Ogonek Digital Archive

Throughout its illustrious history Ogonek came to publish original works by such Soviet cultural luminaries as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Isaac Babel, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the photographer Yuri Rost, and others. Ogonek grew into an influential and widely read Soviet publication, experiencing the peak of its popularity at the hands of its editor Vitaly Korotich in 1986 at the height of perestroika. Korotich, inspired by the newfound political liberties, turned the journal into a flagship of glasnost, a lively space for edgy political commentary, criticism, and satire, thus becoming a robust platform for intellectual debate.

After undergoing financial and creative crisis in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which saw a steep decline in readership, Ogonek rediscovered its creative zest under a new leadership and management, returning to its roots as an important forum for cultural and political intellectual exchanges. Facing financial obstacles again years later, Ogonek ceased publication in 2021.

• Ogonek is one of the most important sources of photographic and visual representation of life in the Soviet Union, much akin to LIFE magazine in the United States. It attracted some of the best photographers in the USSR such as Yevgeny Khaldei, Max Alpert, Alexander Rodchenko, et al., publishing their works regularly. Thus, Ogonek represents a treasure trove of photo-documentation of life in the Soviet Union.
• From its inception it had several features that helped shape and elevate the cultural discourse in the USSR becoming in a sense an influential cultural tastemaker. Some of the features were the following: a refined literary language (although it contained elements of official praise); short stories and poems, much like one sees in The New Yorker; quality reproductions of European, Russian, and Soviet art, etc.
• Even during the difficult years of the WWII Ogonek did not cease publication, and thus it is an invaluable repository of primary source material for both visual and textual study of that crucial period of Soviet and Russian history.
• Ogonek was there at the inception of the Soviet Union, and there again during its demise. As such it is an especially important source of content analysis charting the evolving cultural, social, and political discourse of the USSR. By studying the content of Ogonek, scholars and researchers will be able to pinpoint with some precision the periods of the emergence of certain cultural, literary, political trends and the abandonment of others when they were no longer deemed important, fashionable or were even dangerous. In short it provides an important story arc from the rise of the Soviet Union to its demise to Russia’s post-Soviet experiments with democratization and the rise of Vladimir Putin.