150 years of Vokrug Sveta magazine: formation and development of typologicalModel

Vokrug Sveta magazine is one of the few Russian magazines established back in the 19th century thatstill exist. Vokrug Sveta today, along with such magazines as National Geographic. Russia, Geo(Russian edition), Nauka i Zhizn (Science and Life), Nauka v Focuse (Science in Focus), Nauka izPervykh Ruk (First-Hand Science), etc., specifies the image of the domestic cognitive (popularscience) journalism. Cover of the formation and development processes of its typological model helpsunderstand the genesis of domestic scientific popularization traditions in the mass media.The magazine was founded by the publisher M.O. Wolf in 1861 in Saint-Petersburg. Theappearance of a high-quality cognitive magazine was logical, since the social and politicaltransformations of the 1860s and successes of the modern natural sciences was accompanied by thegrowth of the urban population consciousness. One of its expressions was the growing thirst forknowledge, for the expansion of information about the world.In the first issue the chief editor P.M. Olkhin appealed to the readers formulating the programprinciples of the magazine. The editor emphasized the lack of insight into the human out of relationswith the whole of the surrounding world, and set the aim of the journal - to contribute to the expansionof the readers' understanding of themselves as the human race members, and their place in the nature.The program of the magazine was based on the European rationalism ideological principles and wentup to the ideals of the Enlightenment.There are three periods in the history of the magazine: pre-revolutionary (1861 - 1917), Soviet(1927 - 1991), and modern (since 1991). In turn, each historical period is divided into several stages.Their boundaries are defined either by a significant event in the history of the magazine (stop / resumeof issuing, change of publishers and editors), or by the changing historical conditions. The prerevolutionaryperiod had three stages: 1861-1868; 1885-1891; 1891-1917. In the Soviet period therewere three stages, too: 1927-1941; 1946-1953; 1953 - the 1980s. In the modern period, there is thestage of the 1990s, which corresponds to the conditions of the transitional period after the USSRcollapse, and the stage of the 2000s, when the country overcomes the turmoil of the transition era, andthe system of mass media acquires stability.As the analysis shows, the topics of the magazine and the method of its representation at a certainstage, on the one hand, reflects the level of the society world view development, on the other hand,corresponds to the social and historical conditions. Still, the evolution of the typical model tracescontinuity: at each stage of 'Vokrug Sveta is committed to the principles stated by the first editor.Therefore, the phenomenon of Vokrug Sveta at the present stage appears as a natural result of thecentury-and-a-half long history of the magazine.

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