The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Russkii Vestnik

(Russian Herald), a literary and political journal founded in Moscow in 1856 by M. N. Katkov with the assistance of P. M. Leont’ev. Initially it was issued twice a month, and beginning in 1861 monthly.

The first period of the journal’s publication (1856–61) was characterized by a moderately liberal program and the expectation of “reforms from above.” During these years, the journal published M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s Provincial Sketches, I. S. Turgenev’s On the Eve and Fathers and Sons, L. N. Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and F. M. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. In its second period (1862–67) the journal became a mouthpiece for the forces of reaction. Katkov turned from “enlightened liberalism” to “nationalism, chauvinism, and rabid Black-Hun-dredism” (V. I. Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch, 5th ed., vol. 22, p. 44).

Russkii vestnik cultivated the “antinihilistic novel” (A Troubled Sea by A. F. Pisemskii, At Daggers Drawn by N. S. Leskov, The Mirage by V. P. Kliushnikov, and Panurge’s Flock by V. V. Krestovskii) and demanded “repression from above.” After Katkov’s death in 1887, the journal was published by various individuals in Moscow and St. Petersburg until 1906.

REFERENCES

Lenin, V. I. “Kar’era.” Poln. sobr. sock, 5th ed., vol. 22.
Zaionchkovskii, P. A. Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie v kontse XIX stoletiia. Moscow, 1970.
Kantor, V. “M. N. Katkov i krushenie estetiki liberalizma.” Voprosy literatury, 1973, no. 5.
Istoriia russkoi zhurnalistiki XVIII-XIX vv, 3rd ed. Moscow, 1973.

E. G. BABAEV

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References in periodicals archive

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(15) Mikhailo Dragomanov, "Evrei i poliaki v Iugo-Zapadnom krae," Russkii vestnik, no.

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One could spend a lifetime reading the entire collections of Russkaia starina, Kievskaia starina, Russkii vestnik, Istoricheskii vestnik, and so on.

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In 1867, Fadeev published a series of articles critical of War Minister Dmitrii Alekseevich Miliutin's reforms in Russkii vestnik and articulated his Pan-Slavic goals in a series of articles in Birzhevye vedomosti, which he published separately as Mnenie o vostochnom voprose (An Opinion on the Eastern Question) in 1870, just when the issue of Russia's support for the Balkan Slavs was becoming a hot topic in the press.

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(9) S--v [Il'ia Selivanov], "Vospominaniia o Moskovskom kommercheskom uchilishche 1831- 1838 godov," Russkii vestnik 36 (November-December 1861): 719-54, here 722; [Anatolii] Koni, "Kupecheskaia svad'ba," in Moskovskaia starina, 313; I.

(25) "Rasskaz nabilkinskoi bogodelenki, Anny Andreevny Sozonovoi, byvshei krepostnoi Vasil'ia Titovicha Lepekhina," in "Rasskazy ochevidtsev o dvenadtsatom gode," Russkii vestnik 102 (November 1872): 291.

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(80) With these measures, the Prussian War Ministry sought to concentrate ali agitation in its own hands and leave the censored newspaper Russkii vestnik as the only information channel.

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The fact that the second tendency was gaining ground in the most prominent liberal organ, Russkii vestnik, determined that journal's pro-English orientation." (10)

Thus the discussions about the role of the state and about communal property, both within Russkii vestnik and between it and Atenei, another mid-19th-century liberal publication, most probably reflected the initial process of differentiation among liberal thinkers.

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