Children’s Illustrated Magazines in the Era of Post-Soviet Transformation

Abstract

The study of Russian children’s illustrated magazines at the various stages of their formation and development remains a relevant topic due to the evolution of their printed forms in the context of the transformation of the media environment. The first Russian children’s magazine was Children’s Reading for the Heart and Mind [Detskoye chteniye dlya serdtsa i razuma] (1785–1789). This publication contributed to the creation of Russian periodical literature for children, and it provided the point of departure for the creative efforts of numerous publications that followed in its footsteps, including even present-day Russian children’s magazines.

The aim of the present article is to study the evolution of the forms of Russian children’s illustrated magazines under modern processes of the transformation of the media environment. This goal has determined the objectives of the paper: to study empirical materials related to this topic, consisting of numerous children’s publications from different historical periods; identifying the relevant stages of the development of children’s periodicals; examining the content and formal characteristics of children’s periodicals; applying an integrated approach to working with the most important aspects of Russian children’s magazines in the process of transforming the media reality.

Our research methodology is based on a structural approach, which has been updated to incorporate structural-functional, structural-formal, and system-synergetic approaches as well as linear regression methodology. The problems that arise from the epistemological context are determined by the significance of the integrated approach to the study of the formal structure of Russian children’s illustrated magazines. When we review the state of research in this area, we see that there have been very few studies of Russian periodicals for children despite the relevance of the topic.

During the process of their formation and development, children’s magazines came into being as a special type of publication with varying subject-thematic, ideological, political, pedagogical, and commercial orientations. They differed in their target audience, content, and presentation, and they were made available to a wide circle of readers. The content of these publications mainly included fiction, journalism, nonfiction articles, sociopolitical commentary, entertainment, and advertising. We have provided a theoretical justification of our research methodology, which uses the general scientific structural method and facilitates the study of the evolution of Russian children’s illustrated magazines. The methodology has allowed us to draw conclusions about how their formal structure as well as the larger media environment were transformed over time.     

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