Gudok is a Russian daily newspaper in continuous publication since 1917 and is one of the oldest and leading trade newspapers in Russia. Since its inception it has covered a wide range of topics dealing with the railway industry. It has also provided important commentary on Soviet and post-Soviet Russian culture, politics, and social life. Its primary purpose has been informing the general Soviet and subsequently Russian reader with the larger goings on in the country in combination with a mix of biting social commentary and satire, one of the newspapers most popular features.
Although its name and more importantly its affiliation with the Soviet Ministry of Transportation may suggest a rather boring undertaking, it could not be further from the truth. And despite the fact that it started as a small newspaper dealing primarily with industry news, over time due to its growing popularity it became a nationally distributed newspaper attracting top talent from the burgeoning Soviet literary scene. Some of the authors and journalists whose works appeared on the pages of Gudok were the famous Soviet journalist and satirist Ilya Ilf, the writers Mikhail Zoshchenko, Lev Slavin, Sasha Krasny, Alexander Kabakov and many others. At the height of its popularity in 1970s it had a daily circulation of 700,000.
Der deutschlandweite Zugriff auf das Archiv wird durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) und die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München im Rahmen des von der Bibliothek betreuten Fachinformationsdienstes (FID) Ost‑, Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa ermöglicht.
Nachtrag 5.5.2020
Im „ostbib“-Blog gibt es einen Post zum Archiv.