Sovremennik

Sovremennik

The title page of the issue printed after the death of Alexander Pushkin
First issue	1836
Final issue	1866
Based in	St. Petersburg
Language	Russian

Sovremennik (Современник "The Contemporary") was a Russian literary, social and political magazine, published in Saint Petersburg in 1836-1866. It came out four times a year in 1836-1843 and once a month after that. The magazine published poetry, prose, critical, historical, ethnographic and other material.

Sovremennik originated as a private enterprise of Alexander Pushkin who was running out of money to support his growing family. To assist him with the magazine, the poet asked Nikolai Gogol, Pyotr Vyazemsky and Vladimir Odoyevsky to contribute their works to the journal. It was there that the first substantial assortment of Fyodor Tyutchev's poems was published. Soon it became clear that Pushkin's establishment could not compete with Faddey Bulgarin's journal, which published more popular and less demanding literature. Sovremennik was out of date and could not command a paying audience.

When Pushkin died, his friend Pyotr Pletnyov took over the editorship in 1838. A few years later the magazine fell into decline, and Pletnyov handed it over to Nikolay Nekrasov and Ivan Panaev in 1847. It was Nekrasov who really made the magazine profitable. He enlisted the services of Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov, Alexander Herzen and Nikolai Ogaryov. Sovremennik was the first to publish translated works by Charles Dickens, George Sand and other best-selling foreign writers.

Although the magazine was owned and run by Nekrasov, its official editor-in-chief was Alexander Nikitenko. The virulent realist critic Vissarion Belinsky was responsible for its ideology. His criticism of present-day reality and propaganda of democratic ideas made the journal very popular among the Russian intelligentsia. Sovremennik's circulation was 3,100 copies in 1848.