The artistic consciousness of the Soviet socialist realism era implied addressing the topics of building a “bright future”. The literary and artistic almanac “The Ural Contemporary” was published within the framework of this consciousness from 1938 to 1957. The publication was issued as a printed edition of the Sverdlovsk branch of the Union of Soviet Writers. Authors, wishing to be published in “The Ural Contemporary”, were supposed to take into account both current ideological and socio-political demands and the goals of the almanac. The writers’ own attitudes often did not coincide with the requirements put forward by the editors and censorship. Based on the experience of “The Ural Contemporary” and archival documents, the article explores the authors’ attempts to preserve originality in the conditions of ideological limitations and narrow thematic focus. According to our assumptions, the editors, along with embedded in the system collections of cliched texts that did not captivate the reader, published the works that aroused public interest in order to demonstrate the literary possibilities of the region, to represent the diversity of genres, to show a variety of authors and to assemble thematic issues. Writers who disagreed with the requirements, imposed on their texts, did not participate in the creation of “The Ural Contemporary”. Among the successfully published authors were such well-known writers of the Urals as Pavel P. Bazhov, as well as some cultural figures, evacuated during the Great Patriotic War. Their authorial strategies were fully implemented. When it was possible to meet all the specified conditions, the almanac created a literary ground for the demonstration of local writers’ texts, laying the foundation for the further development of Ural literature.