In the Silver Age, Russian culture declared itself as one of the leaders of the world spiritual movement. The Silver Age was cut short by political, military and social upheavals of 1917 - 1920. But a powerful cultural movement could not disappear overnight just from external unfavorable circumstances. The Silver Age has not disappeared. It was torn apart, and most of it continued to exist in the culture of “Russia 2,” as the Russian emigration is sometimes called.

The second wave occurred at the end of World War II. The third wave began after Khrushchev’s “thaw” and carried the greatest writers outside Russia (A. Solzhenitsyn, I. Brodsky, S. Dovlatov). The works of writers of the first wave of Russian emigration have the most cultural and literary significance.

The concept of “Russian diaspora” arose and took shape after October revolution 1917, when refugees began to leave Russia en masse. After 1917, about 2 million people left Russia. In the centers of dispersion - Berlin, Harbin, Paris - “Russia in miniature” was formed, preserving all the features of Russian society. By the mid-1920s, it became obvious that Russia could not be returned and that Russia could not return..

The desire to “keep that truly valuable thing that inspired the past” is at the heart of the work of writers of the older generation, who managed to enter literature and make a name for themselves back in pre-revolutionary Russia. In exile, prose writers of the older generation create great books: Nobel Prize 1933

The main motive of the literature of the older generation was the theme of nostalgic memory of the lost homeland. The most frequently used themes are longing for “eternal Russia”; - events of the revolution and civil war; - Russian history; - memories of childhood and youth.

Contrasting “yesterday” and “today”, older generation made a choice in favor of the lost cultural world of old Russia, not recognizing the need to get used to the new reality of emigration. This also determined the aesthetic conservatism of the “elders”: “Is it time to stop following in Tolstoy’s footsteps?” Bunin wondered. “Whose footsteps should we follow?”

Check yourself. 1. How many periods of Russian emigrant literature do you know? Name the dates of these periods. 2. What centers of dispersion of Russian emigration do you know? What is the difference? 3. From what year did the Russian flowering begin? foreign literature? What books are being created? 4. What are the names of writers and poets who emigrated abroad? 5. What views in literature did writers and poets of the older generation hold? How is the aesthetic conservatism of the “elders” expressed? 6. Who was called the “overlooked generation”?

“Perhaps the most valuable contribution of writers to the general treasury of Russian literature will have to be recognized as various forms of non-fiction literature” - G. Struve (researcher of emigrant literature) Criticism Essays Philosophical prose High journalism Memoir prose

Emigrants were always against the authorities in their homeland, but they always passionately loved their homeland and fatherland and dreamed of returning there. They preserved the Russian flag and the truth about Russia. Truly Russian literature, poetry, philosophy and faith continued to live in Foreign Rus'. Everyone’s main goal was to “bring a candle to the homeland,” to preserve Russian culture and the uncorrupted Russian Orthodox faith for a future free Russia.

Check yourself! 1. What is the main motive of the works of writers of the younger generation of emigrants? 2. What forms of non-fiction did emigrant writers introduce into Russian literature? 3. Explain the term “intermediate position” of some poets. Name these poets. 4. What was the goal of the emigrant writers?

Read excerpts from Irina Odoevtseva’s book “On the Banks of the Neva” and answer the question: “How does Blok appear to readers in her memoirs: “Of course, Blok, like all of us, and perhaps even more than all of us, is overwhelmed with work. He's almost a director Alexandrinsky Theater and treats his duties so honestly that he goes into everything decisively, lectures the actors about Shakespeare, analyzes roles with them, and so on. True, the actors idolize him. Monakhov said the other day: “We play only for Alexander Alexandrovich. For us, his praise is the highest reward.” “Of course, Blok is overwhelmed with work. Moreover, he carries the wood himself to the third floor and splits it himself, he is such a white-handed gentleman. And his home is a complete hell, not a “quiet hell”, but with slamming doors, screaming throughout the house and women’s hysterics. Lyubov Dmitrievna, Blok's wife, and his mother cannot stand each other and quarrel from morning to night. They have all moved in together now. And Blok loves them both more than anything in the world.” “The block is a mystery. Nobody understands him. They judge him wrongly... It seems to me that I have solved him. Blok is not at all a decadent, not a symbolist, as he is considered. Blok is a romantic. Romantic pure water, and besides, he is a German romantic... German blood is strongly felt in him and is reflected in his appearance. Yes, Blok is a romantic with all the advantages and disadvantages of romanticism. For some reason no one understands this, but this is the key, the solution to his work and his personality.

The emigrants formed a unique community abroad. Its uniqueness lay in the supreme task that history set for refugees from Russia: “Not a single emigration... has received such an imperative order to continue and develop the work of their native culture as foreign Rus'.” Preservation and development of Russian culture in traditions Silver Age and puts the emigration of the 20s - 30s in the position of a cultural phenomenon. Neither the second nor the third waves of emigration from Russia set common cultural and national goals.

In composition, the group of expelled “unreliables” (the first wave of emigration) consisted entirely of intelligentsia, mainly the intellectual elite of Russia: professors, philosophers, writers, journalists. Emigrant newspapers called this action a “generous gift” for Russian culture abroad. Abroad, they became the founders of historical and philosophical schools, modern sociology, and important directions in biology, zoology, and technology. The “generous gift” to the Russian diaspora turned out to be the loss for Soviet Russia of entire schools and directions, primarily in historical science, philosophy, cultural studies, and other humanities.

The expulsion of 1922 was the largest state action of the Bolshevik government against the intelligentsia after the revolution. But not the latest one. The trickle of expulsions, departures and simply flight of the intelligentsia from the Soviet Union dried up only by the end of the 20s, when the “iron curtain” of ideology fell between the new world of the Bolsheviks and the entire culture of the old world. By 1925 – 1927 The composition of “Russia 2” was finally formed. In emigration, the share of professionals and people with higher education exceeded the pre-war level.

The active continuation of the spiritual traditions of the Silver Age was also facilitated by the high share cultured people as part of the emigration. A unique situation has been created: there is no state, no government, no economy, no politics, but there is culture. The collapse of a state does not entail the death of a nation! Only the death of a culture means the disappearance of a nation!

This ephemeral “Russia 2”, having neither a capital, nor a government, nor laws, was held together by only one thing - the preservation of the former culture of Russia in a foreign cultural, foreign environment. In this the emigration saw the only historical meaning of what happened, the meaning of their existence. “We are not in exile. We are in the message,” said D.S. Merezhkovsky. The task of preserving the culture of the disappeared old Russia grew into the mission of Russian emigration.

In a situation of national “dispersion,” the Russian language turned out to be the main sign of belonging to the bygone Russia. Newspapers, magazines, books - all this was the only in an effective way preservation and transmission of cultural traditions. Newspapers, magazines, books have become the most effective means of uniting emigration.

To establish some semblance of national spiritual life, it was necessary creative association. The spiritual life of the emigration began to gather around small intellectual points of gravity: publishing houses, educational and educational institutions. Emigrant libraries and archives were formed quite quickly.

Among the libraries, the library named after. I.S. Turgenev in Paris. It was founded back in 1875 by I.S. Turgenev himself with the support of singer Pauline Viardot. In the 20s and 30s, the Turgenev Library experienced its second heyday. Its funds received not only books and magazines published in exile, but also literature, documents, letters, and diaries exported from Russia.

The Turgenev Library began to have its own museum with paintings donated by artists, with personal belongings of Chaliapin, Bunin, Lifar, Nijinsky, Benois. Disaster struck in 1940 when the German army occupied Paris. Most of the library's collection was taken to Germany. The exported funds disappeared, their fate is still unknown. After World War II, the Turgenev Library in Paris was restored, albeit on a more modest scale. It is still in effect today.

Russians cultural centers in emigration they provided a kind of “protection” from a different cultural environment and contributed to the preservation of their own cultural traditions. So many purely Russian institutions were created that one could be born, study, marry, work and die without speaking a word of French. There was even a joke among emigrants: “Paris is a good city, but there are too many French here.”

But the real, full-fledged literary salon in Paris can be considered the Sunday meetings in the apartment of Gippius and Merezhkovsky on Colonel Bonnet Street. Politicians and philosophers were here, sometimes Bunin came in. The queen of the salon was the owner herself - “the magnificent Zinaida.”

The literary society with Pushkin's name "Green Lamp" turned out to be popular and existed for more than 10 years. At its meetings, they listened to reports on culture and literature, read new works... P. Milyukov, A. Kerensky, I. A. Bunin, A. N. Benois, G. Ivanov, I. Odoevtseva and others were here.

The main mechanism for the existence of Russian culture abroad was the principle of the “cultural nest”, which assumed close interaction between all spheres of creativity: literature, music, painting, scenography. Artistic tastes also became relatively more conservative: realism, symbolism, modernism. Avant-garde searches of the 10s. did not take root in emigration. The interaction of artists in exile sometimes turned into a direct vital necessity for survival.

Test yourself 1. Why is the society formed by emigrants considered unique? What makes it unique? 2. What “generous gift” of Russians did emigrant newspapers write about? 3. What do you know about Russia 2? 4. What was the most effective way to unite emigrants?

Continue the sentence! “No emigration has ever received such an imperative order...” “The share of emigration is professionals and people with higher education...” “The collapse of the state does not entail... It only... means...” Dmitry Merezhkovsky said: “We are not in exile. We…." "We did not leave Russia..."

Today the dream of the first emigrants is coming true: their works, like the works of writers of the two subsequent waves of emigration, are returning to their homeland, their names are heard among those who enriched Russian culture and science. The first attempts were made to scientifically comprehend the contribution of Russian diaspora to the national and world culture.

For a long time this was an unexplored area of ​​Russian culture for ideological reasons. Back in the 20s, emigrant literature was declared hostile to our worldview as a phenomenon of “bourgeois decay,” after which prohibitive measures followed. Works by emigrant writers, even those who made history before the revolution national culture, were removed from libraries, and their publication ceased. This was the case until the mid-50s, when, in the context of Khrushchev’s “thaw,” the situation changed somewhat for some time. But only since the mid-80s. The systematic publication of works by Russian writers abroad and the study of their work began. But another extreme also arose - the assessment of Russian literature abroad was uncritically positive, and that of Soviet literature - negatively. We cannot agree with this. And emigrant literature is not the same in its level. And Soviet literature, even under the conditions of a totalitarian regime, inscribed outstanding names and magnificent works into domestic and world culture, in which it continued the great traditions of national culture.

Literature of Russian abroad is one of the brilliant pages of Russian culture, created by its the greatest masters who found themselves in exile. Emigrant literature represented poets and writers of a wide variety of ideological and artistic movements that had emerged in pre-revolutionary Russia at the beginning XX century - and the founders of Russian symbolism, and former Acmeists, and representatives of futurist movements, as well as those who did not join, such as M. Tsvetaeva, with any movement.

A notable figure in the literature of Russian diaspora was Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky(1865-1941) - one of the “fathers” of Russian symbolism. He gained fame as a prose novelist, literary critic and publicist. Before the revolution, it was made popular by the trilogy “Christ and Antichrist”. In his work, he consistently affirmed the concept of the mystical-religious development of the world - through the contradictions of the heavenly and earthly to a harmonious synthesis.

In emigration there is a certain decline in Merezhkovsky's fame, although he published a lot. He wrote mainly artistic and philosophical prose with pronounced subjective judgments about the world, man, and history. The books “The Secret of Three”, “Napoleon”, “Jesus the Unknown” were written in this way, as well as artistic studies about Dante, Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc and others. His “Modern Notes” were published in 1924-25 the novels “The Birth of the Gods”, “Tutankhamun on Crete” and “The Messiah”. Among his historical books, the central book was “Jesus the Unknown”, in which he returned to his utopias about the coming kingdom of the “Third Testament” and the “third humanity”, where the deepest contradictions inherent in the world will be removed.

Merezhkovsky's companion throughout his life, who shared his philosophical and religious quests - Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius(1869-1945) - poet, one of the largest representatives of older symbolism. Gippius's emigrant creativity consists of poems, memoirs, and journalism. In 1921, she published part of her “Petersburg Diary”, the so-called “Black Book”. And we must pay tribute to the author’s poetic intuition - she wrote: “... the Bolsheviks are a permanent war, a hopeless war. Bolshevik power in Russia is a product, the brainchild of war. And as long as it lasts, there will be war. Civilian? No matter how it is! It’s just a war, only a double one, both external and internal.”

In 1922, her first emigrant collection “Poems. Diary. 1911-1921." - The main theme of the poems is politics. But then in poetry she begins to return to her “eternal themes” - about man, love and death. The best of the poems that she created in exile were included in the collection “Shine.” Of the prose works, Z. Gippius herself especially appreciated the novel “Memoirs of Martynov” and the story “The Mother-of-Pearl Cane,” which are based on the extraordinary love adventures of the protagonist and again reflections on the essence of love, faith, and human existence. Gippius’s memoir prose is “Living Faces” (memoirs of many Russian writers), and an unfinished book about Merezhkovsky is “Dmitry Merezhkovsky” (Paris, 1951). Until the end of her days, Zinaida Gippius was convinced of some kind of envoy mission of the Russian emigration, considering herself a messenger of those forces that alone possess the truth of history and in the name of this truth do not accept the new Russia.

The role of another founder of Russian symbolism - Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont(1867-1942) in literary life Russian diaspora is somewhat more modest, although he wrote quite a lot. Of the most significant books by Balmont published abroad, the following are interesting: “The Gift of the Earth” (Paris, 1921), “Sonnets of the Sun, Honey and Moon” (Berlin, 1923), “Mine is Hers” (Prague, 1924), “In the Spread given" (Belgrade, 1930), "Northern Lights" (Paris, 1931). Along with excellent poems, these collections also contain weak poems. Balmont was also a remarkable translator and in this capacity made a great contribution to Russian culture. He translated, providing articles and commentaries by Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Calderon, as well as O. Wilde, Marlowe, Lope de Vega, Hauptmann and others. He also made a poetic translation of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.”

A major poet of Russian symbolism who found himself in exile (he went on a scientific trip in 1924 and stayed in Italy) was Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov(1866-1949). From 1926 to 1934 he was a professor of new languages ​​and literatures in educational institutions Italy. He published “Roman Walls” and wrote no more poetry. After 1944, he returned to the concept of his monumental novel “The Tale of Svetomir the Tsarevich,” but out of the planned 12 books he wrote only 5. Olga Alexandrovna Shor, who had Ivanov’s archive and was familiar with the concept and plan of the novel, continued working on the novel. Over the course of a decade and a half, she published four more books. The novel in its concept is a myth about a man (Svetomir), who, through the transformation of flesh and spirit, overcomes his sinful human nature. The narrative was supposed to end with a vision of the kingdom of God on an earth cleansed of sin, instilling hope for some kind of mystical revival of man and humanity.

Among their poets, who belonged to the Acmeists, the most notable in emigration was Vladislav Filitsianovich Khodasevich (1886-1939). His personality and work have been and remain the subject of heated debate and conflicting assessments. Throughout his life, Khodasevich published only five small books of poetry: “Youth” (1908), “Happy House” (1914), “The Path of Grain” (from poems 1917-1920; 1920) and two already in emigration: “Heavy Lyre” (Berlin, 1923) and “Collected Poems” (1927), in which the dominant feeling is pessimism associated with the impossibility of creating outside Russia. He wrote a brilliant novel about Derzhavin (Paris, 1921), and many historical and literary articles, including one about Pushkin. Shortly before his death, Khodasevich’s book of memoirs “Necropolis” (about Bryusov, Sologub, Gumilyov, Bely, Gorky, Blok, Yesenin and many others) was published.

Georgy Viktorovich Adamovich(1894-1972) - also one of the former Acmeists. As a poet, he wrote little in exile. In 1939, a collection of poems “In the West” was published. Adamovich thought a lot and difficultly about the destinies and paths of Russian foreign literature. In 1955, his book “Loneliness and Freedom” was published in New York, where he seemed to sum up his thoughts about literature and emigration writers. He was considered one of the best critics among emigrant writers.

Another famous poet - Georgy Vladimirovich Ivanov(1894-1958). In exile, he republished his collections “Heather” and “Gardens” and only in 1931 a new collection of his poems “Sailing to the Island of Cythera” appeared, and then (1937) the collection “Roses”, “Portrait without Resemblance” (1950), and finally - “Poems 1943-1958.” (1988). He is also known as a prose writer; in 1926, in Paris, he published a book of very subjective literary memoirs, “St. Petersburg Winters.”

Among the egofuturists we must name Igor Vasilievich Severyanin(Lotareva) (1887-1941). Once in exile (in Estonia), he published several collections of poems: “The Nightingale” (1918), “Vervena” (1918), “Minstrel” (1921), novels in verse - “Falling Rapids” (1925), “Bells of the Cathedral of Senses” "(1925), the poem "The Dew of the Orange Hour" (1925), as well as the collections "Classical Roses" (1930), "Adriatic" (1932). He died in poverty and obscurity in German-occupied Tallinn.

IN Lately The name is becoming increasingly popular here and abroad Marina Tsvetaeva(1892-1941) - poet, prose writer, critic. Maria Ivanovna went abroad in 1922 to join her husband, S.Ya. Efron - a former officer of the Volunteer Army. At first she lived in Berlin (two collections of her poems were published here: “Psyche” and “Craft” - 1923), then in the suburbs of Prague (living in the capital was beyond her means) and in 1925 she moved to France.

To understand Tsvetaeva’s attitude to the world and man in the world, her poems “Poem of the Mountain” and “Poem of the End” (1924) are of interest - they revealed her characteristic view of man, the romanticization of the spiritual. In exile, he also turns to drama - he is working on a trilogy based on Greek mythology - “Ariadne”, “Phaedra”, “Elena”. He begins to write a lot in prose.

In 1932-1937 more and more “withdraws into himself”, moving away from the emigrant environment. A particularly difficult period in Marina Tsvetaeva’s emigrant life was 1937-39, when she was left with her son George in Paris completely alone. Husband - S.Ya. Efron, back in the early 30s. recruited by the KGB, worked in the “Union of Return,” which served as a cover for KGB agents, went to Russia in 1937 (he took part in organizing, which caused a lot of noise, the murder of the Soviet intelligence officer Poretsky (Reis), who decided not to return to the USSR).

In June 1939, Tsvetaeva returned to Moscow. Soon, her husband S. Efron and daughter Ariadne were arrested (the husband was soon shot) and Marina Tsvetaeva was left alone with her son. Life is very difficult; her poems are not published, but she makes a living from translations. In August 1941, together with a group of writers and their families, she was evacuated to Yelabuga, where, after unsuccessful attempts to get a job, she committed suicide. Her grave is lost.

The tragic outcome of Marina Tsvetaeva’s life is most likely explained not only by material instability, indifference to her fate on the part of writers and the writers’ organization at that difficult time, but also by an increasingly growing sense of loneliness. It so happened that she did not find her place in emigration, and there was no place for her in her homeland. Much of Tsvetaeva’s literary heritage was not published at the time; much remained in the archives of foreign publishing houses, in private archives, and in her personal archive.

Only in last years work began on researching the foreign creativity of M. Tsvetaeva, her contribution to Russian poetic culture of the 20th century.

From realist writers (of the older generation) who found themselves in exile, first of all, it must be said about Leonid Andreev, Ivan Bunin, Alexander Kuprin, Boris Zaitsev, Ivan Shmelev and others.

Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev(1871-1919) after the October Revolution, he left Petrograd for Finland, to a dacha in Reivola, where he found himself surrounded by leaders of the White Guard government of Yudenich. All of them, in his opinion, were “sharps and swindlers” who speculated on the high ideals of love for Russia. He lived very little abroad. In Finland he will write his last significant work - the novel-pamphlet "Satan's Diary" - about the adventures of Satan, incarnated as an American billionaire.

Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin(1870-1938) emigrated to Finland in the fall of 1919, and then to France (although his emigration was not due to any clear political reasons).

Kuprin's works of the emigrant period differ in philosophical content and style from his pre-revolutionary work. Their main motive is longing for the abstract ideal of human existence and a nostalgic look at the past.

In exile, he published in newspapers, thick magazines, published separate books “The Wheel of Time”, “Elan”, “The Dome of St. Isaac of Dalmatia”, “Junker”, “Zhanneta”, etc. He also writes fairy tales, legends, fantastic stories, filled with a romantic appeal to people to be humane.

The work of this great, talented writer in exile met, of course, with a positive attitude. In 1937 he returned to his homeland, but lived very little - in August 1938 he died of cancer in Leningrad.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin(1870-1953) - the first Russian writer awarded Nobel Prize in 1933. The official announcement of the Nobel Prize being awarded to Bunin stated: “By the decision of the Swedish Academy on November 9, 1933, the Nobel Prize in Literature for this year was awarded to Ivan Bunin for the truthful artistic talent with which he recreated in artistic prose typical Russian character." Bunin continued the best traditions of Russian literary classics.

The writer perceived the February revolution as a way out of the impasse into which tsarism had reached. Oktyabrskaya - hostile. In 1918 he left Moscow, and in February 1920, together with the remnants of the White Guards, he left Russia. Bunin’s response to the October Revolution was his essays “Cursed Days,” which he wrote in Moscow and Odessa in 1918-1920. This work is essentially his political credo, an expression of rejection of the revolution and the new Russia: “...one of distinctive features revolution - a frenzied thirst for games, acting, poses, booths. The monkey awakens in a person.” And further: “For the third year now, something monstrous has been going on. The third year is only baseness, only dirt, only atrocity.”

Bunin experienced a tragic break with his homeland. In his work, he focused on memories of Russia, on the experiences of the past forever gone. During the war years he took a patriotic position.

Bunin's main interest in emigration focused on the “eternal themes” that sounded even in pre-October creativity, about the meaning of life, about love and death, about the past and the future, which were intertwined with the motives of the hopelessness of personal fate, with thoughts about the homeland. The main stages of Bunin’s work after 1924 were outlined in the books: “Mitya’s Love” (1925), “Sunstroke” (1927), “God’s Tree” (1931), “The Life of Arsenyev” (1930), “The Liberation of Tolstoy” (1937 ), “Lika” (1939), then appeared “ Dark alleys"(1946) and finally "Memoirs" (1950). Bunin's poetic works were collected in the volume “Selected Poems” (1929).

The most significant phenomenon in Bunin’s work in recent years was the novel “The Life of Arsenyev,” in which he tried to comprehend the events of his life and the life of Russia in the pre-revolutionary period.

In 1934-35 The Petropolis publishing house published in Berlin the collected works of Bunin in 11 volumes. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin still remains an unsurpassed master of words. His name rightfully stands among the largest writers of Russian literature. Bunin was buried in the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery in the suburbs of Paris.

The closest to Bunin was Boris Konstantinovich Zaitsev(1881-1972), who announced himself back in 1906 with a collection of stories “ Quiet dawns" In 1922 he moved with his family to Berlin, lived in Italy for about a year, then in Paris until his death.

In Zaitsev’s work - both in tone and in the themes of his works - the religious principle is clearly manifested, as, for example, in the work “Reverend Sergius of Radonezh” (Paris, 1925).

Zaitsev’s most extensive work is the autobiographical tetralogy “Gleb’s Travels,” which includes four novels: “Dawn” (1937), “Silence” (1948), “Youth” (1950), and “The Tree of Life” (1953). The novels “The Life of Turgenev” (1932), “Zhukovsky” (1952), “Chekhov” (1954), written in the style of lyrical impressionism, stand out among Zaitsev’s foreign works.

Writers made significant contributions to the literature of the Russian emigration Evgeniy Nikolaevich Chirikov(1864-1932) (“Life of Tarkhanov” - autobiographical trilogy about the eternal gap between the intelligentsia and the people, etc.) and Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev(1872-1950), who made their presence known at the beginning of the century (the book of essays “On the Slopes of Valaam” (1890), the story “The Man from the Restaurant” (1911).

I.S. Shmelev greeted the February Revolution with enthusiasm, but did not accept the October Revolution and settled in Alushta. His son, an officer in the Volunteer Army, was in the hospital in Feodosia, from which he was captured and then shot by the Reds. Shmelev left Russia; lived first in Berlin and then in France.

The emigrant period of I. Shmelev’s work was very fruitful. Here are just some of his books: essays " Sun of the dead"(1923) about post-revolutionary life in Crimea, where hunger, death, and tyranny reigned; novels “A Love Story” (1929), “Nanny from Moscow” (1936), “Heavenly Paths” (1937-1948) and unfinished: “Soldiers” (1930) and “Foreigner” (1938). Shmelev was one of the most widely read authors in emigration. Shmelev’s autobiographical works received very high praise from critics: “The Summer of the Lord” and “Pilgrim,” which glorify the old patriarchal Russia.

A special figure in Russian literature of the 20th century, including foreign, -Alexey Mikhailovich Remizov(1877-1957). The basis of his literary and historical concept, which was finally formed in emigration, is the idea of ​​​​the chaos of existence, disbelief in the victory of the “divine” over the “devilish”. His work is characterized by fantasticality and grotesqueness, not as artistic techniques, like Gogol’s, but as the essence, the content of life itself. Hence, in his works there are delusional visions, terrible dreams, hallucinations, all kinds of evil spirits - kikimoras, imps, goblins, etc. Remizov believes that the secret of the world and its “spheres” can only be penetrated in a dream, which for Remizov is “a special reality ", the soul lives in it, the world of the soul is expressed. In 1954, a collection of Remizov’s “literary dreams” - “Martyn Zadeka. Dream Interpretation".

Remizov did not accept the October Revolution, seeing in it the final destruction of his ideal of Russia. Then he wrote “The Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land” (1917). Soon the writer left for Berlin, and in 1923 he moved to Paris, where he remained to live until the end of his days.

He published a lot in exile. His book “Swirled Russia” (1927) was a response to the revolution. At the same time, Remizov plunged into his world of dreams, devils and goblin - “Dokuka and jokers” (1923), “Grass-murava” (1922), “Zvenigorod clicked. Nikolina's parables" (1924). Many of his works are like retellings of dreams. “The Fire of Things” (1954) - about dreams in Russian literature... Dreaming, Remizov claims, lies at the heart of mythology, at the heart of human history. A person can look into the secrets of the higher cosmic spheres only in a dream. In Remizov’s philosophy, space united all living things. One of best books Remizov in exile “With Trimmed Eyes” (1954) has the subtitle “The Book of Knots and the Twist of Memory.”

Towards the end of his life he studied the history of literature a lot, reworking stories Ancient Rus'(“Possessed. Savva Grudtsyn and Solomonia” (1951), “Melusina Bruntsvik” (1952), “Circle of Happiness. The Legend of King Solomon”, “Tristan and Isolde”, etc.).

One of the tragic figures of the Russian emigration of the 20s. was MichaelOsorgin(Ilyin) (1872-1942). His love for his homeland was always combined with his love for freedom. The writer was expelled from Russia in 1922 (“The Philosophical Steamship”); voluntarily, as he stated, he would never leave Russia. Finding himself far from her, despite all the complexity of emigrant life, he always remained a Russian patriot. The main theme of his work is Russia. He considered Russian literature to be united and responded to all the best that appeared both in Soviet Russia and in Russian diaspora. This put him in a special position in emigration circles.

His books about Russia: “Sivtsev the Vrazhek” (1928), “Witness of History” (1931), “The Book of Ends” (1935), as well as memoirs “Miracle on the Lake”, “Things of Man”, “Times”. In the novel “Sivtsev Vrazhek” (published in Russia in 1990), Osorgin wrote about the tragic situation in which Russia found itself during the years of revolution and civil war, about the fact that one cannot see the truth of our history as unambiguous and one-sided, because it was, and neither one nor the other side had it. To see only reds and whites in history is unlikely to see the truth: “Wall against wall stood two fraternal armies, and each had its own truth and its own honor... two truths and two honors fought among themselves, and the battlefield was strewn with corpses the best and most honest."

Alexey Nikolaevich Tolstoy(1883-1945) - representative of Russian realism at the beginning of the century. He did not stay in exile for long - in 1922 he returned to Russia with his family. There, in exile, he began to write “Sisters” (the first part of the famous trilogy), and also creates works that move away from modernity into the world of fantasy: “Count Cagliostro” (1921), “Country Evening” (1921). He also writes “Nikita’s Childhood”. During the years of emigration (1918-1922), Tolstoy also created works in historical topics“Obsession”, “The Day of Peter”, “The Tale of the Time of Troubles”, in which the author tries to find a clue to the Russian character.

A few words must be said about satirical writers. When the publication of the New Satyricon magazine ceased in August 1918, most of the employees went abroad. This is A. Averchenko, Teffi (Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lokhvitskaya), Sasha Cherny (Alexander Mikhailovich Glikberg), Bukhov, Remi, Yakovlev. Their creativity abroad is quite extensive. Teffi, Sasha Cherny, Averchenko were especially published (for example, “Stories of a Cynic”, Prague, 1922, or the novel “Jokes of a Patron”). These were brilliant satirists. Their work before the revolution and in emigration constituted an entire era in the history of Russian satirical literature .

And about another interesting foreign author - Evgeniy Zamyatin. He began publishing even before the revolution. In 1914, his story “In the Middle East” was published. After the October Revolution, Zamyatin had no intention of emigrating. He actively participated in cultural work, published a lot of articles on problems of literature and art, etc. In 1920 he wrote the novel “We”, which was not published in his homeland, but first appeared in England in 1924 on English language. The newspaper persecution of the writer gradually intensified; his play “The Flea,” which was a constant success, was removed from the repertoire, and the books were banned; the novel “We” was qualified as “an angry pamphlet on the Soviet state.” In 1931, Zamyatin, with the assistance of Gorky, received permission to travel abroad, although he did not consider himself an emigrant, expecting to return to his homeland.

Zamyatin’s novel “We” (published in 1990) is a dystopia, a warning novel in a possible future. And at the same time, this is an extremely modern thing. The novel takes us to a society of realized dreams, where all material problems are solved, mathematically verified happiness is realized for everyone, and at the same time freedom, human individuality, the right to free will and thought are abolished. This novel seems to be a response to the naive belief in the possibility of realizing communist utopias, widespread in the first years after October 1917. Zamyatin created many magnificent stories, the tragedy “Attila” - about the invasion of barbarians on a decrepit Rome, and the historically accurate story, masterly in style, “The Scourge of God” (about the perishing Rome).

The name stands out among the writers of the Russian diaspora Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov(1899-1977). He not only gained worldwide fame, but became equally “at home” for the Russian- and English-speaking intellectual public. He wrote eight novels in Russian: “Mashenka” (published in 1926), “The Defense of Luzhin”, “Invitation to Execution”, etc. - and eight novels in English: “The True Life of Sebastian Knight” (1939), the novel “Lolita”, which caused a lot of noise, etc.

Nabokov's prose is intellectually oversaturated, stylistically oversaturated, as some literary scholars believe, and is of great interest in many countries. The publication of his works in our country, which began during the period of perestroika, was greeted with great satisfaction by the reading public. V.V. Nabokov made a serious contribution to Pushkinian studies. In 1964, he published a 4-volume commentary on “Eugene Onegin” with a prose translation of Pushkin’s novel.

; The list of emigrant writers of the first wave and their works can be continued for a very long time. Now this enormous spiritual wealth is gradually returning to us. In recent years, many of the works mentioned and unnamed here have been published. Now, it seems, there are no longer those who will deny that the literature of Russian abroad is the richest layer of Russian culture. And in its roots, and in its plots, in its entire spirit, it is in its best works carried high the great traditions of Russian classics. In many ways, this literature was “fed” by nostalgia. This is her strength and weakness. Strength First of all, it gave excellent examples of poetry and prose based on materials from pre-revolutionary Russia. Weakness - its isolation from the real processes that were taking place in the Motherland - doomed it to the fact that the literature of the Russian diaspora had no future, could not be continued by its descendants of emigrants. But her future turned out to be different - new waves of emigration joined the ranks of writers from the Russian diaspora.

The third wave of emigration included many notable and major names in the literature of the Russian diaspora. This, as a rule, was not voluntary emigration. Writers and artists who had the courage not to accept the violation of basic human rights and freedom of creativity were forced to leave their homeland through systematic persecution, persecution, or threats or were simply thrown out of its borders.

This extensive list is rightfully headed by Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn.

Solzhenitsyn served on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War and was awarded orders and medals. At the end of the war, he was arrested as a “traitor to the Motherland” (according to denunciations, for his literary works). More than ten years - prisons, camps, exile and the first rehabilitation in 1957. A deadly disease - cancer - and a miraculous healing. Widely known during the Khrushchev “thaw” and kept silent during the years of stagnation.

Solzhenitsyn’s literary destiny opened in 1962 with the publication of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in the magazine “New World,” which was then headed by A.T. Tvardovsky. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this story became the pinnacle of the literary and social upsurge of the 60s. She brought the author fame. (The story was nominated by the magazine for the Lenin Prize, but times were changing, the “thaw” was ending and there could be no talk of any prize.) At the same time, a number of Solzhenitsyn’s stories were published, and above all “Matryona’s Dvor.” According to one of the outstanding and most honest writers of our time - Viktor Astafiev - “ Matrenin Dvor“became a real revelation and the starting point of a whole trend in our literature - the “village” writers.

The enormous significance of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is not only that it opened the camp theme in literature. Solzhenitsyn showed suffering common man, who is morally purer, higher than many leaders and figures of that time, who are now presented as victims and suffering heroes. Ivan Denisovich is a truly Russian person, like Pushkin’s stationmaster, Maxim Maksimych in “A Hero of Our Time,” men and women in Turgenev’s “Notes of a Hunter,” Tolstoy’s peasants, Dostoevsky’s poor people.

In 1970, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. And in his homeland, the persecution of the writer began and intensified. The press publishes “letters from workers,” writers, scientists, signed by many award-winning, then-venerable literary and artistic figures. “Literary Vlasovite” is not yet the strongest expression of such letters.

In February 1974, after the publication of the book “The Gulag Archipelago” in the West, and when Solzhenitsyn failed to “survive” from the country through persecution, he was captured, pushed onto a plane and taken to Germany, deprived of Soviet citizenship. For many years, the writer lived and worked in the USA, in the state of Vermont.

Solzhenitsyn is a phenomenon of Russian literature, an artist of global scale. V. Astafiev, stingy with praise, says that with the release of “The Gulag Archipelago” and “The Red Wheel” the Soviet reader is presented with greatest writer modernity, ascetic of the spirit.

At the end of 1991, an International Symposium dedicated to Solzhenitsyn was held in Naples. Opening it, Professor Vitto Rio Strade noted that Solzhenitsyn is more than a writer. In his works such as “The Gulag Archipelago” and “The Red Wheel,” he acts not only as an outstanding writer, but also as a deep researcher-historian, looking for the roots of evil in the Russian past that led his homeland to decline and desolation. He made a contribution to understanding the complexity of the historical processes of his time that exceeded the contribution of any of his contemporaries. His grandiose journalistic activities are devoted to the problems of the future of Russia and the world.

Not everything is indisputable in Solzhenitsyn’s views on the past and future. He criticizes the thesis that asserts continuity between pre- and post-October Russia, but his antithesis, which denies continuity between these two periods, is not indisputable. Russia appears as an incomprehensible victim of outside cultural and political interference. The idea arises that the Bolshevik revolution was made possible as a result of the activities of demonic individuals, vividly represented in the episode entitled “Lenin in Zurich.” The question also arises from his search for some mythical new path, not capitalist (Western. His criticism of the West, quite reasonable, causes him to be accused of being anti-Western) and not communist. In the search for such a path, a lot of effort was wasted in the past, and not only in Russia. Solzhenitsyn's views on these problems contain utopian elements of Christian socialism.

Interesting and significant are Solzhenitsyn’s views on the role, place, and duty of the artist in modern world. They were clearly reflected in his Nobel lecture.

In his Nobel lecture, Solzhenitsyn speaks about the great power and mystery of art, about literature as the living memory of the people, about the tragedy of Russian literature. "Brave national literature remained there (those in the Gulag), buried not only without a coffin, but even without underwear. Naked, with a tag on her toe. Russian literature was not interrupted for a moment! - but from the outside it seemed like a desert. Where a friendly forest could have grown, after all the logging there were two or three trees that were accidentally bypassed.” The lecture ends with a call to writers all over the world: “One word of truth will conquer the whole world.” Solzhenitsyn himself, in his entire life and work, is guided by the fundamental principle he formed and became famous - “do not live by lies.”

Another Nobel Prize winner in literature from the third wave of emigration is a poet Joseph Alexandrovich Brodsky (1940- 1998).

His work was unknown to the general public, but he was known in the circles of the intelligentsia. His poems were not published. The poet was convicted of “parasitism” and exiled to the north, and in 1972 he was expelled from the USSR. During the period of persecution, when there was a threat of expulsion, one of his friends, the writer V. Maramzin, trying to help the poet, collected everything he had written here and that his friends had. The result was five volumes of typewritten text, which he submitted to samizdat, for which he was arrested and sentenced to 5 years of suspended imprisonment. Maramzin left the USSR, lives in Paris, where a number of his works were published (the story “The Story of the Marriage of Ivan Petrovich” and a number of others in the traditions of Kafka, Platonov, absurd literature: “Blonde of both colors”, “Funnier than before”, “Pull Pull” and etc.). As for the works of I. Brodsky, in the second half of the 90s. The publication of his works in seven volumes began. A number of works dedicated to the poet have appeared: books by L. Batkin “The Thirty-third Letter”, N. Strizhevskaya “On the Poetry of Joseph Brodsky”, a collection of interviews with V. Polukhina “Brodsky through the eyes of his contemporaries” was republished, and in 1998 another book - “Joseph Brodsky: works and days”, compiled by L. Losev and P. Weil.

The fate of a famous, talented writer is dramatic - Viktor Platonovich Nekrasov, author of one of the truest books about Patriotic War- the story “In the Trenches of Stalingrad” (for which he received the Stalin Prize), the novel “In the Hometown”, etc. However, as soon as he published in 1962, during the Khrushchev Thaw, the magnificent essays “On both sides” in the “New World” ocean,” as persecutions began and intensified, searches of the apartment, detentions, refusals to publish, etc. Nekrasov was forced to go abroad. He was deprived of Soviet citizenship. He lived in Paris, collaborated with the magazine Continent, where he published a number of things. I was very worried about my emigration. He died in September 1987 in a Paris hospital. The same sad fate befell the talented poet-singer Alexander Galich, who was forced to leave the country and also died in Paris.

Another talented writer - Vasily Aksenov, whose creative destiny seemed to begin well. Since 1959, he has successfully published his stories, novels, and novels, winning the gratitude of the reader. The story “Colleagues” (and the film of the same name based on it), which sincerely described the life and thinking of Soviet youth, brought popularity. Since 1965, Aksenov increasingly turned to forms of grotesque, absurdity, and unreality that are widespread in modern world literature. This was reflected in his works “It’s a pity that you weren’t with us” (1965), “Overstocked Barrel” (1968), “My Grandfather the Monument” (1972), “Search for a Genre” (1978). In 1978, Aksenov was one of the initiators of the creation of the Metropol almanac, published without censorship permission (initially in eight copies). The persecution of the authorities began. In 1980, Aksenov went abroad and lived in Washington. Published regularly. In 1980, his novel “Burn” (now published here) and the dystopia “Island of Crimea” were published, which became widely known in many countries. In 1989, he completed a novel in English, “The Yolk of an Egg.”

Such famous writers as Vladimir Voinovich - author of the anecdote novel “The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Soldier Ivan Chonkin,” originally published abroad (published in the magazine “Youth” No. 12 for 1988 and No. 1-2 for 1989). A number of his works were published abroad, including in particular, the novel “Moscow, 2042” is a dystopian novel, a warning novel, which depicts the bleak future of the Soviet Union that awaits it if perestroika does not work out. Georgy Vladimov, the author of “Faithful Ruslan”, the greatest literary critic and writer Lev Kopelev, philosopher and writer Alexander Zinoviev, the author of the magnificent satires “Yawning Heights” and “Homo Sovetikus”, were forced to live and work abroad.

The literature of the third wave of emigration is represented, in addition to those mentioned above and widely known in the world, also by many names that were almost or completely unknown to us. Only at the end of 1991 was the anthology of Russian diaspora “The Third Wave” published, which gives a certain idea of ​​​​some of them. These are S. Dovlatov, F. Berman, V. Matlin, Yu. Mamleev, S. Yurienen, K. Koscinsky, O. Kustarev, E. Limonov, I. Ratushinskaya, Sasha Sokolov and others. Of course, it is difficult to judge them based on individual, usually small, works included in anthologies. These may not be quantities of the first order, but authors who are trying to “make a statement.”

The concept of “Russian abroad” was formed almost immediately after the Revolution of 1917, when refugees began to leave the country. In large centers of Russian settlement - Paris, Berlin, Harbin - entire mini-towns “Russia in miniature” were formed, in which all the features of pre-revolutionary Russian society were completely recreated. Russian newspapers were published here, universities and schools operated, and the intelligentsia who left their homeland wrote their works.

At that time, most of the artists, philosophers, and writers voluntarily emigrated or were deported outside the country. The emigrants were ballet stars Vaslav Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova, I. Repin, F. Chaliapin, famous actors I. Mozzhukhin and M. Chekhov, composer S. Rachmaninov. They also emigrated famous writers I. Bunin, A. Averchenko, A. Kuprin, K. Balmont, I. Severyanin, B. Zaitsev, Sasha Cherny, A. Tolstoy. The entire flower of Russian literature, which responded to the terrible events of the revolutionary coup and civil war, and captured the collapse of pre-revolutionary life, ended up in exile and became the spiritual stronghold of the nation. In the unusual conditions abroad, Russian writers retained not only internal, but also political freedom. Despite the hard life of an emigrant, they did not stop writing their wonderful novels and poems.

Second wave emigrants (1940 – 1950)

During the Second World War, another stage of emigration began in Russia, which was not as large-scale as the first. With the second wave of emigration, former prisoners of war and displaced persons are leaving the country. Among the writers who left the Soviet Union at that time were V. Sinkevich, I. Elagin, S. Maksimov, D. Klenovsky, B. Shiryaev, B. Nartsisov, V. Markov, I. Chinnov, V. Yurasov, for whom fate had prepared difficult trials. The political situation could not but affect the worldview of writers, so the most popular themes in their work are terrible military events, captivity, and the nightmares of the Bolsheviks.

Third wave emigrants (1960–1980)

In the third wave of emigration Soviet Union predominantly representatives of the creative intelligentsia left. The new emigrant writers of the third wave were the generation of the “sixties,” whose worldview was formed during that time. Hoping for Khrushchev's "", they never saw any fundamental changes in the socio-political life of Soviet society and after the famous exhibition in Manege they began to leave the country. Most of the emigrant writers were deprived of citizenship - V. Voinovich, A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Maksimov. With the third wave, writers D. Rubina, Yu. Aleshkovsky, E. Limonov, I. Brodsky, S. Dovlatov, I. Guberman, A. Galich, V. Nekrasov, I. Solzhenitsyn and others are traveling abroad.

After the October Revolution of 1917, more than two million Russian people left Russia. Mass emigration from Russia began in 1919-1920. It was during these years that the concept of Russian abroad and the great Russian emigration appeared, since, in fact, the first wave of Russian emigration managed to preserve “both the spirit and the letter” of pre-revolutionary Russian society and Russian culture. Emigration, according to the poetess Z. Gippius, “represented Russia in miniature.” Russian emigration is representatives of all classes of the former Russian Empire: nobility, merchants, intelligentsia, clergy, military personnel, workers, peasants. But the culture of the Russian diaspora was created mainly by people from the creative elite. Many of them were expelled from Soviet Russia in the early 20s. Many emigrated on their own, fleeing the “Red Terror.” Prominent writers, scientists, philosophers, artists, musicians, and actors ended up in exile. Among them worldwide famous composers S. Rachmaninov and I. Stravinsky, singer F. Chaliapin, actor M. Chekhov, artists I. Repin, N. Roerich, K. Korovin, chess player A. Alekhine, thinkers N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, S. Frank, L Shestov and many others. Russian literature split. Symbolists D. Merezhkovsky and Z. Gippius, K. Balmont, V. Ivanov ended up abroad. Among the futurists, the most important figure outside Russia was I. Severyanin, who lived in Estonia. The most prominent prose writers I. Bunin, A. Remizov, I. Shmelev, B. Zaitsev left Russia. After living abroad for some time, A. Bely, A. Tolstoy, M. Gorky, M. Tsvetaeva returned. L. Andreev lived out his last years at a dacha in Finland. The “Russian dispersion” spread throughout the world, but several centers played a particularly important role in the formation and development of Russian foreign literature and culture: Berlin, Paris, Prague, Belgrade, Warsaw, Sofia, Constantinople, “Russian China” (Harbin and Shanghai) and "Russian America". The Berlin and Parisian Russian diasporas turned out to be decisive for the formation of the Russian diaspora.

At the beginning of the 20s, Berlin was the capital of Russian emigration. A regional feature of the literary life of Berlin can be considered the intensity of cultural contacts between emigration and the metropolis, accompanied by an unprecedented publishing boom (from 1918 to 1928, 188 Russian publishing houses were registered in Germany). In the literary circles of Berlin there was

The idea of ​​“building bridges” between the two streams of Russian literature is popular. This task was set for themselves by the magazines “Russian Book”, “Epic” (edited by A. Bely), “Conversation” (prepared by Gorky, Khodasevich and Bely for readers of Soviet Russia). As well as the newspaper “Days” (1922-1925), where the prose of I. Bunin, Z. Gippius, B. Zaitsev, A. Remizova, I. Shmeleva and others was published, and “Rul”, with which the literary fate is largely connected V. Nabokov.

By the mid-20s, ideas about the future of Russia among the emigrants had changed. If from the beginning the emigrants hoped for changes in Russia, then later it became obvious that the emigrantsI J /'tion - this is for a long time, if not forever. In the mid-20s, an economic crisis occurred in Germany, which led to the departure of Russian writers to other countries. The literary life of the Russian diaspora began to move to Paris, which became, before its occupation by the Nazis, the new capital of Russian culture. One of the most famous in the literature of the Russian diaspora was the Parisian magazine “Modern Notes” (1920-1940), which was distinguished by its breadth of political views and aesthetic tolerance. “Walking in Torment” by A. Tolstoy, “The Life of Arsenyev” by I. Bunin, novels by M, Adlanov, works by B. Zaitsev, M. Osorgin, D. Merezhkovsky, A. Remizov, I. Shmelev, A. Bely were published here. Of the master poets, M. Tsvetaeva, G. Ivanov, Z. Gippius, V. Khodasevich, K. Balmont regularly published in the magazine. The pride of “Modern Notes” was the literary and philosophical section, where N. Berdyaev, N. Lossky, F. Stepun presented articles. The Sunday readings at the Merezhkovskys’ apartment in Paris were also a unifying center for the Russian emigration. Here N. Teffi, V. Khodasevich, I. Bunin, N. Berdyaev, L. Shestov, B. Poplavsky and others gave readings of poetry and reports on Russian culture. In 1927, the literary association “Green Lamp” arose in Paris. , whose main goal was to maintain “light and hope” in emigrant circles. Literary masters, the “old men,” united in the “Union of Writers and Journalists.” And emigrant youth created the “Union of Young Writers and Poets.”

The life and literature of the emigration did not contribute to the artist’s harmonious worldview. There was a need to create new means of expression adequate to the modern tragic era. It was in Paris that the “artistic multi-style” was formed, which was called the “Parisian note” - a metaphorical state of soul of artists, in whichrum combined “solemn, bright and hopeless notes”, a feeling of doom and acute sensation life.

The overwhelming majority of writers of the first wave of Russian emigration considered themselves the guardians and continuers of the traditions of Russian national culture, humanistic aspirations of A. Pushkin, L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoevsky. In their works they preached the priority of the individual over the state, the idea of ​​conciliarity, the merging of man with the world, society, nature, and space. At the same time, many of them were heirs to the literature of the Silver Age, which expressed the tragedy of the destruction of world harmony

The running theme of all Russian literature abroad is Russia and the longing for it. Bunin's "Life of Arsenyev" (1927-1952) is permeated with memories of the bright past. With nostalgic sadness and at the same time warmth, the writer draws Russian nature. Its simplest manifestations are full of lyricism and poetry: from afar, the past life seems bright and kind to the writer. His main thoughts in this work are about the feeling of the unity of man with his family, his ancestors, as a guarantee of “continuity of blood and nature.” In Ivan Bunin’s journalistic book-diary “Cursed Days” (1928), in the description of lost pre-revolutionary Russia, phrases lengthen, become slow-moving, and in stories about revolutionary events, on the contrary, short and torn. The stylistically harmonious vocabulary of the old Russian language is contrasted with the rude and tongue-tied speech of the new time. The revolution is shown here as the destruction of culture, chaos.

As D. Merezhkovsky believed, Russian emigrants were “not in exile, but in exile.” “If my Russia ends, I die,” said Z. Gippius. They feared the "Coming Ham" (future Soviet man, having lost its cultural roots) and their main goal in the first years of emigration was seen as telling the West about the bloody horror of the Russian revolution. The Notebooks of D. Merezhkovsky became an angry denunciation of the destructive power of the revolution. As a symbolist, he looked for a prophetic meaning behind real events and facts and tried to discern divine intent. The poetic heritage of 3. Gippius is small, but it left a deep mark on Russian literature. It showed not only the best ideas of the Silver Age, but also innovation in form. Her poetry is imbued with the love-hate of exiles for their homeland. Hope and fear, contradictions, “split” of the inner world of man and the idea of ​​Christian love - these are the integral properties of the characters in her poetry (“Pro-
Member of graphic works about a beautiful, happy childhood (“BoTbmolye”, “The Summer of the Lord” by Y. Shmelev, the trilogy “Gleb’s Travels” by B. Zaitsev, “Nikita’s Childhood, or a Tale of Many Excellent Things” by A. Tolstoy). And the catastrophic and ugly present, the new Russia, is described, for example, in I. Shmelev’s masterpiece story “About an Old Woman” (1925) as a punishment for the destruction of what was “reliable from time immemorial,” for unrest. Ivan Shmelev (1873-1950), who largely continues the traditions of F. Dostoevsky, is also characterized by the translation of everyday text into an existential, philosophically generalized plane. The plot of the road in this story allows the writer to give an epic picture - the life of a righteous woman, an eternal worker, has been destroyed - and everyone suffers

The older generation of Russian writers has retained an attachment to the neorealism of the turn of the century, to the pure Russian word. Younger artists were looking for a “golden aesthetic mean.” Thus, V. Khodasevich (1886-1939) follows the classical traditions of Derzhavin, Tyutchev, Annensky. With the help of reminiscences, the poet restores what is long gone, but dear (“Through the wild voice of catastrophes”, “Tears of Rachel”, the poem “John Bottom”, the book of poems “European Night”). Such fidelity to Russian classics expressed the need to preserve the great Russian language. But also repulsion from literature of the 19th century centuries, with the retention of all the best, it was also inevitable - life and literature were changing rapidly. Many old poets understood this.of our generation." V. Khodasevich also tried, in part, to convey in a new way the unpoeticism of emigrant reality through rhythmic disharmony (lack of rhymes, multi- and multi-foot iambic). M. Tsvetaeva, echoing the innovation of Mayakovsky, created poems based on the style of folk songs and colloquial speech (“Lane Streets,” “Well done”), But above all, the young generation of writers, formed in emigration, was carried away by innovative searches: V. Nabokov, B. Poplavsky, G. Gazdanov and others. V. Nabokov, for example, gravitated towards Western modernism. In the works of B. Poplavsky and G. Gazdanov, researchers discover surrealist tendencies.The genre of the historical novel, as well as the biographical novel, is becoming widespread - especially in the works of M. Aldanov. But the most common theme of literary abroad is the life of the emigration itself. Everyday prose is gaining popularity, typical representatives of which are Irina Odoevtseva (1895-1990) with her memoirs “On the Banks of the Seine” and novels from emigrant life, and Nina Berberova (1901-1993). The everyday prose of A. Averchenko and Teffi was distinguished by a combination of drama and comedy, lyricism and humor.

The poetry of Boris Poplavsky (1903-1935) is a reflection of the continuous aesthetic and philosophical quest of the “unnoticed generation” of Russian emigration. This is the poetry of questions and guesses, not answers and solutions. His surreal images (“sharks of trams”, “laughing engines”, “the face of fate covered with freckles of sadness”) express an invariably tragic attitude. Mystical analogies convey the “horror of the subconscious”, which is not always amenable to rational interpretation (the poem “Black Madonna”, books of poems “Flags” (1931), “Airship of an unknown direction” (1935), “Snow Hour” (1936)).

Gaito Gazdanov (1903-1971) also wrote prose works of a non-classical type, without plots, with a mosaic composition, where parts of the text are connected according to the associative principle (“Evening at Claire’s” (1929)). G. Gazdanov’s favorite themes are the search for the meaning of life, the conflict between the present and memory, the illusory nature of dreams, the absurdity of existence. Focus on inner world The characters are determined by the impressionistic composition of his works, the “stream of consciousness” style.

The question of the degree of unity of Russian culture - the metropolis and abroad - still remains relevant. Today, when almost all previously banned emigrant works have already been published in the authors’ homeland, it is clear that Soviet and Russian emigrant literature are in many ways consonant and even complement each other. If Soviet writers managed to show the active side of the Russian character, then existential truths, the search for God, and the individualistic aspirations of human nature were forbidden topics for them. It was these questions that were developed mainly by artists from the Russian diaspora. The playful, laughter principle, combined with experiments in the field of artistic form and violenceessentially “removed” from Soviet literature (OBERIUTs, B. Pilnyak, I. Babel, A. Kruchenykh, Yu. Olesha), was picked up by A. Remizov (1877-1957), the only successor to the tradition of ancient Russian laughter culture, folk word play, literary mischief by A. Pushkin and V. Khlebnikov (chronicle novel “Whirlwind Russia” (1927)). Another advantage of the “literature of dispersion” was that, unlike the official Soviet one, it developed in the context of global literature. The work of young writers from abroad was influenced by M. Proust and D. Joyce, then almost unknown in the USSR. In turn, V. Nabokov, who wrote in both Russian and English, had a huge influence on world and American literature.

The literature of Russian emigration consists of three waves of Russian emigration. The emigration of the first wave is a tragic page in Russian culture. This is a unique phenomenon both in terms of its popularity and its contribution to world culture. The mass exodus from Soviet Russia began already in 1919. More than 150 writers and more than 2 million people left. In 1922, by order of the state political administration (GPU), more than 160 religious and philosophical writers were expelled from the country on the so-called “philosophical ship” (N. Berdyaev, N. Lossky, S. Frank, I. Ilyin, F. . Stepun, L. Shestov), ​​prose writers and critics (M. Osorgin, Yu. Aikhenvald, etc.), doctors, university professors. The flower of Russian literature left Russia: I. Bunin, A. Kuprin (later returned), B. Zaitsev, I. Shmelev, A. Tolstoy (returned in 1923), D. Merezhkovsky, 3. Gippius, K. Balmont , I. Severya-nin, Vyach. Ivanov and others. The emigration of the first wave preserved all the main features of Russian society and represented, in the words of Z. Gippius, “Russia in miniature.”

The main centers of Russian emigration in Europe were Berlin (mainly playwrights and theater workers settled here), Prague (professors, artists, poets), Paris (which became the capital of Russian culture). In the East, emigrants were received by Shanghai and Harbin (S. Gusev-Orenburgsky, S. Petrov-Skitalets, A. Vertinsky, N. Baikov).

In the literature of the first wave of emigration, two generations clearly stood out: the older one, whose representatives were formed as writers on Russian soil, they were known to the Russian reader, had their own established style, and were widely published not only in Russia. These are almost all symbolists, except A. Blok, V. Bryusov and the returning A. Bely (3. Gippius, K. Balmont, D. Merezhkovsky), futurists (I. Severyanin, N. Otsup), Ak-meists (G. Ivanov , G. Adamovich), realists (I. Bunin, I. Shmelev, B. Zaitsev, A. Kuprin, A. Tolstoy, M. Osorgin). Groups and circles of writers of the younger, so-called “unnoticed” generation formed around them. These are those who were still beginning their formation in Russia, published individual works, but did not have time to develop as a writer or poet with their own style. Some of them grouped around Bunin, forming the “Bunin circle” (G. Kuznetsova, L. Zurov). Others united around Khodasevich, creating the group “Perekrestok”. They focused on strict forms (neoclassicism). This is Y. Terapiano, Vl. Smolensky, N. Berberova, D. Knut, Jur. Mandelstam.

Around G. Adamovich and G. Ivanov the group “Parisian Note” (I. Odoevtseva, B. Poplavsky, A. Ladinsky) formed. The main thing in creativity is simplicity: no complex metaphors, no detailing, only the most general, even abstract. They continued Acmeism, although they also turned to the experience of the Symbolists. Themes: love, death, pity. Material from the site

Members of the “Kochevye” group (leader M. Slonim) sought to experiment with words and form. They inherited the traditions of futurism, especially V. Khlebnikov (A. Ginker, A. Prismanova, V. Mamchenko).

The main theme of creativity at the very beginning of emigration (1918-1920) was the “explosion of anti-Soviet passions.” “Cursed Days” by I. Bunin is published, a book of notes and diary entries a person who saw the first post-war years from the inside. In a number of places it echoes M. Gorky’s “Untimely Thoughts” (about the Asianness and savagery in Russian people, about the guilt of the intelligentsia, which for so long taught the people to think that they are a sufferer and passion-bearer, for so long fostered hatred in them , that now she herself is horrified by the fruits; about the atrocities of soldiers and commissars, etc.).