The Military Historical Journal is a monthly Russian magazine focussed on military history. Initially published by the People's Commissariat of Defense of the Soviet Union (later: Soviet Ministry of Defense) between 1939 and 1941, publication was resumed in 1959 and has carried on since. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, publication was taken over by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
In English-language publications, the abbreviation used for the Military Historical Journal is VIZh.[1]
The Military Historical Journal was initially issued on 29 August 1939 as an organ of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the Soviet Union, with Boris Shaposhnikov as the first editor-in-chief.[2]
The Military Historical Journal was re-founded in 1959 and used intensively by the Soviet Armed Forces for a theoretical reevaluation of military theory and tactics; a large number of articles covered the performance of the Soviet Union during World War II, and the Red Army in particular.[3] With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Military Historical Journal passed to the Ministry of Defense of the newly independent Russian Federation, which also made the previously more secluded journal face a much broader public audience. By its own definition, the journals aims to cover "military policy of the Russian state", "historical experience of national security", and "activities of outstanding Russian and Soviet army and naval leaders".[4]
The archive broadly follows a pro-Russian and pro-Soviet agenda; for example, the suffering of the Polish victims of the 1940 Katyn massacre, perpetrated by the Soviet NKVD, was explicitly equivocated with the suffering of Soviet prisoners of the 1920 Polish–Soviet War. The analysis and documentation in this and other pieces of coverage has been criticized by historian David R. Stone as insufficiently balanced.[5]
In 2012, the journal had a circulation of 4,200 copies.[6] The editorial board is staffed by Russian intellectuals as well as by officers of the Russian Armed Forces.[7]