The file - “Mikh. Zoshchenko” - from the archive of M. O. Chudakova

The article analyzes part of the documentary legacy of M. O. Chudakova (1937-2021), Doctor of Philology and a historian of Soviet literature, transferred by her daughter, M. A. Chudakova, to the fund of handwritten documents of the Bulgakov Museum, relating to her work on the book “The Poetics of Mikhail Zoshchenko”, published in 1979 by the Nauka publishing house. It gives some results of the analysis of the documents from the archive, carried out by the author of the article in January-March 2023, and related to the identification of materials about M. M. Zoshchenko in this archive. Special attention is paid to the documents of the file “Mikh. Zoshchenko”, containing information about the initial stage of work on the book associated with the University of Tartu, and the first assessments of the “Poetics of Mikhail Zoshchenko” received by M. O. Chudakova from writers and scholars. The sources under consideration help to determine the historical and cultural significance of the information contained in them. The conducted research introduces into scientific circulation the general information about the composition, subject matter and - selectively - the content of the documents included in the complex of materials about M. M. Zosh-chenko preserved in the archive of the highly respected researcher of his work.