[en] We explore a correspondence between Melvin magnetic fluxtubes and anisotropic cosmological solutions, which we call ‘Melvin cosmologies’. The correspondence via analytic continuation provides useful information in both directions. Solution generating techniques known on the fluxtube side can also be used for generating cosmological backgrounds. Melvin cosmologies interpolate between different limiting Kasner behaviors at early and late times. This has an analogue on the fluxtube side between limiting Levi-Civita behavior at small and large radii. We construct generalized Melvin fluxtubes and cosmologies in both Einstein–Maxwell theory and dilaton gravity and show that similar properties hold. (paper)