This article considers Ivan Bunin’s late publications of his early poems in the Paris newspapers Vozrozhdenie (1925-1927) and Poslednie novosti (1929, 1935). Starting in 1925, he published eleven selections of poems in them, sometimes combining familiar and unfamiliar texts from earlier years, and sometimes consisting entirely of poems from the first years of his literary work, previously unpublished, with no surviving manuscripts. All these publications can be considered as part of the creative stocktaking that Bunin undertook, first in the collection Selected Poems (Paris, Sovremennye zapiski, 1929), then in his 11-volume collected works (Berlin, Petropolis, 1934–1936). In this respect, the most significant selections are the five-part cycle An Old Notebook (1926– 1927) and the cycle First Poems (1935). The article pays particular attention to analysing the internal links that unite the texts of these cycles into a rounded poetical statement and to the question of how poems from the late 1880s to the early 1900s, without reliable sources in Bunin’s previous literary output, should be incorporated into a scholarly critical edition of his works.

The article examines the relationship between R. Rolland and one of his important Soviet correspondents, the Soviet diplomat, writer, and party activist A. Arosev. Based on the letters and diaries of Rolland and Arosev, the research reconstructs the crucial events of the Soviet-French dialogue in the 1930s, associated with the change in Rolland’s position on what was happening in the USSR. From criticizing the results of the October Revolution, Rolland revises his political views and decides to travel to the country that is building a “new society.” Arosev, who received the post of chairman of VOKS in 1934, played a significant role in preparing for his arrival. For the first time, the article publishes a letter from Rolland to Arosev dated May 12, 1935, in which Rolland sets out his demands for his accommodation, food, and medical care. In the letter, Rolland expresses concern about the delay in the publication of the next volumes of his complete works, as well as a desire to receive confirmation of the possibility of meeting with Gorky and Stalin in Moscow. The article traces the further development of Rolland’s relations with Arosev: after a crisis of trust associated with Stalin and Arosev’s attempt to place Rolland not in Gorky’s house, but in a guarded government dacha, Arosev manages to regain Rolland’s favor and continue friendly correspondence and meetings with him in Switzerland, at Rolland’s villa. The writer’s correspondence with Arosev ends with the latter’s arrest. For the first time, the unpublished Russian translation of “Supplements (October–December 1938)” to Rolland’s Moscow Diary is introduced into scientific circulation.

Archival research enables to reconstruct and present the history of the confrontation between the head office of Gosizdat in Moscow and Lengiz as its structural unit. The article shows that this conflict, which began in 1923, clearly manifested the “geographical factor” of the uneasy relations between the country’s power center and periphery, represented by the national republics, and Leningrad as the cultural center of the former empire. Using the example of several cultural institutions, the article concludes that in the formative period of Soviet statehood and the situation of the New Economic Policy, the construction of a power vertical required linking centralized management with the economic independence of regions and organizations to optimize the production process. Ultimately, the balance of cultural forces between the center and the periphery did not always work out in favor of the governing center. Archival documents prove that Lengiz conducted a more effective publishing policy, which determined his unwillingness to comply with the requirements of the head office in Moscow and obey its orders. The article establishes that in striving for commercial and financial independence, Lengiz was supported by the Leningrad Regional Executive Committee. The conflict between the head office of Gosizdat in Moscow and Lengiz reflected the general contradiction of the time between the value of cultural capital and the production goals of state construction, which devalued the importance of cultural heritage at that time.

Nikolai Yakovlevich Prokopovich (1810–1857) was Gogol’s close friend, a publisher of his works, a poet, and a teacher. After graduating from the Nizhyn gymnasium he came to St. Petersburg and entered the drama department of the theater school (1829). Then he served for several years (1832–1835) as an actor in the St. Petersburg Imperial theaters. The article provides new biographical information about him and his theatrical career. It examines the range of plays in which he and his wife Maria Nikiforovna Trokhneva, also an actress, played. Gogol, who maintained a close relationship with Prokopovich all his life, could attend performances with his participation. Gogol transformed the dramatic traditions and techniques implemented in them into his own comedies. Later he expressed his views on the features of the repertoire of those years and the trends in the development of the national theater in an article devoted to the St. Petersburg stage of 1835–1836.

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Alexander Larionov’s Leo Tolstoy and China is a review article that represents one of the first serious attempts to understand “the problem of a detailed study of relations between China and Tolstoy and the interaction between Tolstoy’s work and Chinese culture” in post-war literary criticism. (Its autograph and incomplete typescript were found in the collection of the Press Department of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, located in the State Archive of the Russian Federation.) Compared to his predecessors, such as Paul Biryukov, a Russian publicist (Tolstoi und der Orient, 1925), and Romain Rolland, a French writer (La Réponse de l’Asie à Tolstoï, 1928), Alexander Larionov broke new ground by selecting and systematically presenting a large amount of “factual material” (in his own words, “more than one copyright sheet”). In fact, for the first time, he established an ideological sequence that would later be reached by professional scholars, Derk Bodde, an American historian and sinologist (Tolstoy and China, 1950), and Alexander Shifman, a Soviet literary critic (Leo Tolstoy and the Orient, 1960 and 1971). The main research plot is structured as follows: “Tolstoy’s Writings and Publications on China” (the Chinese Wisdom, the Water Flow, the Coffee-House of Surat, the Circle of Reading, the Epistle to the Chinese, etc.); “Tolstoy’s Readings on China” (the study of popular science books about China in English, Russian, French, and German, as well as the philosophical heritage of Confucius, Laozi, Mozi, and Mencius); “Tolstoy’s Contacts with the Orient” (the correspondence with Zhang Qingtong and Gu Hongming); and finally, “The Meaning of Tolstoy to the Orient” (a translation of some of his works and critical responses to them). As Alexander Larionov’s manuscript was neglected for too long, this publication includes all the necessary comments, additions, and clarifications in its footnotes which significantly exceed the volume of the author’s text that has “already a historical character.”

The series of articles are devoted to the scientific project “Yesenin Encyclopedia” carried out at the IWL RAS. It is a collection of information about the life and work of S.A. Yesenin and his role in Russian and world culture, based on the fundamental academic works, i. e., the Complete Works of S.A. Yesenin: in 7 vols. (9 books) (1895–2001), Chronicles of Life and Work S.A. Yesenin: in 5 vols. (7 books) (2003–2018), and recent studies. The issues of the concept, composition and structure of this work and the ways to solve them are considered. Attention is being paid to the issue of the Yesenin Encyclopedia. 1895–1925. Memorable Places. Literary Geography, which was published on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of his birth and is being prepared for republication, related to the biography and work of the poet and the memory of him in Russia and the world (357 articles on 442 toponyms were included). The author shows the uniqueness of articles about real and literary toponyms of various types, the meaning of which is to reveal their meaning and functions, semantics, sources, historical and literary context, perception by contemporaries and interpretation by researchers. The article gives typical examples of articles about real and literary, including biblical, religious, philosophical, and place names created by the poet himself (Inonia, The Land of Scoundrels, etc.). The article analyzes the second issue of the Yesenin Encyclopedia. 1895–1925. Works (about 450 articles, 200 figures), equipped with a bibliography of scientific papers on these works and a multi-level commentary: textual, real, poetical, and general cultural. The composition and structure of articles about the work are substantiated, and an appendix is provided with an expanded textual commentary (autograph (manuscripts), dating, publications, translations, etc.). A separate section of the article is devoted to the bibliography of S.A. Yesenin’s translations, which for the first time provides a list of lifetime and first posthumous translations of S.A. Yesenin’s works (1920–1927), and in some cases their characteristics. The article reflects the dynamics of the poet’s entry into the world literary world.

For the first time, the article presents a memoir essay about V.Ya. Bryusov, written shortly after the poet’s death by his friend, the symbolist of the younger generation S.M. Solovyov. Their literary and human relations were not simple, which is directly reflected in the essay. In his memoir, Solovyov stops at the mid-1900s, the time of the closest communication between the two poets and Bryusov’s acquisition of wide literary recognition. Telling a number of interesting life stories, the memoirist at the same time tries to show the formation of Bryusov as the head of a new school of Russian poetry and literature, assigning him approximately the same role that A.S. Pushkin had to play a century earlier. Remembering Bryusov in the hustle and bustle of editorial affairs at the journal Libra, the publishing house “Scorpio,” in literary and personal skirmishes and polemics, in the family circle and in tense love collisions, Solovyov does not forget the main thing — that the hero of his essay was, first of all, a poet. The memoirs are published entirely according to the author’s manuscript of S.M. Solovyov, the publication is accompanied by an academic commentary.

The article restores Soviet contacts of the representatives of the left American Jewish press, resumed in 1956 when Khruschev “thaw” set in. Based on press materials and documents deposited in the Russian archives (RGALI and RGANI), we trace how the New York “Yiddishist” Jews like P. Novik and Ch. Suller tried to accomplish a non-trivial task: without breaking friendly ties, they delicately but decisively encouraged their Moscow colleagues to take more energetic actions aimed at reviving Jewish culture in the USSR. Hoping for a return to the 1930s, the Americans deemed necessary to open Jewish theaters, publishing houses, newspapers, literary journals. The contact group on this issue on the Soviet part was headed by the chairman of the Writers’ Union A. Surkov and included major Jewish writers under the leadership of A. Vergelis. In the article we reconstruct the year of intense negotiations, personal meetings, public statements and exchange of letters, and demonstrate that the restoration of Jewish literature during the early “thaw” was being delayed, and all proactive proposals of the American Jews were being sabotaged. Mindful of the fate that befell the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the last years of Stalin’s rule, representatives of the contact group coordinated every step with the higher leadership of the Central Committee, which inevitably led to lengthy delays. In the appendix to the article we publish a report by A. Vergelis to B. Polevoy, the Chairman of the Foreign Commission of the Writers’ Union, in which he signals a crisis in partnerships with the representatives of the Western left Jewish press.

Publications in the literary-artistic and literary-critical periodicals of the 1920s offer valuable insights into a largely overlooked dimension of Soviet literary history. They reveal the reception of Isaac Babel by participants in the literary polemics of the time, all within the broader framework of the fierce competition over the reader that defined the decade. During the 1920s, the reader was placed at the center of diverse ideological projects aimed at reshaping human nature and forging a new consciousness. Babel was commonly grouped with the so-called poputchiki (fellow travelers), a classification that shaped his reception both among critics aligned with RAPP and among Trotskyist sympathizers, as well as independent Marxist literary thinkers such as Vyach. Polonsky and V. Pravdukhin. The study demonstrates that in the reader-centric literary and sociopolitical climate of the 1920s, Babel found support among that segment of Bolshevik criticism which upheld the aesthetic value of literary form. Conversely, he was rejected by the RAPP critics and, in turn, by the readership they cultivated. Babel’s literary singularity — his f lorid, ornamental style; his avoidance of explicit authorial judgment; and the structural complexity of both phrase and text — resisted incorporation into RAPP’s rigid classificatory schemes. In place of sustained critical engagement with his work, RAPP critics resorted — contrary to the actual dynamics of readership — to a formulaic refrain: “Babel is not read.”