Article

Name: “The story is too wordy”: M. Gorky and the Failed Writer Mark Volgin (The Plot of the Novel “Emigrants” and the Fate of Its Author)

Authors: Elena V. Kudrina

A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation

In the section Plots and Destinies

Abstract: The article is devoted to the plot of Mark Volgin’s novel “Emigrants”. Letters of the writer Olga Nikolaevna Nikiforova and her mother, Lyudmila Alekseevna Nikiforova, to M. Gorky were found in the Gorky Archive of the Institute of World Literature. They asked the writer to read the manuscript “Emigrants” signed with the pseudonym Mark Volgin and give a review. The manuscript was sent from Harbin in July-August 1935. Gorky read the novel and wrote an answer in October. Gorky’s letter about the novel reached the addressees only in early 1936. We learn about the content of the novel from the letters of L. A. and O. Nikiforov and the letter of the Deputy People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs B. S. Stomonyakov. Mark Volgin’s political novel depicted the whole essence of emigrant life. The novel interested the Harbin Consul M. M. Slavutsky and M. Gorky. Gorky advised Nikiforova to work on it seri-ously. The manuscript of the novel “Emigrants” has not been preserved in Gorky’s Archive. The fate of two more copies of the manuscript is unknown. New, previously unpublished let-ters of Gorky’s correspondents are being introduced into scientific circulation.

Keywords: M. Gorky, L. A. Nikiforova, O. N. Nikiforova, Mark Volgin, emigrants, Harbin

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