The article deals with the distribution of agricultural periodicals on the territory of the Russian Em-pire in the early twentieth century. Before that there were practically no publications on the pages of sci-entific magazines. Great emphasis is placed on the analysis of agricultural magazines published before 1917 in the Upper Volga region, namely in Vladimir, Kostroma, Tver and Yaroslavl provinces. Thanks to existed in pre-revolutionary Russian periodicals on agricultural subjects advanced knowledge of agron-omy, agriculture, soil science, horticulture, fruit growing, vegetable growing, winemaking, viticulture,
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tobacco growing, livestock, poultry, bee-keeping, veterinary medicine, forestry, and hunting, land man-agement, irrigation, horse breeding were promoted. On the basis of statistical data, office documentation and other published sources, the author draws conclusions about the degree of accessibility of agricul-tural periodicals for the population, including the peasantry. Availability of agricultural periodicals largely depended on its price, so the author studied the situation with the cost of the annual subscription fee of these publications. The article investigates the issues of periodicity of agricultural magazines and newspapers, the exact number of such publications, as well as their subject matter. Existence duration of different types of periodicals is analyzed, the main publishers of magazines and newspapers, places of their publication are revealed. A prominent place is given to the publishing activities of agricultural pub-lic organizations and zemstvo self-government bodies. It is concluded that natural process of agricultural knowledge distribution among the population of Russia through publications on the pages of periodicals was disrupted by revolutionary events of 1917.
Emeritus Professor Reinhard Ferdinand Mathias Van Steveninck (1928–2017) and Dr Margaret Elva Van Steveninck (1931–2017) – plant physiologists and electron microscope X-ray microprobe specialists