NovosibIrsk literary and news magazine ‘NastoyAshcheye’ (Present Day) was founded in 1928 and existed until the early 1930. Despite its short lifetime, the publication, representing the literary group of the same name which included Boris Reznikov, Yevgeny Ivanov (Fillipych), and others, is rightfully considered a historical monument to the periodicals of the Russian avant-garde. ‘NastoyAshchee’ was edited by the activist of the Soviet press Alexander Kurs, who arrived in Novosibirsk on the direction of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party in 1926. The journalist had eight years of reporting in London, editing the capital’s magazines “Ekran” and “Journalist” and the newspaper “Kino”, and the Civil War under his belt.
The style of the magazine was determined by the leading art trend of the 1920s, “literature of fact”. The main focus was essays, sketches, reviews, and feuilletons conveying the atmosphere of the late 1920s. The magazine carried on a dialog with its readers letting peasants and workers speak their minds. Every issue featured readers' letters. Editorial staff discussed with the people the content and columns of previous and upcoming issues. The magazine’s writers and journalists would impersonate their characters a lot. Even poetry was often written in the folklore style: comic couplets (chastushka), work songs, and hymns.
Keeping up with the concept of ‘fact, ’ the magazine criticized hackjobs, bombast, and literariness. Maxim Gorky, MikhaIl Sholokhov, Yuri Olesha, and Vsevolod Ivanov were regularly under attack. Funny that some of the criticized personalities previously were members of the magazine’s editorial staff.
By criticizing “literariness” and “literate men”, not only the magazine entered into harsh controversy with reputable Sibirskiye Ogni but also did seamlessly reject the acknowledged works of Russian and Soviet classics, which led to a conflict with Maxim Gorky and failure to fulfill the requirements of the Soviet censorship. In 1930, the publication was dismissed. The magazine’s editor Alexander Kurs, fired from the position of chief editor of Sovetskaya Sibir in 1929, the following year was accused of supporting the Left-Right bloc of Syrtsov and Lominadze and was expelled from the All-Union Communist Party but later readmitted. After the wipeout of the ‘Nastoyashcheye’ magazine, Kurs went back to Moscow. In 1937, he was arrested, convicted, and executed at LubyAnka (the seat of the KGB).
