[1] In 1837, Krayevsky started editing Russky Invalid's Literary Supplement, an obscure newspaper he soon transformed into the popular Literaturnaya Gazeta.

With a stellar team of authors and critics (Vladimir Odoyevsky, Evgeny Baratynsky, Vasily Zhukovsky, Alexander Veltman, Pyotr Vyazemsky, Alexey Koltsov, Nikolay Gogol, later – Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander Hertzen, Nikolay Nekrasov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (from 1846), Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov) in the mid-1840s Krayevsky's OZ became one of the most successful and respected Russian publications.

After Belinsky's departure in 1846, Krayevsky was keen on keeping the magazine's high profile, but the change of the political atmosphere in the country forced him to make compromises.

An 1848, a pro-monarchist article called "Russia and The Western Europe as They Stand Now", saw him shifting from the left to the center-right of the Russian literary world's political spectrum.

[1] In 1845, Krayevsky began an effort to publish Russian translations of all Sir Walter Scott's novels, but failed to finish this project.