About the author:
Olga A. Rostova, Senior Researcher, House-Museum of Marina Tsvetaeva, Borisoglebskiy per., 6, building 1, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5039-2319
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Abstract:
The paper considers the milestones in the history of the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists in Paris that can be linked to Ivan Bunin’s activity there. The paper is based on archive material. Elected in 1920 as the first chairman of the Union, Bunin and his associates laid the foundations for a unique community of Russian writers in exile, defining the goals and objectives of the Union and developing its Charter. It was the Charter that later played a special role in the lives of many writers, including Bunin himself. However, less than a year later, Ivan Bunin famously resigned from the newly elected Board, where Pavel Milyukov then took the lead. The paper considers Bunin’s participation in the daily life of the Union and the fact the writer, a Nobel laureate, was elected as its Honorary Member in 1933. Another theme is the post-war agitation and split among the members of the Union, the circumstances of Ivan Bunin’s withdrawal from the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists, and his break with the new chairman of the Board Boris Zaitsev. The paper also gives a look into the ways the Union sought to perpetuate the memory of Bunin after the writer’s death. The materials used are the archive documents of the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists in Paris, previously unpublished.