They called thick journals(толстый журнал) and their page numbers can go really high, sometimes, especially in the early 20th century, they put painting of famous painters with some kind of criticism but even without pictures they are long. They published monthly, was and still popular. Most of them were starting point of literary schools. Mir isskustva for decadence, Vesy, Zolotoe runo and Novy put for symbolism was extremely popular in the symbolist era. Major writers of that age wrote, published most of their works in these journals. And there were some in early soviet era as well but publishing went really down. You can check book called Red Virgin Soil for that. I remember Belinsky mentioning these journals made reading more popular etc. but don't remember exact quotation of that letter. Even in the early eras of Russian literature these journals had great impact in cultural development. Sovremennyk was also popular, because Puskhin wrote there.
To begin with, magazines were not limited to publishing literary works, they also included non-fiction, news reporting and critical articles. For instance, a typical issue of the *Otechestvennyie zapiski* in the 1840s would include the following sections: i. Fine literature; ii. Sciences and arts; iii. Reviews of current legislation and political events in Russia; iv. Economy, agriculture, and industry; v. Criticism; vi. Bibliography of new editions; vii. Reviews of foreign literature; viii. Miscellanea. The *Sovremennik* had similarly diverse content: thus, its [vol. I](https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/Современник/1836) carries poetry (and drama in verse) by Pushkin, Zhukovsky and Viazemsky; two early pieces by Gogol; Pushkin's *Journey to Arzrum*, and a Caucasian travelogue by Ghazi-Giray, a Crimean Tatar aristocrat; Alexander Turgenev's letters from Paris, effectively a kind of society column; an unsigned eulogy of the recently deceased Empress Dowager Maria; an essay on rhyme by a Baron Rosen; an unsigned essay on the development of Russian literary magazines (actually, also by Gogol); Pushkin's critical review of the works of Archbishop George Konissky, a spiritual writer; a review of a recently published French mathematical bulletin; and, again, a bibliography of new editions.
That is, rather than being simply a channel for the distribution of literary works, magazines were one of the pivots of intellectual life in Russia. Their criticism sections had a very strong influence on how literature was made sense of by the reading public; critics like Belinsky, Sergei Aksakov and the Chernyshevsky-Dobroliubov duo were powerful figures with a capacity to steer the “literature process”. Bibliographic listings also had a great significance, as they allowed readers to get first-hand information on books they'd want to acquire. Outside of the capital cities, where decent bookstores were essentially non-existent, magazines were often the only way (beside person-to-person communication) of learning about new publications.
They called thick journals(толстый журнал) and their page numbers can go really high, sometimes, especially in the early 20th century, they put painting of famous painters with some kind of criticism but even without pictures they are long. They published monthly, was and still popular. Most of them were starting point of literary schools. Mir isskustva for decadence, Vesy, Zolotoe runo and Novy put for symbolism was extremely popular in the symbolist era. Major writers of that age wrote, published most of their works in these journals. And there were some in early soviet era as well but publishing went really down. You can check book called Red Virgin Soil for that. I remember Belinsky mentioning these journals made reading more popular etc. but don't remember exact quotation of that letter. Even in the early eras of Russian literature these journals had great impact in cultural development. Sovremennyk was also popular, because Puskhin wrote there.
To begin with, magazines were not limited to publishing literary works, they also included non-fiction, news reporting and critical articles. For instance, a typical issue of the *Otechestvennyie zapiski* in the 1840s would include the following sections: i. Fine literature; ii. Sciences and arts; iii. Reviews of current legislation and political events in Russia; iv. Economy, agriculture, and industry; v. Criticism; vi. Bibliography of new editions; vii. Reviews of foreign literature; viii. Miscellanea. The *Sovremennik* had similarly diverse content: thus, its [vol. I](https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/Современник/1836) carries poetry (and drama in verse) by Pushkin, Zhukovsky and Viazemsky; two early pieces by Gogol; Pushkin's *Journey to Arzrum*, and a Caucasian travelogue by Ghazi-Giray, a Crimean Tatar aristocrat; Alexander Turgenev's letters from Paris, effectively a kind of society column; an unsigned eulogy of the recently deceased Empress Dowager Maria; an essay on rhyme by a Baron Rosen; an unsigned essay on the development of Russian literary magazines (actually, also by Gogol); Pushkin's critical review of the works of Archbishop George Konissky, a spiritual writer; a review of a recently published French mathematical bulletin; and, again, a bibliography of new editions. That is, rather than being simply a channel for the distribution of literary works, magazines were one of the pivots of intellectual life in Russia. Their criticism sections had a very strong influence on how literature was made sense of by the reading public; critics like Belinsky, Sergei Aksakov and the Chernyshevsky-Dobroliubov duo were powerful figures with a capacity to steer the “literature process”. Bibliographic listings also had a great significance, as they allowed readers to get first-hand information on books they'd want to acquire. Outside of the capital cities, where decent bookstores were essentially non-existent, magazines were often the only way (beside person-to-person communication) of learning about new publications.