One of the Most Spectacular Sights in the History of World Aviation: the Agitprop Aeroplane of the Magazine Krokodil, an ANT-9 from the Experimental Series

Yes, exactly so: in the 1930s Soviet magazines had aeroplanes of their own. An entire air fleet.

The first to think of raising money for an aeroplane of their own was Ogonyok, in 1932, and out of that idea was born the agitprop squadron dedicated to the fortieth anniversary of Maxim Gorky's literary career. Other publications took to the idea, and subscribers' money was collected by Pionerskaya Pravda, Rabotnitsa, Krasnaya Zvezda, Pravda, Izvestia and Birobidzhanets.

Krokodil acquired an aeroplane too, and a satirical publication could not, of course, fail to devise the most spectacular livery, turning the aircraft into a twin-engined, fanged crocodile.

The aeroplanes were needed for propaganda flights across the whole country, and they worked with considerable success: they entertained young people, gave rides to shock workers, ferried competition juries, made radio broadcasts, invited celebrated pilots, and staged rallies and lectures around the aircraft. There were thousands of flights.

Alas, first, in 1935, the flagship, the Maxim Gorky, an eight-engined ANT-20, a giant with sleeping berths, lavatories and a buffet on board, crashed after a collision with an escort fighter, killing 49 people. Then, in 1938, the initiator of the whole undertaking, Ogonyok's editor-in-chief Mikhail Koltsov, was arrested, and in 1940 he was shot. Soon afterwards the squadron was disbanded and its aeroplanes transferred to the civil fleet; in the war years they were, naturally, mobilised, and the last of the more than thirty aircraft was written off as worn out in 1944. Not one of them survives in any aviation museum.