Imperial Russia's Illustrated Press Online

Nothing illuminates the lost world of late Imperial Russia better than the pictorial magazines of the era. The illustrated weeklies that appeared following the Emancipation open a wide window on Russian cultural, social, and political life. Their editors traced the sweep of the Russian imagination at the apogee of Russian cultural power from the peak years of Dostojevski and Tolstoj to the modernist era and the chaos of 1917. They captured imperial expansion, cultural innovation, high fashion, graphic arts, performing arts, grand funerals and anniversaries, occasions of state, wonders of science, and domestic and foreign politics. In addition, the weeklies inscribed the changing image of Russia?s great cities, its landscapes, and its multinational citizenry, together with literary life and a visual and verbal chronicle of all and sundry occasions and events. 

The selected journals show how Russia and its peoples were imagined and events recorded and memorialized. They also document Russia's physical landscape including churches no longer standing, vanished landscapes, rituals no longer performed, and scenes that will never again appear, all through the eyes of contemporaries. Each issue of these magazines contains surprises for historians and scholars of culture alike.

Main topics

Russian culture of the early 20th century

Daily life and entertainment in pre-revolutionary Russia

Politics, the First World War

Urban and social life

Literature and the Arts

Fashion

Subject areas

Slavic and Eurasian Studies

Cultural Studies

History

Art History

Social Sciences