A-Ya Magazine Archive. Igor Shelkovsky's Correspondence

A‑Ya was a magazine devoted to unofficial Russian art that was published irregularly in Paris from 1979 to 1987 in Russian, English, and French. In this period, seven art issues, one literary issue, and a series of small books were published as part of the project.

The magazine was founded by publisher and photographer Alexander Sidorov (pseudonym Alexej Alexejev; Moscow) and artist Igor Shelkovsky (Paris; emigrated to France in 1976), with financial support from Swiss entrepreneur Jacques Melkonian. Soviet émigré artists and art critics who were involved in creating the magazine included Igor Golomstock (London), Oleg Prokofiev (London), Irina Baskina (Paris), Sergei Yesayan (Paris), Vitaly Statsinsky (Paris), Oleg Yakovlev (Paris), Mikhail Kulakov (Rome), and Alexander Kosolapov (New York).

A‑Ya was compiled through correspondence. Its editors, on different sides of the Soviet border, not only exchanged materials by post (which more often than not disappeared) but also used any opportunity to get them to each other (including diplomatic mail or foreign trips of people they knew). To protect those involved with the magazine from KGB persecution, it was stated on the back cover that works by artists in the USSR were published without their knowledge.

A‑Ya published works by Erik Bulatov, Ilya Kabakov, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Dmitri Prigov, Ivan Chuikov, Leonid Sokov, Rimma and Valeriy Gerlovin, Collective Actions, and Vagrich Bakhchanyan. Authors included Boris Groys, John Bowlt, Igor Golomstock, Viktor and Margarita Tupitsyn, and Vitaly Patsukov.

In 2019, New Literary Review published two volumes of artists' correspondence with A‑Ya, compiled by Igor Shelkovsky. In 2021, these letters (including unpublished correspondence), which cover the period 1976–1998, were acquired by Garage Archive Collection.