Russkaya Starina was a Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n history journal

History Journal

A history journal is an academic serial publication designed to present new scholarship on a historical subject, usually a subfield of history, with articles generally being subjected to peer review.-History and development:...

 published monthly in St. Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 by amateur historian Mikhail Semevsky

Mikhail Semevsky

Mikhail Ivanovich Semevsky was a Russian amateur historian who focused on the era of palace revolutions and the history of 18th-century Russia....

 and his successors between 1870 and 1918. Its authors included Ivan Zabelin, Dmitry Ilovaysky, Nikolai Karlovich Shilder, and Nikolay Kostomarov

Nikolay Kostomarov

Nikolay Ivanovich Kostomarov , of mixed Russian and Ukrainian origin, is one of the most distinguished Russian and Ukrainian historians, a Professor of History at the Kiev University and later at the St...

. A collected edition was reprinted in 2008.

Semevsky was highly enthusiastic about the history of 18th-century Russia. His journal covered the imperial period of Russian history

History of Russia

The history of Russia begins with that of the Eastern Slavs and the Finno-Ugric peoples. The state of Garðaríki , which was centered in Novgorod and included the entire areas inhabited by Ilmen Slavs, Veps and Votes, was established by the Varangian chieftain Rurik in 862...

, including the era of palace revolutions. It was Russkaya Starina that first brought to light the unpublished pages of Eugene Onegin

Eugene Onegin

Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin.It is a classic of Russian literature, and its eponymous protagonist has served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes . It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832...

and Dead Souls

Dead Souls

Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol...

, Bolotov

Andrey Bolotov

Andrey Timofeyevich Bolotov was the most distinguished Russian agriculturist of the 18th century.Bolotov was born and spent most of his adult life in the family estate of Dvoryaninovo, in the Tula region to the south of Moscow. He was brought up by his parents in Livland, where his father's...

's memoir

Memoir

A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...

s, Kuchelbecker

Wilhelm Küchelbecker

Wilhelm Küchelbecker was a Russian Romantic poet and Decembrist....

's diary

Diary

A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...

, and many other materials long forgotten or repressed by censorship. Semevsky personally persuaded numerous old nobles and bureaucrats to put their reminiscences into writing.

In the late 1870s another amateur historian, Sergei Shubinsky, set up a rival publication, The Historical Herald.

External links

• A collection of digitized copies