Niva (journal)

Niva

An issue from 1891
Frequency	Monthly
Circulation	200,000
Year founded	1870
Final issue	1918
Based in	St. Petersburg
Language	Russian

Niva (Russian: Нива) (Grainfield) was the most popular magazine of late-nineteenth-century Russia; it lasted from 1870 to 1918, and defined itself on its masthead as "an illustrated weekly journal of literature, politics and modern life." Niva was the first of the "thin magazines," illustrated weeklies that "contrasted with the more serious and ideologically focused monthly 'thick journals' intended for the educated reader."

It was founded by A. F. Marx, a German immigrant who saw that Russia "lacked moderately priced magazines of general interest. He intended Niva to be a politically neutral family magazine, but the periodical soon outgrew its original purpose and became an ambitious vehicle for the dissemination of good literature in the provinces. It was read by an audience that extended from primary schoolteachers, rural parish priests, and the urban middle class to the gentry." One of its most popular features was the bonus premiums offered as an inducement to subscribe; at first these consisted of large colored prints of art in traditional style by artists such as Konstantin Makovsky. Later science and literature supplements were added, as well as a children's section; by the end of the century, the most important premium was the collected works of Russian classical authors: "By 1912 Niva subscribers had received much of the best in Russian literature, including the works of Gogol, Lermontov, Goncharov, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Leskov, Chekhov, and others."

In his autobiography, Maxim Gorky says that his employers in the early 1880s subscribed to Niva "for the cut-out patterns and the prize offers; but they never read it"; he himself, however, was enthralled by the volumes he pulled out from under their bed and read at night: "[T]he pictures and their captions... placed in my ken a world which widened every day, a world splendid like the cities of romance. They brought me views of lofty peaks and lovely beaches. Life unfolded its marvels; earth became more enchanting, studded with towns and laden with treasures."