The concept of "rossica" has been used in library and book studies since the mid-19 ^th century. In modern scholarly discourse, it is used more narrowly, encompassing reflections on Russia by foreigners, writings about Russia by Russians outside Russia, literature of the Russian émigré community, and other literature published in Russian abroad. A broader definition encompasses any publications, works of art, or philatelic materials related to Russia in language or content, created abroad. The purpose of this article is to present the development of the concept of "rossica", the researchers studying it, and the authors of this thematic issue of the journal "Book. Reading. Media". Interest in studying the book heritage of rossica has grown since the 1990s. During this time, research centers of scholars specializing in this topic have emerged. This thematic issue includes works by both established authors and emerging researchers.

This publication provides the first full-length memory interview about V. V. Mayakovsky, the iconic poetic figure of Soviet Russia and Russian Futurism. It was given in 1939 to A. S. Yezerskaya, the first director of the Mayakovsky Museum, by I. P. Ladyzhnikov, one of the largest Russian-language book publishers of the Russian emigration. This is the only known interview to date that has ever been publicly given by one of the representatives of the book publishing industry abroad. In the interview, Ladyzhnikov talked about his attitude to the poet and A. M. Gorky’s perception of Mayakovsky. Particular emphasis is placed on the activities of the Parus publishing house and the Letopis magazine within the framework of A. M. Gorky’s literary work. The interview contains a lot of new data on the literary and artistic environment of Russia in the 1910-1920s and the life of the Russian emigration abroad. It also reveals, for the first time, previously unknown pages of the personal and everyday life of Mayakovsky and Gorky during the difficult pre-revolutionary and revolutionary upheaval periods of their lives. Particularly relevant is the fact that I. P. Ladyzhnikov touched upon little-known aspects of the existence of the Russian creative emigration abroad, the peculiarities of Mayakovsky’s stay abroad. The interview is an important source on the history of Russian book publishing and culture of the 1910-1920s.

The article is devoted to Sasha Cherny’s latest author’s collections for children, published in exile: “The Silver Christmas Tree” (1929), “The Ruddy Book” (1930) and “The Seafaring Squirrel” (1933). The purpose of this work is to determine the author’s approach of Sasha Cherny to the formation of books for children. The following conclusions were reached during the study: the first works that open the collection can be called programmatic, since they set the main theme, images, and motifs. Each collection is based on different author’s approaches, the leading principle of unity is different: genre, thematic and artistic images. Each collection has its own themes, but there are common ones as well, such as motifs of joy and play. These define the tone of Sasha Cherny’s works for children, where all conflicts and dangerous situations are resolved happily. There is a special author’s narrative style: in some works, events are shown from the perspective of other beings, when the narrator provides a voice to his characters and animals or toys become the subjects of the focus. In some, on the contrary, the narrator’s voice and a special warm intonation are heard, which betrays the author’s attitude towards his characters: sympathy and empathy, irony or humor that relieves tension and sets the mood for a successful resolution of a difficult or dangerous situation. The collections Serebryanaya Yelka (The Silver Christmas Tree), Rumyanaya Knizhka (The Ruddy Book), Belka-moreplavatel’nitsa (The Seafaring Squirrel), and became the last Sasha Cherny’s books for children, in which the writer recalled his early work, told young readers about Russia, and delighted with the funny stories of his contemporaries.

The article focuses on the role of the newspaper Na Granitse (On the Border) in the process of political consolidation of the Russian emigration in Manchu-digo. The newspaper was published in 1935–1940 by the branch of the Bureau for Russian Emigrants in the Manchurian Empire (BREM) at the Pogranichnaya Station of the North Manchurian Railway (NMR). The newspaper was controlled by the group of B. N. Shepunov, who closely collaborated with the Japanese intelligence services. The analysis of newspaper materials shows, the editorial board of the Na Granitse promoted the ideas of effective anti-communism, Russian monarchism and Orthodoxy in combination with the idea of the community of emigrants with the peoples of the Manchurian Empire in building the foundations of Manchurian statehood. The main object of propaganda was the emigrant youth, united as part of several organizations operating on the eastern line of the NMR. Propaganda, along with other tools used by the administration to influence emigration, did not contribute to deep transformations of the consciousness of emigrants, including young people, but led only to external adaptation – ideological and political mimicry.

The article is devoted to the multifaceted contribution of Yevgeny Alexandrovich Lyatsky (1868–1942) in the field of humanities and cultural heritage of Russian emigration during the first half of the 20 th century. Today there are frequent studies that reveal Lyatsky’s activities as a humanitarian scholar and     writer, but his creative work in publishing remains beyond the scope and it has not been fully studied yet. This problem becomes particularly evident when delving into book publishing in Czechoslovakia during the first half of the 20 th century. The aim of this article is to provide a comprehensive analysis of E. A. Lyatsky’s contribution to preserving and disseminating Russian culture through organizing book publishing abroad, mainly in Czechoslovakia. The article provides basic information about Lyatsky’s activity as a researcher of Russian classics and an émigré scientist, but the main focus is on his organizational role in the area of publishing business in Czechoslovakia. Emphasis is placed on the period of his professional career when he acted as a founder and director of Plamya, the largest émigré publishing house in Prague, which played a key role in maintaining Russian cultural identity among émigrés in interwar Europe. An overview of the most important publications issued by the “Plamya” publishing house is given, emphasizing the significance of scientific, educational, and fiction literature published for sustaining intellectual continuity across generations of Russian intellectuals outside their historical homeland. This article fills gaps and complements existing research on E. A. Lyatsky as a promoter of many writers from the first wave of emigration and his significant role in establishing the émigré publishing house Plamya in Prague.

The book publishing of the Russian emigration, especially in “the provinces” of the Russian diaspora, has not been fully explored. Unlike “the capitals” Berlin, Paris and New York, they are not characterized by a noticeable number of Russian emigrants and cultural influence. However, the “provinces”, being part of the Russian diaspora, have left their small but important trace in its history in the form of books and periodicals. It is possible to get a comprehensive picture of the local Russian emigration: its image, culture, and the nature of its interaction with the “outside world”. The purpose of the article is to comprehensively reconstruct the publishing business of the Russian emigration in Denmark during the first three “waves” from 1918 to 1991. Several conclusions can be drawn from its results. Despite the modest number of publications, they showed that the “first” Russian emigration in Denmark was not fully formed. While before World War II there were mainly Russian emigrant publications, after the Second World War translated Russian-language publications prevailed. The publishing “image” of the Russian emigration in Denmark can be called official (in terms of purpose) and medical (in terms of content). The concentration of the publishing business in the capital city, characteristic of “provinces”, is confirmed. Danish Soviet scientific cooperation in the field of medical research is revealed, as well as a small surge of Danish interest in Russian culture, which is confirmed by the publication of several Russian-language art and linguistic publications. The results of the study can be used in related studies and for more comprehensive research of “provincial” publishing of the Russian emigration.

For the first time, the activities of the Chalidze Publication post-war publishing house have been reconstructed. It was created by the famous human rights activist and emigrant of the third wave Valery Nikolaevich Chalidze (1938–2018) in the USA from 1978 to 1991. Previously, the activities of this publishing house have not been covered in the book studies literature. First time ever, an overview of the history of Chalidze Publication has been given. The publishing house operated in New York, then in the city of Benson (Vermont). A brief biography of its director and owner V. N. Chalidze and the history of the predecessor publishing house, Khronika Press, are given. The features of the historiography of the topic are briefly analyzed. The history of the Chalidze Publication publishing house is reconstructed for the first time. A thematic and typological analysis of the publishing products is given. The main trends and features are revealed in comparison with books and brochures of other publishing houses of Russian emigration. The features of the Chalidze Publication editions and the reasons for focusing on a reduced format are shown. The reasons for the main shortcomings in the publishing house’s work when publishing printed products are revealed. The main topics in the publishing house were the history of the USSR, the history of Menshevism and Trotskyism, unjustified repressions in the Soviet Union, the work of banned writers and poets, philosophical, economic and legal works, and numerous memoirs about life in the homeland. In general, the subject matter of V. N. Chalidze was reduced to publishing everything banned in the USSR. The authors of following books were especially successful: N. S. Khrushchev, L. D. Trotsky, N. Valentinov, L. M. Alekseeva, R. A. Medvedev, L. Martov, L. K. Chukovskaya, V. K. Bukovsky, G. P. Fedotova, S. Kierkegaard, F. Nietzsche, Z. Freud, J. Eichenwald, J. Aleshkovsky, A. Koestler.

The purpose of this article is to provide a brief analysis of the main Russian language periodicals published in the Commonwealth of Australia at the beginning of the 21st century. These newspapers, magazines, and their websites reflect the sentiments of the Russian diaspora in all its diversity and multilayered character: from post-war migrants to recent immigrants from Russia. The article explores the differences in publishers' approaches and the influence of their biographies and personalities on their content, as well as the dependence of publishing projects on funding sources. It notes that journalists, Russian language teachers, and writers are the most active in publishing.

The aim of this article is to provide a historical and philosophical analysis of the key aspects of the interaction of Russian anarchist émigré periodicals in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. By reconstructing the conceptual history of three magazines (Delo Truda, Probuzhdenie, and The Clarion), the author shows how strong the ideological differences were between the publishing groups of anarchists who left Russia after the start of large-scale political repression. The article argues that it was precisely in the Russian anarchist diaspora when it became clear that the previous intellectual attitudes, which had been relevant in 1905 and 1917, became irrelevant by the mid-1920s. The author insists that émigré anarchists in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s still believed in the power of ideas, that concepts and ideological constructs in themselves possessed power and could take hold of the masses. The article examines the views of different émigré groups: anarcho-syndicalists, mystical anarchists and individualist anarchists.

The article was written as part of a scientific discussion with N. I. Gerasimov on the problems of the “dialogue of ideas”, interaction between the organs of the Russian language periodical press of anarchists in the USA in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s. The purpose of the article is to analyze the possibility of applying historical and philosophical analysis to this study. The topic of the history of the anarchist periodical press of the Russian Diaspora in the 1920s and the 1930s has not yet been the subject of comprehensive study. It is important to refer about several of the most influential currents of emigration (traditional anarcho-communism, united anarchism, platformism, anarcho-syndicalism, svobodnichestvo), whose supporters were united in anarchist and cultural-educational workers’ organizations. These organizational structures were the actual founders of such publications as Amerikanskiye Izvestiya (American News), Volna (The Wave), Rassvet (The Dawn), Delo Truda (The Cause of Labor), and Probuzhdeniye (The Awakening). The attempt to adapt the sociopolitical ideas of anarchism to the changing socioeconomic and sociocultural conditions of the 1920s and 1930s led to the creation of the programmatic projects advocated by their ideologists. Their goal was to transform anarchism into a mass movement capable of implementing its own programmatic principles. The defeat of the anarchists in the Russian Revolution of 1917–1922, the economic crisis of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the rise of fascist regimes, and the growing prerequisites for World War II gave a special intensity to the ideological and political struggle within the anarchist movement.

Dianina K. Art on the Agenda: The Birth of Russian Culture from the Spirit of Newspaper Debates. Sankt-Petersburg: Academic Studies Press / Bibliorossika, 2023. 498 p.