In the history of journalism in Russia, thick journal or thick magazine (Russian: толстый журнал, tolsty zhurnal) was a type of literary magazine, regarded to be an important tradition originated in Russian Empire, continued through the times of the Soviet Union and into the modern Russia.
[2] The thick journal, usually distributed once a onth, was originally a phenomenon of the Western European Enlightenment, a means to circulate ideas to a small, educated public.
[5] The first independent Russian journal was Ezhemesiachnye sochineniya, k pol'ze i uveseleniyu sluzhashchie (Monthly Writings Serving Purpose and Enjoyment; 1755–1797), edited by Gerhard Friedrich Mueller, of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
[3] In 1948, a campaign of Zhdanovism was directed against thick journals Zvezda (magazine) and Leningrad, for having published works by Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko.
[7] Novyi Mir became so associated with liberal intelligentsia that it received hundreds of readers's letters not only in response to its publication, but also on human rights matters, such as the Pasternak affair, when he published Doctor Zhivago (novel) outside the USSR and was expelled from the country for it, and the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial.