The publication's original intention was to promote self-education by popularizing science and history. By mid-1890, due largely to
Angel Bogdanovich (who instigated on the journal's pages a well-publicized polemic with
narodniks), it became more politically aware. Attracting
Marxist (mainly the so-called
Legal Marxists:
Pyotr Struve,
Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky,
Nikolai Berdyaev and others) authors and readership, it became popular among liberal and radical Russian
intelligentsia. The literary criticism section was edited by Bogdanovich, Vladimir Kranikhfeld and Nevedomsky. Among the magazine's regular contributors were
Vikenty Veresaev,
Leonid Andreev,
Ivan Bunin,
Alexander Kuprin,
Mikhail Artsybashev,
Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak,
Ignaty Potapenko,
Nikolai Garin-Mikhailovsky (fiction); Ivan Ivanov,
Pavel Milyukov,
Yevgeny Tarle,
Fyodor Batyushkov,
Evgeny Anichkov,
Nestor Kotlyarevsky (non-fiction). In July 1906, the journal was closed by censors. It changed its title and in October 1906, re-emerged as
Sovremenny Mir (Modern World) with Bogdanovich at the helm. ==References==