Old News: Historical Newspapers and Periodicals

Pravda was launched by Lenin; it survived, usually under different titles, the repeated suspensions by the tsarist government before it became the organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Many important Bolshevik leaders (including Stalin) worked with the newspaper. It voiced the views of the leadership of the Soviet Union. 

By the early 1990s Pravda Ukrainy had become the complete opposite of the original newspaper, having jettisoned its previous ideological commitments, and instead embracing democratic principles, independent journalism, and an unrestrained criticism of the government - stances that drove its popularity and growing circulation. Due largely to financial struggles the newspaper ceased publication in 2014.

The Russian literary avant-garde was both a cradle for many new literary styles and the birthplace of a new physical appearance for printed materials. This collection contains many rare and obscure books, as well as well-known and critically acclaimed texts, almanacs, periodicals, literary manifests. Represented in it are more than 30 literary groups without which the history of twentieth-century Russian literature would have been very different. Among the groups included are the Ego-Futurists and Cubo-Futurists, the Imaginists, the Constructivists, the Biocosmists, and the infamous nichevoki - who, in their most radical manifestoes, professed complete abstinence from literary creation.
(From the vendor write-up.)

Previously published under the titles Rabochii i iskusstvo (1929-1930), Sovetskoe iskusstvo (1931-1941), Literatura i iskusstvo (1942-1944), Sovetskoe iskusstvo (1944-1952) and Sovetskaia kul’tura (1953-1991). In the Soviet period it published critical diatribes against dissident writers Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Aksyonov and others, infamous articles condemning modern art exhibitions, chastising avant-guard composers and abstract painters. In modern Russia its reviews and event listings often focus on the cultural life of Moscow and regions, it is known for its topical commentaries on popular culture and politics.

Sheds light on the production side of Soviet cinematography, as well as on the theoretical and practical concepts developed by the period’s leading directors and critics. Includes articles by leading Soviet directors (Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Abram Room), as well as members of the avant-garde LEF, leading authors and philologists.

he magazine covered issues dealing with economics, politics, life abroad, life in Soviet republics, women’s fashion, as well as broader issues in culture and the arts. One of its most popular features was the translations of Soviet literary works, making available in English, (and other languages) works of Russian and Soviet writers that were previously unavailable. An important communist propaganda outlet, the magazine continued its run until the collapse of the USSR in 1991.