The Russian history journal that's been publishing archival documents for 20 years (interview)
For the past twenty years, the staff of the Rodina Magazine, an illustrated history journal, has been dissecting archived historical materials for fragments of the truth to bring into the public domain.
While the world continues discussing Russia’s “new informational closedness,” for almost twenty years now the Rodina (Motherland) magazine has been publishing exclusive historical Russian documents, dating from ancient Kiev to the 1990s. The documents are quite informative, processed by competent people with a wide vision of history. Who, for example, has ever thought about how the corrupt officials during Ivan Grozny’s times used the then-analogue of today’s prosecutor’s office for their own purposes? Who ever noticed that the conflict between the General Staff and the Ministry of Defense, which had cost the Russian army so much in Afghanistan and in Chechnya, actually began during the first months of World War I? Where else can you find out what real power did a governor of Vyatka or Yaroslavl have in the late 19th century? Rodina’s professional editorial staff does not allow for any generalizations or loud statements. Instead, on display are the results of scrupulous work by a team of historians, headed by the Editor in Chief Yury Borisyonok. Russia Profile spoke to Borisyonok about his work.
R.P. Today your magazine is one of the most authoritative and, at the same time, most popular periodicals on Russian history. How did it come into being?
Y.B.: We have two birthdays. In 1879 a weekly magazine called Rodina was launched in St. Petersburg. This periodical was very popular with the general public. A character from an Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov novel named Vasisualy Lokhankin, who is a parody of a liberal Russian intellectual, reads the Rodina magazine even in the 1920s, under the Bolsheviks. He does read an old collection of issues, though: the Bolsheviks closed the magazine in 1917 for political reasons.
In 1989 the same Bolsheviks reopened the magazine. The idea of reopening it belonged to the Editor in Chief of the Pravda newspaper at that time, Viktor Afanasyev. Starting with the very first issues, the magazine published interesting materials on history, including the most topical historical pages of the 20th century. For example, Rodina published materials about the 1918 execution of the royal family. Today we are already sick and tired of this topic, but back then it was sensational. In 1990 the magazine was closed for a short while, and it was published again in 1991 under the auspice of Russia’s new President Boris Yeltsin. This is when I joined the magazine as a correspondent.
R.P. One of your predecessors remembered that the name Rodina in the 1990s was perceived as something politically incorrect and nationalist. He called the atmosphere of those years “suffocating:” it was shameful to be called a patriot…
Y.B.: I remember the atmosphere at that time, and I can call it anything but suffocating. From the very beginning of my being here, I do not remember any occasions when the state authorities interfered with our editorial policy, although the list of Rodina’s founders includes the Government of the Russian Federation and the Russian Presidential Administration....
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While the world continues discussing Russia’s “new informational closedness,” for almost twenty years now the Rodina (Motherland) magazine has been publishing exclusive historical Russian documents, dating from ancient Kiev to the 1990s. The documents are quite informative, processed by competent people with a wide vision of history. Who, for example, has ever thought about how the corrupt officials during Ivan Grozny’s times used the then-analogue of today’s prosecutor’s office for their own purposes? Who ever noticed that the conflict between the General Staff and the Ministry of Defense, which had cost the Russian army so much in Afghanistan and in Chechnya, actually began during the first months of World War I? Where else can you find out what real power did a governor of Vyatka or Yaroslavl have in the late 19th century? Rodina’s professional editorial staff does not allow for any generalizations or loud statements. Instead, on display are the results of scrupulous work by a team of historians, headed by the Editor in Chief Yury Borisyonok. Russia Profile spoke to Borisyonok about his work.
R.P. Today your magazine is one of the most authoritative and, at the same time, most popular periodicals on Russian history. How did it come into being?
Y.B.: We have two birthdays. In 1879 a weekly magazine called Rodina was launched in St. Petersburg. This periodical was very popular with the general public. A character from an Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov novel named Vasisualy Lokhankin, who is a parody of a liberal Russian intellectual, reads the Rodina magazine even in the 1920s, under the Bolsheviks. He does read an old collection of issues, though: the Bolsheviks closed the magazine in 1917 for political reasons.
In 1989 the same Bolsheviks reopened the magazine. The idea of reopening it belonged to the Editor in Chief of the Pravda newspaper at that time, Viktor Afanasyev. Starting with the very first issues, the magazine published interesting materials on history, including the most topical historical pages of the 20th century. For example, Rodina published materials about the 1918 execution of the royal family. Today we are already sick and tired of this topic, but back then it was sensational. In 1990 the magazine was closed for a short while, and it was published again in 1991 under the auspice of Russia’s new President Boris Yeltsin. This is when I joined the magazine as a correspondent.
R.P. One of your predecessors remembered that the name Rodina in the 1990s was perceived as something politically incorrect and nationalist. He called the atmosphere of those years “suffocating:” it was shameful to be called a patriot…
Y.B.: I remember the atmosphere at that time, and I can call it anything but suffocating. From the very beginning of my being here, I do not remember any occasions when the state authorities interfered with our editorial policy, although the list of Rodina’s founders includes the Government of the Russian Federation and the Russian Presidential Administration....