Funny pictures of a sad epoch: the full archive of the Krokodil satirical magazine has been posted on the Internet

The entire archive of the legendary satirical magazine Krokodil was posted on the Web, all issues from 1922 to 2008. As you probably know, this magazine was published three times a month, and its circulation in the USSR reached 6.5 million copies. Krokodil was founded in 1922, first as an unnamed supplement to Rabochaya Gazeta. Then the "satirical" part of this appendix began to expand, turning into a real satirical magazine. The name Krokodil was invented by a young employee of the "Rabochaya Gazeta" Sergey Gessen. And its first editor was Konstantin Eremeyev.

During the years of the USSR, Krokodil was the most popular means of Soviet propaganda, in which humorists and satirists from the heart condemned the bourgeois lifestyle, and also paid attention to "individual shortcomings" "sometimes" manifested in socialist society. Moreover, the influence of the magazine, and indeed of the Soviet media in general, was so powerful that the appearance of the name of some negligent official in Krokodil actually meant a harsh sentence to him. Alas, with the fall of the USSR, there was no time for jokes, and in 2000, due to insufficient funding, Krokodil ceased to be published. True, in 2001, the New Krokodil edition began to be published with the subtitle “Satire and Humor Magazine,” but it only lasted until the summer of 2004.

Another attempt to revive Krokodil was made by the well-known journalist Sergei Mostovshchikov in August 2005, but this publication was originally intended not for a wide audience, and it was not possible to achieve the same popularity, and therefore profit. Finally, Krokodil was closed in 2008.

Journalist Aleksey Belyakov writes on his blog about this:

“In adolescence, that is, in the late 70s - early 80s, I was a wild fan of Krokodil, my mother wrote it out for me.

I went to the bath, took a magazine with me and leafed through, enjoyed. Normal teenagers in the bathroom were engaged in other things, enjoyed in a different way, and I - Krokodil. The printing industry was bad. Paper - figgy, but as reliable as AKM. It could be wetted, dried, then stored in a coveted box.

Most of all I loved about the capitalists, well, everyone loved it. From an old bathroom with a gas water heater, a wonderful and frightening world opened up to me. A certain Micah. Vladimov, special correspondent of Krokodil, published accusatory verses. Here, for example, "Na Place Pigalle" - it is clear that about a prostitute. That is, it is clear to us right now, but then I did not know what kind of place it was, but I knew for sure: I would never find myself in France and I would never see beautiful prostitutes. All that remained was to read Mikh. Vladimova:

...And in Paris it is chilly and autumn,

The rain net is draped from the mist.

No salvation for the girl

And other corners are occupied.

But the main thing is what is under the verses. There are the names of the cities in which the poems were written - Paris, Lisbon, Istanbul, London and another quite amazing one - “the road from Cadiz to Seville”. That is, I understood: the satirist is not inventing something at home, he honestly travels the world, tries for me.

Although the poems - best of all the imperialists were drawn by artists. In fact, Krokodil was more interesting to me just from the visual side, but I myself drew, even thought about an art school.

I identified artists immediately, by eye. I knew everyone's by hand - Weisbord, Uzbyakov, Sychev, Shabelnik, Cherepanov and, of course, the great graphic artist Soyfertis.

It is very good that this archive is now available on the net. There will be something to look through on the road when I go from Cadiz to Seville.

And next year we will celebrate the centenary, we will get drunk to the state of a reptile..."