Global InformationThe Lives of Remarkable People information
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| Country | Soviet Union |
|---|---|
| Language | Russian |
| Genre | Biography |
| Publisher | Molodaya Gvardiya |
Publication date | Since 1933 |
The Lives of Remarkable People (Жизнь замечательных людей or the acronym, ЖЗЛ[1][2] or common name "жэзээлка")[3][4] is a book series containing fiction and biographical books intended for the mass audience. It was first published in 1890 till 1924 by Florenty Pavlenkov as Жизнь замечательных людей (1890—1924). It is mainly reprints of biographies published after 1900s. Since then there have been several attempts to revive the series, but only Maxim Gorky succeeded. In 1933–1938 the series was reissued by the Association of Periodicals and Newspapers, with the numbering starting from one. After 1938, the series was published by "Molodaya Gvardiya" with a continuous numbering of issues; since 2001, the numbering has been doubled (taking into account Pavlenkov's issues). By 2010, the total number of editions exceeded one and a half thousand, and the total circulation of the series exceeded one hundred million copies.[5]
Pavlenkov's serie was accessible to public and intended to "acquaint readers with outstanding personalities of past epochs". The genre format of the series was determined by the educational goals: a popular biographical essay, focused on the great achievements of a person who left his mark on the history of world civilization. The biographies were written by famous publicists and journalists of their time (E. A. Solovyov, A. Skabichevsky). Some essays were written by professional philosophers and writers (V.S. Solovyov, N.M. Minsky). Maxim Gorky created a new format of biographies, whose heroes were world-famous figures of science and art, as well as revolutionaries. In the publishing house "Molodaya Gvardiya" a public editorial board of the series was created, which included academicians V. L. Komarov, E. M. Minsky. L. Komarov, E. V. Tarle, A. E. Fersman, professors Y. N. Tynyanov and P. F. Yudin, writers A. A. Fadeev and A.N. Tolstoy.
In the 1950s, the editors of the series formulated three main principles for selecting the texts to be published, which have been followed ever since: scientific accuracy, high literary level, and entertainment. For the author, publication in the series was a sign of recognition of his or her high social and professional status. In different years the "Molodaya Gvardiya" invited Lev Gumilevsky, Sergei Durylin, Konstantin Paustovsky, Marietta Shaginian, Kornei Chukovsky, Juri Lotman, Alexei Losev, Nathan Eidelman and many others to write biographies. Many authors of biographies, in turn, became the heroes of new books in the serie. At the same time, the tone of the texts published in the 1960s and 1970s was subordinated to the requirements of ideology, and the concept of "remarkable" was interpreted as "flawless". Most of the people chosen were ideologically upright and morally irreproachable, and very little was said about the difficulties of their destinies.
After the Dissolution of the Soviet Union, the number of copies of the series decreased significantly. This was due to competition from the media and then the Internet. The number of published books didn't increase for many years. The genre of the "classical" biography was limited to the scientific framework, the tradition of the novel biography died out, professional historians and philologists began to predominate among the authors of the series. At the same time, since the 1990s the thematic range of the series has expanded enormously: biographies of tsars, Orthodox saints, emigrant writers, figures of the White movement, Soviet and foreign film actors have been published. The flow of translated literature increased significantly.
- ^ Мильчин А. Э. (2003). Издательский словарь-справочник. — 2-е изд., испр. и доп. — М.: ОЛМА-Пресс. pp. 33, 560.
- ^ Белякова Г. В., Гаврилкина Т. Ю. Об особенностях произношения русских аббревиатур // Альманах современной науки и образования. — 2016. — № 11 (113). — P. 12—14.
- ^ Баталина Ю. Человеческие истории. Электронное периодическое издание «Новый Компаньон». РИА ИД «Компаньон» (4 September 2007).
- ^ Юркин В. Ф. Энергия сопротивления. Издательство «Молодая гвардия»: XXI век. Осмысление прошлого, приближение будущего / сост. С. Г. Коростелев. — М.: Молодая гвардия, 2019. — 489 p.
- ^ «МОЛОДА́Я ГВА́РДИЯ» : [арх. 21 октября 2020] // Меотская археологическая культура — Монголо-татарское нашествие. — М. : Большая российская энциклопедия, 2012. — P. 686. — (Большая российская энциклопедия : [in 35 volumes.] / гл. ред. Ю. С. Осипов; 2004—2017, v. 20). — ISBN 978-5-85270-354-5.