V. Lukianin. Ural: The journal and destinies

Abstract

More than simply a monograph about a literary journal, Lukyanin’s book features reminiscences of its former readers, authors, and editors. Already in its first decade of existence, Ural began to print works of renowned Russian writers and translated American and British prose alongside Urals-born authors. Its commercial success peaked in the 1970s, under V. Ocheretin as its editor-in-chief, with tens of thousands of local industrial workers subscribing to the journal for its crime mysteries and its popular satirical and humorous sections. In the early 1980s, the liberal Communist Lukianin started transformation of the journal’s agenda, while Urals remained the centre of the region’s literary life. The Urals underground writers began to appear in the journal in the late 1980s, although Ural shunned works that were too critical of the Soviet government, unlike its Moscow-based peers, who managed to attract huge numbers of new readers.