“Readers' Wishes Largely Coincided with the Plans of the Editorial Board": The Role of the Student Meridian Magazine in the Formation of Soviet Student Identity

The article examines Michel Foucault's concept of pastoral authority and its manifestation in the Soviet student magazine Student Meridian. The focus is not on individual techniques of ideological influence, but on the institutional logic of the editorial office, where educational, formative, and ideological objectives were combined with the maintenance of social norms and institutional distance between editors and readers. Formally subordinate to the Central Committee of the Komsomol, the magazine functioned as a tool for shaping a model of student engagement oriented toward self-discipline, self-education, collective responsibility, initiative, critical thinking, personal development, and social adaptation within established societal frameworks, offering readers diverse means to reflect on their own experiences, analyze social phenomena, participate in the construction of social norms, discuss current issues, exchange opinions, and develop new practices. An analysis of reader letters, thematic sections, and the magazine’s publication strategy reveals the limits of audience participation while maintaining significant distinctions between journalists and students, demonstrating the complex interaction between “top-down authority” and grassroots student initiative. The magazine emerges as a space where its formative and political functions intersected, shaping students’ behavior, habits, values, and identities. These could be simultaneously imposed, discussed, and partially reinterpreted, thus constructing the “ideal student.” The article shows how journalistic activity served as a connecting link between the directives of the Komsomol Central Committee and the everyday life of students, revealing broader mechanisms of governance, social norms, and control in the USSR of the 1970s–1980s, and highlighting the magazine’s crucial role in the late-Soviet youth press system.