1. Perhaps the clearest examples of genres that perform this function are fairy tales and children’s literature: these are orientated not towards short-term social knowledge but rather towards moral norms and values which need to be deeply internalized.
2. In Soviet times it was, of course, quite common (especially in the glas-nost period) for readers to chase after a particular issue of a particular journal because they wanted to gain access to a novel published in it. But this simply shows that Soviet tolstye zhurnaly of the late 1980s were losing their primary function and turning into something resembling almanacs.
3. See P. Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917–1929, Cambridge, 1985.
4. See J. Brooks, ‘The Press and Its Message: Images of America in the 1920s and 1930s’, in S. Fitzpatrick et al. (eds), Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture, Bloomington, Ind. and Indianapolis, 1991.
5. J. Brooks, ‘Public and Private Values in the Soviet Press, 1921–1928’, Slavic Review, vol. 48, no. 1, 1989, p. 19.