Following in the footsteps of homeless aonides. Following in the footsteps of the homeless Aonid Mark, we move portraits of Soviet writers

Meeting former members of the constituent assembly . Participant, supported left Socialist Revolutionaries and became close to the Mensheviks 1922 - Moscow. The trial of the socialist revolutionaries 1922 - Summer. First meeting with Marina Tsvetaeva... she dedicates several poems to him 1922 - Berlin. Magazine "News liters". Editor 1922 - Book "Russian forerunners of Bolshevism" 1923 - Translation of the book “Memoirs of G. Casanova” (vol. 1. Berlin, 1923) 1924 - Translation of the book “Italian Novellas” by Stendhal, Berlin 1924 - Translation of the book “Civilization and Other Stories” by J. Duhamel, Prague 1926 - Prague. The magazine Volya Rossii ceased to exist 1928 - Paris. Moved to a new place of residence 1928 - Paris. Literary circle "Nomad" Chairman 1928 - Paris.European Literary Bureau. Supervisor. WITHcollaborated in the magazine “Numbers”, newspapers “Days”, “Ogni”, “Voice of Russia” 1928 - Book “On the Golden Path: Czechoslovak Impressions” , Paris 1929 - Paris. "Russian emigrant defencist movement." In the founding team together with General P. Makhrov 1931 - Paris. "New Newspaper". Editor 1932 - Paris. Literary circle "Kochevye" and the Agency "European Literary Bureau". Supervisor 1933 - Book "Portraits of modern Russian writers" , Paris 1939 - September. Toulouse. French toVernet concentration camp. Imprisoned in the case of the "Russian emigrant defencist movement" 1940 - USA. Immigrant 1941 - USA. P is reproducingRussian and European literature in local vocational schools and universities 1942 - USA. Helps Sofya Yulievna Pregel(1894-1972) develop a patriotic platform for the new literary magazine “Novoselye” 1943 - Professor 1944 - Articles "Jewish Writers in Soviet Literature" 1945 - Victory 1950 - New York. The first volume of the two-volume "History of Russian Literature" 1953 - Death of Stalin 1953 - New York. The second volume of the two-volume "History of Russian Literature" 1953 - Book "The Three Loves of Dostoevsky" 1962 - Pensioner 1962 - Switzerland. Moved to a new place of residence. Engaged in translations 1976 - April 08. Beaulieu-sur-Mer. Died 1977 - Book“Soviet Russian literature. Writers and problems. 1917-1977”

Four stages can be distinguished in the development of French Russian studies:

1832-1875 - opening of the Department of Slavic Literatures at the College de France; A. De's book "Russia in 1839"; P. - translator I.S. ; teaching Russian at the Ecole des langues orientalles;
1875-1917 - book by E-M de Vogue "Russian Novel"; book by L. Lizhe "Russians and Slavs"; textbook by Paul Boyer and Nikolai Speransky based on the material of “Books for Reading” by Leo Tolstoy (4 editions from 1905 to 1976), propaganda of Leo Tolstoy’s ideas in the magazine of his followers “Ere nouvelle”;
1917-1940 - creation of the Institute of Slavic Studies in Paris; P. Boyer and A. Mazon - founders of the magazine "Revue des etudes slaves"; magazine "Le monde slave"; creation of a society of Slavists; creation of the League for Assistance to Emigration; the activities of Henri Barbusse as the head of the Clarte group in promoting Russian revolutionary literature; moving to Paris of the publishing house "YMCA-PRESS"; opening of the Russian Theological Institute in Paris (Sergius Compound); books by V. Posner, M. Slonim, G. Struve about the literature of Soviet Russia for the French; occupation of Paris by German troops;
1946 - present - introduction of Russian as a second foreign language into the secondary education system (1975); magazine "Cahiers du monde russe et sovie"tique"; the formation of Russian studies as a scientific discipline; publication of the first volumes of "The History of Russian Literature of the 20th Century" by E. Etkind, I. Serman, J. Niva, V. Strad.

Thus, in the 20th century, the appeal to Russian culture and literature was determined, among others, by political reasons and the existence in Paris of the largest colony of Russian emigrants of the first wave.

Among the first to open Russian literature to the French reader after 1917 were the emigrants V. Posner, M. Slonim, G. Struve, P. Kovalevsky and others. Perceiving themselves as the only guardians of Russian culture (6) and as its propagandists, they sought to correct the existing idea of Russia as an “empire of facades” (A. de Custine) (7). The educational activities of the Russian emigration are still not fully appreciated today.

She played a significant role in the cultural integration of Russia into Europe. At the same time, it should be noted that the first books and articles about modern Russian literature, written by emigrants and published in Germany (A. Voznesensky, 1929), England (D. Svyatopolk-Mirsky, 1931) and France, were informative and contained a great deal of information. the number of factual errors that then passed into later studies of Western Russian scholars.

Russian emigrants established a sad tradition of evaluating works of art depending on the degree of their loyalty to the Soviet regime.

Today's opportunity for an open dialogue between Western Russian studies and Russian literary science creates the preconditions for an open dialogue in which the former ideological enemy will finally be replaced by an opponent in a scientific dispute and the complete history of Russian literature of the 1920-1930s will be written.

Andrey Dikiy : Jews in Russia and the USSR. Historical sketch

Mark Slonim, a Russian Jew, who is considered by many to be an expert on Russian literature and who writes and lectures extensively on Russian literature, in his essay “Jewish Writers in Russian Literature,” published in the collection “Jewish World” (Published by the “Union of Russian Jews” in New York, 1944), writes the following lines: “There is and cannot be any special “Russian-Jewish” literature in the Soviet Union. For a historian and art researcher, only one question can arise: what influence did Jewish writers have on Russian literature? to what extent did they bring into it their own spirit and original themes?"...

Depending on this degree of influence and the introduction of its Jewish themes and “spirit” into Russian literature, Mark Slonim divides Jews who wrote in Russian into three categories:

I. To the first category Slonim enumerates Jewish writers and poets who wrote their works in Russian, so assimilated that M. Slonim does not notice the “Jewish spirit” in their works and in his essay quotes the words of the critic Lvov-Rogachevsky, who called this category “Jews only by passport” , agreeing with this definition. “There is nothing specifically Jewish - neither in spirit nor in the theme of their work,” according to M. Slonim, in the works of these writers. Some writers from this category “hid their real name under a pseudonym and even in their autobiographies do not indicate that they are Jews,” says M. Slonim.

II. Second category are composed of authors in whom, as M. Slonim says, “despite their completely obvious dissolution in the Russian element, Jewish themes and motifs sometimes break through.”

This category does not hide its Jewish origin, and sometimes even sticks it out and emphasizes it. Ehrenburg, for example, begins his autobiography with the words: “Born in 1891. A Jew.”

Elizaveta Polonskaya in one of her poems says: “then my blood sings in your veins, speaks in a foreign language”... (when the poetess met a Jewish beggar who recognized her as a Jew),

III. To the third category M. Slonim lists those Jewish writers who write almost exclusively on Jewish topics.

At the head of this category is Isaac Babel, about whom Slonim writes that he, Babel, “is one of the types of Jewish communists so often encountered in reality, who fanatically believed in the teachings of Lenin and strangely combined the precepts of the Bible or Talmud with the demands and doctrine of the communist church "

In addition to Babel, this category can include Kozakov, Broide, Bergelson, Khait and many other Jewish writers, many of whom wrote not only in Russian, but also in Hebrew.

Yu. Margolin, a journalist whose articles often appear on the pages of periodicals published in Russian in exile, also speaks out on this same issue - the issue of the existence of “Russian-Jewish” literature. In the newspaper “New Russian Word” dated January II, 1962, Margolin wrote the following: “Babel is a Jewish writer of the era of the collapse. He relates to Russian literature like a ring with an expensive stone on his finger. The ring can be removed, put aside for 20 years and put on again - it does not form part of the body. He enters the Jewish literature of his time organically - with all the meaning, all the pathos and themes of his writing. Jewish literature is generally multilingual: the Greek of Josephus and the Acts of the Apostles, the Arabic of Maimonides, the Latin of Spinoza and the German of Heine - These are all branches from one trunk."

About Jewish literature, to which, as stated above, the Jews themselves include everything written by persons of the Jewish race in a variety of languages in different times and eras, the famous historian of this literature S. L. Tsinberg writes: “in Jewish literature, the individual was always subordinate to the collective and dissolved in it: all spiritual wealth created and collected among the people belongs to the whole people. They bear only his name, they know only one creator - this is the entire Jewish people." ("Jewish World", collection II, 1944, New York).

Jewish literature in Russian appeared only when a significant number of Jews, taking advantage of the opportunities provided to Jews by the desegregation policies of the Russian government, learned the Russian language and were educated in Russian educational institutions. This happened only in the last quarter of the 19th century, and by the beginning of this century the number of Jews who became involved in Russian literature and cultural life increased enormously.

Inclusion was not a merger, dissolution, assimilation to the end, like a chemical combination of dissimilar elements, but only a mechanical mixture or, according to Yu. Margolin’s apt definition, “rings with an expensive stone” put on the fingers of an alien body.

These “rings” became more and more numerous, especially in the fields of journalism, journalism, criticism, and the legal profession...

This phenomenon did not go unnoticed. And since the 80s of the last century, the Russian government, which at the beginning of the century so widely opened the doors of all educational institutions for its Jewish subjects, took the path of restrictions, about which so much and often is written now, forgetting that more than eighty-year period when not only were there no restrictions (1804-1888), but the Russian government in every possible way contributed to the introduction of Jews to all-Russian culture by receiving education in Russian educational institutions.

The advantages of secular education and the associated opportunities for material prosperity were so obvious and strong that a significant part of the Jews, regardless of the displeasure of the rabbis, rushed to Russian educational institutions
The process of including Jews among Russian citizens. graduated from secondary and higher educational institutions in Russia, grew rapidly and steadily. And by the mid-80s, one third of all students at the universities of Kharkov and Novorossiysk (Odessa), studying at the medical and law faculties, were Jews.
Having received diplomas from secondary and higher educational institutions in Russia, Jews thereby penetrated into the environment of the Russian intelligentsia, especially into the liberal professions: doctors, lawyers, journalists, and began to increasingly influence the entire cultural life of Russia. But this was not, as stated above, the assimilation that the Russian government sought to achieve, promoting and encouraging the education of Jews in secular educational institutions, in the hope of introducing them to Russian culture and “digesting them in the all-Russian cauldron,” as is now happening in the United States with all ethnic groups of US citizens, where the “American nation” and “American patriotism” are gradually being created through not only education in the official language of English, but also mixed marriages, the same way of life, common material and political interests.
There was none of this in Russia. A Jew, despite graduating from a Russian educational institution, replacing the traditional "lapserdak" with ordinary clothes, cutting off his sidelocks, leaving the closed circle of the Jewish community - "Kagala", crossing the "Pale of Settlement" and even (sometimes) changing his religion and received all rights without exception on an equal basis with the rest of the population - he still remained, first of all, a Jew.
From his own Jewish point of view, he assessed all events, primarily bearing in mind their usefulness and benefit for Jewry. Not only the multimillion-dollar Jewry of Russia, but also the entire Jewry of the Diaspora.
This does not mean that they were not loyal citizens of Russia. But the feeling that was characteristic and inherent in those who had their roots in the distant past of their people, and saw their future inextricably linked with the future of their people and the state created by their ancestors - Russia, was alien and incomprehensible to them.
For the Jews, both the past and the future were connected not with Russia and the Russian people, but with the Jewry of the whole world, its past and its future.
Russia for them was only a temporary stage of their thousand-year stay in exile, as the Roman Empire, Spain, and Western Europe once were. Just as they did not become Romans, Greeks, Spaniards, Germans, they did not become Russians, although they studied the Russian language and themselves sought to take an active part in the social and political life of Russia. This desire found full support among Russian cultural people, especially the progressive and liberal intelligentsia.
And Jews joined Russian cultural life as equal and even welcome members of all kinds of societies and professional associations and cultural endeavors.
But at the same time they preserved and sacredly protected what Prof. Lurie calls “the inner appearance of a Jew”, inherent only to Jews, no matter in what era and in what country they live and no matter what language they speak.
This “inner appearance,” which distinguishes a Jew from all other peoples, tribes, races, the Jews themselves did not notice or did not want to notice, much less talk and write about it. And non-Jews who accepted Jews into their midst considered the very idea of the possibility of discussing and having this “inner appearance” to be a manifestation of “Judeophobia” or “anti-Semitism.”
But latently and unspokenly, already from the 80s of the last century, a certain conflict began to be felt between the Jews who entered Russian cultural life and the Russian intelligentsia, whose roots go back to the distant past of the Russian people.
It was not “Judeophobia” or aggressive “anti-Semitism” - for the most part, the Russian intelligentsia - the cultural stratum - did not know it and did not approve of it. But this was an unspoken and unformulated admission that desegregation and assimilation policies had not been successful, despite the fact that a huge percentage of Jews had become outwardly completely similar to non-Jewish Russian subjects.
Filling the ranks of free professions, where Jews themselves strove, not only because other professions were closed or difficult for them, but also due to their innate repulsion from purely bureaucratic, bureaucratic activity, they brought with them their own specific Jewish, alien and little understood for the environment.
Voices, albeit very timid ones, began to be heard about the “Jewish spirit” in the liberal professions, primarily in the legal profession and the newspaper business.
All this created the preconditions for the Russian government to reconsider the correctness and appropriateness of its policy on the Jewish question.
Since the 80s of the last century, the government has taken the path of various kinds of restrictions for persons of the Jewish faith in various areas of life and economic and cultural activities, in particular, in the matter of education in educational institutions, not only public, but also private.
These restrictions were met extremely negatively by the Russian public (except for a relatively small part that was conservative and anti-Semitic), and among all Jews they generally gave rise to sharply anti-government sentiments and pushed them into opposition and revolutionary groups and organizations.
Thus ended the “assimilation” period in the history of Jews in Russia, which was fully used by the Jews to create numerous cadres of intelligentsia of Jewish origin, inextricably linked with the Jewish religion and recognition of themselves as the “chosen people,” which prevented merging with the Russian people and their culture.
How numerous these cadres were can be judged by the data on the number of Jewish students who joined these cadres after graduating from universities.
According to the “Book of Russian Jewry” (New York, 1960), in 1886 there were 41.5% Jews at the medical faculty of Kharkov University; and in Odessa in medical - 30.7%, and in legal - 41.2%. Those who graduated from the university joined the ranks of the Russian intelligentsia, bringing into it a lot of their own, specifically Jewish, characteristic of this ancient race, which managed to maintain its purity throughout the millennia of dispersion.
Considering this undesirable and observing the failure of their assimilation policy. In 1887, the Russian Government introduced the so-called “percentage norm,” which meant that only a certain percentage of people of the Jewish faith were allowed to be admitted to educational institutions (secondary and higher), namely, in the “Pale of Settlement” - 10%; outside the “line” - 5%, in St. Petersburg and Moscow - only 3%.
This caused an explosion of indignation among all Jews and finally pushed them into the ranks of opponents of the regime. The liberal all-Russian public also reacted sharply negatively to this.
However, the “percentage norm” did not significantly change the percentage of Jews receiving secondary and higher education. There were many ways and opportunities to circumvent the law. Some converted to Lutheranism and, according to the letter of the law, ceased to be considered Jews; others graduated from educational institutions abroad and returned to Russia; still others took exams as external students; the fourth received their education in educational institutions to which the “percentage rate” did not apply (commercial schools and a number of private secondary and higher educational institutions). According to the Book of Russian Jewry, in 1912 there were 1,875 Jewish students at the Kiev Commercial Institute; and at the Psycho-Neurological Institute in St. Petersburg, as the above-mentioned book reports, there were “thousands of Jews” among the students.
And, as a final result, over the 30 years of the existence of the “percentage norm” (1887-1917), the percentage of Jewish students (that is, those who did not convert to another religion and remained in Judaism) changed very little. In 1887, the average percentage for all of Russia was 14.5%, and in 1917 - 12.1%. (The figures are taken from the “Book of Russian Jewry” and there is no reason to doubt their accuracy).
Only one adjustment should be made to these figures: the number of students who are Jewish by tribe and race, but not by Jewish religion. There were significantly fewer of them in 1887 than in 1917. There is no exact data on their number, but it is generally known that there were a lot of them.
Taking into account this adjustment, without fear of making a major mistake, we can say that the introduction of the “percentage norm” did not change the percentage of Jewish students in Russian educational institutions, but only froze at the 1887 level.
The “percentage norm” was felt especially acutely in Ukraine, where by 1917 there lived 2,500,000 Jews, or 41% of all Jewish Russian subjects. But still, the “percentage rate” was circumvented in various ways, mainly through the creation of private educational institutions with the support of Jewish capital. In addition, there were many purely Jewish private schools run by Jewish communities. Jewish youth who did not get into Russian educational institutions received education there. The enormous activity of this kind of educational institutions is reported in great detail and documented in a separate chapter of the “Book on Russian Jewry.”
In the same book, on page 360, we find the following lines: “back in June 1914, a law was published on private educational institutions that did not enjoy the rights of government ones. The law provided people with freedom to choose the language for teaching, which opened up wide opportunities for the development of Jewish education in Yiddish and ancient Hebrew."
Slonim

In 1934 (March-October) he collaborated in the weekly illustrated magazine “Illustrated Life” (Paris).

In 1938 - member of the Committee for Assistance to Republican Spain.

In 1941 he left Marseille and reached the USA through Morocco. Since 1943, he taught Russian literature at Sarah Lawrence College. Author of several books on the history of Russian literature. Retired in 1962.

Essays

Russian forerunners of Bolshevism. - Berlin, 1922
"On the Golden Path: Czechoslovak Impressions" (Paris, 1928)
“Portraits of Soviet Writers” (Paris, ed. Parabola, 1933)
Three loves of Dostoevsky. - NY, ed. them. Chekhov, 1953.
Three loves of Dostoevsky. - M., Soviet writer, 1991 - 100,000 copies.
Three loves of Dostoevsky. - M., “Our Heritage” - “Image”, 1991. - 50,000 copies.
Three loves of Dostoevsky. - Rostov-on-Don, Phoenix, 1998. - 5,000 copies.
Three loves of Dostoevsky. - M., Eksmo, 2011. - 3,000 copies.

The Epic of Russian Literature, From Its Origins Through Tolstoy. 1950.
Three Loves of Dostoevsky. Rinehart & Company. New York. 1955.
An Outline of Russian Literature. Oxford University Press, New York. 1958.
From Chekhov to the revolution; Russian literature, 1900-1917. Oxford University Press. 1962.
Soviet Russian Literature: Writers and Problems, 1919-1977. 1977.

Translations

"Memoirs of G. Casanova." - Berlin. 1923.
“Civilization and Other Stories” by J. Duhamel. - Prague, 1924.

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Notes

An excerpt characterizing Slonim, Mark Lvovich

From the chief of the militia he went to the governor. The governor was a small, lively man, very affectionate and simple. He pointed out to Nikolai those factories where he could get horses, recommended to him a horse dealer in the city and a landowner twenty miles from the city who had the best horses, and promised all assistance.
– Are you Count Ilya Andreevich’s son? My wife was very friendly with your mother. On Thursdays they gather at my place; “Today is Thursday, you are welcome to come to me easily,” said the governor, dismissing him.
Directly from the governor, Nikolai took the saddlebag and, taking the sergeant with him, rode twenty miles to the landowner’s factory. Everything during this first time of his stay in Voronezh was fun and easy for Nikolai, and everything, as happens when a person is well disposed, everything went well and went smoothly.
The landowner to whom Nikolai came was an old bachelor cavalryman, a horse expert, a hunter, the owner of a carpet, a hundred-year-old casserole, an old Hungarian and wonderful horses.
Nikolai, in two words, bought for six thousand and seventeen stallions for selection (as he said) for the horse-drawn end of his renovation. Having had lunch and drunk a little extra Hungarian, Rostov, having kissed the landowner, with whom he had already gotten on first name terms, along the disgusting road, in the most cheerful mood, galloped back, constantly chasing the coachman, in order to be in time for the evening with the governor.
Having changed clothes, perfumed himself and doused his head with cold milk, Nikolai, although somewhat late, but with a ready-made phrase: vaut mieux tard que jamais, [better late than never] came to the governor.
It was not a ball, and it was not said that there would be dancing; but everyone knew that Katerina Petrovna would play waltzes and ecosaises on the clavichord and that they would dance, and everyone, counting on this, gathered at the ballroom.
Provincial life in 1812 was exactly the same as always, with the only difference that the city was livelier on the occasion of the arrival of many wealthy families from Moscow and that, as in everything that happened at that time in Russia, it was noticeable some kind of special sweepingness - the sea is knee-deep, the grass is dry in life, and even in the fact that that vulgar conversation that is necessary between people and which was previously conducted about the weather and about mutual acquaintances, was now conducted about Moscow, about the army and Napoleon.
The society gathered from the governor was the best society in Voronezh.
There were a lot of ladies, there were several of Nikolai’s Moscow acquaintances; but there were no men who could in any way compete with the Cavalier of St. George, the repairman hussar, and at the same time the good-natured and well-mannered Count Rostov. Among the men was one captured Italian - an officer of the French army, and Nikolai felt that the presence of this prisoner further elevated the importance of him - the Russian hero. It was like a trophy. Nikolai felt this, and it seemed to him that everyone was looking at the Italian in the same way, and Nikolai treated this officer with dignity and restraint.
As soon as Nicholas entered in his hussar uniform, spreading the smell of perfume and wine around him, he himself said and heard the words spoken to him several times: vaut mieux tard que jamais, they surrounded him; all eyes turned to him, and he immediately felt that he had entered into the position of everyone’s favorite that was due to him in the province and was always pleasant, but now, after a long deprivation, the position of everyone’s favorite intoxicated him with pleasure. Not only at stations, inns and in the landowner’s carpet were there maidservants who were flattered by his attention; but here, at the governor’s evening, there was (as it seemed to Nikolai) an inexhaustible number of young ladies and pretty girls who were impatiently waiting for Nikolai to pay attention to them. Ladies and girls flirted with him, and from the first day the old women were already busy trying to get this young rake of a hussar to marry and settle down. Among these latter was the governor’s wife herself, who accepted Rostov as a close relative and called him “Nicolas” and “you.”

SLONIM Mark Lvovich (1894, Novgorod-Seversky, Chernigov province, - 1976, Geneva), Russian literary critic, publicist. Nephew of Yu. Aikhenvald.

In 1912–14 studied at the University of Florence (graduated only in 1920 with a doctorate); in 1915–18 studied literature and philosophy at Petrograd University. Published in Odessa List (1913–17), Vestnik Evropy (1916–17) and other periodicals. Member of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly (from the Socialist Revolutionary Party), then the Committee of the Constituent Assembly in Samara, the Directory in Ufa (1918).

Emigrated in 1919. Settled in Prague, where he taught at the Russian University in Prague and in 1922–32. was a literary editor and leading critic of the magazine “Volya Rossii”, collaborated in “Modern Notes” (Paris) and other publications. Slonim willingly published beginning writers and actively supported Marina Tsvetaeva, about whom he later wrote: “The day will come when her work will be rediscovered and appreciated.” In the magazine “Will of Russia”, which played a significant role in the artistic and intellectual life of the Russian emigration, Slonim published reviews of Soviet literature, reviews of new books by Soviet writers and writers from the Russian diaspora: I. Babel, writers of the Serapion Brothers association, B. Pilnyak, Vera Inber, N. Gumilyov, S. Yesenin, Teffi and others. Slonim’s articles are written lively and sharply, he invariably participated brilliantly in literary polemics.

In 1928, Slonim organized the free literary association “Kochevye” in Paris (existed until 1938), whose “oral journals” were very popular among the Russian emigration. In 1941–62 lived in the USA. He collaborated in the newspaper “New Russian Word”, in “New Journal” and other publications. Since 1943, he taught Russian and comparative European literature at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. He retired in 1962 (one of the College buildings bears his name); until 1970 he was director of the European Program for American Students and the American School of Renaissance Studies in Florence. Slonim lectured at many universities in America and Europe. In 1963 he settled in Geneva, wrote over 200 materials for Radio Liberty, contributed to the New York Times, New York Times Book Review, and the Russian Thought newspaper; was a member of the PEN Club.

Slonim is the author of books on Russian history, literature and theater, in which the presentation of facts is combined with polemical sharpness. The most significant of them: “Russian forerunners of Bolshevism” (1922), “From Peter the Great to Lenin” (1922), “Portraits of modern Russian writers” (in Serbian; 1931), “Portraits of Soviet writers” (1933), “Anthology Soviet Literature" (English, 1933; compiled together with translator J. Reavey), "The Three Loves of Dostoevsky" (1953), "Russian Soviet Literature. Writers and Problems" (English, 1964), "Russian Theatre. From Empire to Soviets" (English, 1961). Slonim's work “The History of Russian Literature” (English, vols. 1–3, 1950–64), which contains a large amount of factual material, was one of the main textbooks for the Slavic studies departments of many Western universities.

In 1944, in the collection “The Jewish World” (N.Y.), Slonim published an article “Jewish Writers in Soviet Literature” (this was the first attempt at such a review). Slonim divides them into three groups: those who completely merged with the Russian elements; those who have Jewish motifs; writing only on Jewish topics (that is, essentially belonging to Russian-Jewish literature). In the article, Slonim also reflects on the destructive impact of the revolution on traditional Jewish life.

Among the literary critics of the emigration, Mark Slonim, a Socialist Revolutionary and former member of the Constituent Assembly, took the most “Sovietophile” position. At the end of 1931, a controversy broke out between him and Boris Zaitsev on the age-old question of where the “real” literature was.

“The majority of emigrant writers are spiritually cut off from Russia, alien to its life, cut off from its origins, and have lost the feeling of Russian life,” Slonim wrote in the Prague magazine “The Will of Russia.” - In emigration, the swan song of Russian art of the early 900s is heard. This is either realistic imitation or a repetition of the melodies of the symbolic school.” Zaitsev, who saw a personal insult in the article, retorted: “Soviet literature should be looked at only as material from which something can be learned about life, about the way of life in Russia. There is simply no meaning or purely artistic character in the literature of the Five Year Plan.”
Adamovich summed up: “According to Slonim, it turns out that not only is there nothing in emigration, but nothing can exist: all his hopes are turned to Soviet Russia. According to Zaitsev, on the contrary, literature does not exist in Russia: Russian literature is now all abroad. We will not decide which of the disputants is right. It was also difficult to decide, because both of them, in the desire to “straighten their line” at all costs, sometimes argue, indeed, too straightforwardly. Both are wrong. The advantage of thought, perhaps, is still on Slonim’s side. But Zaitsev has the advantage of feeling, very worthy, restrained and courageous. Slonim’s joyful animation, his cheerful and upbeat tone are incomprehensible: he says things, in most cases, true, but extremely sad, but he speaks triumphantly. It seems that polemical success is most valuable to him: anticipating his victory in polemics, he rejoices, and at the same time forgets that he is talking about living people, for whom it is difficult even without him, that he himself is an emigrant, that emigration in general there is a terrible misfortune, and even if local literature has no “mission”, then it is still impossible to drive a “aspen stake” into its imaginary grave, there is no reason for it, and this cannot be justified either by history or by the true state of affairs and will never be justified" (1).
Why did Slonim treat emigrant literature this way, in which he occupied a prominent place as a critic and as the head of the literary association “Kochevye” (1928-1938). At the end of 1933, Adamovich wrote: “The rise and fall of Kochevye are not accidental. This society relied on Soviet literature. Three or four years ago, his trend coincided with a widespread, very strong interest in this literature: then many believed that everything fresh and youthful, in the literary sense, came from Russia, that Soviet literature was heroic and majestic, and that there was no censorship, no dictatorship unable to cope with her unstoppable growth. They believed in credit, but they believed sincerely. Head of “Kochevye” M.L. Slonim supported this belief in every possible way and argued that there were real, unshakable grounds for it... But now the illusions have dissipated. It turned out that Soviet literature does not have much to “present.” The placers turned out to be a mirage. Of course, there remained a conviction in the talent and significance of several Soviet writers. But the naive interest in it, as in some kind of exotic, fabulously rich and unheard of new, disappeared” (2).
Starting negotiations with the Chekhov Publishing House about a book about emigrant literature (the future “Loneliness and Freedom”), Adamovich learned that “Vreden is wavering between me and Slonim,” which he informed the writer Vasily Yanovsky on October 10, 1953, adding: “Of course , It’s better not to assign Slonim a book on this topic. He will write that Puzanov from Voronezh is better than Bunin, because he is from Voronezh.” “Puzanov from Voronezh” is a legendary character whom Boris Pilnyak mentioned in 1925 in response to a questionnaire as “new great forces” from the provinces; in emigration, where the answer was immediately reprinted, the name Puzanov became a household name, although no one had ever heard of his works. Maybe Pilnyak came up with it? If Remizov had answered, I would have had no doubts.
Slonim's candidacy soon disappeared. The second competitor was Gleb Struve, but the publishing house released both him and Adamovich. Why did Vreden think of Slonim first? Because Mark Lvovich, who moved to the United States in 1941, managed to gain fame in scientific and literary circles as a critic, translator and teacher: he lectured at Yale, Chicago and Philadelphia, and in 1943 he took a permanent job at New York. York Women's College Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville. Teaching gave status and income, but Slonim considered writing books to be his main job.
In 1950 and 1953 The prestigious Oxford University Press published his history of Russian literature in two books, without numbers, but in the same design. The first “Epic of Russian Literature” covered the period from Peter the Great (with an excursion into ancient Russian literature in the introduction) to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The title of the second, “Modern Russian Literature,” speaks for itself: from the populists to the “fight against cosmopolitanism.”
Both volumes in my collection contain the author's scripts:

To Gloria Welch
to make her remember
our talks on Tolsoy
and Dostoevsky
with love
Marc Slonim
April 1950
(To Gloria Welch, in memory of our conversations about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky with love, Mark Slonim. April 1950).
To Jane Cecil
ｗho has been my student
and whom I liked very much
with love and friendship
Marc Slonim
May 1953, Bronxville, NY
(Jane Cecil, who was my student and I liked very much, with love and friendship Mark Slonim. May 1953, Bronxville, New York).

It is not difficult to determine the category to which the recipients belonged - Sarah Lawrence College students. The books were donated immediately upon release - rather, they weren’t even donated, but inscribed at the request of the listeners. Finding personal information about them and, even more so, about their future fate is much more difficult: girls tend to get married and change their last name.
For several decades, the “free world” studied Russian literature according to Slonim. I leafed through the first volume with some pleasure, although I did not learn anything new. This is a practical textbook for foreigners (better than Soviet textbooks of that time), informative, deideologized and, so to speak, deconceptualized. Nowadays they don’t write like that - maybe it’s in vain. I read the second volume carefully, starting with the chapter “The Modernist Movement.” It is worthy of a separate analysis, but not here. I will only dwell on what the author wrote about emigrant literature. We have figured out why Vreden turned to Slonim. Why did the Chekhov publishing house refuse his services?

In Soviet textbooks, foreign literature was not given a separate paragraph, much less a chapter. The emigrant creativity of those who made a name for themselves in Russia was seen as an appendage to the pre-emigrant work (Slonim does this), and there was simply no place for those who made their debut in exile, be it Aldanov or Nabokov. Mark Lvovich devoted 186 pages to the period after the Civil War, of which the literature of Russian emigration as an integral phenomenon took up 11. Now this is difficult to imagine even in the most “conventional” Russian textbook, but here is an emigrant critic! What did he write?
That "emigrants in the twenties (and even the early thirties) tended to exaggerate their role." That all of Merezhkovsky’s later books are “pale and wordy.” That Bunin “can only be considered as an epigone of the great masters.” That only those who “never read Voltaire or Anatole France believed in the originality” of Aldanov. That Georgy Ivanov is a “nihilist and cynic”, and his “long-term friend and ally” Georgy Adamovich is “an intelligent and sometimes snobbish critic and esthete who plays with religion, art and morality.” Tsvetaeva - apparently out of old friendship - is given one and a half pages, and among the “last romantics”, next to Pasternak, and not among the emigrants. Khodasevich has half a page, Ivanov two and a half lines, Poplavsky seven. “The time has not yet come to evaluate the literary work of emigrants as a whole,” the critic summed up. “One thing is certain: emigration did not produce any new trends, no new schools or individual writers of any significance.” I just want to say: “Comrade Slonim is mistaken.”