The founder of the magazine
Russkaya Mysl, Vukol Mikhailovich Lavrov, was born on September 23, 1852, in a merchant family in the small rural town of
Yelets. It is known that he completed only three classes of the
parish school, which, however, did not prevent him from reading extensively and becoming a highly educated individual. After meeting with his fellow writers in
Moscow, Vukol Lavrov decided to publish his own magazine. Having received permission to publish
Russkaya Mysl in 1879, he closed his father’s trading business in Yelets and invested all his funds in the magazine, the first issue of which was published in 1880. In 1880–1885 the editor of
Russkaya Mysl was
Sergey Yuryev who brought it close to the
Slavophiliac movement. After Yuryev's death, Viktor Goltsev became the editor; under his guidance the magazine made a turn to the left and provided safe haven for many contributors of the recently closed
Otechestvennye Zapiski, taking upon itself some of the letter's subscription obligations. This, as well as dropping the standard price from 16 to 12
rubles per issue, helped its popularity rise.
Russkaya Mysl’s adherence to moderate
constitutionalism led to the magazine receiving two warnings: the first – for the ‘Petersburg Letters’ in the December issue of 1883, the second – for the article by
V.A. Goltsev ‘Sociology on an Economic Basis’ in the November issue of 1893. In 1911, the magazine was also criticized by the Church after it published material dedicated to the memory of
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Because of this,
Russkaya Mysl was excluded from the dean's library by the pastoral meeting of the
Vyazma city
clergy. In 1906, after Goltsev's death,
Alexander Kisevetter became the editor-in-chief; he invited
Pyotr Struve as a co-editor. The magazine started actively discuss latest political, social and religious reforms. Lavrov was still a stuff member but now his works were published not that often. One specific feature of
Russkaya Mysl was the Bibliography section which informed the readership of all that was new in
Russian literature and journalism. The journal also ran its own The Scientific review and The Modern Art sections, the latter specializing mostly in the Moscow theatrical life.
Russkaya Mysl was often called the organ of the
Cadet Party, but Struve himself denied this: ‘The period of certain magazines which tend to represent certain political views, in my opinion, is over. [...] Whether in philosophy or in religion, there should not be a place for “partisanship”.’ After the 1905 revolution, the magazine became more right-wing, while maintaining a constitutional-democratic orientation. Struve fervently supported the
February Revolution, but he perceived the
October Revolution as a catastrophe for the country and was hostile to the
Bolshevik, whom he viewed as usurpers. In connection with this, the magazine stopped being published in Moscow in 1918. Since 1921, the magazine has continued to be published abroad; but the last of the monthly issues was published in 1927 in
Paris. After a twenty-year break,
Russkaya Mysl was brought back into existence, but in the format of a newspaper. The first editor of the new
Russkaya Mysl was the pre-revolutionary Russian journalist
Vladimir Lazarevsky and, following
World War II, the newspaper acquired a new official sponsor in the person of the
US State Department. The newspaper positioned itself as a
Christian publication in opposition to
Marxist publications or those which were being financed by the
USSR. Lazarevsky remained the editor-in-chief of the publication until 1953. He was replaced by
Sergei Vodov, who headed the editorial office until 1968. During this remarkable period, the publication was authored by extraordinary writers such as
Boris Zaitsev,
Ivan Bunin,
Ivan Shmelev,
Nina Berberova,
Gaito Gazdanov and many others. From 1968 to 1978, the newspaper was headed by Zinaida Shakhovskaya. This period saw the emergence of the human rights movement in the USSR. Defending the values of democracy,
Russkaya Mysl published works of
dissidents. In 1978,
Irina Ilovaiskaya-Alberti became the editor-in-chief of
Russkaya Mysl.
Sergei Grigoryants noted that, with the arrival of the new editor-in-chief, ‘the newspaper's attention was no longer the news and problems of Russian emigration, but everything that was happening in the Soviet Union (which had already begun to open-up), and most importantly, its dissident democratic movement’. During this period, representatives of the ‘third wave’ of emigration and, also, human rights activists, Western Slavists, Sovietologists and dissidents were published in
Russkaya Mysl. Such authors and Russian thinkers as Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
Joseph Brodsky,
Andrei Sakharov, Mikhail Koryakov, Vladimir Maksimov, Natalia Gorbanevskaya, Mikhail Geller, Sergey Dovlatov, Alexander Nekrich, Victor Suvorov and Alain Besancon left a mark on the history of
Russkaya Mysl. After the collapse of the USSR, and the fall of the
Iron Curtain, the publication reoriented itself to rallying Russian-speaking communities abroad and restoring ties between compatriots and the Motherland. In 1991 the publication faced severe financial difficulties. Many sponsors, including the
United States Department of State, declined to renew the sponsorship-contract. This forced the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Irina Alekseevna Ilovaiskaya-Alberti, to begin to look for new sources of funding. Eventually the
Roman Catholic Church and the
Soros Foundation announced that they would help the legendary publication to weather those hard times. By the early 2000s,
Russkaya Mysl was again on the verge of closure. The editor-in-chief of the newspaper,
Irina Vladimirovna Krivova, has described this period as follows: ‘By 2001, we were completely bankrupt, and they really wanted to close the newspaper. We (several journalists of the newspaper) amassed the money that had been paid to us as redundancy benefits, and we bought the newspaper from our French publisher for the price of the underlying assets. It was impossible to allow
Russkaya Mysl to disappear without a trace. For two years, we, the remaining five or six people, worked for free – writing and editing from home. We said goodbye to our historical premises, in which we had “lived” for almost 30 years […] We lived, one might say, in the attic but, thanks to the authors who supported us completely voluntarily, we managed not to miss a single issue of the newspaper. For two years, I was, literally rushed off my feet in search of funds. I went around all the Parisian publications, and many publishing houses, explaining that
Russkaya Mysl had already become part of the historical heritage of France. However, I could not find any support. In the end, the people who showed interest in our publication turned out to be Russian businessmen.’. Since 2005, Victor Lupan has been the head of the editorial board and a regular contributor to
Russkaya Mysl. In 2006, within the framework of the ‘Homecoming’ program, the Parisian archives of the newspaper were donated to the
Russian State Library. In the same year,
Russkaya Mysl published a collection of the best articles of the newspaper entitled
From Stalin to Putin: 60 Years of Russian History. The presentation of the book took place at the 2007
Russian Economic Forum. Since 2006,
Russkaya Mysl has been published in
London as
Russian Mind. In 2011, the publication was returned to the historical format of the 1880 magazine. Since 2016, the journal has been published both in Russian and in English. Due to administrative difficulties, which were caused by
Brexit, followed by the Pandemic, the board of directors decided to relocate back to Paris and, in 2021,
Russian Mind again began to be published there. Now headquartered in 8th district, and continuing to be published monthly,
Russian Mind stays true to its mission of being a beam of cultural enrichment for broad-minded individuals. == Authors ==