Correspondence of the Bunins and the Zaitsevs. 1920s

The article was prepared on the basis of the full text of the correspondence between I.A. Bunin and B.K. Zaitsev, as well as between their wives V.N. Bunina and V.A. Zaitseva. Bunin and Zaitsev were friends for about fifty years, with their wives being friends even longer: Vera Muromtseva was friends with Vera Oreshnikova from early youth, she knew her first husband and the son from her first marriage. The full text of the correspondence of the major writers of the emigration and the wives absorbed completely in the interests of their husbands (“two Veras”) has been collected bit by bit by an international team of researchers over the course many years and will be published for the first time in one of the books of the 110th volume of “Literary Heritage”. In anticipation of this publication, the author of the article provides an overview of “back-and-forth” letters from the 1920s. The initial stage of the émigré correspondence gives us a broad overview of the life of Russian Berlin (in which the Zaitsevs found themselves after fleeing from Russia) and Russian Paris (where the Bunins lived, for they had left Russia earlier). After the Zaitsevs had also settled in Paris, correspondence links Grasse, where the Bunins lived for a long time, and Paris, where the Zaitsevs usually spent the entire season. There is no correspondence in the months when both families lived in Paris. Among the important topics in the letters, the creative relationships between Bunin and Zaitsev are highlighted (during this period Zaitsev called himself a disciple and a follower of Bunin). Other topics are: a shared social circle, where the two families are; a general rejection of Soviet culture; discussion of what is happening in Moscow and the fate of relatives and friends who remained there; a new unfamiliar household life in the emigration. The Congress of Russian Writers in Belgrade in 1927 is especially discussed.