Abstract

This article examines the metamorphosis of the poetry section of Russian
journals at the beginning of the twentieth century. It describes the dependence of periodicals
structure on the printing process and demonstrates the emergence of the innovative
approach to the journal layout. Such approach correlates with the modernists’
growing attention to the internal structure of the poetic cycle and – more broadly – of
the poetry collection. The author analyses cross-cultural parallels in the structure of
early twentieth-century editions with the composition of almanacs of the Pushkin’s
time. The archival materials demonstrate the secret springs of editorial policy of major
journals of Russian modernism, primarily Moscow’s journal Vesy. In general, the evolution
of the poetry department appears as linear and technologically as well as conceptually
determined. At the pinnacle stands a journal composed of only poems in the
manner of St. Petersburg’s Giperborei.