Russian Satirical Journals

"On Sunday, January 9th, 1905, Tsar Nicholas II ordered troops to fire on a peaceful procession of workers demonstrating in St. Petersburg, unleashing a storm of strikes, mutinies, violent uprisings, and brutal reprisals that raged across Russia for well over a year.

Known collectively as the Revolution of 1905, these upheavals transformed the political landscape and set the stage for the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War that followed. Bloody Sunday also marked an important watershed for Russian graphic artists. With the momentary collapse of censorship, over 300 different satirical magazines were published during the Revolution of 1905, more than had seen the light of day in Russia during the entire nineteenth century. Most of them survived for only a few numbers before the censors caught up. Yet the output was impressive all the same.

Rushing to fill the expressive void, artists and writers captured the events and personalities of the revolution with biting satire and aesthetic sophistication. While styles and subject matter varied, artists often chose to depict nightmarish scenes of bloodshed and repression, drawing on images of the macabre and the mystical that had already been in vogue in Symbolist circles across Europe at the turn of the century." [source]

“For a few brief months the journals spoke with a great and unprecedented rage that neither arrest nor exile could silence. At first their approach was oblique, their allusions veiled, and they often fell victim to the censor’s pencil. But people had suffered censorship for too long.Satirists constantly expanded their territory and their targets of attack, demolishing one obstacle after another as they went, thriving on censorship.

The workers’ movement grew in boldness, culminating in the birth of the St Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, the people’s government. For fifty days the Tsar and his ministers were confronted by another power, another law. Journalists and printers seized the right to publish without submitting to the censor. The satirical journals then reached their apotheosis, until the revolution died as it had risen, bathed in blood.”
From the introduction to 'Blood and Laughter: Caricatures from the 1905 Revolution', 1983 by C Porter & D King [Thanks JM!]

Author: Gints, G. E.
Golmstrem, A. A. Iurevich, V. N.
Karpov, G. P. Kirsanov, K.
Kniazev, Vasilii Vasilevich, 1887-1937?
Lebedev, V. P. (Vladimir Petrovich), 1869-1939.
Morozov, P. Ongirskii, V. M.
Rysis, A. D. Shcheglov, A. A.
Varezhnikov, A. V. Vasilevskii, I.
'Ovod'
Saint Petersburg, 1906
8 p. ill. 35 cm.




Author N. Vasin
'Voron'
Saint Petersburg, 1906
8 p. col. ill. 36 cm.




Sinitsyn, Ya. D., Editor
'Dikar'
Sankt-Peterburg: Sinitsyn, Ya. D., 1906
1 v. : 8 p. ill. ; 35 cm.




Author
Chekonin, S. V. Chernyi, Sasha.
Deters, E. V. Geier, B. F.
Gerardov, N. N. Godin, IA. V.
Kaizerman, G. IA.
Krandievskaia-Tolstaia, N. (Natalia), 1888-1963.
Kartsov, V. S. Kudinov, A. A.
Likhachev, V. S. (Vladimir Sergieevich), 1849-1910.
Mikhailov, V. G.
'Maski'
Saint Petersburg, 1906
8 p.
col. ill.
32 cm.




Sinitsyn, Ya. D., Editor
'Dikar'
Sankt-Peterburg: Sinitsyn, Ya. D., 1906
1 v. : 8 p. ill. ; 35 cm.





Author
A. K. (Aleksandr Kondratev), b. 1876.
Artsybushev, IU. K. (IUrii Konstantinovich), 1877-1952.
Bariatinskii, V. V. (Vladimir Vladimirovich), kniaz, b. 1874.
Bashkin, V. V. Biatkin, G. A.
Chapygin, Aleksei, 1870-1937.
Chekhonin, Sergei Vasilevich, 1878-1936
'Zritel'
16 p. col. ill. 33 cm.





Vakhrameyev, A. I.; Zlatovratskiy; A. N.; Zasodimskiy; P. V.; Bezpalov, I. F., Editor
'Gamayun'
Sankt-Peterburg: Zlatovratskiy; A. N., 1906
1 v. : 10 p. ; ill. ; 33 cm.
[alternative version - unripped]




Author: Bebutov, P. V.
Lazarev-Gruzinskii, A. S.
Roslavlev, Aleksandr, 1883-1920.
Seven, N. N. Svobodin, M. P.
'Zalp'
Saint Petersburg, 1905
8 p. ill. 36 cm.




Vakhrameyev, A. I.; Zlatovratskiy; A. N.; Zasodimskiy; P. V.; Bezpalov, I. F., Editor
'Gamayun'
Sankt-Peterburg: Zlatovratskiy; A. N., 1906
1 v. : 10 p. ; ill. ; 33 cm.




Vakhrameyev, A. I.; Zlatovratskiy; A. N.; Zasodimskiy; P. V.; Bezpalov, I. F., Editor
'Gamayun'
Sankt-Peterburg: Zlatovratskiy; A. N., 1906
1 v. : 10 p. ; ill. ; 33 cm.




Petrov, A. M., Editor
'Yad'
Sankt-Peterburg: Petrov, A. M., 1905
1 v. : 8 p. ; ill. ; 23 cm.




Gol'dberg, Yu. V., Editor
'Nakanune'
Sankt-Peterburg: Gol'dberg, Yu. V., [1907]
1 v. : 16 p. ; ill. ; 32 cm.




Gol'dberg, Yu. V., Editor
'Obryv'
Sankt-Peterburg: Gol'dberg, Yu. V., 1907
1 v. : 12 p. ; ill. ; 32 cm

The print title is 'Odin v pole ne voin' {Один в поле не воин}: "One man in the field is not a warrior" or "One man alone can't win a war" --- this was the Russian title of German book by Friedrich von Spielhagen (d. 1911) that featured the revolutionary character Leo and was wildly popular in Russia.




Vyshomirskiy, V. M., Editor
'Payatsy'
Sankt-Peterburg: Vyshomirskiy, V. M., 1906
1 v. : 8 p. ; ill. ; 46 cm.




Adamov, E. M. (Kholodnyy), Editor
'Petrushka'
Sankt-Peterburg: Adamov, E. M. (Kholodnyy), 1905
1 v. : ill. ; 33 cm.




Milyayev, V. E., Editor
'Shrapnel' 1
Moskva: Milyayev, V. E., 1905
1 v. : 8 p. ; ill. ; 30 cm.

Illustration of royal family's belongings in front of ruined palace




Milyayev, V. E., Editor
'Shrapnel' 2
Moskva: Milyayev, V. E., 1905
1 v. : 8 p. ; ill. ; 30 cm.




[Kisnemskiy, S. P.], Editor
'Shtyk'
Sankt-Peterburg: [Kisnemskiy, S. P.], [1906]
1 v. : 8 p. ; ill. ; 41 cm.




Author: Chepurnyi, S. I.
Chisliev, D. G. Dymow, Ossip, 1878-1959.
Iargin, A. I. Panov, N. A. (Nikolai Aleksandrovich), b. 1848.
Rudenko, S. I. Usas, S. M.
Publisher: S.I. Chepurnyi,
Saint Petersburg
'Deviatyi val.' 2
8 p. ill. 35 cm.




[Prokhorov, S. M.], Editor
'Za zhizn'!'
Sankt-Peterburg: [Prokhorov, S. M.], 1905
1 v. : ill. ; 35 cm.




Author: Assaturov, P. K.
Evstafev, P. M. Iazenko, N. I.
Ivanov, D. I. (Dmitrii Ivanovich), 1891-
Kartsov, V. S. Kaufman, M. S.
Kniazev, Vasilii, 1887-1937?
Krasnitskii, A. I. (Aleksandr Ivanovich), b. 1866.
Lvovich, M. Mikhailov, K. A. (Konstantin Arsenevich)
'IUmoristicheskii almanakh'
16 p. ill. 32 cm.


As JMorrison rightly pointed out in his Nonist post from a few years ago, we westerners have to modify our concept of the word 'satire' to accommodate some of the grim subject matter examined in the early 20th century Russian satirical journals.

That's not to say they are devoid of humour, but the process of drawing and publishing some scenes must have been a catharsis itself, without the need for a comic overlay. If life for the general populace was so depressing and bleak at the best of times, it's a hard task for an editorial cartoonist or illustrator to convincingly skewer abominable crimes of the wicked oppressors (or whomever) beyond simply recording their occurrence in an underground publication.

{Edit: Thinking about this later, the opinion above is less applicable to the (biased of course!) selection of images in this entry than it is to the whole corpus of post-revolutionary graphic art journals.]

On a happier note, this post gave me the opportunity to revisit three of my all-time favourite destinations on the interweb, viz:

~~ The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections -- Russian Satirical Journals.
~~ Yale's Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscript Library -- Russian Graphic Art and the Revolution of 1905.
~~ The Nonist -- sadly dormant now, but never forgotten -- Wit Larded with Malice.

See also: The University of Southern California Libraries site: Russian Satirical Journals of the 1905 Revolution.