Journal archive

Abstract: The article deals with an episode of studying F. Sologub’s work in the 1930s. After the writer’s death, his archive came to the Pushkin House, and a scientific publication of the novel The Petty Demon, based on these materials, became possible. The book was published in 1933 in Academia publishing house; the text was prepared by A. L. Dymshits, the preface was written by O. V. Tsekhnovitzer. However, the volume was originally planned to have a different composition: in addition to the section Variants and the famous episode about the writers Turgenev and Sharik, commented upon but not included in the text, it was to contain an introductory article by Dymshits. Its text has survived in the archives of the publishing house (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art) and allows seeing what view of the work of a decadent “alien to Soviet power” was required for such an important and obligatory element of the book in the early 1930s as an “ideological, ‘shield’ preamble”. Another source for analyzing how The Petty Demon should be presented to the Soviet reader was L. Timofeev’s review in the journal The Book and the Proletarian Revolution. His criticism was directed not only at the preface and the composition of the volume, but also at the publishing house Academia itself and the activities of L. B. Kamenev. A comparison of Dymshits’s article with Tsekhnovitzer’s preface shows what points were missed by the researcher and what was superfluous for this genre. All this material becomes a source for studying the history of the perception and reputation of the Symbolists’ work in Soviet era.

About the author(s) :

Vera V. Filicheva

Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkinskiy Dom) of Russian Academy of Sciences (Saint Petersburg, Russia)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2942-4846

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 27.04.2024; date of publication: 28.12.2024

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