Publishing activity of S. P. Diaghilev in the early (Russian) period of his life

The purpose of the study is to supplement the known scientific data on the publication activities of S. P. Diaghilev by putting into scientific circulation information about the printed publications of 1897-1901, which are kept in the Research Library of the Russian Museum. One cannot deny the possible influence of these projects on the main result of Diaghilev’s early (Russian) period of publication activity – the publication of the “Yearbook of the Imperial Theaters”: season 1899-1900 and three Supplements to it in 1900. This text reveals the position of the leader of the theatrical and exhibition process in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, S. P. Diaghilev, regarding the role of Russian art, his understanding of the importance of the major transformations taking place in art during his time. The authors of the article provide descriptions of creative initiatives in the great impresario’s publishing projects aimed at evaluating art criticism and bibliography. The reader is given links to S. P. Diaghilev’s well-known and little-studied or first-time presented publications, considered in terms of their book design, and works about him. Scientific novelty: a new perspective on the task set makes it possible to assess S. P. Diaghilev’s contribution to Russian art, art criticism, publishing, and book design. As a result of the analysis of the presented facts, little-studied aspects of S. P. Diaghilev’s publishing activities were revealed, and the artistic background that favorably influenced the achievement of the goal of book publishing was shown, which represents a new direction in Russian art criticism: an interdisciplinary study combining the categories of bibliography, bibliology, publishing, graphics, the history of illustrated book design, theater studies, and other related types of culture.