‘Nash Jurnal’ (‘Our Journal’) is a collection of manuscripts and pictures by famous artists’ children (members of the children’s editorial board) as well as those collected throughout Russia after the announcement in the newspaper ‘Rech’. The terms for participation were simple: children had to be between 4 and 14 years old and parents were not allowed to give them any help.

The idea to create ‘Nash Jurnal’ came from children — Zhorzhik and Garik — the sons of the illustrator and painter Alexandre Arnshtam.

In February 1915, Dmitry Filosofov, a Russian publicist and art critic, reached out to the parents of children with a penchant for art via a popular cadet newspaper ‘Rech’: ‘Children (fortunately!) do not read newspapers. Therefore, I appeal only to parents. If your children with persistence and love, day after day, trash paper, draw strange people, paint them with unusual colours, tell them about Garik and Zhorzhik. Send their pictures to the editorial office of ‘Nash Jurnal’. Just be honest. Do not correct the pictures, do not show them to an ‘art teacher’, and remember that employees of the new journal should not be over the age of 14. The editorial staff will handle submissions with utmost care and love’.

Many people responded, and hundreds of children’s drawings from all over the Russian Empire were sent to the editorial office of ‘Nash Jurnal’ on Bolshoy Prospekt Vasilievskogo Ostrova, 88 ‘a’ to Alexandre Arnshtam. The journal came out a year later. 

There are more pictures than texts in ‘Nash Jurnal’, and the pictures do not necessarily illustrate the text. This is why ‘Nash Jurnal’ is so peculiar. The magazine includes drawings and texts by the children of artists — friends of Alexandre Benois: A. Arnshtam, E. Lansere, N. Roerich and other famous parents. However, their names in the table of contents were encrypted, so even Alexandre Benois could not guess them all. Certainly, there was Coca Benoit (Nikolai Benoit, an artist whose set designs are still used in performances at La Scala and the Rome Opera House, formerly known as the Royal Opera House); and Svetik and Yurik — Svyatoslav and Yuri Roerich; and the children of the sculptor Yevgeny Lansere — Zhenya and Natasha; and the creators of the magazine — the Arnshtam boys, Zhorzhik and Garik; and Lidochka Ch-aya — Lydia Chukovskaya, who wrote a short story ‘The Adventures of the Sleepwalker’.

The parents of the magazine’s editorial board members, defending the right and value of pure children’s art, both literary and artistic, provided the publication with a large selection of reviews by famous people who supported the children’s initiative. Nowadays it seems strange, but more than 100 years ago, this was not a popular opinion. Many critics and educators believed that subpar children’s art had no value and should not be published. For that matter, children might even become too conceited.

The supporters (the parents of the magazine’s authors) believed that purity, naivety and sincerity of children’s works was valuable, since this is what adults tend to lose when they grow up. Only those who retain a child’s state of mind can become good writers and artists that children love and understand.