It was founded in 1978 by the All-Union organization "Knowledge" and was published throughout the whole Soviet Union. In 1980 AiF was transformed into a weekly but was available only by subscription. In the late 1980s, it was one of the leading publications in the Glasnost period.AIF was listed in the Guinness Book of Records with the largest circulation of any weekly publication.In 1990 it had a print run of 33.5 million. With the fall of the Soviet Union, publication of it was discontinued in countries outside the Russian Federation. As of 2008, the circulation was about 3 million copies, with about 8 million readers. More specifically its February 2008 circulation was 2,750,000.