Autographs Don’t Burn: Letters to the Bunins, Part 1 9781644694336

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Autographs Don’t L e t ters the Burn to Bu n i n s

Автографы не горят Ч А С Т Ь

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П ис ь м а Бун ин ы м В Е РА Ц А Р Е В А- Б РАУ Н Е Р

Autographs Don’t L e t ters the Burn to Bu n i n s P A R T

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V E RA T S A R E VA- B RA U N E R

BOSTON 2020

The publication of this book was supported by the Institute of Translation, ­Russia (ANO “Institut Perevoda”).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bunin, Ivan Alekseevich, 1870–1953 author. | 1 Tsareva-Brauner, Vera, 1964editor, translator, writer of added comment | 12 Kulʹman, N. K. (Nikolaĭ Karlovich), 1871–1940. Correspondence. Selections. English (Tsareva-Brau | 12 Kulʹman, Natalʹia, 1877–1958. Correspondence. Selections. English (Tsareva-Brau Title: Autographs don't burn : letters to the Bunins / [edited and translated by] Vera ­Tsareva-Brauner. Other titles: 880–01 Avtografy ne goriat : pisʹma Buninym Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references. | Contents: The people behind the autograph. Nikolai Karlovich Kulman -- Natalia Ivanovna Bokii-Likhareva-Kulman -- Nikolai and Natalia Kulman: their story -- Gleb Bokii: the case of myth creation -- The Exodus -- Note on Translation of Letters -Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922-1935) -- Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina (1928–1938) -- Letters of Natalia Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1944–1952). Identifiers: LCCN 2020014945 (print) | LCCN 202001 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644694329 (hardback) | ISBN 9781644694336 (adobe pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Bunin, Ivan Alekseevich, 1870–1953--Correspondence. | Bunin, Ivan Alekseevich, 1870–1953--Friends and associates. | Muromtseva-Bunina, V. N. (Vera Nikolaevna)--Correspondence. | Kulʹman, N. K. (Nikolaĭ Karlovich), 1871–1940--­C orrespondence. | Kulʹman, Natalia, 1877–1958--Corresponde Classification: LCC PG3453.B9 Z48 2020 (print) | LCC PG3453.B9 (ebook) | DDC 891.73/42--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014945 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014946 Copyright © 2020 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved. ISBN 9781644694329 (hardback) ISBN 9781644694336 (adobe pdf) ISBN 9781644694343 (ePub) Book design by PHi Business Solutions. Cover design by Tessa Peskett. Published by Academic Studies Press. 1577 Beacon Street Brookline, MA 02446, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

In memory of Lev Nikolaevich Tsarev (1938–2017) Памяти Льва Николаевича Царёва (1938–2017)

Table of Contents Archives and Libraries ix Acknowledgmentsxi Introduction1 Chapter 1. The People behind the Autograph 12     Nikolai Karlovich Kulman 15     Natalia Ivanovna Bokii-Likhareva-Kulman 44      Nikolai and Natalia Kulman: Their Story 52      Gleb Bokii: The Case of Myth Creation 60 Chapter 2. The Exodus 71 Chapter 3. Note on Translation of Letters 87 Chapter 4. Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935) 90 Chapter 5. Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina (1928–1938) 146 Chapter 6. Letters of Natalia Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1944–1953) 166 Bibliography183 Index187

Archives and Libraries Archive of the Institute of Russian Literature, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg (IRLI) Cambridge University Library, UK Central State Archives, St. Petersburg (TsGA SPB) Leeds Russian Archives, University of Leeds, UK (RAL) The Russian National Library, St. Petersburg (RNB) The Russian State Archives of Literature and Arts, Moscow (RGALI) The Russian State Archives of the Navy, St. Petersburg (RGA VMF) The State Archives of the Russian Federation, Moscow (GARF) The Russian State Historical Archives, St. Petersburg (RGIA)

Acknowledgments

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his book started from three lines written in Bunin’s hand. The rest has been a long and convoluted road, which would have been utterly impassable without the generous help, advice, and support of various people, to whom I owe a great debt. Mel Bach, curator of the Slavonic collections of Cambridge University Library—for supporting my initial search and helping with the books’ provenance. Richard Davies, archivist and curator of the Russian Archives in Leeds University—for finding the only existing photograph of the Kulmans together and other invaluable help and advice. Father Alexander Kedroff, archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Alexander Nevsky in Paris— for trying to help with sourcing some important documents. Lilia Kolosimo of the Institut de Théologie Orthodoxe Saint-Serge in Paris—for introducing me to Father Georgy and sister Anna of Our Lady of All Protection Nunnery (­Bussy-en-Othe, France). Andrei Korlyakov, author of L’emmigration russe en photos 1917–1947 (Paris: YMCA Press, 1999) for giving me permission to use the only photograph of the Kulmans together. Tatyana Marchenko, head of the Russia Abroad Section of the Solzhenitsyn Research Centre for Russia Abroad, for interesting leads and encouragement. Sergei Morozov of the Russian Institute of World Literature in Moscow for giving me the answers to some tricky questions. Father Georgy Pimenov, archpriest of the Church of Ressurection in St. Petersburg and scholar, for filling so many gaps and generously offering his help. I would also like to thank my wonderful friend Olga Shramko for deciphering and translating various handwritten passages from French. Thank you to Tessa Peskett of Seillans in Provence, a friend and an artist who kindly agreed to design the cover of this book and was encouraging and supportive throughout. Finally, I would like to thank Chris for his relentless support and numerous, endless drives from Cambridge to Leeds and back, as well as more p­ icturesque ones in Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes; and Sasha—for finding the Belvedere and climbing the wall to take those magic pictures. I am also very grateful to the Institut Perevoda (The Institute for Literary Translation) in Moscow for their financial support. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are the author’s own.

Introduction

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he title for this book—Autographs Don’t Burn—is a deliberate echo of the famous phrase pronounced by Woland, the dark and mysterious protagonist of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita: in chapter twenty-four the Master tells Woland that he cannot give him the manuscript to read, since it was burnt. To which Woland replies: “Manuscripts don’t burn. Behemoth, pass me the novel!” This short phrase became something of an aphorism in Russian and has come to mean that something that is truly worthy can never disappear without a trace, cannot be erased—even if destroyed by fire. The story of this book has many echoes with this line: there is something profoundly Bulgakovian in the way the story began, how it unfolded, not to mention at least one of its characters—more of which later. More important, though, is that hopefully this book will bring back to life the story, legacy, and memory of two people, who, despite their significant role at the time, seem to have strangely disappeared from the discourse about the cultural heritage of the first wave of Russian emigration in France, that last outpost of “old Russia.” This story began in Cambridge University Library, which is also home to the main part of the University’s Slavonic Collections. The building itself might surprise an unprepared visitor: towering between the genteel architecture of Cambridge colleges with their manicured lawns and spectacular gardens, it stands as something of an oddity amongst this almost clichéd, picture-perfect setting. Designed in the early 1930s by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott—famous for his landmark London creations like Tate Modern and Battersea Power Station, made almost iconic by the cover of the Pink Floyd album Animals—and built with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Cambridge University library building is something that would look much more authentic in a Third Reich setting or the early (modernist) Soviet Union. The plot was once part of a First World War military hospital and one suspects that in opting for something so cutting-edge and contemporary, Cambridge’s aim was for its main library to look much more modern than its eternal rival, the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The way the library’s collections are organized and catalogued is equally

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c­ ontroversial for the uninitiated. In fact, its main website helpfully describes the system of cataloguing as “idiosyncratic at times,” so it takes some patience, a lot of practice, and a healthy dose of intuition to find what you are looking for, even when equipped with all the right classification marks of the sought book.

Figure 1.  Cambridge University Library

On that September evening in 2016, I went there to look for some books on traditional Moscow architecture. The Slavonic Section lives on the fifth floor of the North Wing, which does not get much natural light at the best of times. It was getting dark and the windup timed lighting system, probably state of the

Introduction

art in the 1930s, kept turning itself off automatically before I could find what I was looking for. Using my phone as a torch and kneeling, since the book was supposed to be on a lower shelf, I finally pulled out the large volume I needed to find. As I was retrieving the volume, another book, much smaller, and definitely not of the coffee-table variety, fell down just behind it. I could not see the title, but for some reason took the book out. Once back in the lighted zone, I opened the dark-beige volume and, before I could read what the title was, I saw handwriting that is recognizable to most Russians—Ivan Bunin’s autograph. What was also immediately striking was that the book looked almost new, its high-quality, thick paper untouched by any yellowing or that typical, slightly damp smell so often associated with old books that have not been handled for years, with some distinct watermarks that looked fresh in their imprint. Having turned the page, I realized that what I was holding in my hands was a first edition of Bunin’s masterpiece, Mitina liubov′ (Mitya’s Love), published in Paris in 1925. I was immediately aware that I was holding a treasure—a treasure on many levels. Ivan Bunin, the first Russian writer to have won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1933, so unfairly underrepresented and undertranslated in the Englishspeaking world, occupies a very special place in the Russian heart. Not many Russian writers—however great—command such universal, unconditional love as Bunin does. Something in his laconic, almost white-verse prose, his deep, almost tragic love for Russia, and his ability to go deep into that clichéd “mysterious Russian soul” in all its diversity and complexity strikes a profound sentimental chord within the national psyche. Bunin does not belong to the “Western” brand of Russian literature—represented by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov—and is not as recognizable, and yet somehow Russia’s love for Bunin goes deeper and is more complex and personal. Bunin died in 1953 in Paris and finding any of his autographs or letters that are not locked safely in various Russian, American, British, French, or Czech archives, or in fiercely guarded private collections, today is extremely rare. Mitya’s Love is undoubtedly one of Bunin’s landmark works: written in 1924, it is often regarded as one of the most striking examples of that pure magic for which Bunin’s laconic, deeply psychological prose is known—a story of tragic, all-consuming, toxic love and desperation, with a famously abrupt finale. The book itself, having spent decades hidden behind some coffee-table volumes in something of an almost miraculous time warp, a perfect natural capsule—dark, dry, not humid—that created the ideal conditions for its preservation, is also a significant bibliographic rarity. Like many of Bunin’s works of

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that period, it first came out in paperback and very few original editions survive today; and those that have survived certainly look their age and are quite frail. Bunin’s striking handwriting, in black ink, appeared remarkably well preserved, not faded, and one can see where, as Bunin was starting on the first letter, the ink must have dried up—so there is the distinct imprint of his attempt to write over the original line again. The autograph, written on the second page of the book, before the title page, in pre-1917 Russian orthography with its i’s and ъ’s, says:

Figure 2.  Bunin’s autograph, 1925

Happy New Year, dear Natalia Ivanovna and Nikolai Karlovich! Ivan Bunin Paris, 30-XII-1925. This discovery was the start of a long, extremely exciting, yet sometimes frustrating journey, which over the years has taken a number of twists and turns, with some false starts and unexpected revelations that I could never have hoped for, as well as some dead ends and still unanswered questions. What I wanted to establish first was: How did the book get here? Why was it in the wrong part and in the wrong section of Cambridge University library? Why was it—although, in this case, and by some stroke of fate—hidden from everyone’s sight? Why was this unique volume stored in open access rather than the rare books section? Why was it hidden from everyone’s sight and therefore never even been borrowed?

Introduction

Unfortunately, after several years of searching, the answers to these questions remain hypothetical, and will probably stay that way: the system of ­cataloguing new Russian arrivals at Cambridge University Library was quite idiosyncratic until, from the mid-1980s onwards, the system went digital. The only pointers to the book’s provenance is the original stamp with the date when it was first registered (December 15, 1960) and the letter B that stands for “Bought.” There is also a handwritten note in faded pencil that says “Moutan and Co., Rijswijk.” The latter turned out to be the name of a secondhand books’ wholesaler/distributor in Holland that specialized in Russian books. It was confirmed that Moutan and Co. received quite a heavy traffic of books coming from France in the late 1950s and early 1960s when many of the first wave of Russian émigrés died and their old collections were picked up by anyone who was interested. In 1977, Moutan and Co.’s inventory was purchased by De Gruyter, a large academic publishing company and, unfortunately, no old records of the books’ origins can now be traced. One potential scenario is that Mitya’s Love was acquired by Dr Elizabeth 1 Hill, the first established chair of Slavonic studies at Cambridge (1946–1968). One of her remits was to expand the University Library’s Slavonic collection, and the date that Bunins’ books were obtained coincides with her tenure. She could have bought it from Moutan and Co. directly or from another, more local source: George David’s, the famous Cambridge secondhand bookshop, which at the time dealt a lot in Russian books. What happened once the volume reached Cambridge University Library is even more mysterious: new acquisitions were catalogued by people who did not know much about Russian literature, or, for that matter—the Russian language. One “amusing anecdote” tells the story of “a certain Mr. Pavlovsky whose knowledge of both English and Russian was not that good”: while processing one newly acquired book, he could see that it was entitled Life of Arseniev, and so catalogued in the following way: “Title: Life. Author: Arseniev”2—quite an unfortunate misunderstanding of the Russian use of the genitive case, which indeed may literally translate as “Life by Arseniev.” The book, of course, turned out to be Bunin’s Life of Arseniev, which won Bunin his Nobel Prize for literature in 1933. … Sadly, it had no autograph. 1 Dame Elizabeth (Liza) Hill (1900–1996) was born in St. Petersburg but moved with her parents to the United Kingdom. Appointed the first woman University Lecturer in Slavonic Studies. Interesting detail: Elizabeth Hill is credited with being an “inspiration” to one of the Cambridge spies, George Blake, who was her student of Russian. 2 Elizabeth Hill, In the Mind’s Eye: The Memoirs of Dame Elizabeth Hill, ed., J. S. Smith (Lewes: The Book Guild, 1999).

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After about three months of looking for information about the addressees of the first autograph (where only names and patronymics were given) and the provenance of the book, on another gloomy Cambridge evening, I was looking for something else and, just like the first time, pulled out another old volume that seemed strangely out of place among some more contemporary books on Soviet literature. I had a strange sense of déjà vu when I opened it. And there it was—another autograph, in the familiar handwriting. It said:

Figure 3.  Bunin’s autograph, 1931

Introduction

To my dear N. I. and N. K. Kulman Iv. Bunin 24. IV.1931, Paris. This time it was Ten′ ptitsy (Shadow of a bird), published in Paris in 1931: another first edition with a priceless autograph, preserved equally well, with an identical stamp confirming that it was purchased and the date of its arrival, December 15, 1960. It also had an identical handwritten note—“Moutan and Co., Rijswijk,”—so clearly it was from the same “batch.” Similarly to the first book, it has not been seen or requested in sixty years, and no one was aware that these two first editions contained Bunin’s autographs. Carrying on with the Bulgakov theme, they would be earmarked for culling in the near future—two old Russian books that no one ever wanted. … But Bunin’s autographs do not burn—so, following this discovery, and with the authenticity of Bunin’s autographs established, these two volumes are now kept in the Rare Books Department. A happy ending.3 But the provenance, while fascinating to bibliophiles, is ultimately overshadowed by the fundamental question thrown up by these short autographs: who were the individuals addressed so affectionately by Bunin and what are their stories? It would not be unfair to say that we live in a world of clichés, and one of them is that history is always alive, ever evolving, ever changing. But that probably applies mostly to the way we interpret historic events and figures, an activity that is often removed from history in its original, pure form. At its core, history is about telling stories. It is a certain cultural or literary archaeology in which a piece of the material culture of an era long gone can uncover a layer that was previously unknown and bring back names and events that were either forgotten or never known back to life. This makes us reflect upon and reexamine the past, enabling us to tell stories that have never been told before. I was fortunate enough to have been given this rare opportunity and have been humbled by the discovery that the cliché is true: history is indeed alive, always evolving, always changing. 3

It was indeed a happy ending. These volumes, together with another find, Bunin’s first edition of Chasha zhizni (Cup of Life), published in Moscow in 1915 and resident in ­Cambridge University Library since 1939—and never requested—with an autograph addressed to Isaac Shklovsky, together with several books by Tolstoy and Teffi, all with the authors’ autographs, were displayed at an exhibition “Out of the Shadows” that can now be seen on-line at https://exhibitions.lib.cam.ac.uk/outoftheshadows/.

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But in this instance, we will be dealing with history by association and extension, if one follows Maurice Halbwachs’s hypothesis that history is formed by millions of private stories that, in turn, form our memory. This book will tell the story of the two extraordinary people whose names appear in Bunin’s autograph. Nikolai Karlovich and Natalia Ivanovna Kulman were close friends, loyal allies, and sometimes even financial supporters of Ivan and Vera Bunin for the almost sixty years the couple lived both in Russia and—after the tragedy of 1917 and the great Russian exodus—France. Their lives, works, and heritage have somehow been almost forgotten, even though Nikolai Karlovich Kulman was one of the most brilliant scholars of Russian language, literature, and history in prerevolutionary academic and literary circles and later became the leading cultural ideologist of the Russian emigration from 1920 to the 1940s; and whose contribution to preserving the Russian language and culture in what turned out to be his eternal exile cannot be underestimated. His prerevolutionary research was classified as anti-Soviet and was kept in the special access collections in the State Public Library (now the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg) until recently. His life and extraordinary work in prewar Paris is not well documented either. One comes across references to his name, but only in passing, in association with the “stars” like Ivan Bunin, Nadezhda Teffi, Konstantin Balmont, Vladislav Khodasevich, Ivan Shmelev, Boris Zaitsev, Pavel Denikin and others. Whereas these good friends, colleagues, and allies are remembered, Nikolai Kulman is not. This book will try to address a number of interconnecting layers of memory and heritage leading to a wider notion of history. Without diving too deep into academic debates about what history is, perhaps it would be right to suggest the easiest route: from one unknown autograph to two life stories narrated in private letters to Ivan and Vera Bunin, which have never been seen or published before and which are now kept in the Ivan and Vera Bunin Archive in Leeds (RAL). The publication of previously unknown letters is always important: not simply because it releases new archive material into circulation, but because it tells stories. They are human documents that give access to history in its genuine, pure form, as opposed to its hypothesized version. Letters also form a very complex medium that is by its nature both very personal and subjective. Bunin himself was known to categorically oppose any publication of his letters, asking his wife Vera not to allow this to happen after his death. Remembering her conversations with Bunin in the south of France, where both were staying in the Russian House in Juan-les-Pins, Irina Odoevtseva remembers Bunin saying:

Introduction Letters? No one ever tells the truth in letters. One always has to bear in mind what your addressee wants to hear … there is always an element of presenting oneself in the best possible light. I want all my letters to be burnt, I don’t want them published. One can be honest in life, but never in letters but will anyone listen to me?4

And yet it is only through letters—probably among the best carriers of ­ emory—that we can genuinely connect with history via private stories, to m carry out what Pierre Norra describes as the “historical reconstruction” that allows us to reassess and reevaluate the past, to remove or edit existing and previously created myths and politicized hypotheses.5 In telling the private stories of two people whose lives were irrevocably broken into two parts—before and after—by the tragedy of the 1917 Revolution, the notion of myths and politicized hypothesis becomes especially relevant. Even now, more than a hundred years after 1917, this watershed in Russian history is felt as something of an acute birth trauma which society has neither recovered from nor reconciled itself with—although, ironically, in today’s Russia the day of the 1917 Revolution (October 25, old style) is celebrated as “The Day of Reconciliation.” … No one quite knows where this name came from. One important aspect of this “people’s tragedy” was the loss of the country’s intellectual, scientific, cultural, military, and business elite, which was either wiped out or emigrated. The experiences of millions of people thrown out of their country through no fault of their own, with no possibility of return, and their attempts not only to rebuild their lives, but also to preserve their culture, their language, and their heritage, have often been compared to the Exodus from Egypt. The scale of this human tragedy has been thoroughly discussed and researched in various ways both abroad and, after 1991, in Russia. Numerous publications of private letters, diaries, and memoirs of those who had to leave have contributed hugely to what we now know about the Russian emigration in France. What makes this book different is that one small discovery not only led to the first publication of a considerable corpus of letters, almost every one of which contains a story worth telling, but also resulted in bringing back into the light the significant body of prerevolutionary works by Nikolai Kulman that 4 Irina Odoevtseva, Na beregakh Seny (On the Banks of the Seine) (Paris: La presse libre, 1983). 5 Pierre Norra, “Between Memory and History,” Representations 26: Memory and CounterMemory (Spring 1989): 7–24.

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had been published in Russia but which, due to his now almost forgotten role as one of the leading cultural and educational ideologists of the White emigration in Paris, were never republished or debated. Yet, they contain new and interesting discoveries that he made in the field of Russian history and, in particular, Russian literature, in brilliant critical works on Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, and others. This is the first time that this body of work has been brought back to life—over a hundred years after it was first written. Kulman’s letters to Ivan and Vera Bunin also reveal an entire layer of his work after the emigration. It has to be said that in the enormous body of documents, letters, books, and memoirs about the cultural heritage of the Russian immigration in France, conducted both in Russia and elsewhere, his name makes regular appearances and is usually accompanied by the well-worn phrase “the famous Professor Kulman.” But these references are fairly short and contain only very basic information, so one is left wondering precisely what it was that made Nikolai Kulman “famous.” And this brings us back to the question of memory, private stories, and history: the memory of someone who has been forgotten and brought back to life by private stories recounted in letters will hopefully add to what we already know, correct some mistakes, shatter some myths, shed new light on gray areas, fill gaps, and open up fresh lines of research. While Nikolai Kulman enjoyed a brilliant academic and public career in prerevolutionary St. Petersburg, and was fortunate enough to continue his very successful work in Paris, his wife Natalia at first appeared to me as somewhat in the shadow of her husband. All this changed once, as sometimes happens, a small detail led to the discovery of Natalia’s role as one of Bunin’s first editors and commentators; and a very dark family history that does not quite fit into usual biographical conventions. This line of research will hopefully challenge some established notions about the White emigration and the Kulmans’ relationships both with their own world and the world they were forced to leave behind after 1917, but which was still there to haunt them throughout their lives. Finally, this book will endeavor to address the very complex issue of “politicizing history” and “myth creation.” In the first years after the collapse of the USSR, what is known as “The White Idea” enjoyed—to paraphrase a term from Soviet historiography—a triumphant march. In its simplified form, almost everything that was “Red” in this specific discourse was, in post-Soviet historiography, deemed evil, while everything that was “White” was, by definition, deemed good. There is still a tendency in contemporary Russia to follow this

Introduction

line, but in the last few years more and more serious research—substantiated by archive materials, diaries, and letters—has emerged to question the absolute validity of this assumption. The very private story of Natalia Kulman and the family that she left behind in Russia might add to arguments over who was right and who was wrong in and after 1917. The aim of this book is to bring all—or at least most—of these various pieces together, to try and recreate the lives of two people through their private stories, memories, reflections, and, by an almost reverse association, to add new details and nuances to what is already widely known about the lives and works of their correspondents—Ivan and Vera Bunin. As the Kulmans were “civilians” (he an academic; she a wife, fundraiser for various émigré charities, a private tutor of Russian) who, unlike Bunin and his more famous literary friends, never thought that their letters might ever be of interest to anyone apart from their correspondents, their writing is unusually immediate and unguarded. It contains joy and disappointment, good news and bad news, some gossip, some generosity, occasional meanness, praise, and not always kind or objective judgements. In a word, it is completely human, and captures life and history in its unedited form. As the story of these two people unfolds, it will take its place in the vast patchwork of lives that contextualize the experience of the Russian Revolution and the Russian emigration in Paris. The interconnectedness of this experience will take us down many surprising pathways—from the palaces of St. Petersburg to the Solovki camp, from literary soirees in Paris to hardships of wartime Grasse in Provence—and introduce a diverse cast of characters that place the story of the Kulmans and their friendship with the Bunins against the backdrop of social upheaval, shattered lives, exile, and never-ending nostalgia for the country they had to leave behind. Cambridge, UK 2016–2019.

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CHAPTER 1

The People Behind the Autograph

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he search for the people behind Bunin’s autograph was not a straightforward affair, since the original search, before the discovery of the second autograph, was based only on their names and patronymics, with no surname given. However, it was reasonable to presume that these people were probably a couple: the book was signed as a personal New Year’s gift, the Russian cultural equivalent of a Christmas present, meaning that these people were either family, of which the Bunins had none in Paris, or very close friends—of which there were, surprisingly, not too many. It is important to stress that Bunin used the word “dear” before the names. In Russian, as opposed to English, where this is a standard, universal form of address, it is a designation that Russians still use selectively only for family and really close friends. No letter from the bank in Russian informing you of a missed payment would start with “Dear”—there are other options for occasions like this.1 However, all these were mere assumptions. The only four tangibles or definites in this puzzle were the names (Nikolai Karlovich and Natalia Ivanovna), the date (December 1925), the place (Paris), and the signature (Ivan Bunin). In the end, it was Nikolai’s patronymic, of non-Russian, Germanic, or Baltic origin, that led to the full names of Bunin’s addressees and the subjects of this book—Nikolai Karlovich and Natalia Ivanovna Kulman. And then the book’s location (Cambridge) almost led me astray, since it was so tempting to assume that, perhaps, the “Paris Kulmans,” Bunin’s friends and the recipients of his New Year’s gift, were somehow linked or related to “the London Kulmans”—Maria and Gustav, the famous founders of Pushkin House in London. That would give the story continuity and, perhaps most importantly, explain the provenance of the book.2 Indeed, Maria Kulman (née

1 2

See note on translation. The provenance of Bunin’s autograph will be further discussed below.

The People Behind the Autograp

Zernova) (1902–1965), one half of the “London” Kulmans, did live in Paris at the same time, just after she graduated from the Faculty of Theology at Belgrade University, where Nikolai Kulman taught a few years earlier. On moving to Paris, she became active in setting up a group for young Russian émigrés, supporting their interest in the language, culture, and religion of the country of their birth (the Russian Youth Christian Movement) and was its first president. She moved in the same circles as Nikolai Karlovich and Natalia Ivanovna, who were both actively involved in setting up a number of schools and societies to encourage young Russian émigrés not to forget their roots—more about this later. However, this connection proved inaccurate: Maria Zernova only became Maria Kulman in 1929 when she married Gustav Kulman, a Swiss national who worked for the League of Nations and was, in fact, involved in the creation of the famous Nansen passports. They moved from Paris to Geneva, where they lived until after the Second World War, when they moved to London. The Paris and the London Kulmans, both famous for supporting and promoting Russian culture in pre- and postwar Europe, shared an unusual surname but seem to have had no relation or connection whatsoever. A Tale of Two Cities, Russian émigré style, was not meant to be. Nevertheless, of the many lacunae and factual mistakes concerning the life and legacy of the “Paris” Nikolai Karlovich Kulman in exile, this coincidence of names played a part several times. For example, many sources state that Nikolai Kulman was one of the founders of the Sergiev Theological Orthodox Institute in Paris in 1925, while, in fact, it was Gustav Gustavovich Kulman. “Our” Kulman taught the Old Slavonic language at this institute, but was certainly not its founder. We will come across some other examples of wrong attributions as we go along. Finding fully reliable information about two people who were born in Russia but found themselves on the other side of the Red-White divide and fled the country during the Great Exodus of 1918–1922 is truly challenging. In the years after the 1917 Revolution, most of the church records, in which births, marriages, baptisms, and deaths were registered, were gradually destroyed together with the churches that stored them. Furthermore, the Kulmans originally lived in St. Petersburg, and many prerevolutionary archives perished during the siege of Leningrad in 1941–1944. Therefore, tracing the genealogy of those whose lives were effectively deleted from the records of their country of birth carries the risk of making assumptions and inventing theories. Brief biographies of Nikolai Karlovich and Natalia Ivanovna Kulman before they fled Russia are based mostly on information obtained from memoirs, diaries,

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r­eferences in prerevolutionary publications, and other documents—often related to other people close to either their families or, by extension, their circle of friends and colleagues. For example, Nikolai Kulman is listed as a lecturer in Russian literature at the famous Alexandrovsky Lyceum (previously known as Tsarskoselsky when Pushkin attended it), but no specific date of the start of his tenure there is available; as a consequence, his years of service had to be obtained from secondary sources. The same applies to the Bestuzhevsky Institute in St. Petersburg, where Kulman taught Russian language and literature. There are, however, two completely reliable records of Nikolai and Natalia’s life in prerevolutionary St. Petersburg, or Petrograd, as the city was renamed in 1914. One was found in the Russian State Archives of Literature and Arts in Moscow, which in November 1948 received a file bearing the name “N. K. Kulman.” While there is no information as to the provenance of this file, it contains some fascinating and intriguing documents, which helped me to correct numerous historic and biographical errors and create a reliable picture of the Kulmans’ life substantiated by archive documents, rather than the subjective memories and interpretations of people who knew them in Paris.3 Nikolai ­Kulman’s academic works that survived in the Russian National Library—kept in a restricted access fund until after 1991—are another tangible source of information. These materials reveal the depth of Nikolai Kulman’s academic and public success, his genuine beliefs, passions, and hopes that would be crushed in 1917 but would not by any means cease once he started his new life in France in 1920. In this volume, Nikolai Kulman’s letters to Ivan and Vera Bunins will be accompanied by a detailed commentary reflecting on his contribution to the cultural life of what is known as Russia Abroad. The same approach is applied to Natalia Ivanovna Kulman’s biography: we will examine what little is known of her life and works in prerevolutionary St. Petersburg/Petrograd and try to correct some errors in her biography that seem to move from one respectable source to the other—including her research heritage (stored in the same restricted fund of the Russian National Library). In addition, the significant body of letters to Ivan and Vera Bunin from the Russian Archives of the University of Leeds will tell the story of this extraordinary woman who—as wrongly stated by a number of sources—appeared to have lived her life in the shadow of her famous husband and very famous friends. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. 3

The Russian State Archives of Literature and Arts (RGALI), Moscow, fond 1555, op. 1.

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NIKOLAI KARLOVICH KULMAN

Figure 4.  Young Nikolai Kulman

The small—and not so small—inaccuracies about Nikolai Kulman start with his date of birth. Most sources say that he was born on November 18 (30), 1871, while his tombstone in the Russian cemetery in St. Genevieve des Bois near Paris clearly states December 1, 1871. The sources then go to say that he was born to a family of Danish—by some accounts, Swedish—­origin.

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His ­parents were Karl and Maria Kulman, and Nikolai’s earlier ancestors were brought to Russia by Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century as consultants in naval and military affairs, and, as often happened, stayed for good, marrying into the Russian nobility. By the end of the nineteenth century, theirs was a typical Russian noble family, although not part of the titled landed gentry. What the sources fail to mention, however, was that Nikolai, together with his brother Alexander and sister Vera were, in fact, adopted at a very young age and were single-handedly raised by Maria Kulman, who was not their biological ­mother.4 The Kulmans lived in the Novgorod area, near the village of Arakcheevsky Kazarmy, but certainly were not land- or estate owners as accounts say. The family was not rich and so, on all accounts, it would be wrong to suggest that Nikolai came from a privileged background. While studying in the Vvedenskaya Gymnasium in St. Petersburg, young Nikolai had to survive in the capital on ten rubles a month, a minuscule amount by late nineteenth-century standards, and his mother had to take part-time work as a housekeeper on a neighboring estate to send Nikolai this money. According to some records, he was applying for various support grants and trying to provide for himself and his family from the age of sixteen by giving private lessons of Russian language and literature. To a certain extent, these survival skills, which he had to learn early in life, explain his business acumen and strict work ethic, which he was famous for later. As opposed to his correspondent Ivan Bunin, Nikolai Kulman was certainly not “to the manner born.”5 In 1892, Nikolay finished his secondary schooling and entered the Faculty of History and Philology at St. Petersburg Imperial University, which, at the time, was considered one of the best humanities departments in Europe. He graduated in 1897. Kulman must have been a truly outstanding student since he was offered a two-year tenure in the Russian Department so that he could prepare himself for a future academic career—something of a rarity for a twenty-six-year-old graduate. And prepare himself he did: the special archives of the Russian National Library hold almost thirty publications by Kulman published in St. Petersburg/Petrograd in the prerevolutionary years, with the first book Collection of Pushkin’s Bibliography dated 1899. A quick glance at the list of Kulman’s writing, given below, reveals an amazing scope of interests: in-depth studies of Pushkin, Zhukovsky, Gogol, and Tolstoy; books 4 RGALI, fond 1555, op. 1. 5 Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 1, scene 4.

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Figure 5.  Nikolai Kulman’s works from the Russian National Library, St Petersburg

on various aspects of Russian linguistics and the methodology of teaching Russian; and volumes on Russian history. The Russian National Library has two extraordinary books—a history of public movements in Russia during

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the reign of Alexander I (1908), and an detailed study, written in 1907, of the Russian freemasons, in particular the Kishinev lodge and its strong links with the Decembrist movement that culminated in the uprising on Senate Square in St. Petersburg in 1825. Most of these publications are far from being the standard research articles of an aspiring and ambitious postgraduate student, They are profoundly serious academic books by an accomplished scholar, and contain some ideas and interpretations that still appear fresh and exciting today. They are worthy of detailed study, analysis, and reinstatement in the discourse of prerevolutionary Russian literary, critical, and historical thought—well over a century after they were published. For example, in his Psychological Drama of Nikolai Gogol (1909), Kulman produced an extraordinary analysis of Gogol’s state of mind and mental health in the last years of his life, when he burnt the manuscript of the second part of his work of genius Dead Souls. Kulman based this research on extracts from the diaries and correspondence of Gogol’s close circle of friends, acquaintances, and colleagues, and tried to reconstruct what was happening at the time and what could have led to Gogol’s mental breakdown, or—as many believed—his madness. This is brilliant research, and worth revisiting by anyone interested in Gogol’s life and works. Kulman’s prerevolutionary publications include: 1899: Collection of Pushkin’s Bibliography. 1901:  V. Zhukovsky’s Manuscripts from the Private Collection of Counts A. A. and A. A. Bobrinsky: Texts, History and Commentary. 1902: In Memory of Maykov: the Poet’s Letters to Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich. Texts and Commentary. Alexander Pushkin and Romanticism. 1903: In Celebration of Fifty Years of L. N. Tolstoy’s Literary Activity. 1904: Prince Vyazemsky as a Literary Critic. 1907: Nikolai Gogol and His Time. The History of Freemasons in Russia: Study of the Kishinev Lodge. 1908:  History of Public Movements in Russia during the Reign of Emperor Alexander I. 1909: Psychological Drama of Nikolai Gogol. Gogol’s Hans Kuheltargen and Foss’s Louisa. 1911:  Collection of Articles to Celebrate Twenty-Five Years of Ivan Grevs’s Work (editor).

The People Behind the Autograp  Letters of E. A. Engelgardt to M. D. Delarue: Publication and Commentary. 1913: Elementary Russian Grammar. 1915: Prince Oleg (Romanov).

It appears that Kulman’s primary research interests were the legacy of Alexander Pushkin, the history of the Decembrist era and its key figures, the Russian masons—a subject that was of particular interest in Russia in the prerevolutionary years.6 In addition, he wrote extensively on Nikolai Gogol and Lev Tolstoy, the latter still alive and active at the time of Kulman’s writing. These interests go hand in hand with his intensive work in the area of Russian linguistics and the theory and practice of the methodology of teaching Russian, a subject that he would remain passionate about for the rest of his life and would turn into his own personal mission after his emigration. From 1901 to 1923 Kulman wrote and published a number of landmark works that would become staple text books for teachers of Russian before, and for some years after, 1917. These books include: Lectures on the theory of the Russian Language (1904), The Methodology of Teaching Russian (1912), Elementary and Practical Grammar of Russian [Syntax] (1915, 1917), Elementary and Practical Grammar of Russian [Etymology] (1914, 1916, 1922, 1923), On Russian Spelling (1923), On the History of Russian Grammar (1917). Quite extraordinarily, this latter book was last republished in Germany in 1982!7 In 1903, at the age of thirty-two Kulman finally obtained the equivalent of a PhD in Russian philology. A very long and laborious process at the time, he would have been considered quite young for this achievement. He started teaching Russian in a number of institutions in St. Petersburg, and his places and focus of work reflect the mindset of the typical liberal intelligentsia of the time—people who firmly believed that democratic reforms in Russia were long overdue and that they should “go to the masses” and teach workers and their children in the evening, while teaching the children of the Romanovs during the day. On February 5, 1898 Kulman informed St. Petersburg Imperial University of his resignation in order to join the staff of the prestigious A ­ lexandrovsky 6 See, for example, Nina Berberova’s Ludi i lozhi—russkie masony XX stoletiia (People and Lodges—Russian Masons of the Twentieth Century) (Moscow: Progress-Traditsiia, 1997). 7 Nikolai Kul′man, Iz istorii rossiiskoi grammatiki (On the History of Russian Grammar) (­Frankfurt: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1982).

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Figure 6.  Former Alexandrovsky Lyceum today

Lyceum, a school for upper-class boys where he taught Russian language (1897–1904), logic (1901–1902) and the history of Russian literature (1909–1918). One of his students, Count Dmitry Shakhovskoi, later became a “comrade in arms” in Denikin’s Volunteer Army and, as archbishop of San Francisco, went on to become one of the leading figures in the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.8 In 1903 Kulman also joined the teaching staff at the famous liberal Women’s Higher Courses, known as the Bestuzhev Courses (School), the first ever university-level college for women of mostly noble and middleclass background, which was established in 1878 and whose alumni include illustrious figures such as Anna and Olga Ulyanov and Nadezhda ­Krupskaya (Lenin’s sisters and wife). As it happens, Kulman’s future second wife, Natalia, was also his student at the Bestuzhev School—but more of that later. One of Kulman’s key academic appointments before 1917 was as Head of Russian at the newly formed Women’s Pedagogical Institute—quite a revolutionary establishment at the time, founded under the patronage of the 8 Interestingly, Bunin remarked in one of his letters that it was Dmitry (in Russian, “Mitya” is informal for “Dmitry”) Shakhovskoi, and the story of his unfortunate first love, that inspired him to write one of his best works, Mitya’s Love—the book in which the first autograph was found.

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Figure 7. Class in Bestuzhev School, St Petersburg, early 1900s

Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov. This appears to be Kulman’s last official place of work: surviving records show that he taught there until 1918. In addition, in the evenings he taught Russian language, literature, and history in what were known as evening schools—adult classes for the underprivileged and their children who were excluded from mainstream education. He must have been a very busy man! One of Kulman’s high-profile projects at the time was working as a member of the Sub-Commission for the New Orthography, which was established in 1904 under the auspices of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, headed by the academician F. F. Fortunatov and chaired by the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, also known as the brilliant poet “KR.” This experience would be very significant—although possibly also painful— for Kulman’s later life in emigration, when he became a fierce critic of the orthographic reform of December 1917 but was sometimes accused of actually playing a part in that reform. Nothing could be further from the truth: indeed, Kulman believed that Russian orthography could be simplified and freed from the overly complex rules inherited from Church Slavonic. In his work On Russian Spelling, which was published when Kulman was already in Paris, he explains his position very clearly:

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These recommendations were apparently quietly put aside for further consideration “at a later date” and were suddenly brought out again by the Provisional Government in June 1917. The final decree on the official switch to new orthography, now called “Soviet,” was signed by A. Lunacharsky on January 5, 1918, in the days when the Bolshevik regime was still in its infancy and only very few—if any—believed that this surprise baby would live almost to the age of seventy-five. … Back in prerevolutionary St. Petersburg, one of the most exciting and eventful capitals of Europe at the time, the center of the Russian Silver Age in literature and some of the most daring experiments in arts, Nikolai Kulman was writing books and editing professional magazines for teachers of Russian who, like himself, followed Tolstoy’s teachings and “went to the masses” to deliver literacy to workers and peasants. He passionately believed that Russian people of all classes should learn their native language, literature, and history properly, and developed a whole new pedagogical approach to make teaching Russian to the masses more accessible and enjoyable. He contributed to Russkii narodnyi uchitel′ (Russian people’s teacher) and from 1915 edited a weekly journal Letopis′ srednei shkoly (Chronicles of middle school). He continued his extensive academic research, working in historic archives, and teaching all over St. Petersburg day and night. He was in demand for appearances at various public committees; gave lectures to commemorate significant literary and historic events, including T ­ olstoy’s fiftieth anniversary lecture, where Kulman was one of the key speakers; and he ran a number of research seminars, such as the Neophilological Society of the Imperial University of St. Petersburg. At the same time, he had a young family— by 1904 he was married and had four small children. Living life at full pelt, he was a typical fin de siècle, liberal, true prerevolutionary Russian intellectual. … What is so interesting about Kulman’s life before his exile—as it emerges from the very little information that is now available—is that there were also a 9

Nikolai Kul′man, O russkoj orfografii (On Russian Spelling) (Berlin: Russkaia Mysl′, 1923).

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Figure 8a.  Women’s Pedagogical Institute St Petersburg, early XX century

Figure 8b.  Nikolai Kulman with his students (1914)

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number of twists in his consistently impressive career. On the one hand, he was a brilliant young academic, a published author, a practicing teacher, and a passionate propagandist for a democratic approach to universal education. In his literary articles, Kulman was known to express some openly liberal views: for example, in his excellent analysis of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, he sounds almost evangelical in his interpretation of the character Gerasim, Ivan Ilyich’s servant: Gerasim is the only truly mighty, happy, honest character here: he does not lie and he truly loves Ivan Ilyich for what he is, he understands and accepts God’s will as no-one else does. He is a true representative of the people, unspoiled by civilization and therefore he is the bearer of the supreme ethical truth.10

But at the same time, as a true man of the Russian Renaissance or a classic selfmade man, Kulman also was known for his business acumen. This trait that would later play a part in Bunin’s decision to appoint him to manage Bunin’s Nobel Prize money. In the early 1900s, Kulman served on the board of directors of several big companies, such as the Russian Shipbuilding Company, the Nikolaev Shipbuilding Yard, the Gartmann factory, and the Kharkov railway building company. Ironically, he is known to have mediated between the Gartmann factory’s workers and management during the civil unrest of 1905.11 In October 1917, Kulman was briefly arrested, together with other board members of the Russian Shipbuilding Company, but later released.12 As early as 1899, just a year after joining the Alexandrovsky Lyceum, at the age of twenty-seven, Nikolai was presented as a potential candidate for the prestigious Order of St. Stanislav. In 1904, he was also awarded the title of Court Councilor—a civil honor that was bestowed on promising statesmen, a significant step on the highly bureaucratic Imperial establishment ladder. He now had to be officially addressed as Vashe Vysokoblagorodie (literally—“Your High Well-Born”). In the next few years, Kulman continued his rise when he was awarded the Order of St. Anna (third degree), another sign of recognition and appreciation by the official establishment. And following all that success he 10 Nikolai Kulman, Na prazdnovanie 50-letia tvorcheskoi deiatel′nosti L. N. Tolstogo (In Celebration of Fifty Years of L. N. Tolstoy’s Literary Activity) (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1904). 11 Padenie tsarskogo rezhima—stenograficheskie otchety komissii vremennogo pravitel′stva, vol. 4 (The Fall of the Tsarist Regime—Stenography Records of the Provisional Government Commission) (Leningrad: n.p., 1925). 12 The Russian State Archives of the Navy (RGA VMF), St. Petersburg.

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was also made a professor—at a very young age by Russian academic standards of the time. The first few years of what would become perhaps the most terrible century in the long history of terrible Russian centuries must have looked exciting and promising to Nikolai Karlovich Kulman. One piece of evidence we have that testifies to his steady progression through the official ranks is a beautiful special edition book that is currently stored in the restricted collections of the Russian National Library: a large volume of about fifty to seventy centimeters in size, bound in luxurious soft brown leather, printed on high-quality paper, containing a large number of facsimile copies of handwritten poems and watercolors covered by tissue paper. It is called Prince Oleg and its author is Professor Nikolai Kulman. The book was published in Petrograd in 1915 and is dedicated to the memory of Prince Oleg Konstantinovich Romanov, the only member of the Russian royal family to be killed in action (October 1914) during the First World War. The front page of the book has quite a striking handwritten dedication by Grand Duchess Elizaveta: “To the Russian Department of the Imperial Public Library13 in memory of my late son’s visits here. Petrograd, 1915. Elizaveta.” Kulman was chosen as the sole author of this book because he had been universally known to be very close to the late prince and, in many ways, was one of the most important figures in Oleg’s life, strongly influencing the prince’s passion for Russian literature and instilling in him the values for which the young man (he was just twenty-one when he was killed) was known. The book tells the story of Oleg’s short life, starting with his birth in the Marble Palace in St. Petersburg in November 1892. Oleg’s father was Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov, another very unusual member of the Romanov household—a poet who published under the pseudonym “KR,” a friend and disciple of Dostoyevsky and Tchaikovsky; a gifted translator who translated Goethe and Shakespeare, including one of the best translations of Hamlet; a playwright; an accomplished musician and composer; a prominent statesman; an actor; a (guilt-ridden) homosexual; and an adoring father of nine (!) children. He married Princess Elizabeth of Saxe-Altenburgh, who, on converting to Russian Orthodoxy, became Grand Duchess Elizaveta. It was Elizaveta, Oleg’s mother, who later left her signature on Kulman’s book. Grand Duke Konstantin took his parental duties very seriously and was both closely involved and genuinely interested in his children’s life and 13 Now the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg

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Figure 9.  Prince Oleg Romanov

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Figure 10.  Prince Oleg memorial book compiled and edited by N. Kulman, from the Russian National Library, St Petersburg. The inscription by Grand Duchess Elizaveta, Prince Oleg’s mother, reads: “To the Russian Department of the Imperial Public Library in memory of my late son’s visits here.”

e­ ducation—quite a rarity for the Russian royal household. Bearing this in mind, it would be reasonable to assume that the competition for the post of private tutor who would teach Grand Duke Konstantin’s children the Russian language and literature was extremely fierce, but it was young Nikolay Kulman who secured this tenure and was officially appointed to the grand duke’s ­household in 1899. This appointment could explain Kulman’s “court counsellorship”—it was most probably deemed necessary for a new appointee of this level to hold a certain position in the Russian Imperial Table of Ranks. The question is: why would Kulman take a position in royal service? His work in the school for the workers, as well as his writing were certainly much more indicative of liberal rather than monarchist views and beliefs. He was a true product of his class and era, arguing for the urgent necessity of democratic reforms rather than offering his services to the privileged Russian grand dukes and their children.14 And 14 It is useful to quote a short paragraph from Vera Bunina’s diary here. On April 5, 1920, she writes: “Many of the Russians who live here [in emigration] attended universities in Germany … they returned to Russia in 1905 as Socialist Revolutionaries and suffered prison, exile, and

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Figure 11.  Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov (“KR”)

yet, he was appointed tutor in Russian language and literature to the eldest son and later to other children of Grand Duke Konstantin. I would suggest that Kulman made an exception for this particular grand duke—since Konstantin Konstantinovich was indeed a very special royal in many ways, as will be discussed shortly. Kulman had worked with KR well before he became his employee: Grand Duke Konstantin served as patron of the Bestuzhev Courses where Kulman taught and was also President of the Russian Academy of Sciences where, again, their paths must have crossed on a number of occasions even before Kulman joined the Sub-Commission for the New Orthography. Kulman had regularly contributed to the work of the Second Department of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, responsible for arts and literature. Among other works of his that appeared with e­ migration for their views. They saw everything except that one elephant—the people. …” Ustami ­Buninykh, ed. M. Green (Frankfurt: Posev, 1977–1982), vol. 2, 73.

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the Second Department were V. Zhukovsky’s Manuscripts from the Private Collection of Counts A. A. and A. A. Bobrinsky: Texts, History and Commentary (1900), Prince Vyazemsky as a Literary Critic (1904), and History of Public Movements in Russia during the Reign of Emperor Alexander I (1908). Equally, this appointment also shows that Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov was a man of open mind: before any candidate for this sort of position was approached, detailed references, personal recommendations, and even reliability checks would be carefully collected. While the grand duke was very much aware of Kulman’s liberal views, the latter’s excellent academic and pedagogical credentials and professionalism must have been decisive.

Figure 12.  The Marble Palace, St Petersburg, home of Grand Duke Konstantin and his family

The family of Grand Duke Konstantin was, indeed, quite different from other royal households of the time. On the one hand, the Konstantinovichi, as they were commonly referred to, were officially the richest of all the grand dukes. They had exceptional collections of art housed both in their St. Petersburg base, the Marble Palace—which, ironically, housed the Museum of the 1917 Revolution in Soviet times—and their country estate, Pavlovsk. On the other hand, it was a very close-knit, loving, and warm family where affection towards children was displayed openly and they were encouraged to study literature and arts— something unusual in the households of other grand dukes, in which boys were handed to nannies and guardians before they were shipped off to elite military

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schools. A typical entry in the diary of the grand duke’s son Gavriil says: “It’s my Saint’s Day and I got the most wonderful presents from papa: a volume of Tyutchev’s poetry and an amazing collection Famous Russian Writers.”15

Figure 13.  Pavlovsk Palace

The Konstantinovichi were also known for their committed work in the community. For example, in the early 1900s Grand Duke Konstantin acquired an estate in Ostashevo, near Moscow, where, using his own money, he set out to build a new church primary school for the villagers, a seventy-five-bed hospital, a library, and even a kindergarten. This was unheard of at the time. The grand duke also successfully lobbied to secure finance to build a new modern road from Ostashevo to Volokolamsk. Reading Grand Duke Konstantin’s diaries, it becomes obvious that Nikolai Kulman quickly became close to his royal employers. He was often credited with the Konstantinovichi’s genuine interest in Russian language and literature and was highly praised for his wonderful “Thursdays”—the days when he organized open readings, recitals, and stage productions of the best pieces of Russian

15 Dnevnik kniazia imperatorskoi krovi Gavriila Konstantinovicha. 1897–1916 (Diaries of the Royal Blood Prince Gavriil Konstantinovich, 1897–1916), ed. T. A. Lobashkova (Moscow: Buki Vedi, 2016).

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Figure 14.  Ostashevo Estate. Watercolour by Prince Oleg

literature, which the whole family started to attend and enjoy.16 Kulman was invited to bring his own children to the Marble Palace and Pavlovsk to attend these “Thursdays” and various other children’s events. Grand Duke Konstantin recorded these events in his diaries with genuine warmth.17 16 During that time Kulman also made some acquaintances that would prove almost lifesaving after the 1917 Revolution. At one of those “Thursdays” he met Alexander, the heir to the Serbian throne, who was studying at the St. Petersburg Cadet Corps at the time, and who would ask Kulman to be his son’s tutor in Belgrade in 1921, giving him his first job in exile. 17 Dnevnik velikogo kniazia Konstantina Konstantinovicha Romanova. 1911–1915 (Diaries of the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov. 1911–1915), ed. V. Khrustalev (Moscow: PROZAiK, 2013).

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This is precisely why Kulman’s Prince Oleg reads like a very personal book, and not the dutiful panegyric of a loyal employee or subject. Kulman had known Prince Oleg since he was seven years old. He wrote of his favorite pupil’s intellectual growth, his many talents, and passions (Russian literature, music, arts), as well as their joint projects with genuine affection and respect. The book contains some poetry written by Prince Oleg, as well as extracts from his diary and some facsimile watercolors. Interestingly, though, parts of his diary were censored—negative comments about the state of Russia and its monarchy—and it was Kulman’s task to edit these out. In the full version of Oleg’s diaries, first published in 2016, the seventeen-year-old prince reflected on the recent events of the 1905 Revolution and described his country as “being unwell … where Russians fight against Russians.”18 It should be said here that Konstantin Konstantinovich, Oleg’s father, tried to maintain close family relationships with, and stay loyal to, Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra as much as possible, as opposed to most other grand dukes and their families, who fell out with the royal couple after 1905 over Rasputin19 and only maintained formal relationships with the royal couple and their children. Reading Kulman’s Prince Oleg, one can sense that over the years his relationship with Grand Duke Oleg evolved into a true and genuine partnership between like-minded individuals, not just a convention relationship between tutor and pupil (albeit a royal one). One enthusiasm they shared was Alexander Pushkin. When the Alexandrovsky Institute found some facsimiles of Pushkin’s manuscripts dating back to the time when Kulman was studying there, Prince Oleg came up with the idea of publishing a compilation of all existing ­manuscripts—from both public and private collections—to commemorate the centenary of the poet’s graduation from the Lyceum in 1814. He wrote to a number of key Pushkinists of the time, including his own tutor, asking for guidance and advice. Of course, Kulman agreed and often acted as an intermediary between the Marble Palace and the Alexandrovsky Institute, where he also worked, liaising with typesetters, binders, editors, and publishers. It is interesting to read one of Oleg’s notes to Kulman asking him to reschedule one of their usual lessons:

18 Dnevnik kniazia imperatorskoi krovi Olega Konstantinovicha (Diary of Royal Blood Duke Oleg Konstantinovich, 1900–1914) (Moscow: Buki Vedi, 2016), October 11, 1905, 356. 19 Grigory Rasputin (1869–1916).

The People Behind the Autograp Mr. Golike20 informed me that he had finished working with Pushkin’s autographs on Wednesday. He also asked me to compare the photographs with the originals as soon as possible so that the process could go ahead without delay. In the light of this, would you mind terribly if we could reschedule our usual Thursday lecture in Pavlovsk and instead meet in Mr. Golike’s office to discuss this? There is so much we need to work through with [other members of] the commission.21

The work on the first part of this publication was successfully accomplished by late 1914 and 1000 copies of this genuinely precious edition were printed, with 890 donated to the Alexandrovsky Institute. On October 19, 1911, the hundredth anniversary of the Lyceum, the book was presented to Nicholas II. The quality of this publication was quite unique for its time: the facsimiles even recreated the exact tint of the ink and texture of the paper that Pushkin used in his early manuscripts. The start of the First World War, the 1917 revolutions, and the tumult that followed put a stop to the rest of this plan, and it was only completed in 1999 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Pushkin’s birth. Prince Oleg, together with his brother Gavriil, another pupil of Kulman, were the only Romanovs to have received both higher military and civil education, the former being compulsory for the Russian royalty. In order to receive the latter, Oleg had to get personal permission from the tsar, which was duly granted, and he became the first in his family to enter the Alexandrovsky ­Institute. It would be reasonable to suggest that one of Kulman’s tasks was to help Oleg with preparation for his entrance exams—even royalty had to take a fairly trying exam to be admitted. Prince Oleg did well and was admitted, but due to ill health in the first year of studies he could not attend lectures, so Kulman taught him at home, in Pavlovsk, until Oleg was well again. While most of the Konstantinovichi fought in the war, Oleg was the only Romanov to have been killed in action. The dying words of this twentyone-year-old royal were, “I’m content, I’m happy—it would be good for the troops’ morale to know that one of us, the Romanovs, spilled his blood on the battlefield.”22 How poignant this is: how would Russian history have evolved 20 Roman Golike (1848–1919) owned a publishing house in St. Petersburg. 21 T. Ivanova, Arkhiv kniazia Olega Konstantinovicha Romanova v Pushkinskom Dome (The Archives of Prince Oleg Konstantinovich Romanov in the Pushkin House), lib.pushkinskijdom.ru. 22 Gavriil Konstantinovich, Mramornyi dvorets: Khroniki nashei sem′i (In the Marble Palace: Chronicles of our Family) (New York: Izdatel′stvo imeni Chekhova, 1955).

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if young Romanovs like Oleg were not killed at the age of twenty, soon to be replaced by those who, ten years later, desecrated his grave and scattered his remains on the village’s main road, stealing his war medals and his baptismal cross. … Nikolai Kulman was tutor to Grand Duke Konstantin’s daughter Tatiana and to his senior sons. Three of them—Ioann, Konstantin, and Igor—were brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 in Alapaevsk, two days after the execution of Nicholas II, Alexandra, and their five children in Ekaterinburg. Together with other members of the Romanov family, including Alexandra’s sister Ella, who became a nun, and Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, a famous historian, the three brothers were thrown into a disused mine alive and then the assassins tossed grenades down the shaft. By all accounts, this was a martyrs’ death—slow, with unimaginable suffering and no hope of escape. The peasants who worked in the forest nearby found the mine because they heard moans coming from under the earth. The only fault of those who suffered this terrible fate was their family name—none of them had ever been involved in politics. Several other grand dukes, including the boys’ uncle, a brilliant scholar and collector, were executed in the Peter and Paul fortress in Petrograd in 1919 as a response to the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Berlin. Oleg’s older brother Gavriil, another pupil of Kulman, had an almost miraculous escape from this fate: he fell ill and could not be transported from Petrograd with his brothers. His very energetic wife, Nina Nesterovskaya, a former Imperial Ballet dancer and a good friend of Matilda Kshesinskaya, Nicholas II’s first love and mistress before he married Alexandra, did everything she could to save him and begged Maxim Gorky (with whom, ironically, Gavriil shared a doctor)23 to petition on his behalf. On November 20, 1918, Gorky sent Lenin the following letter:24 Dear Vladimir Ilyich,25 Please do one tiny but very clever thing for me: instruct your people to release the former Grand Duke Gavriil Konstantinovich Romanov. Firstly, 23 Ivan Manukhin (1882–1958) treated later, in emigration, many poor émigrés who could not afford a doctor. His name appears in correspondence between Nikolai Kulman and Vera Bunina. 24 Ivanova, Arkhiv kniazia Olega Konstantinovicha. 25 Lenin’s first name and patronymic. Gorky uses a formal address in the letter.

The People Behind the Autograp he is a wonderful man, and secondly—a gravely ill man. Why f­abricate martyrs? A really damaging thing to do at the best of times, but for those who are planning to build a new free state—especially so. Plus—a little bit of romanticism wouldn’t hurt any politics. … So please release Romanov—and stay healthy. A. Peshkov.26

It worked: Gavriil was moved from prison to Gerzoni hospital in Petrograd and then took refuge in Gorky’s apartment, where he stayed for a couple of weeks before he was allowed to cross over to Finland27. The order for Gavriil’s release was signed by a certain Gleb Bokii, the new chief of the Petrograd Cheka, the predecessor of NKVD. Bokii was appointed after the assassination of the Cheka’s first chairman, Moisei Uritsky—an event that triggered the start of the Red Terror in 1918. This name will appear again in close connection with Nikolai Kulman and his family. Back in the relatively carefree and certainly exciting St. Petersburg of the early twentieth century it was not all work for Nikolai Kulman. He seems to have found time for quite a lot of play as well. The literary and academic circles of Moscow and St. Petersburg often mingled together, spending their summer months in Crimea or on the French Riviera. And it was in Yalta, in Crimea, in September 1901, that Nikolai Kulman first met and struck up what was to become a lifelong friendship with the author of our autograph—the future academician and first Russian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin. Bunin was visiting Anton Chekhov in his house near Yalta, Leo Tolstoy was staying in Gaspra, not far away, and Maxim Gorky often joined them. In her Life of Bunin, Vera Bunina writes: “That day, Ivan Alekseevich went to Massandra with Elpatievsky where he was introduced to Nikolai Karlovich Kulman, whom he liked immediately: Kulman was very witty, full of joy, with lively eyes, although he seemed to have won the affections of a certain Vera Ivanovna whom both men were trying to court while drinking wine in the wine cellars.”28 A slight diversion: the three friends drinking wine and chasing the attention of the mysterious Vera Ivanovna in Crimea in 1901 presents an interesting 26 Alexei Peshkov was Maxim Gorky’s real name. 27 Two of Dr Manukhin’s patients are known to have met at Gorky’s Petrograd flat at 21 Kronverksky prospect in 1918: Gavriil Romanov, Kulman’s former pupil, and a certain Gleb Bokii: a “former” Grand Duke and his savoir, of whom more later. 28 Vera Bunina-Muromtseva, Zhizn′ Bunina. Besedy s pamiat′iu (Life of Bunin: Conversations with Memory) (Moscow: Vagrius, 1989), 200.

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Figure 15.  Gorky’s house in Petrograd

insight into the prerevolutionary demographics of Russia’s “chattering classes” and their destinies before and after 1917. Sergey Yakovlevich Elpatievsky,29 Chekhov’s private doctor in Yalta, also happened to be a fierce revolutionary and an active participant in Narodnaya Volya, a terrorist organization that, among other things, assassinated Tsar Alexander II in March 1881. Dr Elpatievsky spent long periods of time in Siberian exile and later in the Peter and Paul Fortress as a political prisoner, but in 1917 he disagreed with Bolshevik tactics—although that did not stop him from becoming a staff doctor in the elite Kremlin hospital, where only trusted and reliable comrades were allowed to work, in the 1920s and 1930s. It would be reasonable to assume that in the space of twenty years he went from treating Chekhov and Tolstoy to treating the likes of Lenin and Stalin.30 But before all that, he was drinking wine and enjoying life in the company of Bunin and Kulman, both of whom would soon find themselves on the other side of the barricades and represent the archenemy. Dr Elpatievsky later published a number of memoirs about both Chekhov 29 Sergei Elpatievsky (1854–1933)—political activist, writer, doctor. 30 Not at all an unusual trajectory: the Kulmans’ letters to the Bunins contain references to many names whose loyalties and affiliations changed quite dramatically since 1917.

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and Tolstoy31 and died in Moscow in 1933, the year that Bunin received his Nobel Prize. An interesting company got together one day in Crimea in September 1901: Ivan Bunin, a writer, future academician, a typical member of the landed gentry, of fairly conservative views, and a close friend of Chekhov; Dr Elpatievsky, a terrorist who spent time in exile in Siberia as a political prisoner but who also happened to be Tolstoy and Chekhov’s doctor; and Nikolai Kulman, an established academic and writer, a passionate advocate for mass education, but also a staunch capitalist with business interests, court counsellor, private tutor to children of a grand duke with personal access to the Marble Palace, beneficiary of an imperial court pension and generous salary, and a man who wined and dined with the Romanovs, their royal relatives, and entourage. It is also important to add that in that summer of 1901 Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Gorky, the future beacon of Socialist Realism, were all reported to have visited the Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, a renowned historian and intellectual, who was staying at his Crimean villa nearby, and who would be executed in the Peter and Paul Fortress and buried in an unknown grave in 1918. Apparently, Gorky did try to plead with Lenin arguing that Nikolai Mikhailovich was a brilliant historian and completely apolitical, but Lenin’s famous response was: “Our revolution doesn’t need old historians.” Sometimes a brief entry in someone’s diary—a quick flash of memory— can suddenly open up so much more than official records. … Many years later, in émigré Paris, Kulman would be occasionally mentioned in the context of the anti-Soviet, politically and aesthetically conservative wing of the Russian community abroad32—although what is not clear from these brief and mostly random references is whether this alleged affinity was of a political or purely literary and critical nature. If we assume, only hypothetically, that this attribution refers to Kulman’s political orientation, then it would be reasonable to suggest that his strong liberal views could have altered as a result of the years spent in close proximity to Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov’s family. The inside knowledge he acquired of this family’s genuine beliefs and values, and his understanding of the potential contribution it could have made to the future of Russia, may have lead him to think that a modernized monarchy was a serious, viable alternative to the Soviet regime. Little was known at the time of what some 31 Sergei Elpatievskii, Vospominaniia za 50 let (My Memoirs of Fifty Years) (Leningrad: Priboi, 1929). 32 For example, in Nina Berberova’s memoirs The Italics Are Mine.

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of the Romanovs themselves thought about the state of the Russian monarchy. As mentioned earlier, Kulman’s Prince Oleg was heavily censored when it was published in 1915, but it would be reasonable to suggest that, being an insider in the family, Kulman knew his pupil’s views on the Russian monarchy. Just one entry in Oleg’s diary, dated February 2, 1914, and, of course, not included in the 1915 book, offers a good insight into what the young, modern, thinking members of this family thought about the state of their institution just three years before the revolution and how they openly discussed it with their tutors. I have to record a conversation I had this morning with Nikolaus.33 We talked about the desperate state Russia is in at the moment and the genuinely hopeless, almost tragic position in which most Russian monarchists find themselves today. What do they have to believe in? What is there to fight for? For some sort of a ghost? Where is the monarchy where the tsar’s word actually means something? Where is that once strong, powerful dynasty? It’s all gone. The tsar is surrounded by people who manage to somehow prevent him from carrying out all of his good plans and intentions which he does have but can do nothing about.34

At the same time, a comment written by Oleg’s father in his 1904 diary appears more measured: “Unrest everywhere: in the space of two or three months ­Russia is suddenly consumed by the desire for reforms. Revolution is knocking at our door. They talk about a constitution almost openly! It’s all so shameful and also scary.”35 We might add here that Konstantin Romanov was the last Russian grand duke who died a natural death—in Pavlovsk in 1916—and was buried in the family’s Peter and Paul Cathedral in Petrograd. All his other relatives were either executed or, in the case of very few, fled the country. After Oleg’s death from wounds in 1916, Kulman wrote a short article in which he said: “His highness was too young to be known outside the royal family and it makes this loss so much more poignant since … his only dream and ambition was to dedicate his life to serving his country and making it better.”36 33 Nikolaus was an intimate name Oleg used for his senior guardian, N. N. Ermolinsky (1869– 1919), who Kulman was reporting to. 34 Dnevnik kniazia imperatorskoi krovi Olega Konstantinovicha. 35 Dnevnik velikogo kniazia Konstantina Konstantinovicha Romanova, 167. 36 Nikolai Kulman, Prince Oleg (Petrograd, 1915).

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The tragedy of 1917 and the horrors that accompanied it inevitably and radically changed the Russian liberal intelligentsia’s view on the old regime, with all its shortcomings. The subsequent, even greater horrors of the Red Terror—and the knowledge that three of his talented pupils, who had so much to give to their country, were brutally murdered—almost certainly had a strong effect on Kulman’s once expressly liberal and probably anti-­ monarchist views. Even though there is no documentary evidence to support this, it is reasonable to assume that, based on his writings and personal associations, Nikolai Kulman’s sympathies in the 1910s would have been with the Constitutional Democrats (the Kadets or “KD” as they were know in Russian)—the party of the Russian liberal intelligentsia, who, after the February Revolution and abdication of Tsar Nicholas, categorically denounced the Bolsheviks and essentially formed the basis for an anti-Bolshevik movement. On August 1, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia and in the first few months of the First World War, the mood was universally upbeat and patriotic. The official draft age at the start of the First World War was forty-three years before it was raised to forty-five in 1917.37 Nikolai Kulman was almost fortythree at the beginning of the war and would likely have been excused from formal mobilization as a court councilor and professor. Judging by the chronology of Kulman’s publications and public appearances, as well as the official record of him being on the staff of the Alexandrovsky Institute and the Bestuzhev Courses, he remained in Petrograd in 1914, but in 1918 joined what would later become known as Denikin’s Volunteer Army, an anti-Bolshevik force operating mostly in the south of Russia at the start of the civil war. In Soviet historiography, the Volunteer Army is regarded as almost synonymous with and the basis of the White movement, although this is now believed to be a somewhat simplified view, since those fighting under its flag were often closer to “pink”—that is, of a left-liberal tint, rather than “pure white.” Ironically, the iconic Bolshevik address “comrade” was often used in the Volunteer Army and, later on, at the outbreak of the Second World War, Soviet propaganda brought back some of the slogans of the Volunteer Army to unite the country in the face of the imminent Nazi invasion. 37 Igor′ Shein, “Mobilizatsiia russkoi armii i ee popolnenie liudskimi resursami v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny (1914–1918 gg.)” (“Mobilization of the Russian Army and Its Personnel Reinforcement in the First World War [1914–1918]”), Voennyi akademicheskii zhurnal 3 (2016): 72–76.

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In 1917–1919, the Bolsheviks threw the country into a state of anarchic experiment, where equality was only observed in destitution, where all opposition was cruelly suppressed, and recruitment was forceful and universal, regardless of political beliefs. Meanwhile, the Volunteer Army’s slogan was “Truth and law applies to everyone.” It stood for reuniting Russia and bringing it back to its prerevolutionary glory and prosperity by continuous liberal reforms that had been sabotaged by the Bolsheviks and anarchists—for example, by reestablishing the Constituent Assembly. No one was forcefully drafted and freedom of political views was actually encouraged. And this is precisely why the Volunteer Army was so much smaller than the Red Army and why it fought so bravely.38 The term “Denikin’s Army” later often replaced “Volunteer Army.” However, it is not fully historically justified, since Anton Ivanovich Denikin (1872–1947) was not technically the founder of the organization. Denikin took over from Generals Alekseev and later Kornilov (the former died and the latter was killed in action) and was formally appointed “Supreme Ruler of Russia” in January 1920, “inheriting” this title from Admiral Kolchack. On April 4, 1920, Denikin resigned in favor of Baron Vrangel and left Russia for good. In 1918, Kulman turned forty-seven, a civilian through and through. Yet, without any special military training, he was now serving as an officer (second lieutenant) in Denikin’s Volunteer Army. Kulman would have volunteered because the first year of Bolshevik rule had shattered his once liberal beliefs. Extrapolating from one of Kulman’s letters to Bunin, written in Paris in 1928, it appears that he fought in one of the units operational in the Nikolaev area,39 where the dramatic episode that he writes about took place.40 Interestingly, General Denikin and Professor Kulman would become close friends in emigration and their families would spend many summers together in Capbreton, not far from Biarritz, where the two men shared their passion for fishing, mushroom-hunting, and endless conversations about the past and future of Russia, its language, and literature. It is quite possible, though, that they had known each other before the revolution and their exile, since General Anton Denikin had not only been known to be interested in literature, but had been a published author long before he became the head and later the symbol 38 Marina Tsvetaeva wrote about the tragedy of the White Army in her poignant poetic cycle A Wedge of Swans (1918–1921). 39 Nikolaev used to be in southern Russia; now in Ukraine. See below. 40 Letter 13 (N. Kulman to I. Bunin), November 11, 1928.

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of the White movement. History sometimes allocates unfair name tags: from the mid-1920s, those who fought for the Whites and later fled Russia were mostly referred to generically as Denikintsy (“Denikin’s men”), not Vrangelevtsy, which, technically, would apply to the remains of Denikin’s army when it merged with the Baron Vrangel’s units in Crimea before their final defeat and retreat from Crimea to Constantinople in late 1920. When in 1941, the German command in Paris approached General Denikin with the suggestion that he collaborate with the Nazis to “free Russia from the Bolsheviks,” he responded: “I have fought against them most of my life. But I am a Russian general and will never fight against Russia.” In the context of visual memory, it would be appropriate perhaps to mention here that there are only four known photographs of Nikolai Kulman, all except one probably dating back to 1928 and taken on holidays in Capbreton. In one of these three photographs (see fig. 16) Kulman is, in fact, wrongly identified as the leading symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont (1867–1942). With his striking red mane, even in older age—it was common knowledge that he continued dyeing his hair—Balmont could not look more different from the completely bald Kulman! Incidentally, he looked quite similar to General Denikin, who appears in the same photograph.41 Kulman and Balmont were indeed of the same circle, both in Paris and in Capbreton. That group also included the writer Ivan Shmelev,42 at whose house two of the photographs were taken. The three men all knew each other quite well, most probably from prerevolutionary times. Kulman wrote a number of reviews and articles on Balmont’s works, and later, in emigration, Balmont dedicated his 1930 translation of the ancient Russian epic poem The Tale of Igor’s Campaign to Kulman for his “ongoing support and advice,” saying: “This both challenging and rewarding, humble and daring work that had been brewing for a long time. … I dedicate to Professor Nikolai Karlovich Kulman with profound gratitude for his delicate cooperation.”43 Kulman’s review of Balmont’s translation is published in the same issue of Rossiia i slavianstvo (Russia and the Slavic world): 41 Photographs from Natal′ia Solntseva, Ivan Shmelev—zhizn′ i tvorchestvo (Ivan Shmelev—Life and Works) (Moscow: Ellis Lak, 2007). 42 Ivan Shmelev (1873–1950) was a Russian émigré writer, close friend of both the Bunins and the Kulmans. See below. 43 “‘Slovo o polku Igoreve’ v perevode K. Bal′monta” (“‘The Tale of Igor’s Campaign’ Translated by K. Balmont”), Rossiia i slavianstvo 8 (1930). For more details, see Nikolai Kulman’s letters to Bunin.

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Figure 16.  Kulman (first on the left) with Denikin and Shmelev in Capbreton, late 1920s Balmont’s translation is closer to the original than any of its predecessors. His poetic intuition didn’t miss a single artistic image of the original and he follows the laconic format and precision of the source. Balmont also introduced some poetic elements of Russian epic folk songs and successfully conveyed all the colors, sounds, movement of The Song, its lyricism that is filled with light and grandeur of the epic parts. First and foremost, he managed to retain the spirit of the author’s genuine love for his motherland.44

Going back to the photograph, this rather striking fact of visual misidentification, together with numerous other recurring factual errors in what little information is available, could offer something of a metaphor for—in this instance, quite literally—the forgotten face of Nikolai Kulman. The other image—this time attributed correctly—is found in Andrei Korlyakov’s excellent photo album L’emmigration russe en photos 1917–1947:45 it shows Nikolai and Natalia Kulman fishing on the banks of a river, looking happy and relaxed, with a dog next to them. Nikolai Kulman seems to be dressed a bit too formally for the occasion: he is wearing a suit and a tie, with only a straw hat softening the overall sharp look. The photograph is not dated, but from the way 44 Nikolai Kul′man, “Istoriia ‘Slova o polku Igoreve’” (“The History of ‘The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,’” Rossiia i slavianstvo 8 (1930): 4. 45 A. Korliakov, L’emmigration russe en photos 1917–1947 (Paris: YMCA Press, 1999).

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Figure 17.  The Kulmans, fishing. Image from Nataliia Zaitseva-Sollogub’s archive. Published in Russkaia emigratsiia v fotografiiakh, Frantsiia 1917–1947 (L’emmigration russe en photos 1917–1947), compiled by Andrei Korlyakov (Paris: YMCA Press, 1999) Capbreton, late 1920s

Nikolai Kulman looks, it would be reasonable to assume that it was taken around the same time as the other two Capbreton pictures mentioned earlier. Up until now there has been no accurate, archive-based information about Kulman’s private life before 1917. Sources seem to be playing a game

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of telephone by repeating the same pattern: Kulman was married to Natalia Ivanovna Kulman and they had a son, Vladimir Nikolaevich Kulman, who later became a prominent figure in the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and was widely known as Archbishop Methodius. In fact, Nikolai Kulman had two daughters and two sons from his marriage to his first wife, Ekaterina Smirnova. His long and very happy marriage to Natalia Kulman (née Bokii) was childless, which seems to have brought them closer to the childless Bunins, as we will see from some correspondence between Natalia Kulman and Vera Bunina later. Some sources then mistakenly state that Kulman emigrated with his son Vladimir and wife Natalia. In fact, all of Nikolai’s children—mostly grown up by then—fled Russia after the revolution, but they did so separately, with their mother, to whom Kulman was still married at the time according to the records of 1922 found in Prague that are now kept in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts. We will return to this.

NATALIA IVANOVNA BOKII-LIKHAREVA-KULMAN Who was Natalia Kulman, Nikolay Kulman’s second wife and the writer of one of the largest single corpus of letters to the Bunins in the Russian Archive in Leeds, whom Bunin described as “the sweetest, kindest woman who’s ever lived”?46 How and where did she meet Nikolai? What was their story, before and after 1917? While an average book on the history or cultural heritage of Russian emigration gives Nikolai Kulman approximately five lines, Natalia rarely gets more than one and this description is usually limited to “the wife of Nikolai Kulman.” Some go further and say “mother of Vladimir Kulman,” which, as mentioned earlier, is wrong. The rest is, at best, unknown and, at worst, erroneous. And yet, Natalia’s life and her legacy appear to be so much more than just “a wife.” In this chapter, we will try to piece together the complex and fascinating story of another person who disappeared into a set of standardized, often incorrect, references. Most biographical entries give Natalia Ivanovna Bokii’s date of birth as October 30, 1876. In fact, her tombstone in St. Genevieve des Bois reads “1877.” This was obviously based on her birth certificate, so it is almost certainly correct. Natalia was born to an old noble family of Ivan Dmitrievich and Alexandra Kuzminichna Bokii (née Kirpotina), whose roots go back to 46 Bunin’s diary of 12.02.1945, in Ustami Buninykh, vol. 3, 175.

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medieval times. Ivan Dmitrievich’s ancestor, Fedor Bokii-Pechikhvostsky, was a judge stationed in what was then the Duchy of Lithuania and is mentioned in correspondence between Ivan the Terrible and Prince Andrei Kurbsky.47 Her great-grandfather was Mikhail Vasilievich Ostrogradsky, an academician and one of the founders of the St. Petersburg School of Mathematics; in the 1820s, he studied and later taught in the Sorbonne, returning to Russia to set up his own school and become one of the most prominent figures in Russian science, as well as an honorary academician at a number of European universities. Interestingly, in later life Mikhail Vasilievich allegedly turned to spiritualism and tried to prove its feasibility by means of mathematics. Natalia’s father, Ivan Dmitrievich, was also a prominent scholar and, at some stage, a private tutor to Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich’s sons.48 One of his pupils, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, known as Sandro, later married Tsar Nicholas’s sister Xenia and was father-in-law to Felix Yusupov, Rasputin’s killer. Ironically, and in some parallel with his future son-in-law, Natalia’s father supported the ideas of liberal and democratic reforms in Russia and was a great admirer of Herzen in his younger years—only to become disappointed in his ideas and steadily grow more and more conservative, becoming a loyal monarchist by the end of his relatively short life. On her mother’s side, Natalya was related to another prominent Russian noble family, the Delarues. Interestingly, one of Nikolai Kulman’s early academic works was dedicated to the correspondence between Prince V ­ yazemsky and Mikhail Delarue, both close friends and contemporaries of Alexander Pushkin, who studied with them at the Tsarkoselsky (Alexandrovsky) Lyseum, where, of course, Nikolai Kulman taught just before the revolution. In fact, in one of her letters to Ivan Bunin, written in August 1951, Natalia refers to her uncle Mikhail Danilovich Delarue as “Pushkin’s grandson.”49 From the early nineteenth century, the family estate was situated near the village of Pashennaya, in the Poltava region (now Ukraine), where some of the Bokiis are buried in the old churchyard, but the house and the estate were destroyed during the Russian Civil War. Natalia, the second of three children, had two brothers, named after two Russian saints, Boris and Gleb. In the 1870 and 1880s the family lived in Tiflis 47 Prince Andrei Kurbsky (1528–1583) was first a childhood friend and later a fierce political opponent of Ivan the Terrible. Kurbsky is portrayed in some detail in Sergei Eisenstein’s film Ivan the Terrible (1944). 48 Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich (1832–1909) was son of Tsar Nicholas I. 49 Letter no. 3413/2.

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Figure 18.  Bestuzhev Courses, St. Petersburg

Figure 18 A.  Bestuzhev Courses Students, early XX century

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(now Tbilsi, in Georgia), where Natalia’s father had a university post and where both Boris and Gleb were born, so it would be reasonable to assume that Natalia, the middle child, was born there as well. Given the family’s background and the father’s interest in liberalism and the arts, one would suspect that it was a pretty typical fin de siècle Russian intelligentsia upbringing, with good schooling, lots of reading of both Russian and European literature, fluency in several European languages, and regular educational holidays to European capitals. The next recorded entry in Natalia’s biography is that she was a student at the liberal Bestuzhev Institute (Courses) in St. Petersburg. As mentioned previously, this was effectively the first ever Russian university where women were admitted. They followed the standard university syllabus and were taught by academic staff from St. Petersburg Imperial University. Therefore the term “courses” is rather a colloquial name—this was a proper university education, albeit for what today would be called “mature students,” since the applicants had to be at least twenty-one when they applied. Natalia read history and philology and most likely entered in 1898–1899. There were two terms for young women studying there at the time: bestuzhevka and kursistka. The latter name comes from the word kursy (“courses”). A famous image of a kursistka by N. Yaroshenko, one of the Peredvizhniki group of Russian artists, adorned almost every Soviet history textbook. The picture shows a very modestly dressed, fairly plain-looking young woman, wearing a strange “unladylike” hat, purposefully striding somewhere with a book under her arm. She looks determined, focused, going into some bright future, perhaps only seen or imagined by her. These young women read Marx, Engels, and Herzen at leisure, attended protest demonstrations, adored Peter Struve,50 recited poetry of the Russian Silver age and genuinely believed that they were the first breed of Russian women who could finally change the world—or at least play some part in it. And some of them tried by joining various left and anti-monarchist groups, occasionally throwing bombs, and taking part in rallies and protests. This is, of course, a stereotype, but when the picture was first exhibited in 1883, it provoked a very strong reaction from traditionalists and even mild conservatives: the Russian political climate of the late nineteenth century was very tense after the assassination of Alexander II in March 1881 and numerous failed attempts on royal lives after that. Russia was on what would now be described as “high security alert.” In fact, every applicant to the Bestuzhev Courses had to be checked by the police’s special department before a letter of acceptance was sent out. 50 See detailed reference later.

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Figure 19.  N. Yaroshenko, Kursistka

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And yet, it appears the authorities were not thorough enough with their checks. Among Natalia’s contemporaries at the Bestuzhev Courses were Lenin’s future wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, his two sisters, and other soon-­to-be prominent figures of the new revolutionary elite. However, other kursistkas, such as Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams,51 found themselves on the other side of the barricades. After 1918, Tyrkova-Williams became a prominent figure in the anti-Bolshevik movement in London. She tells a story of being introduced by Krupskaya to Lenin, who jokingly promised that “we will hang people like you on lamp posts once we are in power.”52 Natalia Bokii, a bestuzhevka or kursistka, a child of her time, of noble and fairly privileged background but of a liberal intelligentsia upbringing, would most certainly be a young woman of strong beliefs and progressive outlook. There is an extraordinary, albeit poignant story, about Natalia’s father’s death. Her older brother, Boris, with whom she remained very close even after she emigrated and he stayed behind to become one of the leading Soviet scholars in geology, was very politically active while a student at the St. Petersburg Mining Institute, one of the centers of liberal youth of the day. In 1897 (Soviet sources mistakenly put “1900”), Boris invited both his siblings to attend a d­ emonstration, and all three were arrested and held in police custody for a couple of days. Their father, Ivan Dmitrievich, did his absolute best to secure their release, but his heart disease got much worse as a result of this traumatic experience and he died of a heart attack only a week later. Boris and Natalia blamed themselves for their father’s untimely death and were forever put off any form of active politics by this experience. It seems that Natalya’s literary tastes were not on the side of the new “proletarian” writers either. In her letter to Bunin of October 24, 1952, she talks about Maxim Gorky: “Even in my youth I absolutely detested Gorky and turned down several opportunities to meet him … there was so much darkness in his soul.”53 She also seems quite dismissive of other literary “stars” of that time such as Alexander Blok, Sergey Esenin, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. By the time she graduated, Natalia was focusing her research on European medieval and early modern history, the methodology of its teaching in Russian secondary schools, and the general principles of progressive pedagogy. She was 51 Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams (1869–1962) was a liberal politician, journalist, writer, and feminist activist. After she emigrated in 1920, Tyrkova-Williams founded the Russian Liberation Committee. 52 Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams, Na putiakh k svobode (Our Ways to Freedom) (New York: Izdatel′stvo imeni Chekhova, 1952). 53 Letter 3 (N. Kulman to I. Bunin).

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taught by the distinguished academic and inspirational teacher Professor Ivan Grevs (1860–1941)54 and was an active member of his study group—a fact that would play a crucial part in Natalia’s life. From 1901, her published works include a number of articles in Education magazine, a large brochure History of Pedagogic Thought: Methodology of Teaching Russian History from the Eighteenth Century, History of State Institutions in Medieval France, and How the French Revolution Happened. Some of these books can be found in the Russian National Library.55 Between 1904 and 1917 she also translated some major works by French and German historians: E. Flandene’s Political Institutions of Europe Today and P. Guiro’s Ancient Greeks—Their Public and Private Lives, for example. Natalia also contributed a number of articles to Brockhaus and Efron’s iconic Encyclopedic Dictionary.56 It is not clear whether Natalia was thinking of an academic path as a career. However, as mentioned earlier, she was heavily involved in Grevs’s Medieval History Study Group.57 Professor Grevs was regarded by many as a true visionary, creator of a new method of teaching history known in Russia as the seminar method, who believed passionately that his students should not just study history academically but go among the “masses” and teach what they knew to those who did not have the luxury of higher education. Like many people of his circle, profession and background, Ivan Mikhailovich Grevs was a member of the ­Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets), the party of the prerevolutionary Russian intelligentsia, whose slogan was “Let there be light, freedom, and culture.” Although Grevs never emigrated like many of his peers, he managed to live by this rule all his long life, having only been arrested once in the early 1930s—an amazing exception!— and worked at the Faculty of History in what would become Leningrad State University until his death in 1941. Natalia’s uncle Mikhail Danilovich Delarue was also a member of this party and became one of the leaders of the Kadets in the first State Russian Duma (1906). Among other famous Kadets were Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, the novelist’s father, and Igor Stravinsky. Going back to Professor Grevs and his circle of students, it is important to see these gatherings of young, aspiring academics in the context of the time 54 Like Natalia’s future husband, Grevs taught both at St. Petersburg Imperial University and the Bestuzhev Courses. 55 All of Natalia Kulman’s (then Likhareva) books are kept in the special collections of the Russian State National Library (St. Petersburg). 56 The Encyclopedic Dictionary, published by Brockhaus and Efron, one of the largest reference dictionaries containing just under one hundred volumes, was published in Russia in 1890–1907. 57 Nikolai Kul′man, ed., Sbornik statei, posviashchennykh 25-letiiu deiatel′nosti I. M. Grevsa (Collection of Articles to Celebrate Twenty-Five Years of Ivan Grevs’s Work) (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1911).

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Figure 20.  Natalia Likhareva (Kulman)’s ‘From the History of Paedagogical Thought’ (1911), from the Russian National Library

and culture of the Russian intellectual elite: they were adamant in advocating urgent changes in society to make education and enlightenment accessible to all classes. They practiced what they preached and, as early as 1903, Natalia taught history in night schools in some working-class areas of Petersburg, as well as in the Free Women’s Institute. Natalia’s research (1908–1916) appeared under her maiden name “Bokii” or “Likhareva.” The second name is used in all correspondence, bills, bank accounts, even her will, dated May 23, 1914, in which she left everything to Nikolai Kulman. Unfortunately, no record of her first marriage could be found,

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and as she never mentioned her first husband in her letters to Vera Bunina, we will probably never know who he was or why the marriage ended. In 1911, Natalia published her work in a collection of articles dedicated to “twenty-five years of Ivan Grevs’s work as scholar and teacher.” Her contribution was entitled “On the Methodology of Teaching History in Eighteenth-Century Russia.” The collection was edited by a certain Professor Nikolai Kulman. He was a colleague and a good friend of Professor Grevs and also an active member of Grevs’s Medieval Study Group. It is in that publication that Nikolai and Natalia’s names first appear together.

NIKOLAI AND NATALIA KULMAN: THEIR STORY Finding reliable archive information about someone’s private life is almost impossible: birth, christening, and marriage certificates do not normally tell the whole story, but they are instrumental in correcting mistakes and starting the process of fitting together the larger jigsaw pieces. Letters, postcards, telegrams, diaries, even utility bills sometimes open up a completely new perspective. While universally known as “the inseparable Kulmans” by their friends, Nikolai and Natalia remained very private as far as the origins and evolution of their own love story were concerned. A recent discovery led to uncovering some previously unknown facts about Nikolai Kulman’s life and the story of his and Natalia’s love in prerevolutionary St. Petersburg/Petrograd and after their ­departure from Russia.58 Yet this is where any scholar is faced with a difficult ethical choice: what can and cannot be revealed? Should the private life of one’s subjects remain strictly private regardless of scholarly pursuits, especially when these findings concern those who are gone and cannot protest against the breach of privacy—even for the sake of correcting numerous errors in what has been published about them over the years? While some important discoveries were made, I chose to reveal only the facts that are of direct relevance in ­answering the simple question: how did Nikolai and Natalia’s lives become entwined? As previously mentioned, not much has been accurately written about Nikolai Kulman’s private life before Natalia became Mrs. Natalia Kulman— which, in fact, only happened in Paris sometime after 1922! This obfuscation of true history, a total elimination of someone else’s life, name, and face—to such an extent that Natalia is even credited with being a mother to someone else’s 58 I would like to express my profound gratitude to Father Georgy Pimenov, archpriest of the Church of Resurrection in St. Petersburg, for his help and guidance in finding the relevant archival sources and invaluable advice on N. K. Kulman in St. Petersburg/Petrograd up to 1917.

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son—can only be explained by a lack of access to archive material. And yet, for quite a few years Natalia Likhareva (née Bokii) was “the other woman” in Nikolai Kulman’s life—clearly, not an unusual role, particularly in the liberal and emancipated St. Petersburg of the early twentieth century. But the result of this misinformation is that another woman, Kulman’s first wife and mother of his four children, has been deleted from what we have known far about his life until now.

Figure 21.  Gleb Bokii as a child

A tiny faded photograph found in the State Historical Archive of St. Petersburg shows a middle-aged woman wearing a rather large hat.59 She seems tired and somehow prematurely aged. It looks like a photograph that has been torn off some document—a passport, a pass, a ID card?—with scratches and holes. This is a photograph of Ekaterina Iasonovna Kulman, the first Mrs. Kulman. Another document, from the RGALI Archives in Moscow, dated June 12, 1896, states that “N. K. Kulman, a student of the Faculty of History and Philosophy at St. Petersburg University, is given permission by his mother, Maria Kulman, to get married.”60 Yet another, dated August 16, 1896, is a marriage certificate issued by the Church of Our Savior in Tula, confirming Nikolai Kulman’s marriage to Ekaterina Iasonovna Smirnova, born in 1872 in St. Petersburg.61 The wedding took place near the Smirnovs’ country estate, where, according 59 The Russian State Historical Archives (RGIA), St. Petersburg, fond 129. 60 RGALI, fond 1555, list 3. 61 RGALI, fond 1555, list 4.

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Figure 22. Ekaterina Kulman, Nikolai’s first wife, mid-1920s, Prague

to the archives, Kulman spent the summer of 1895. Ekaterina’s father—a decorated war hero, a major general, was close to the Russian court. Tsar A ­ lexander II is listed as Ekaterina’s godfather at her christening on November 18, 1874, which took place in John the Baptist Church in St. Petersburg Corps de Pages on Sennaya Street. It is not known whether the tsar was actually present at the ceremony or acted in absentia, but the list of other guests is equally impressive. Unlike the Kulmans, the Smirnovs were quite well-off. The newlyweds’ first address in St. Petersburg was flat 13, 5 Bolshaya Spasskaya Street. It is located in Peterburgskaya (now Petrogradskaya) Storona, Nikolai’s most beloved area, where he had lived all his life until his departure to fight against the Bolsheviks in the Volunteer Army and then into exile. In Soviet times, many streets in this area were given new “Soviet” names and so from 1922 Bolshaya Spasskaya was called Red Cadet Street. Little is known about Ekaterina’s education, but on one of the forms completed during her exile in Prague in September 1921 she stated that she received a higher education. She also declared fluency in three foreign languages and that she had worked as a private tutor.62 Nikolai and Ekaterina Kulman produced four children in fairly quick succession: their first daughter, Olga, was born in 1898. They had another daughter, Elena, in 1900. Two boys soon followed: Vladimir, the future Archbishop Methodius, (born 1902) and finally the youngest, Konstantin (1904). 62 State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF), fond 5764, op. 3, d. 3094.

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­ eedless to say, all the children received an excellent education and were often N invited to the Marble Palace, where their father worked as a tutor to Grand Duke Konstantin’s children and took part in his “Literary Thursdays.” Elena, the Kulmans’ second daughter, studied at the Konstantinovskaya school for girls in St. Petersburg, which was opened in 1913 and was named appropriately after Grand Duke Konstantin, the school’s patron, who was her father’s employer and friend. Elena continued her education in Odessa and later in Sofia and Prague. As of November 1917, the youngest son, Konstantin, studied at the Nikolaevsky Cadets Corps in St. Petersburg.63 It was one of the most expensive and liberal military schools for young boys, where students were encouraged to study languages and the arts, and also allowed to bring their butlers with them! The oldest daughter, Olga, was educated in Petrograd and Kiev. Little is known about when precisely they fled Petrograd with their mother, but records show that they first arrived in Sofia and then Prague where they seem to have settled around 1921. Vladimir continued his education in Prague, studying history and philology, and received his PhD in 1926. In the early 1930s he moved to Paris to study at the St. Sergy Orthodox Institute. The youngest, Konstantin, died in 1919 of pneumonia. One line in Ekaterina Kulman’s document that was issued in Prague in September 1921, cited earlier, is intriguing: “… married, husband resides in Paris.” Nothing is known about Ekaterina Kulman’s later life: no record of her death has been found but it is believed that she remained in Prague. It would be reasonable to assume that Nikolai divorced his first wife later in the 1920s and finally married Natalia, the woman he had loved and lived with for at least fifteen years.64 However, it is impossible to say precisely when—and if!—Nikolai ever officially left his family prior to his departure for the Volunteer Army in 1918. Perhaps he was not in a position to do so: however liberal St. Petersburg society was on the eve of the catastrophe, Kulman had to keep his public reputation. After all, he held a number of important positions, and abandoning a family of five would probably not have been looked upon favorably. Not least, he had to think of his reputation as tutor to the children of the genuinely virtuous family in the Marble Palace. He certainly also had his own responsibility to his wife and four children, whom he loved and cared for. And yet the evidence of this long love affair— complex, painful to all involved, and yet one that survived the tragedies of three 63 RGIA. 64 The first letter from Natalia to Nikolai is dated 1900 (RGALI, fond 1555, op. 12).

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revolutions, civil war, exodus, and life in exile—is the corpus of over 250 letters and telegrams between Natalia, then still Likhareva, and Nikolai Kulman. The letters, written between 1900 and 1912, miraculously survived and are now kept in the Russian State Archives of Literature and Arts in Moscow. Judging from the documents’ chronology, their relationship became a serious commitment around 1905 and by 1914 Natalia wrote her will, in which she left all her estate to Nikolai Kulman.65 There is evidence that, once settled in Paris, Nikolai Kulman did his absolute best to maintain a close relationship with his by then grown-up children. Olga’s name occasionally appears in Natalia Ivanovna’s letters to Vera Bunina, although it does not look like their relationship was particularly close. Vladimir certainly was an important part of Natalia’s life, especially after Nikolai’s death in 1940. In a letter to Galina Kuznetsova, dated March 20, 1956, Vera Bunina wrote: “Father Methodius, her [Natalia Kulman’s] stepson does his absolute best to help during her illness. …”66 Details of this relationship—Natalia’s guilt for being “the other woman” for many years and thus causing pain to the children, as well as her gratitude to Olga and Vladimir for finally accepting her “because I made their father happy”—can be found in Natalia’s letters to Vera Bunina to be published in the second part of this book. So far it has been impossible to assert with certainty when Natalia and Nikolai got married. As mentioned earlier, in late 1921 his first wife Ekaterina considered herself married to Nikolai. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral on Rue Daru, where Bunin was married once his divorce went through in 1922, has no records of the Kulmans’ marriage. But, of course, there were some thirty Russian Orthodox churches in Paris alone at the time, so the Kulmans could have got married in any of them. By many accounts it was 1918, not 1917, that signaled the start of what is now commonly referred to as “the people’s tragedy,” with millions displaced, lost, executed, shot on sight, and perishing of starvation. The first year of the Red Terror was unimaginable in its chaos and cruelty. According to the records of the Alexandrovsky Lyceum and ­Bestuzhev Courses, Nikolai Kulman taught there until 1916 and 1918 respectively,67 but no specific date of his departure is given. Unsurprisingly, both institutions ceased to exist in their original state shortly after the revolution, so it is likely that Nikolai 65 RGALI, fond 1555, op. 14. 66 I. A. Bunin—novye materialy (I. A. Bunin—New Materials), ed. O. Korostylev and R. Davies, vol. 3 (Moscow: Russkii put′, 2014), 430. 67 RGIA, fond 14, op. 28910; fond 11, op. 3725.

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Kulman joined the Denikin Volunteers Army sometime in late 1917 or early 1918 and left Petrograd for the south of Russia. Hypothetically, Natalia could have stayed behind—in the very early months of 1918 it was generally expected that things would be back to normal in a few weeks at the most. However, those of nonproletarian origin who stayed in Petrograd in 1918 were exposed to a double threat: the Red Terror and the Petrograd golodomor.68 Like the siege of Leningrad, the Petrograd golodomor of 1918–1920 was rarely talked about in Soviet times. Most of the archive materials associated with it were destroyed at the end of the civil war to give way to a happy new Soviet history. The situation in 1918 was tragically similar to that of September 1941, when the city found itself cut off from the mainland and surrounded by the Germans and the Finns. The difference was that in 1918, Petrograd was cut off by “supplies regiments”—or “Zinoviev regiments,”69 as they were often referred to—which would effectively not let anybody in or out of Petrograd on the grounds that they might “bring illegal supplies.” The city found itself under internal siege. Leaving it without special permission was treated as high treason. Food supplies were extremely low, speculation rife, and the population trapped. At the other extreme, the Red Terror took hold in early 1918, with its total lawlessness, anarchy, and incomprehensible cruelty often committed by drunken sailors high on cocaine. Bread was in short supply in 1918 Petrograd, but cocaine seems to have been readily available for the triumphant proletariat. The population of Petrograd in 1917 was 2,440.000. By 1920, the height of the civil war, it dropped to 705,000. Perhaps nothing gives a better understanding of life in Petrograd in 1918 than a few quotes from the time. For example, Nadezhda Teffi remarked on October 18, 1918: “Petersburg is dead. Its huge corpse is lying there, with its pockets turned out, it was raped and desecrated.”70 Maria Vrangel later remembered: Anyone who was unfortunate enough to be in Petrograd in those cursed days knew what lawlessness and insolence reigned in the capital. No one, except for communists and high-ranked officials of the new regime was

68 The term is now commonly applied to the famine in Ukraine (1931–1933) and is defined as “man-made famine.” It should be pointed out that the golodomor (spelled with a “g” in Russian) affected not just today’s Ukraine, but most of southern Russia. An earlier golodomor took place in the Volga and Urals regions in 1920–1921. 69 Grigory Zinoviev (1883–1936) was in charge of the Petrograd Soviet in 1917–1926. He was instrumental in the implementation of the Red Terror. 70 Published in Kievskaia mysl′ (Kiev Thought), October 18, 1918, and reproduced in Diaspora 1 (2001): 402.

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Grigory Zinoviev wrote: “We have to engage ninety million people out of a hundred million currently residing in Soviet Russia. We will not negotiate with the other ten. They will have to be destroyed.”72 And one more quote: The right SRs [Socialist Revolutionary Party] murdered Uritsky and wounded comrade Lenin. The Vecheka [The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission] responded by executing a number of counterrevolutionaries who had long deserved to be extinguished: 512 counterrevolutionaries and Whites. We have many hostages and will execute all of them should even one of ours be killed.

This chilling quote comes from Gleb Bokii, Chairman of the Petrograd Cheka (1918–1919),73 bringing together an extraordinary fusion of the personal and the political, the biographical and the historic. Gleb Bokii was Natalia’s little brother, the dark secret of her life in exile. His appearance in this memoir at this stage is a fitting symbol of the turmoil and upheaval that was wreaking havoc on an entire country as well as smashing to smithereens the lives of two individuals. It is almost certain that émigrés in Natalia’s circle in Paris would have lost relatives, friends, and colleagues executed on the direct orders of her sibling. Equally, it seems clear that Gleb Bokii would have nurtured his own secret at a time of class confrontation and ideological schism: he came from the very class that the Bolsheviks were now intent on exterminating. He had a sister in exile who was married to a very vocal leading anti-­Bolshevik figure,74 who had fought against the revolution in the ranks of 71 Mariia Vrangel′, “Moia zhizn′ v kommunisticheskom raiu” (“My Life in the Communist Paradise”), in Barony Vrangeli—vospominaniia (Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2006). 72 A. L. Vassoevich, “Petrogradskii golodomor kak orudie tsivilizatsionnogo sloma” (“The Petrograd Golodomor as a Means to Destroy Civilization”), in Russkii Iskhod kak rezul′tat natsional′noi katastrofy (The Russian Exodus as a Result of National Catastrophe), ed. M. Smolin and V. Filianova (Moscow: Rossiiskii institut strategicheskikh issledovanii, 2011), 194. 73 Ibid., 116. 74 For example, Nikolai Kulman was on the organizing committee of the Russian Congress Abroad (1925), whose main agenda was to determine effective ways to remove the Bolsheviks from power and restore the previous regime. He actively campaigned for reinstating Grand Duke Nicholas, who lived in Antibes at the time, and visited him there a number of

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­ enikin’s army (a good enough reason to qualify as “an enemy of the people”) D and dedicated the rest of his life in exile to the preservation of what the new regime was systematically destroying and devaluing. This fight became his mission, as we will see later in Nikolai ­Kulman’s letters to Bunin and the commentary that accompanies them. As far as Natalia Kulman and her “dark” secret are concerned, this information was considered very private, with only a very close circle of friends privy to it. Her name was different by then and it was not that easy to make a connection without knowing her past. At the onset of the Great Terror, Stalin famously said: “Children are not responsible for their fathers’ sins”—although as later history showed, this truism was subject to many interpretations. However, it can almost certainly be applied to Natalia in that she could not be responsible for her brother’s horrendous sins. And yet. … To give just one example: Ivan Shmelev, a celebrated émigré writer and a very close friend of the Kulmans, with whom they holidayed together in Capbreton, and who features in many letters, lost his only son in the years of the Red Terror: the young man was arrested by the Cheka on a street in Crimea because he “looked suspicious” and was never seen again. It took Shmelev several years to find out that his son was executed the same day. The Sun of the Dead, written by Shmelev in 1923, is widely considered to be one of the most poignant and moving accounts of the horrors of the civil war and Red Terror. There is no doubt that he knew who Gleb Bokii was and that Bokii was, even if indirectly, responsible for his own private tragedy. Shmelev also knew that he was the brother of his close friend, Natalia. The only person who ever broke the trust by making this secret public was Nina Berberova. In 1946, she very publicly fell out with the Bunins and their circle and was subsequently excluded and never mentioned again in Russian “polite society” in Paris, other than in very derogatory terms. This revelation in Berberova’s The Italics Are Mine came in a line next to Natalia’s name at the end of the book. It was considered by many at the time of the book’s publication in 1972 to be Berberova’s personal revenge against Bunin and his close circle, which, of course, included the Kulmans. In that circle’s view, with its “old-­fashioned” values, this revelation would be regarded as a stab in the back, a shocking violation, and betrayal of trust and confidence. But of course, by 1972 most of these people, including the Kulmans, were dead and could neither times. More about it can be found in Nikolai Kulman’s letters to Ivan Bunin published for the first time in this book.

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defend themselves nor express their position, and the author of The Italics Are Mine was well aware of it when she published her book. Natalia never used her maiden name in emigration and was always known as Mrs. Kulman, or, as in Nadezhda Teffi’s letters, simply “Natalia Ivanovna.” It is worth mentioning, however, that Natalia’s grave in St. Genevieve des Bois clearly reads: Natalia Kulman, née Bokii.

GLEB BOKII: THE CASE OF MYTH CREATION History—and modern history in particular—is often political, and it appears difficult to assume the role of an unprejudiced scholar. Even archive materials, the fundamental primary source of historical knowledge, are so often subjected to volatile interpretations. “History is written by the victors”—this quote, often credited to Winston Churchill, is also subject to ongoing debate. But it would not be an exaggeration to say that no other historical event of the twentieth century produced such fertile ground for creating “angels” and “demons” as the Russian Revolution of 1917, with the once-angels swiftly turning into demons after the end of the Soviet regime in 1991. Needless to say, it happened during Stalin’s reign as well: high school students were instructed to cut portraits of yesterday’s heroes of the nation out of their history textbooks because overnight these heroes became enemies of the same nation. But that was perhaps a case of acute historical pathology.

Figure 23. Gleb and Natalia’s parents

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Figure 24.  Bokii and Uritsky

Figure 25.  Bokii with Maxim Gorky during his visit to Solovki

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Figure 26. A GULAG banknote (1929) with Bokii’s signature on the left

Post-Soviet historiography, overwhelmed by “the truth” that had been regarded as classified information and hidden in restricted access funds for over eighty years, quickly declared, with no time for proper reflection, that e­ verything that was “Red” was by definition evil and everything that was “White” was, by the same definition, good. It is quite easy to see why this happened. The overwhelmingly triumphant victory of the White idea was almost inevitable in post-Soviet discourse as a reaction to decades of the “one party—one ideology” system. As Mikhail Zygar writes: “Post-factum, history always looks fairly logical and both bad will and good will, martyrs and victims appear so obvious.”75 But when we look at history through the prism of individual lives and life stories, theories start crumbling and nothing seems quite so certain: people make wrong choices, change alliances, betray—in full confidence that they are doing the right thing. So perhaps the time has come to depart from ideas and focus on the cause and effect, expressed in those individual stories and memories that, like the pictures that were mentioned earlier, were wrongly attributed and misplaced. The story of Gleb Bokii could potentially illustrate this approach. Surprisingly, the Russian National Library has only two biographies of Gleb Bokii: one, with the catchy Soviet title His Calling was to Defend the 75 Mikhail Zygar′, Imperiia dolzhna umeret′ (The Empire Must Die) (Moscow: Al′pina, 2018).

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­ evolution, was published during perestroika in 1987, while the other, with an R almost Biblical title Temptations of the Chekist Bokii, appeared in 1999.76 Twelve years apart, these two biographies present two different worlds: the former is a classic Soviet-style panegyric to a revolutionary knight in shining armor, although one can only wonder why it was only published in 1987 when this genre of hurrah-literature was definitely not in demand, and why no other biographies of this cult figure had been published in the USSR earlier. The latter is the absolute opposite—the ultimate unmasking and denunciation of a fallen angel, with a highly sarcastic, almost patronizing narrative. Sandwiched between a Soviet and a post-Soviet account of Gleb Bokii’s life is Solzhenitsyn’s The GULAG Archipelago. Of course, this book was categorically not within the official Soviet discourse, but chronologically it falls into that epoch, even though it was only available in an underground ­samizdat edition.77 What is remarkable in this pyramid of memory is that while the two Bokii biographies represent perfect examples of m ­ anufactured, politicized history produced by two diametrically opposite ideologies, ­Solzhenitsyn’s account represents personal memory in its pure form. We will come back to it later, but first let’s look at Gleb Bokii’s life in its factual representation, which appears remarkably consistent in both accounts, despite their differences. Back in prerevolutionary St. Petersburg, in 1897, Natalia Kulman (then Bokii) and her two brothers took part in a demonstration, and were arrested and released on their father’s word of honor. As previously mentioned, this effort cost him his life. While Natalia and her older brother, Boris, swore never to take part in any revolutionary activities as a mark of respect to their father’s memory, Gleb’s life took a completely different course: he decided to dedicate his life to the cause of punishing those “oppressors” who, he felt, were responsible for his father’s death. And punish them he did. In 1900 Gleb joined the RSDRP(B) (The Russian Socialist Democratic Labor Party [of the Bolsheviks]) and by 1904 was appointed chairman of the party’s St. Petersburg branch. He took an active part in the 1905–1907 76 T. Alekseeva et al., Dovereno zashchishchat′ revoliutsiiu (Entrusted to Defend the R ­ evolution) (Moscow: Politliteratura, 1987); and V. Berezhkov, Iskushenie chekista Bokiia (Temptations of the Chekist Bokii) (Moscow: GIORD, 1999). 77 Written in 1958–1961, during the Khruschev Thaw, the manuscript was confiscated by the KGB in 1973, but a copy was smuggled out of the USSR and the book was first published in Russian in France in late 1973. Typed copies were secretly circulated in the USSR, although possession of the book was a criminal offence. It was first officially published in the USSR in 1989 and in 2009 it became part of Russian secondary schools’ curriculum.

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­ evolution, was arrested twelve times between 1907 and 1917 and spent R eighteen months in isolation during one of those arrests. He was then exiled to Siberia but returned to the St. Petersburg revolutionary scene in early 1917. Gleb Bokii was a delegate at the famous April 1917 Conference and the 7th RSDRP(B) Congress, which set out Lenin’s agenda for overthrowing the tsarist regime and first unveiled the “All Power to the Soviets” slogan. From April 1917 to March 1918, Bokii was the secretary of Petrograd’s RSDRP(B) Committee and was one of the key figures in the October 1917 revolt that, to the total surprise of the whole world and the party itself, brought the Bolsheviks to power. In March 1918, Bokii was appointed deputy chairman of the Petrograd Cheka and, when his boss, Moisei Uritsky, was assassinated on August 30, 1918 by the anti-Bolshevik Leonid Kannegisser, Bokii took his place. This assassination signaled the official beginning of the Red Terror and Natalia Bokii’s little brother Gleb was there to implement it. There was perhaps no better ground in the whole of Russia for “exterminating the aristocracy, nobility, and the bourgeoisie—the former people” than Petrograd in 1918. It was Gleb Bokii who signed the execution papers for thousands and thousands of his own “former people”—those of nonproletarian origin or those who had links with the “White emigration,” including, for example, Anna Akhmatova’s husband, the poet Nikolai Gumilev, as well as many of the Romanovs who had not been lucky enough to escape by that time. According to Andreev and Berezhkov’s book, those who remember him at the time described him as “a sophisticated and cold-blooded executioner,”78 with the word “sophisticated” referring to Gleb’s background, rather than the way those executions were carried out. However, some sources state that Bokii was more moderate in his views about how to carry out the Red Terror than some of his peers, including Zinoviev, and generally opposed the idea of a full-scale extermination of “the former people”—but he was clearly overpowered.79 Another example of his relative liberalism was his part in securing the safe passage of Grand Duke Gavriil Konstantinovich (one of Nikolai Kulman’s former pupils) from Petrograd in 1918, as mentioned earlier.80 78 Berezhkov, Iskusheniia chekista Bokiia, 23. 79 Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power. The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). 80 In fact, Bokii was probably returning a debt to Dr. Manukhin who treated him in exile in 1907, when Bokii suffered from tuberculosis. As it happens, Manukhin also treated Maxim Gorky and Gavriil Konstantinovich Romanov in Petrograd in 1918. We will

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By then the future Natalia Kulman was still using both her maiden name, Bokii, and her first married name, Likhareva, as is evident from both her prerevolutionary publications and the archive materials that contain her letters, bills, and a will. Many sources erroneously claim that Natalia had no contact with her famous revolutionary brother in the years that followed their father’s death. In fact, she did: there are a number of letters and telegrams dated 1908–1911 that prove that the relationship was not altogether terminated, even though it was probably not a straightforward affair: Gleb Bokii lived under pseudonyms, often in exile, prison, or undercover.81 From Nikolai Kulman’s letter to Ivan Bunin82 we know that by 1918 Natalia was in the south of Russia, near the city of Nikolaev. Did she know what her brother became at the time? Did she know what he was doing? Almost certainly. But we will never know for sure—this was not something that was ever mentioned or discussed amongst those who knew Natalia in later life. Although she occasionally mentions her brother Boris in her letters to Vera Bunina, Gleb is, unsurprisingly, not mentioned once. On the other side of this divide, all members of the OGPU (which succeeded the Cheka in 1923 and became the NKVD in 1934) were subjected to regular checks on their links with the White emigration and so, by 1919, Gleb Bokii would certainly have severed all links with his sister’s family, at least officially. Gleb Bokii’s next career high within the OGPU was no less ominous: he is universally credited in both Soviet and post-Soviet sources as one of the key architects of the GULAG system, a fact that is not mentioned at all in his Soviet biography. In fact, in her book, Anne Applebaum refers to him as “the OGPU boss in charge of concentration camps.”83 Solzhenitsyn’s account fills this major gap: Solovki, the once remote monastery in the Onega Lake that had been used in the past to exile heretics, was, in the early 1920s, turned into the first “­exemplary” model of a new Soviet correction system where, in theory, those who “lost their way” would be put right. In the famous opening scene of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, the poet Bezdomny, on hearing of the three proofs by Immanuel Kant that God exists, says it would be a really good idea to “send this Kant to Solovki for three years”! come across Manukhin’s name later in the book. See Tat′iana Grekova, Tibetskii lekar′ kremlevskikh vozhdei (Tibetan Healer of Kremlin Leaders) (St. Petersburg: OLMA Media Grup, 2004). 81 RGALI, fond 1555. 82 See letter 13 (Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin). 83 Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 57.

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Meanwhile, in the real Solovki, a boat named after Gleb Bokii was transporting prisoners from the mainland to the actual camp. In The GULAG Archipelago84 we read that for thousands of prisoners, this name signaled the start of the new “corrective” phase of life which, for so many, ended in death.85 Solovki even had its own “currency,” with every note carrying a facsimile of Gleb Bokii’s regal signature (see fig. 25). There are several photographs of Bokii accompanying Maxim Gorky during the latter’s visit to Solovki in June 1929, an event that is also described in great detail in Solzhenitsyn’s novel (see fig. 24). Both appear in a somewhat reflective mood, and in retrospect, there was quite a lot to reflect upon. Maxim Gorky, once a friend and a huge admirer of Bunin, who spent a number of summers at Gorky’s villa in Capri before the revolution, chose to return to the USSR at Stalin’s personal invitation to become an official proletarian “classic.”86 The trip to Solovki was undoubtedly one of those great PR exercises in which Gorky was to tell the world about the wonderful new c­ orrection system, masterminded, among others, by Gleb Bokii. The architect showed the Soviet classic around. One particularly poignant episode in Solzhenitsyn’s The GULAG Archipelago describes a fourteen-year-old prisoner coming out of the crowd saying: “‘Listen, Gorky. What they are showing you here now is all a lie. Do you want to know the truth?’” The author said he did, but demanded that he be left alone with the boy; the camp’s management and guards had no choice but to obey. They were alone and talked for almost two hours on June 22, 1929. Gorky ended his trip and departed the next day—on the Gleb Bokii steamer—to write a glowing report of this marvel of the new Soviet correction system. The boy was executed immediately on his departure. The truth about Gleb Bokii’s “exemplary correction establishment” did, however, get out: a certain Sozerko Malsagov, a former White officer, miraculously escaped Solovki and fled via Finland in May 1925. He wrote a book appropriately called An Island Hell, which was published in London in 1926. In many ways, this book precedes Solzhenitsyn’s format and narrative in 84 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The GULAG Archipelago (1918–1956), trans. Thomas P Whitney and Harry Willets (London: The Harvill Press, 2003). 85 A picture of that boat can be seen in Applebaum’s Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps. 86 Maxim Gorky introduced Bokii to his other friend, H. G. Wells, who visited Soviet Russia in the 1920s. It was indeed an amazingly small world: H. G. Wells later had a villa in Grasse, which was in a walking distance from the Bunins’ Belvedere, so often visited by the Kulmans. Furthermore, he shared that villa with Gorky’s ex-mistress, Moura Budberg, also known as the “Red Mata Hari.”

The People Behind the Autograp

that it essentially presents memories of people who were in the camp in the early 1920s (what Akhmatova would later call the “vegetarian years”): their stories, their everyday lives, Malsagov’s escape from the camp. Less politicized than The GULAG Archipelago (written much later, in the not-so-vegetarian years), the book is somehow more harrowing. An Island Hell has now been mostly forgotten and is only available online.87 The photographs of Bokii and Gorky together are striking: they do not smile, they do not pose, and they do not look, even remotely, victorious. In fact, they seem weary and tired—like former true believers who have found themselves caught in the trap of a tragic mistake with no way out. Bokii is cuddling a puppy(!) while Gorky looks old and sad, staring into the distance, not at the camera. Gleb Bokii played a key part in a secret and complex operation that would bring the ailing writer back to Soviet Russia from his self-imposed exile to become a reluctant and tragic figurehead. Gorky later went to Moscow, where he died in 1936 under suspicious circumstances and was given a state funeral with Stalin and Molotov in attendance. The reason Gleb Bokii was in charge of this operation is that as early as 1921 he was instructed to set up and manage one of the most secret departments within the NKVD apparatus: the Spetsotdel (Special Department). Its original mission was to develop complex cryptographic systems, secret codes and ways of breaking them, listening devices, advanced electronic surveillance, and other technologies to be used, initially, to intercept the communications of foreign embassies in Moscow and provide a confidential channel for information from Soviet embassies abroad. The department’s research was also used in counterespionage, the recruitment of agents, and so on. A ­ ccording to various, mostly post-Soviet sources, Spetsotdel developed highly sophisticated hypnotic techniques, and investigated telepathy, magnetism, and even the occult. One unofficial brief included research into extending the lifespan of party leaders, triggered by Lenin’s unexpectedly early death in 1924 at the age of fiftythree. The young Soviet state could not afford to risk another leader’s untimely demise, and Bokii employed experts in these esoteric fields. Reportedly, he was too generous, in his GPU colleagues’ views, with the experts’ salaries and elite apartments in central Moscow. He worked closely with Alexander Barchenko, an expert in Kabbalah, Sufism, Kalachakra, and shamanism. 87 S. A. Malsagoff, An Island Hell (London: A. M. Philpot, 1926), https://archive.org/details/ 1926AnIslandHellMalsagoff/page/n1.

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Georgy Chicherin, the first People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs (1918–1930) and one of Bokii’s few fellow Russian ex-noblemen in the Soviet state apparatus, called Bokii “a keeper of all secrets.” Some post-Soviet literary scholars suggest that the research to extend the life of Soviet leaders carried out by Bokii’s secret department was partly an inspiration for Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog. There is also a popular hypothesis that the character of Gleb Bokii is part of a complex picture that would later become Woland, the protagonist of Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita—the one who utters the words “Manuscripts don’t burn.” Needless to say, all these suggestions are open to interpretation.88 Apart from the overall narrative and general focus on the good versus evil dilemma, what separates the two biographies of Gleb Bokii is their grand finale. The glorious revolutionary saga of 1987 finishes abruptly: “In 1937 the life of this passionate revolutionary ended tragically.”89 No explanation, no detail, no comment, no postscript: what happened to Gleb Bokii, who, as the title suggests, was destined to “defend the revolution”? The 1999 biography, on the other hand, concludes in a surprisingly reflective and nonjudgmental afterword, which, in particular, says: “Perhaps the time has not come for us to fully appreciate or comprehend the whole complexity and controversy of that period and thus, its leaders.”90 Bokii’s faith in his life’s work suffered a considerable blow after Lenin’s death in 1924, when he gradually started to realize that Stalin’s model of the country’s present and future was very far removed from what he believed was Lenin’s vision. As Bokii suspected, Stalin neglected the cause that Bokii had so passionately served since his own conversion to Bolshevism, the cause that saw him betray his own background and become responsible for the misery of thousands—if not millions—of innocent people. According to Berezhkov’s book, it was that tragic disillusion that led Bokii towards mysticism and the occult in his capacity as head of the Spetsotdel. In a way, he followed in his great-grandfather’s steps: Academician Mikhail Vasilievich Ostrogradsky also turned to mysticism. Gleb Bokii was arrested in his office on May 16, 1937 after he allegedly casually said to a colleague: “I don’t care about your Stalin. I was put here by 88 More information about Spetsotdel and its controversial lines of research can be found in Jonathan Haslam, Near and Distant Neighbours: A New History of Soviet Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 89 Alekseeva et al., Dovereno zashchishchat′ revoliutsiiu, 318. 90 Berezhkov, Iskushenie chekista Bokiia, 189.

The People Behind the Autograp

Lenin.”91 On November 15, 1937, he was charged with spying for the British, being a member of an anti-Party group, and conspiring to assassinate Stalin. Bokii was executed immediately after his sentence was read out of and, according to sources quoted in Berezhkov’s book, appeared incredibly, almost eerily, calm and serene, which the executioners found unnerving. Natalia Kulman wrote several letters to Vera Bunina in autumn 1937 and winter 1938, but none of them, as previously said, mentions her brother. Did she know? She must have done—it would definitely have been in the Soviet papers that another “traitor” and “enemy of the people” had been unmasked. These papers were available in Paris. Less than twenty years later, following Khrushchev’s speech that denounced Stalin’s personality cult, Gleb Ivanovich Bokii was rehabilitated as a victim of “repressions.” The mass rehabilitations have stirred up controversy ever since. Many of the architects of the Red Terror and the Gulags, as well as those taking an active part in the Great Terror of the 1920s and the 1930s, including Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bokii, and hundreds of others, were rehabilitated together with millions of their direct victims. Other key figures—Yagoda, Ezhov, Beria92—were not, however. One of those innocent victims of the Great terror was Nikolai Kulman’s only brother, Alexander Karlovich Kulman. Born in 1874, he graduated from the Novgorod Seminary, one of the oldest in Russia, and in 1898 became the priest of a small church in Borovenka, near Novgorod, where he served from 1900 until 1937. Father Alexander taught religious studies in a small local school before the revolution. On September 21, 1937 he was arrested and executed two months later by order of the local troika commission—another invention of Gleb Bokii. However, while Alexander Kulman is mentioned in the Russian Orthodox Church’s list of martyrs, no reliable information can be found to confirm whether he was ever officially rehabilitated—as opposed to Gleb Bokii. Father Alexander Kulman’s life and death became an i­nspiration for Nikolai Kulman’s son, Vladimir, who was later to become Archbishop Methodius. Natalia Kulman’s other brother, Boris Bokii, was, like her, deeply affected by their father’s death and swore to never take part in any revolutionary 91 Ibid., 187. 92 Genrikh Yagoda (1891–1938), Nikolai Ezhov (1985–1940), Lavrentii Beria (1899–1953) were all heads of the NKVD during the Great Terror. All three were executed as “enemies of the people.”

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activity. Boris became a prominent geology and mining scholar. He stayed in Russia, becoming professor of the Petrograd (later—Leningrad) Mining Institute, but somehow managed to stay in touch with Natalia after her emigration. Natalia would often mention him in her letters to Vera Bunina, telling of her desperate attempts to help when Boris was seriously ill. Boris Bokii’s relatively early death in 1927 almost certainly saved him from disappearing into the GULAG camps, so carefully designed by his own brother: following Sergey Kirov’s assassination in 1934 most of the “former people” of Leningrad became prime targets of class purges and Boris Bokii would have been a strong candidate.93 The mysterious and deeply controversial figure of Gleb Bokii still attracts interest in contemporary Russia, not all of it academic. There is a conspiracy theory, for instance, about his role in alleged attempts to conceal the fact that Lenin was never actually shot in August 1918.94 Bokii appears in many works of both Soviet and post-Soviet literature and film: Paulina Dashkova’s acclaimed trilogy The Source of Happiness features him as one of its central characters and the infamous boat Gleb Bokii appears in Zakhar Prilepin’s award-winning novel Retreat (2014). We started this chapter by saying that there are many missing pieces in this story of two people who happened to live in one of the most turbulent periods of Russian history. And yet by trying to recreate their lives and their various connections with other people prior to 1917, one can see how these private stories and memories can open up a layer of history in its much broader sense. They remain deeply personal and, therefore, much more tangible than any “new angle” offered by interpretations of events. Its causes and effects embedded in daily life, friendships, family, associations, love affairs, work, and play, the Russian Revolution was a human tragedy.

93 Bokii’s first wife, Sofia Aleksandrovna Bokii-Moskvina (1887–1938), with whom he had two daughters, was declared an “enemy of the people” and executed. 94 On the evening of August 30, 1918 Lenin was addressing the workers of one of the Moscow factories. When he finished and was heading for a car, a shot was fired. Very soon, Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, who was present at the meeting, was arrested and confessed immediately. Kaplan was executed without trial and her body was bundled into a barrel and set alight under the Kremlin’s wall. One of her judges was Yakov Yurovsky, the executioner of Nicholas II and his family, who was brought in ­especially from Ekaterinburg. Several historians question Kaplan’s actual role in this attempt on Lenin’s life.

CHAPTER 2

The Exodus Foreigners … do not understand that the so-called Russian “exodus” is one of the greatest in world history … and that its members represent and ­express not only old Russia but the Russia of the future. For Russia will either fall, or it will rise again as a land that is National and Free. —Gleb Struve, November 20, 19331

T

he extent of the dramatic events and the total chaos that followed the October 1917 revolution did not allow much time or space for orderly departure. Nothing can illustrate this better than the bare figures: as mentioned earlier the population of Petrograd went from almost 2.5 million in 1917 to 705,000 in 1920. People of all classes fled Petrograd. Most of them headed south: Kiev, Odessa, and the Crimea were still not fully taken by the Reds. As Nadezhda Teffi writes in her memoirs: “I left for Kiev only because someone said you could still—unbelievably—buy bread there!”2 The journey, or the flight, was unpredictable and highly dangerous. One sentiment was quite common: people left their homes, possessions, lives behind, confident that all this “­nonsense” would be over in a couple of months and they would return to their old lives. Those who stayed behind in cold, hungry, and dangerous Petrograd—a ­glittering European capital just two years ago—remembered that one could walk into any apartment and often find a table that had been laid for dinner or an opened book waiting to be read. The Kulmans’ last address in Petrograd was flat 5, 19 Vvedenskaya Street in the fashionable Peterburgskaya Storona, just a few minutes’ walk from the Neva, the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Marble Palace, and the famous Petersburg Zoo. According to Zinaida Gippius, in 1918 the few surviving animals

1 2

Quoted in Thomas Marullo, Ivan Bunin: The Twilight of Émigré Russia (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002). Nadezhda Teffi, Moia letopis′ (My Chronicle) (Moscow: Prozaik, 2015).

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Figure 27.  The Kulmans’ house in St. Petersburg today

there were fed the corpses of those who were executed in their hundreds daily in the Peter and Paul Fortress next door. Nikolai Karlovich’s last record of employment states “up to 1918”: that was the year when he joined the Volunteer Army and was fighting in the South. His official wife, Ekaterina, and the children appear to have moved to Nikolaev where some still attended schools. Natalia Ivanovna had some family in Kiev and in the south of Russia (now Ukraine), so it would be reasonable to suggest that later in 1918, once the situation in Petrograd became seriously dangerous and shortages of food turned into a proper famine, she followed Nikolai, leaving everything behind: hundreds of letters, telegrams, bills, cheque books, bank statements, her will, precious family photographs, and diaries.3 She would never see Petersburg again and the Kulmans would never return to their flat on Vvedenskaya Street. Could she have thought this as she was locking her door for the last time? In 1946, a box of documents with the handwritten inscription “N. K. Kulman” was registered by the newly created USSR Central Literary and Arts

3

RGALI, fond 1555.

The Exodu

Archive (now known as the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts, RGALI). This new archive was founded in 1941 to merge collections from a number of other Soviet literature, arts, and history archives, as well as some private ones. The provenance of the Kulman file (or fond) is hypothetical: it was transferred to the newly founded archive from the Ministry of the Interior, which may suggest that it most likely came from Gleb Bokii, Natalia’s ‘famous’ brother. As head of Cheka in Petrograd in 1918, Gleb would have had the absolute authority to access the Kulmans’ flat once it was “nationalized.” Contrary to what one reads in numerous sources regarding Gleb Bokii and his sister, their relationship did not break down until at least Natalia’s emigration, since the file contains a number of short but interesting letters from Gleb to Natalia dated 1910 and 1911. Of course, Natalia’s other brother, Boris, by then a promising academic at the Mining Institute, with whom she remained very close until his untimely death in 1927, also stayed behind in Petrograd, so the documents could have stayed in his family, with Gleb’s permission—providing that the brothers were still in contact then. The files could also have been kept by Gleb Bokii and passed on to the archives after his execution in 1937. In one of his letters to Bunin,4 Nikolai Kulman tells a profoundly moving and poignant story, worthy of a Dr Zhivago narrative. Natalia was told by someone that Nikolai, by then serving in Denikin’s army in the Nikolaev area of Southern Russia, had been either sentenced to death or already executed by the Bolsheviks. Natalia refused to believe it and spent four days without sleep desperately trying to get to the place where the execution allegedly happened. The reason she could not sleep was because when she closed her eyes, she would see Nikolai dead. Against all the odds, she found him alive and relatively well: southern Russia was passing from Reds to Whites and vice versa almost every couple of weeks and somehow, miraculously, the captors forgot to execute their prisoners as they fled. The Kulmans swore to never spend a night apart after that, and they never did until Nikolai Karlovich’s death in 1940. This small episode was used by Kulman in a letter to Bunin to excuse himself from an invitation to a congress in Belgrade, explaining that since Natalia could not go, he would have to decline the invitation. This gives us a glimpse of the chaos, lawlessness and everyday horrors of Russia in the grip of its horrendous Civil War. History is made of private memories. After months of uncertainty, separation, and the horrors of the revolution and Civil War, Natalia and Nikolai Kulman were reunited in late 1918. 4

Letter 13 (Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin).

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The V ­ olunteer Army was retreating and most of what remained of the Denikin men were, in early 1919, evacuated to Constantinople from Odessa and various other ports in Crimea—Kerch, Sevastopol and Yalta,—as the Reds advanced and the south of Russia was eventually taken back from the Whites and the Entente and German control. The remnants of Baron Vrangel’s White army were evacuating from various Crimean and Southern Russia’s ports, as well as those few of the Romanovs who miraculously survived being kept under house arrest near Yalta in some of their former villas.5 The chaos and desperation of those days are described in Ivan Bunin’s The Cursed Days—made even more poignant by the fact that this book is based on Bunin’s actual diary written as the events were unfolding in Odessa. It is not at all surprising, therefore, that there is no official record as to when exactly, and from which port, the Kulmans fled Russia. Most sources point to late 1918 or early 1919.6 It is known, however, that like hundreds of thousands of others, they started their emigration in Constantinople, moving on to Belgrade and then Prague before they finally arrived in Paris. According to some archives, in Belgrade Kulman edited one of the first émigré newspapers Svoboda (Freedom) and also taught Russian literature in Prague and Belgrade Universities. However, no documentary evidence of his employment there remains—perhaps he was asked to deliver a set of lectures, but it was certainly not a formal arrangement that could be traced. Another common entry in various accounts of Nikolai Kulman’s pre-Paris life is that he briefly served as tutor to Alexander, then heir to the Serbian throne, who became king in 1922. This is an interesting connection—Kulman’s former pupil, Ioann Konstantinovich, one of Grand Duke Konstantin’s sons who was executed in Siberia in 1918, was married to Elena, King Alexander’s sister. It could, of course, have been an informal arrangement based on their former lives and mutual acquaintances in St. Petersburg, as they both belonged to the so-called “Marble Palace circle.” Nikolai Kulman’s first letter to Ivan Bunin from Paris is dated May 1923 and congratulates the Bunins on finding their first villa in Grasse, Mont Fleuri. Soon they would move to the now famous Belvedere. Today, Russian tourists still wander around Grasse trying to find “that very Belvedere.” Indeed, this now 5 See Alexander, Great Duke of Russia, Once a Great Duke (Plano, TX: Borodino Books, 2017). 6 Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) Archives, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg.

The Exodu

Figure 28. Bunin in the garden of Belvedere in Grasse, 1928

deserted villa has become something of a pilgrimage destination: the Bunins lived in Belvedere for almost eighteen years and most of Bunin’s acclaimed works were written there. This is where Vera Nikolaevna received a phone call from Stockholm informing them about Bunin’s Nobel Prize award. It was also the place where the Kulmans used to come and stay. The villa has now been empty for a while—several attempts to turn it into Bunin’s museum have not succeeded, even though there are now two monuments to Bunin in Grasse, one unveiled as recently as 2017. The Bunins reached Paris on March 28, 1920, sailing from Odessa to Constantinople in February 1920, with short stays in Prague and Belgrade. The route of their flight from Russia mirrored that of millions of other Russian émigrés. There is no specific record as to when precisely the Kulmans reached Paris, but according to most sources, by 1922 Nikolai Kulman was working at the Sorbonne, of which more later. Their very first address in what would become their second native city, and in which they would live for the rest of their lives, was in the fashionable Sixteenth arrondissement, at 5 Rue des Belles Feuilles, on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, within walking distance of the Sorbonne, the Champs Elysees, and Trocadero. The house still looks appropriately bourgeois and one would suspect that even in 1922 it was perhaps not the cheapest renting option. But, as we remember from Nikolai’s business interests back in prerevolutionary St Petersburg, he had always been quite savvy with money and had good connections. This certainly continued in Paris: apart from his usual academic, teaching, and writing duties, Nikolai was also on the board of the Russian Treasury Abroad, an organisation that raised money for various charitable

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causes ­supporting the Russian émigrés in Paris, as well as The Russian Trade and Finance Association. In 1925 Professor Kulman secured a tenured post teaching Russian language and literature at the Sorbonne—there is quite a lot about that in his letters to the Bunins—and later, when his colleague and friend Emile Haumant retired in 1929, he became the first dean of the Department of Russian Language, Literature, and History who hailed from outside France.7 Kulman also managed to find time and energy to carry on his St. Petersburg routine of freelancing in other places: at various times in 1920s and 30s he taught Russian in the Russian-French Institute, as well as in various private schools around Paris. Compared to thousands of their compatriots struggling in Paris, Nikolai and Natalia must have been doing reasonably well financially and could afford a nice apartment in a prestigious area of Paris. Nikolai Karlovich certainly was unusually lucky to continue doing his old job in exile. Hundreds of former professors, doctors, and lawyers drove Paris taxis, worked shifts at the Renault factory in the suburbs, or, as was the case with one Russian princess, served as toilet attendants. What did change quite dramatically compared to Nikolai Kulman’s fairly apolitical life before 1917, is that in Paris he became one of the most visible public face—and very passionate voices—of anti-Bolshevism. That was not unusual for those prerevolutionary liberals who appeared almost reborn, once their intellectual disputes and discussions, mostly conducted in the comfort of cozy salons of Moscow and St. Petersburg, accompanied by readings of symbolist poetry, were replaced by personal, and very real, experiences of the two revolutions, the bloody Civil War, and, if lucky, fleeing their country with nothing on crowded cargo ships. The Kulmans’ letters contain plenty of references to people such as that. In a way, his own fairly reluctant politicization mirrors what happened to Bunin, who was also fairly apolitical prior to emigration. In one of his letters to Bunin, written in 1928, Kulman says: “I would so much rather not touch politics at all and instead focus on my research in history and literature.”8 In the 1920s Bunin, who was not interested in politics back in Russia, suddenly found himself appointed, in the words of Zinaida Gippius, “The Russian literature’s Prime Minister,” and, by extension, the moral and artistic voice of a huge diaspora, scattered all over the world, who tried to do everything to keep their culture alive until they could go home. It is important to remember that 7 8

Most sources state that he was appointed dean in 1922, which is not quite correct. Letter 12 (Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin).

The Exodu

in the early years of Russia Abroad, from about 1919 up to the early 1930s, many people genuinely believed that they would be going home soon. These people—and the Kulmans and the Bunins were certainly amongst them—saw their mission in doing everything in their power to speed up the collapse of the Bolshevist regime (or, as Bunin put it in his famous speech, the “TartarBolshevik yoke”)9 and preserve “the great Russian language and culture” that was being destroyed at that time. Demographically, this part of Russian diaspora was quite unique in that it largely represented the educated classes, the crème de la crème of prerevolutionary Russia, its best writers, critics, artists, and intellectuals, for whom ­language, literature, and culture in general was an organic, fundamental, and integral part of life. Both Bunin and Kulman (as well as their wives, according to the original list of speakers)10 took active parts in the famous gathering in Paris on February 16, 1924, which later was seen as the meeting that helped define “The Mission of the Russian Emigration”—after a brilliant and passionate speech delivered there by Bunin. Kulman’s address was entitled “The Cultural Mission of the Russian Emigration.” As seems to be an ongoing case, Bunin’s speech is well known and available,11 and Kulman’s name strangely disappeared from the list of speakers in later publications, even though others such as Merezhkovsky or Kartashev remained. No transcript of Kulman’s speech could be traced. The letters that follow will show that in emigration Professor Kulman assumed a central role in a number of high-profile political, social, and cultural projects and initiatives of the early 1920s and the late 1930s. They will also highlight his part in the Congress of Russia Abroad (1926) and his attempts to persuade the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, whom many saw as a natural successor to the Russian throne, to take over what remained of the house of Romanov.12 Kulman was also passionate about making sure that children of Russian émigrés received quality education and did not forget their native language, literature, history, and culture. After all, those young people had to be ready

9 See Ivan Bunin, Missiia russkoi emigratsii (Mission of the Russian Emigration) (Moscow: Litres, 2019). 10 Vera Bunina was on the organization committee for this historic meeting, while Natalia Kulman was originally named as one of the speakers. 11 See, for example, Kåre J Mjør, Reformulating Russia: The Cultural and Intellectual Historiography of Russian First-Wave Émigré Writers (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 41. 12 See letter 4 (Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin) and commentary.

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Figure 29.  Kolos

to restore their country when they went back.13 Kulman was behind a number of charitable initiatives that aimed to raise money for schools and orphanages for Russian children who lost their parents or whose parents could not afford to educate them. Here is only one example: in 1926 Nikolai Kulman organized, and partly financed, a publication of the book Kolos (Wheat Stalk), subtitled “Russian Writers to Russian Youth”—a selection of short stories by the leading authors and poets, which included Bunin, Kuprin, Teffi, Tsvetaeva, Balmont, Zaitsev, Shmelev, Peter Struve, and many others who all agreed to publish their work for free. All the proceeds went to support the orphanage for Russian boys in Chaville, near Paris. In his foreword to this publication, Nikolai Kulman wrote:

13 Of course, the reality proved to be very different. Not many émigrés went back, and by the mid-1940s Bunin said in an interview: “Young ones are now bored when they read War and Peace and they do not understand Natasha Rostova. They look upon her as if she was someone from Greenland. …”

The Exodu Raising our children in the spirit and tradition of Russian culture is by far the most important mission of Russian emigration, which is now dispersed across many countries. Future citizens of new Russia must save the culture that is now being systematically destroyed there. It would be the task of their generation to reinstate Russia in its legitimate place amongst other European countries, to restore its civil order and liberties, its thought and arts. And it is our task and duty to allow our children to study without s­ uffering, without feeling cold and hungry, to protect them from homelessness, preserve their childhood in all its freshness and innocence, to raise them in love, faith and belief in fairness, save them from destructive denationalisation so that they don’t feel foreigners in their native land when she calls them back to make it great again. … Do not abandon our children! Donate as much as you can—however hard your personal experience has been in the recent past, find it in your heart to remember your own childhood and help our young ones to have one too.14

Figure 30. Group photograph onside the Kolos edition. Nikolai Kulman is second on the right, next to Ivan Shmelev 14 Kolos—Russkie pisateli russkomu iunoshestvu (Wheat Stalk—Russian Writers to Russian Youth) (Paris: Sheville, 1927), 4.

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Nikolai Kulman can be seen in the center on the photograph inside the book. But, as always, he remains nameless. In 1925 Kulman published a book called How Shall We Teach Russian to Our Children?, which became the main resource for teaching Russian to heritage speakers and saw numerous editions over the next two decades. A copy of this book with his dedication to Bunin is now kept in RAL. Kulman’s Elementary Grammar of Russian, first published in St. Petersburg back in 1913, also saw dozens of editions in France. The last one, edited by Natalia, was published in 1949 and is still available in the YMCA Press shop in Paris. Kulman became a regular contributor to the leading émigré newspapers and magazines, especially Vozrozhdenie (Renaissance), Sovremennye zapiski (Contemporary chronicles), where he was in charge of literary reviews, Rossiia i slavianstvo (Russia and the Slavic world), Russkii mir (The Russian world), and some others—not something he had been known for in St. Petersburg. He also wrote for French literary magazines, where he published reviews of new titles of émigré and, later, Soviet literature. He gave public lectures (both in Russian and French) about Tolstoy, Pushkin, and Gogol under the auspices of The RussianFrench Conversations initiative. Some details of his various projects, including his translation of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, lobbying and campaigning for Nobel Prize candidates or securing more stipends for struggling Russian writers in Belgrade, are reflected in his letters to the Bunins as perfect examples of living history. However, there are no letters that address Kulman’s concerns of the late 1930s—for example, his key role in celebrating Kuprin’s anniversary, accompanied by various charitable concerts, readings, and publications, or the 1937 Pushkin Celebrations and his editorship of the one-off edition of Pushkin newspaper. While Kulman’s latest letter to Bunin is dated 1935 and the one to Vera Bunina is from late 1938, it appears that a corpus of letters of that period could have been lost in the war.15 Another new role, or, rather, a mission, that Kulman took upon himself was his relentless campaign against the new orthography of the Russian language officially adopted by the Bolsheviks in December 1917. The famous saying about the United Kingdom and the United States, often attributed to Bernard Shaw, held true here as well: Russia Abroad and the USSR became “two countries separated by a common language.” As mentioned earlier, Kulman had once been a member of the Sub-Commission for the New Orthography established in 1904 under the auspices of the Imperial Academy 15 See more on this in the commentary to Nikolai Kulman’s letters.

The Exodu

of Sciences in St. Petersburg and chaired by the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich. In emigration, Kulman categorically disagreed with, in his words, the “bastardization” of Russian orthography. The idea behind the new orthography was to abandon some archaic rules and simplify the written language, making it more accessible to “the masses” in what was then, in many rural remote parts, an illiterate country. However, it appeared that the result of that reform, implemented by the Bolsheviks, completely outraged Kulman. And he was by no means alone—Bunin never agreed for any of his works to be published in the new orthography, and it did cause some serious problems with his publishers in America after the Second World War. There is even some anecdotal evidence that one of his reasons to not go back to the USSR despite numerous invitations and assurances of a happy and prosperous life, was that he would rather die than see his works in “these bastards’ language” (Bunin used to apply a much more colorful expression here). To the end of their lives, the Kulmans and the Bunins all wrote using the old orthography. Natalia Kulman was very upset when her Russian typewriter broke down—it could not be replaced since no one was making typewriters with the pre-reform Russian keys any more. Bunin wrote to one of his publishers in 1949: I know that you and your journal use the new orthography. That is precisely why I am asking that you make printing blocks for my signature … to show that I write in the old orthography, for the new one is absolutely insufferable for any cultured Russian individual. … I find it offensive to see the name “Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin” written in the new style rather than the old way, which is sacred to Russian literature. No one asked Pushkin’s permission to write his name differently. … It is a repulsive thing to see.16

Kulman also showed a sentimental preference for the letters that the new orthography discarded. The Bunins and the Kulmans saw the new 1926 year in together, as well as many others, and Bunin later wrote in his diary: “Kulman proposed a toast for the letter “ѣ.” The names of the Kulmans and the Bunins on their graves in St. Genevieve de Bois are also spelled in “the old way,” even though by the time the last of them, Vera, died in 1961, the old orthography had been abandoned for almost fifty years. 16 Cited from Marullo, Twilight, 138.

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Figure 31.  7 Rue Boucicaut, Paris, today

In 1925 the Kulmans moved to their second—and final—address in Paris: 7 Rue Boucicaut in the Fifteenth arrondissement. The house, built in 1907, stands in a quiet, elegant, narrow street. It could not have changed much since when the Kulmans lived there. The whole district was heavily bombarded during the Second World War, but number 7 did not suffer. The Kulmans had a three-bedroom flat, which, by the Russian Paris standards of the early 1920s was almost decadent. The Kulmans lived in this house until Nikolai’s death in 1940, and, after that, Natalia lived there alone until she died in 1958. Interestingly, the area has the same feel as the Petrogradskaya Storona in St. Petersburg, where Nikolai Kulman lived most of his life before the emigration. The Seine is only a short stroll away—just like the Neva that was so close to his house on Vvedenskaya Street. Both areas today are full of cafes

The Exodu

and cozy little squares. The architecture also looks similar—both areas were actively developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and St. Petersburg at that time certainly took inspiration from Paris. It is from this address in Boucicaut that the Kulmans’ letters to the Bunins really begin, covering in total a period of over twenty-five years. It should be pointed out that there are some considerable chronological gaps in the correspondence, which are most likely to be a result of a loss of some part of the corpus of the Kulmans’ letters. There is certainly no evidence to suggest that there was ever any falling out between the Bunins and the Kulmans, rather the opposite.17 In one of his letters to Bunin Nikolai says: “Our friendship brings me enormous spiritual joy, so I am counting the days [until we meet].”18 In a letter to Vera Bunina he admits: “I … allow myself this pleasure of talking to you, although, of course, these written conversations are so much less satisfying then when you can see your beloved interlocutor and enjoy this closeness of souls.”19 Closeness of souls it clearly was. Here is an example from Bunin’s diary dated February 12, 1945: “We received such a touching little parcel from Natalia Ivanovna Kulman today—she is truly one of the most extraordinary women I’ve ever known. So grateful.”20 Nikolai Kulman and Vera Bunina became “almost related” in the early 1930s when they were asked to be godparents to a child of a mutual friend—of which there is more in the letters. Of course, they must have had their slight differences—they would not be human if they did not!—but what occasionally comes across while reading through the enormous corpus of Natalia’s letters to Vera and the latter’s entries in her diaries is that these were mostly tiny frictions, to do with, for example, the Kulmans’ friendship with the Shmelevs (who the Bunins were not that keen on) or the fact that Nikolai Kulman was a good friend of Konstantin Balmont (while the Bunins were not, even though Bunin gave a substantial amount of 17 Of course, parts of the Bunins’ archives went missing over the years. In his letter to Yulia Sazonova of December 3, 1952, Bunin writes: “… trying to sort out what remains of my archives. So many items perished in the the five years that we were away from Paris” (I. A. Bunin—novye materialy, vol. 3, 311). According to Keith Tribble et al, who provide commentary to these letters, Bunin was wrong and the nine suitcases that contained his archives were saved during the war due to the combined efforts of Nina Berberova, Boris Zaitsev, and Mother Maria. See ibid., 312. 18 Letter of September 2, 1927 (Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin). 19 Letter of January 4, 1928 (Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina). 20 Ustami Buninykh, 230. In winter 1945 the Bunins were stuck in Grasse and were close to starving. Paris was not much better, but Natalia kept sending regular food parcels to the south.

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money to Balmont out of his Nobel Prize win). But when in 1947 it came to a question of true loyalty during the Bunins’ very public fallout with Maria Tsetlina, the Zaitsevs, Berberova, and others, Natalia Kulman, who was by then a widow, severed all links with those who, she felt, betrayed her beloved friends and showed her full support and genuine devotion to the Bunins. This is seen in her letters to Vera Bunina, which will be published separately. It appears that most letters were written when the Bunins were spending lengthy periods of time at their villa in Grasse or when the Kulmans were away from Paris. The Bunins’ Paris address, at 1 Rue Jacques Offenbach, also in the fashionable XV arrondisment, is only about twenty minutes’ walk across the bridge towards Bois de Boulogne from the Kulmans’ house, so there was no need for letters, except for some official invitations. Finally, a few words on the total number of letters presented in this book: according to Anthony J. Heywood’s Catalogue of the I. A. Bunin, V. N. Bunina, L. F. Zurov and E. M. Lopatina Collections, the Russian Archive in Leeds (RAL) currently holds a total of 31 letters to Ivan Bunin (26 from Nikolai and 5 from Natalia) and 221 letters to Vera Bunina (3 letters from Nikolai and 218 from Natalia), which were written between 1923 and 1958.21 None of them has ever been published before—neither in Russian nor in English.22 As far as the precise number of letters is concerned, while the catalogue lists some of Natalia’s letters as co-signed by Nikolai and vice versa, in fact, these turned out to be not just signatures but full self-contained letters. The Kulmans had a charming habit of writing at the end, or occasionally, even at the beginning of each other’s letters casual postscripts, which, at times, spontaneously grew into quite lengthy autonomous pieces. Nikolai in particular had the habit of adding to his wife’s writing. These extra letters certainly present a special interest and, to a certain extent, their misnumbering seems to continue the unfortunate trend of the “disappearing” Professor Kulman and his legacy.23 All of these newly found add-on letters are included in this book. 21 A. J. Heywood, R. Davies, and D. Rieneker, eds., Catalogue of the I. A. Bunin, V. N. Bunina, L. F. Zurov and E. M. Lopatina Collections (Leeds: Leeds University Press, 2011). 22 Several lines from Nikolai Kulman’s letter to Bunin of January 1934, written in his official capacity of the financial manager of Bunin’s Nobel Prize fund were quoted in Tat’jana Marcenko, Russische Schriftsteller und der Literaturnobelpreis (1901–1955) (Russian Writers and the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1901–1955) (Cologne: Bohlau, 2007). 23 I am very grateful to the Leeds Russian Archive, and in particular, to Richard Davies, for granting me the permission to publish these letters. The reason for this permission is that the Kulmans’ letters are classified as “orphan works.” For some reason, this class mark seems to be expressly appropriate in this case.

The Exodu

Some of the letters contain small handwritten notes in pencil, usually stating the item’s catalogue number and occasionally an abbreviation in Russian that stands for “response.” These were made by Militsa Green24 and most likely date back to the time when she carried out the original inventory of the Bunins’ archive after she inherited it from Leonid Zurov in 1971 and its subsequent arrival in Edinburgh, where Dr Green taught in the University. This was a truly surprising twist in the story of the Bunins archive: at various times before and after Vera Bunina’s death in 1962 both the Americans (Columbia University) and the Soviets (who reportedly engaged a KGB resident of the Soviet Embassy in Paris to assist with this operation) were hoping to become its legal owners, but Leonid Zurov, the Bunins’ rights holder and executor, surprised all by his unexpected decision to give it to his friend instead.25 Dr Green then gave the archive as a gift to Leeds University Library, where its gradual arrival started in 1983 and was completed by 1991. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Kulmans’ letters, in terms of their sheer volume, present one of the most considerable individual holdings in the Bunins’ archive.26 While working through them, I was often frustrated by limitations of time—why can they not be open for twenty-four hours a day like Cambridge college libraries during exams! Another source of confusion was Natalia’s often not ideal handwriting that was not easy to decipher. But always, I kept thinking: all this started with three lines in a book that fell behind its shelf, just an autograph with two unknown names, one very famous name, a date, and a place. And here I am now. Autographs—as well as manuscripts—do not burn … There is another mystery: what happened to the Bunins’ letters to the Kulmans? Judging by the handwritten note “response” on many letters, the ­correspondence was certainly a lively two-way street, and yet, except for one 24 Militsa Green, née Gartier (1912–1998), born in St. Petersburg, was a British academic, author, and archivist, who carried out the enormous task of cataloguing what is now known as The Bunins’ Archive of Leeds University Library. 25 This decision still causes a certain amount of controversy on the Russian side, which claims that no formal will was ever found to certify that Zurov was, indeed, the Bunins’ heir. The Russians also argue that Zurov’s psychiatric condition meant that this transaction could not be deemed fully legal. 26 This certainly applies to the total individual holdings of Natalia Kulman’s letters to Vera Bunina and this is why they will appear separately, in the second part of this book. Just to compare, there are eighty-three letters from N. Teffi, sixty-two letters from G. Adamovich, forty-one in total from the Zaitsevs (once the Bunins’ closest friends), and four from M. Tsvetaeva.

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unfinished letter from Vera Bunina to Natalia Kulman, which is kept in RAL, the fate of the Bunins letters—and the whole of the Kulmans’ archives— remains unknown. As it was mentioned previously, Bunin repeatedly asked his correspondents to destroy his letters after his death. As he predicted, not many followed his advice. Could it be that Natalia Kulman was one of those few who followed this instruction? Presumably, the Kulmans’ archive also contain their books (with Bunin’s, and no doubt, other distinguished autographs), manuscripts,27 and various other papers related to Nikolai’s work. But no trace of those has so far been found despite a number of hopeful leads, which, sadly, turned out to be false hopes. Given that the Kulmans had no children together, it is impossible to establish what happened to the contents of their flat at 7 Rue Boucicaut where they lived for over thirty years before Natalia’s death in 1958. Although there is evidence that Vladimir Nikolaevich Kulman, by then Archbishop Methodius, looked after his stepmother in her final years,28 he lived a life of an ascetic monk since late 1930s, and so he was unlikely to have inherited the Kulmans’ archive. Whatever their stories, the two books with Bunin’s autographs addressed to the Kulmans somehow made their way from Paris via Holland to Cambridge and allowed me to tell the story of these people, who happened to live in “very interesting times.” I will always be grateful for this, as well as for the fact that, as a result, these precious autographs escaped that proverbial fire.

27 Several letters written by Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin contain references to the manuscript of Zhizn′ Arsenieva, which Kulman was editing and regularly sending comments about to Bunin. There are also expressions of gratitude for some more autographs (for example, on God’s Tree—see letter of April 20, 1931 [Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin]). 28 I. A. Bunin—novye materialy, vol. 3, 365.

CHAPTER 3

Note on Translation of Letters

I

n translating the letters from Russian, I tried to retain the old, elegant, pre1917 style of the Kulmans’ letters, although Natalia’s style is much more “down to earth” compared with Nikolai’s professorial Russian. Needless to say, all letters, handwritten as well as typed, were written in pre-1917 orthography. It is interesting to reflect on the choice of words in addresses and signatures that the Kulmans use in their letters, since quite often it is almost impossible to render the nuances of the words they choose into English. For example, most of Nikolai’s letters address Vera Nikolaevna as dorogaia1 (“dear” in English)—and yet, this salutation is quite far removed from its very standard, impersonal, almost bureaucratic English equivalent. In Russian, dorogaia can only be addressed to very close friends and family, and those in the Bunins-Kulmans circle would have been quite careful not to use this form of address unless the relationship was genuinely close, so as not to appear too familiar. On the other hand, when writing to Bunin, Kulman often uses “My highly esteemed and beloved friend,” an address that sounds a little over the top and formal now, while in Russian at that time it was a standard form of address between male friends or colleagues. Sometimes, as other letters to the Bunins show, the route from “highly esteemed and regarded” to “dear” could take a few years. And sometimes, when the relationship was breaking down—as was the case with Maria Tsetlina, Boris Zaitsev, and Nina Berberova in 1947—the reverse journey from “My dearest” to more formal salutations was made. The effect is quite striking. Signatures are even more fascinating in their variety of registers: translating them word for word would inevitably produce some almost embarrassing combinations: “Embracing and kissing you with all my heart and soul,” “I remain deeply, genuinely, respectfully, and loyally yours,” or “Please accept my assurances of total devotion and loyalty,” or “Allow me take you into my 1

Feminine form. The masculine form is dorogoi.

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brotherly arms,” and so forth. These almost untranslatable phrases are a result of syntactic and stylistic differences between English and Russian. A loving or intimate note can be transmitted in Russian by adding an affectionate prefix or suffix, and read quite naturally, even though in English it might appear almost too sweet or overly familiar. In Russian it would register as a little “nineteenth century” but would not sound as though in an inappropriately high register. References are occasionally given to clarify a specific phrase. Interestingly, this idiosyncrasy carries on in signatures where “Yours faithfully/loyally/sincerely” is anything but standard, while in English it is as impersonal as one could get. Therefore, most addresses and signatures written in a formal tone are translated as: “Dear”; salutations such as “My dear” or “My dearest friend(s)” are reserved for more affectionate addresses, unless the shift in tone and register is markedly disproportionate. Russian names always present some challenges: a full Russian name consists of a given name, a patronymic, a surname that might occasionally look like a patronymic, and on top of that the given name has affectionate or diminutive forms, with various suffixes that make it more familiar, affectionate, or, occasionally, derogatory.2 However, the way the Kulmans address the Bunins is quite standard: always first name and patronymic and certainly the polite, formal form of the second-person pronoun Vy, as opposed to the familiar and informal ty. They even refer to each other in their letters in the same way, Nikolai Karlovich and Natalia Ivanovna, never just Natalia/Natasha or Nikolai/Kolya. This seems to be quite common in their circle: for example, even after almost forty years of very close friendship, Teffi always remained Nadezhda Alexandrovna to both the Bunins and the Kulmans. Affectionate or diminutive forms, or even nicknames, were only used in the family. For example, it was well known that Vera Bunina’s nickname for her husband was Yan,3 or very occasionally “Prince”— but no one, except Vera herself, would ever have dared to address Bunin this way, or even as “Ivan,” dropping the patronymic. It would have been out of 2 A good example of this is the way Alexei Tolstoy’s name appears in some letters: Alexei, his full Christian name, is often reduced to Alyosha or Alyoshka (familiar, positive forms). But in some contexts the same Alyoshka might be used in a quite derogatory and patronizing—the way one would address a peasant or a servant. 3 In most English translations it is mistakenly given as “Ian.” The form that Vera used— “Yan”—is a Baltic equivalent of “Ivan” and a specific reference to the Lithuanian origins of Bunin’s ancestors. In her memoirs Besedy s pamiat′iu (Conversations with Memory), Vera says: “I decided to call him Yan because: first, no other woman has ever called him that, and secondly, he was very proud that his family originated from a Lithuanian who had come to live in Russia. He really liked this nickname” (Novyi zhurnal 59 [1960]: 149).

Note on Translation of Letters

the question.4 Only one person seems to have occasionally allowed herself to lovingly call Bunin with a nickname. That was only be the brilliantly witty Nadezhda Teffi, although she only used the nickname “The Only One” in her private letters to Vera Bunina.5 In one of her postscripts, Natalia Kulman refers to Nikolai as “The Viking”—an allusion to his Danish roots and perhaps his love of fishing and hunting. This familiarity in reference is also a sign of Natalia’s close friendship with Vera. Some letters contain a brief commentary by Bunin written on margins, and sometimes a paragraph or a single line is highlighted. These additions are mentioned in the footnotes that accompany each letter. All letters are published with permission granted by the Russian Archive in Leeds (RAL) and are reproduced from autographs of the following catalogue items: • Nikolai Kulman’s letters to Ivan Bunin: MS1066/3417-3445, including seven cosigned by N. I. Kulman; • Nikolai Kulman’s letters to Vera Bunina: MS1067/3702-3704; • Natalia Kulman’s letters to Ivan Bunin: MS1066/3412-341.6 A corpus of letters from Natalia Kulman to Vera Bunina (MS.1067/3483-3701) will be published in Volume Two of this book.

4 Even Galina Kuznetsova, Bunin’s last love, muse and “adopted daughter,” always addressed him as “Ivan Alekseevich” in letters and when referring to him in her memoirs Grasskii dnevnik (The Grasse Diary) (Moscow: Litagent, 2017), 342—although he called her simply “Galya” and used a familiar form ty, rather than the formal Vy. In her private letters to Galina Kuznetsova of late 1930–1960s Vera Bunina refers to Bunin as “Yan.” 5 Teffi, Moia letopis′. 6 The information about the total number of reviewed letters will be given in the relevant chapter.

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CHAPTER 4

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935) 1 May 25, 1923 5 Rue des Belles Feuilles, Paris, XVI [arrondisment] My dear Ivan Alekseevich, It was wonderful to hear from you and to learn that you have finally seem to have settled into a sedentary way of life!1 Until now all the news about you came from G. A. Blokh,2 and all we could understand was that you were frantically looking for somewhere to rent in Cote d’Azur, is that right? Please drop us a line: how are you feeling? Are you working?3 1 In May 1923 the Bunins finally found their first villa in Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, the town where they would live for many years in the 1920–1940s, only occasionally returning to Paris. The first villa was called Mon Fleuri. From 1925 the Bunins lived in the famous Belvedere, where the Kulmans stayed many times, and then in the villa Jeannette. Letters to the Bunins are mostly addressed to Belvedere. 2 Gregory Blokh (1867–1927) was a poet, a lawyer, and a musician. In emigration he lived mostly in Nice. Blokh was involved with Knowing (Future) Russia (1924–1934), a regular publication of articles about the future reorganization of Russia. He published a book of poetry in 1928. Blokh also helped the Bunins while they were house hunting in the south of France. 3 In the first few years after arriving in France, Bunin suffered a period of depression, which was believed to be a delayed reaction to the shocks and traumas of his last few years in Russia, so brilliantly described in his Cursed Days. He also suffered from writer’s block. On February, 8, 1922 Vera Bunina wrote in her diary: “We are again at a crossroads: Czechoslovakia, Germany … the south of France, or … Paris? We do not know, we do not know. I would agree to anything if only Yan [Vera’s name for Bunin] could write” (Ustami Buninykh, vol. 2, 79). Moving to Grasse, in the south of France, originally for the summer of 1923, put a stop to the period of nonwriting. It was in Belvedere that most of Bunin’s masterpieces were created. The end of this creative block was welcomed by Zinaida Gippius, who wrote in 1924: “Ivan Bunin is … first amongst contemporary artist-writers and he has been quiet for some time. But now … he turns back time and … has become more severe and collected, his style more complete. Contemporary literature in Europe has retained its Russian prime minister.” Quoted in T. G. Marullo, Ivan Bunin: From the Other Shore (1920–1933) (Chicago: Ivan R Dee, 1995), 356.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

I haven’t heard from Edmond Jaloux4 yet. If by any chance you write to each other, could you possibly drop a hint that I would really like to know whether he wants me to submit my article about you to his magazine, since I can only finish it by August. M. Tsetlin5 kindly sent me a copy of your full works published by Marx6 but I am not sure whether it’s a complete edition. V. A. Roshkov7 came to see me with his daughter the other day. I am trying to do my best for her but it’s a challenge since her French is not that good yet. You must have heard about Balmont’s evening the other day?8 It wasn’t that well attended and yet, thanks to Madame Pettit’s contribution, we managed to raise some 4,000 francs, so hopefully he will be fine for the time being. An interesting meeting took place today: its official title was “The Society to Fight Antisemitism,” but, in my book, it was more like “The Pogrom Society.” They sent over 1000 invitations but only some 60 people turned up, about 20 of them were pro-monarchist young men. Once the official opening speeches were done, Shirinsky-Shikhmatov9 announced that the hatred towards Jews in today’s 4

Edmond Jaloux (1878–1949) was a French writer and critic whose works regularly appeared in Nouvelles Littéraires. Jaloux also contributed to Le Monde Slav. Kulman’s article “Ivan Bunin: Son activité litteraire en France” was published in Le Monde Slav in April 1928. A copy of this publication with Kulman’s dedication to Bunin is now in RAL (1066/9147). 5 Mikhail Tsetlin (1882–1945) was a writer, publisher, and patron of the arts. Originally a member of the SR Party, which he financed, Tsetlin was in emigration in 1907–1917, and then from 1919 onwards he lived in Paris, Lisbon, and New York. Together with his wife, Maria Tsetlina, he played a key role in the literary and cultural life of prewar Paris. The Tsetlins were close friends and supporters of Bunin—the Bunins even lived in the Tsetlins’ apartment when they first moved to Paris. However, the Bunins’ relationship with Maria Tsetlina (1882–1976) broke down in 1947 (see below). 6 Adolf Marx (1838–1904) set up one of the most successful publishing companies in 1869. The complete works of Bunin were published by Marx Publishing in 1915. 7 Unidentified. 8 Konstantin Balmont (1867–1942) was one of the leading Russian Symbolist poets. Originally Balmont welcomed the February Revolution of 1917 and even took part in a competition for the lyrics of the new Russian anthem to replace “God Save the Tsar,” but soon after the October Revolution he left Russia and lived in France where he struggled both creatively and financially. Balmont was a good friend of the Kulmans and even dedicated his translation of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign to Nikolai Kulman who assisted him with the Old East Slavic. They also vacationed together in Capbreton. 9 Before emigration Count Georgy Shirinsky-Shikhmatov (1890–1942) was a successful publicist and political activist, as well as one of the first Russian military pilots during the First World War. After emigration he lived in Paris, where he worked as a taxi driver, and was head of the National-Maximalists movement. During the Nazi occupation of Paris he chose to wear a yellow armband to show solidarity with the Jews. Shirinsky-Shikhmatov was arrested in 1941 and died in Auschwitz. His father, Count Alexei Shirinsky-Shikhmatov (1862–1930), was a Russian statesman who occupied high positions in the last Romanov

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Russia is so widespread that the future rulers of Russia will not be able to ignore it. Avksentiev10 took these words as justification for future pogroms and exploded into a passionate speech saying that new power cannot be built on spilt blood. Someone in the audience shouted: “And what were you, the socialists, doing after the revolution?!” To which Avksentiev—rather s­tupidly—replied: “And what was the empress11 doing with Rasputin?”—having clearly forgotten that by that stage Rasputin12 had been dead and the empress was under arrest! This provoked quite a reaction from the audience, with some shouting, and the Jewish contingent, which, it should be said, was in the majority, started leaving rather hastily. So what was it if not “The Pogrom Society”? If anything, these gatherings only strengthen the antisemitic mood. Quem vult perdere Juppiter, premum dementat.13 My warmest embrace, etc.14 Nikolai Kulman.

10 11 12 13 14

court and a member of the last Imperial State Council. He emigrated in 1917 and became chairman of the Russian Monarchist Council in Paris. He worked with Nikolai Kulman on the committee organizing the Congress of Russia Abroad (1926)—see below. Nikolai Avksentiev (1878–1943) was one of the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (Esers) and a member of the Provisional Government. In Paris he was the head of the Northern Star, a famous Masons lodge. Empress Alexandra (1872–1918), wife of Nicholas II. Gregory Rasputin was assassinated on 17 (30) December 1916. “Whom the Lord wishes to ruin, he first deprives of reason” (Lat.). Please see the note on translation. In fact, this signature reads: “My warmest embrace. I kiss your hand.”

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

2 5 Rue des Belles Feuilles, Paris, XVI [arrondisment] July 29, 1923 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, We often think of you and Vera Nikolaevna15 but haven’t had any chance to sit down and write to you properly. The last month and a half has been so hectic that I now feel a bit like a hound after a good hunt. Natalia Ivanovna is equally exhausted, both from work and various house chores. Still, we very much hope to be in Nice in about three or four weeks’ time and will let you know as soon as we know for sure. Can’t tell you how much we are both looking forward to seeing you again. Recently I met a certain M. Mongault16 and it turns out he is translating Leskov17 and is also writing a thesis about him. I cannot imagine how anyone can translate The Steel Flea!18 He is also a huge admirer of Grebenshchikov19 and is telling me that his writing is very popular with the French. One can never understand these foreigners! What is it about The Churaevs20 that they find so appealing? Do they just find it exotic—the so-called couleur locale—or is it something else? I personally don’t think that Grebenshchikov can offer any fresh perspective, and even if he could, he is far too fond of himself to be in a position to do so. Apparently, he now believes himself to be a prominent Russian writer and is looking for a great new project to reveal his artistic greatness to the world. How is your work? We cannot wait to read something new. I have just received the second issue of Okno21 and have reread your amazing fairy-tale.22 And that made me think again: how can something like this be ever translated? 15 Vera Nikolaevna Bunina, née Muromtseva (1881–1961), Ivan Bunin’s wife. 16 Henri Mongault (1888–1941), French translator of Russian literature, including the works of Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy. 17 Nikolai Leskov (1831–1895) was a prominent Russian writer who experimented with style and language, often using highly idiomatic structures, which can be challenging to translate from Russian. 18 “Steel Flea” is Leskov’s most famous short story. 19 Georgy Grebenshchikov (1883–1964) was a Russian émigré writer. 20 The Churaevs (1922–1927) is Grebenshchikov’s most critically acclaimed novel. 21 Okno (Window) was a literary magazine established in Paris in 1923 by Mikhail Tsetlin. Only three issues were published. It is not quite clear which of Bunin’s fairy-tales Kulman is referring to here. 22 Bunin’s fairy-tale “O durake Emele kto byl vsekh umnee” (About a Fool Called Emelia, Who Thought He Was the Cleverest of Them All) was written in 1921 and published in Okno in 1923.

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And even if someone does try, how much of its beauty will be either lost or somehow distorted in translation! The other day I thought about A ­ cademician Ferdinand Brunot, a linguist who seems very disillusioned with the great French language and wishes it had more adjectives and more nuances in prepositions, etc. Well, we have both of those in abundance in Russian, of course, and that is why we can translate anything from French, but they cannot really translate anything from Russian! Hope to see you very soon. Please send my love to Vera Nikolaevna. Natalia Ivanovna sends her love too. Be well. All yours, Nikolai Kulman

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

323 July 15, 1925, Paris Dear Ivan Alekseevich, To celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of your literary activity and the fifteenth anniversary of your appointment as academician [of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences],24 a group of your friends and admirers of your talent has decreed to set up a committee consisting of E. P. Kepinova, N. I. Kulman,25 E. N. Vyshnegradskaya, M. G. Levina, Professor I. P. Aleksinsky, Prince V. N. Argutinsky, M. V. Beryatsky, A. I. Vyshnegradsky (recently deceased), P. O. Gukasov, N. Kh. Denisov, L. I. Kepinov, N. K. Kulman, S. G. Lianozov, I. I. Manukhin, P. A. Mikhailov, and S. N. Tretyakov.26 This committee has organized a series of fundraising events and would like to present you with this money to allow you to write in peace and not worry about the financial side of things, at least for a while. As of July 15 of this year we have raised 48,850 francs and expect to raise another 700 francs.27 This sum will be deposited to account no. 6617 with Bank de France Mulhouse, which was opened specially for this purpose. Once you fill in the necessary paperwork, this account is at your full disposal. Any further donations will also be transferred to this account and the bank will notify you of these transactions separately.

23 This is the first of many lacunae in correspondence. It has been established that in these two years the Kulmans stayed with the Bunins at Belvedere in Grasse several times, helped to organize several fundraising events for Bunin (for example, his evening on December 21, 1923), and much more. 24 Bunin was granted the honorary title Academician of the Russian Imperial Academy of ­Sciences in 1909. He was always very proud of this, but used to point out that he was an academician who never went to university. 25 In this document Natalia Ivanovna is referred to as “Kulman” but signs as “Likhareva-­ Kulman.” This might suggest that by 1925 the Kulmans could have been married, although no official record has so far been found—see the Introduction to this volume. 26 It is an eclectic mix of people: some of the signatories are distinguished scientists and doctors, some academics, some art collectors. 27 This is a considerable sum of money: for comparison, Bunin’s Nobel Prize award in 1933 amounted to 733,514 francs and he was, at one stage, thinking about purchasing his beloved Belvedere for 40,000 francs.

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Those signed below kindly ask you to accept this modest gift and hope it will help in some way. Signed: N. Kulman N. Likhareva-Kulman28 [Three more signatures]

28 This is the last time Natalia signs as “Likhareva-Kulman.”

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

4 7 Rue Boucicaut, Paris, XV [arrondisment]29 November 18, 192530 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, Please see an extract from the letter I received from Haumant:31 J’ai recu le Secrement de l’Amour. Je l’ai lu avec une vive admiration, c’est peut-etre ce que Bounine a fit du miex. La traduction est souvent tres bonne,32 me resemble-t-il, mais de temps en tembs avec des gaucheries. J’aimerai bien la comparer avec le texte; pourriez vous me le lainer et puis l’adresse de Bounine a Grasse.33

Do you happen to have the print of the second part of Mitya’s Love?34 I only have the first part. Sovremennye zapiski hasn’t published their second issue 29 The Kulmans’ new address, where they lived for the rest of their lives. 30 The Kulmans spent a few weeks with the Bunins at their villa in Grasse in October–November 1925. In her diary Vera Bunina writes: “The Kulmans arrived today. … Yan was quite depressed … but then he came downstairs, got a bit merrier, and shared a bottle of wine with N. K. [Kulman]” On November 6, 1925 she adds: “Kulman is now in Cannes—he went to get his tickets back to Paris. Time really flew and, alas, they are going back on Wednesday. I am always so sad to see them go. They are lovely, kind people of huge intellect, very spiritual, and of high moral values” (Ustami Buninykh, vol. 2, 163). 31 Emile Haumant (1859–1942) was one of the leading French Slavists of the twentieth century, whose legacy includes monumental research into Russian literature and culture. Dean of Slavonic Studies at the Sorbonne (1904–1929) and Nikolai Kulman’s first boss there, Haumant played an important role in supporting Bunin’s candidacy for the Nobel Prize. Nikolai Kulman succeeded Haumant as dean of Slavonic Studies. 32 The first translator of Mitya’s Love (Le Secrement de l’amour in French translation) was Michel Dumesnil de Gramont (1893–1953). Russian by birth and a talented translator of Gorky, Merezhkovsky, and Bunin, he became a prominent figure in French state and political life and was once a Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of France. When he died, General de Gaulle said he “felt a great deal of pain” on hearing about his death. See André Combes, La Franc-Maçonnerie sous l’Occupation (Monaco: Rocher, 2001), 423. 33 “I received The Sacrament of Love. I read it with total admiration. I think it could be the best thing that Bunin has ever written so far. The translation is often quite good, although there are some occasionally clumsy turns of phrase. I would love to compare it with the original. Could you possibly lend it to me? Could you also give me Bunin’s address in Grasse?” Translated from French by Olga Shramko. 34 Mitya’s Love was written in 1924 and first serialized in Sovremennye zapiski, (Contemporary Chronicles), a literary magazine published in Paris in 1920–1940. In 1925, it was published

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yet, so if you happen to have one, could you please post it to me as soon as possible? Hugs to you and Vera Nikolaevna. We seem to be living in a state of constant rush! Yours as ever, Nikolai Kulman PS. At its editorial meeting last night, Akademisheskaia gazeta35 decided to formally ask you to take part in a literary evening in memory of L. Tolstoy, which is planned for January. I personally would like to add my voice to this request: please do say “yes”!



in book form by the publishing house Rodnik in Paris (see note 31). The novel became one of the most iconic of Bunin’s works and was even published in the USSR the same year (Leningrad: Knizhnye novinki, 1925). It was the last of Bunin’s works to have been published in Soviet Russia before the Socialist Realist canon became dogma in the late 1920s. The Soviet edition was published, of course, in the new orthography, which Bunin would never have allowed if in control of the production of that volume. 35 Akademicheskaia gazeta (Academic Newspaper) was another short-lived émigré publication

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

5 7 Rue Boucicaut, Paris, XV [arrondisment] December 14, 1925, Dearest friends, We cannot wait to see you!36 The other day I popped into Kavdossky’s bookshop; they told me that the new issue of Sovremennye zapiski would be out any day. But this “any day” now seems to have turned into three weeks. It’s been a while since I submitted my review of your Cicadae to Struve,37 and he was keen to publish it immediately since the magazine would be out soon. I protested against this idea and asked it to be published only when the book is actually out.38 36 In December 1925 the Bunins came back to Paris from Grasse to see the New Year in (1926) with the Kulmans and some other friends, including Gukasov and Shmelev, who were very soon to be involved in the conflict in Vozrozhdenie (see later reference). On January 1, 1926, Vera Bunina wrote in her diary: “We saw the New Year in in the offices of Vozrozhdenie. It was Gukasov’s treat but reporters organized the whole thing. Struve was not there—he was in Prague. Shmelev, who had too much to drink, pronounced a long speech. Kulman proposed to toast the letter “ѣ” (Ustami Buninykh, vol. 2, 153). At about this time, Bunin also gave the Kulmans a special New Year present—a copy of the first edition of Mitya’s Love with his autograph, which started this book. 37 Peter Struve (1870–1944) was one of the most extraordinary figures of the Russian public, political, and intellectual scene of late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. He was later active among the Russian emigration. Struve’s life and contribution to the development of Russian political thought has been largely edited out of historical accounts. A distinguished economist, historian, sociologist, and philosopher, he started as a recognized leader of intellectual Marxism in Russia and in 1895 founded the Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDRP), for which he wrote a manifesto—although Soviet sources always claimed that it was written by Lenin, while Struve’s name was edited out. RSDRP was the predecessor of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the monolith of the Soviet party system. However, by 1905 Struve was disenchanted with Marxist ideas. Following the protest outside Kazansky Cathedral in St. Petersburg in March 1901, Struve wrote his famous “Open Letter to Nicolas II,” in which he gave the tsar a very early warning that unless some dramatic changes in Russian political and social systems were introduced, revolution was inevitable. Thus, Struve almost predicted, step-by-step, the catastrophe of 1917. He later set up and financed the newspaper Iskra (The Spark), where Lenin was a mere administrator. Later Iskra became the main newspaper of the Bolshevik Party. Struve opposed the 1917 revolutions and eventually emigrated. In Paris he was the editor of Vozrozhdenie (Renaissance), one of the key émigré daily newspapers in prewar Paris. He edited it from May 1925 to August 1926 (see more about this newspaper below). When the Nazis occupied Paris, Struve was famously arrested for being “a close friend of Lenin” but soon released. 38 N. K. Kulman’s review of Bunin’s short story “Tsikady” (“Cicadae”) was published in Vozrozhdenie 198 (December 17, 1925) (http://www.emigrantika.ru/news/770-bookv). Zinaida Gippius, in her usual sarcastic manner, described Kulman’s review as “somehow

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I have just read some extracts from Graham’s book in Vozrozhdenie.39 Indeed, Remizov40 is one of a very few true geniuses of contemporary Russian literature! That is, of course, if one measures one’s genius by a number of puppets, fish bones, and other such nasty things, and in that case, Remizov is undoubtedly a genius. Interestingly, everything that Graham cites about those puppets, etc., I have already heard from Remizov himself—in exactly the same tones, delivered with the same grimace. … He must have prepared his ­repertoire really well and delivers it to everyone who is prepared to listen. I believe Remizov belongs to the same tribe of holy fools that are described so brilliantly in your works.41 A really excellent piece by Teffi42 about Osorgin.43 As a hunter myself, I specially appreciated her term “a howler.” How many of those “howlers” are now publishing their work in Poslednie novosti!44 I know so many people who are genuinely sorry to see the end of the publication of extracts from your Cursed Days.45 Here is a thought (shared by many): why not select some extracts for translation into French and then have them published by the Journal,46 perhaps? So much looking forward to welcoming you at our place! All yours, NK

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

naïve and over-excited” (ibid.). On October 27, 1925 Vera Bunina wrote: “We spoke at long length about Yan with the Kulmans. They love “The Cicadae” and consider it to be a poem rather than prose in its form. I said that I actually considered Yan a poet rather than a [prose] writer. I also find he is more of a poet when he writes in prose. Natalia Ivanovna was genuinely surprised, while Nikolai Karlovich raised his eyebrows and shook his head” (Ustami Buninykh, vol. 2, 151). Stephen Graham (1884–1974) was a British writer who traveled throughout Russia, mostly on foot. The extracts from his Watershed of Europe were published in Vozrozhdenie in 1925. Alexey Remizov (1877–1957) was a Russian Modernist writer whose creative imagination veered toward the fantastic and often bizarre. The whole paragraph is marked by Bunin’s dark-blue pencil. Nadezhda Teffi (Lokhvitskaya) (1872–1952) was one of the most prominent humorist writers of the Russian emigration in Paris. She was also a very close life-long friend of both the Bunins and the Kulmans. Mikhail Osorgin (Ilyin) (1878–1942) was a prominent Russian émigré writer, several times recommended for the Nobel Prize, together with Bunin, Kuprin, and Merezhkovsky. Poslednie novosti (Latest News) was yet another Russian daily newspaper in Paris, published in 1920–1940 and edited by P. Milyukov. It became an unofficial organ for the Kadets (Constitutional Democratic Party) in Paris. Fragments from the book were serialized in Vozrozhdenie in 1925. Most probably a reference to Le Journal des Etudes Slaves.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

6 7 Rue Boucicaut, Paris, XV [arrondisment] June 18, 1926 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, As always, delighted to hear from you. Really sorry to hear that Vera Nikolaevna is not well. We both hope that she is better soon and that you finally find a housekeeper to help her out with chores. Still, I realize it is probably easier for Briand47 to form a new government than for anyone to find a good house­ keeper!48 And I am so sorry you have to think about this whole ­Vozrozhdenie business49 instead of focusing on what’s really important to you—and so dear to us! And all that because of some pathetic 1500 francs. … Is there any chance you could perhaps write more for them? Unless, of course, Struve is as unrelenting as ever? We have had a visit from the Nekhlyudovs50 two days ago. Really lovely people. They were telling us about their married daughter51 who they are staying with [in Paris]: she is running a very successful bed linen business with her husband and they also look after quite a lot of homeless people who seem to gravitate towards them and essentially help themselves to whatever they feel like in their workshops. … All feels very Russian but doesn’t help them financially, of course. On the 15th ( June, 1926).52 together with a few others, I was invited for tea to Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich.53 The Grand Duke asked me a number 47 Aristide Briand (1862–1932) was a French statesman, who won a Nobel Prize for peace. 48 Interesting note: while the Bunins constantly struggled financially, with a very short break in 1934 when Bunin won his Nobel Prize, they almost always employed a housekeeper, rented a villa in the South of France, and kept a flat in a pleasant area of Paris. Ivan Bunin was also known to be partial to first-class train travel, while Vera Nikolaevna and other members of the household usually went second class. 49 For more on the conflict in Vozrozhdenie, see below. 50 Anatoly Nekhlyudov (1856–1943), a Russian diplomat and author, and his wife Nadezhda Nekhlyudova (1864–1945) both emigrated in 1917 and often lived not far from the Bunins near Grasse. 51 Elena Nekhlyudova (1892–1931), former lady-in-waiting at the last Romanov court, was married to Baron Grottgus. 52 The visit was part of the program of the Congress of Russia Abroad (Paris, 1926). About fifteen delegates, including Nikolai Kulman, were invited to visit Grand Duke Nikolai at his estate near Paris. 53 Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich (1856–1929) was a grandson of Emperor Nicholas I, and first cousin (once removed) of Nicholas II. One of the most influential of Russian grand

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of questions to do with the current political situation. I was very open with him and said everything I felt I had to say about the Union—or Assembly?54—as well as about the ultra-right and even Kirill Vladimirovich. The Grand Duke knows a lot of things that we cannot be aware about, but I had a distinct sense that he was not very hopeful.55 The Bolsheviks are resilient and their present falling out with the English56 is definitely not good news for us. But—lovers’ quarrels are short-lived. …57 Both of us are feeling pretty exhausted and are going to see the doctor within the next few days. If he recommends a trip to Royat,58 I will do my best to persuade Natalia Ivanovna to go, but if not, just a short break would do. Apart from her usual chores, she is now looking after some invalids and the poor. So today, for example, it’s some eighteen-year-old woman who needs her help. All this takes time and energy and can sometimes be quite unsettling. Yesterday I received a letter from Shmelev. His mood seems quite gloomy, even dark at the moment. He asked about you, said he wrote to you about the terms of business of some Dutch publishers but hasn’t heard anything back yet.

54 55

56 57 58

dukes, he was commander in chief of the Russian forces in the first years of the First World War. In emigration Grand Duke Nikolai became the symbolic figurehead of an anti-Soviet Russian monarchist movement after assuming the supreme command of all Russian forces and thus of the Russian All-Military Union in exile on November 16, 1924. He was seen by many in emigration as the only natural successor to the Russian throne—as opposed to Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich (1876–1938) who, on August 31, 1924, assumed the title Emperor of All Russias. His claims were contested by some factions of the monarchy movement in a division that continues to this day. Many saw him as a traitor since he fully supported Kerensky’s Provisional Government and even marched to the Duma with a red carnation in his lapel, the emblem of the February Revolution. The Supreme Monarchist Council (Assembly) was established in 1922. Still active today, it aims to reestablish the monarchy in Russia. Indeed, the views of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich about the future of Russia were quite sober and realistic. He declared that almost ten years after the 1917 Revolution only the Russian people—and not Russia Abroad—had the right to determine the future of their country and whether it should have a monarchy. He was also skeptical about attempts to “reverse” the events of 1917. See M. Kotenko and I. Domnin, eds., Rossiiskii Zarubezhnyi S′′ezd, 1926 (The Congress of Russia Abroad, 1926) (Moscow: Russkii put′, 2006). Bunin seems to have shared this view. In an interview in 1923 he said: “I prefer the old Russia, not the present one. But the old Russia is gone and I don’t believe it can be resurrected” (Zinaida Shakhovskaia, Takoi moi vek [That was my century] [Moscow: Russkii put′, 2008], 69). Here Kulman probably refers to the issue of spheres of influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus (1925–1926). This paragraph is highlighted in blue by Bunin. A spa resort in Central France where the Kulmans went quite frequently.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

Natalia Ivanovna is out at the moment but I will wait until she is back so that she could write a few lines to you—I know she wants to. Yours as ever, N. Kulman [Written in Natalia Kulman’s hand]: My dearest friends! I wanted to write to you properly but am not feeling that well, so cannot really deal with my correspondence at the moment. Yesterday I came across an old book by Chukovsky59 with his review of your Dry Valley,60 written soon after its publication. I thought it was a really excellent, thorough, perceptive work. Do you remember that review? Another one, about Z. N. Gippius, is also full of insightful and appropriately waspish comments. Chukovsky really is so very talented—what a shame he is now all Bolshevized and has essentially sold himself to them, and is therefore now lost as a good critic.61 We went to see the Orthodox Academy62 yesterday. Although Stelletsky’s iconostasis63 is not quite completed yet, the whole church now looks completely different. We didn’t see Ekaterina Mikhailovna64 and I am not sure where she is at the moment. Hugs and kisses, Natalia

59 Kornei Chukovsky (1882–1969) was a critic, writer, and essayist. Natalia Ivanovna seems a little harsh on him. 60 Sukhodol (Dry Valley) by Bunin was first published in 1912. Chukovsky’s review was written in 1914. 61 A darling of prerevolutionary St. Petersburg/Petrograd, Kornei Chukovsky stayed behind in the USSR, but remained a courageous literary critic, often praising, supporting, and defending those who did not follow the party line—for example, representatives of the Formalist group and Mikhail Zoshchenko. He was also known for never signing any condemnatory letters during the Stalin’s repressions. Chukovsky was the author of some brilliant children’s books, which were completely apolitical. 62 St. Sergy Orthodox Theological Institute was founded in Paris in 1925 and is still open today. 63 Dmitry Stelletsky (1875–1947) was a prominent icon painter, artist, and sculptor, who created the iconostasis in St. Sergy Church in the St. Sergy Orthodox Theological Institute. It was unveiled in 1927 and took two years to complete. The iconostasis was regarded as one of the most significant works of icon painting. Tragically, it was almost completely destroyed as a result of a technical error during restoration in 2012. 64 Unidentified.

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7 Villa la Hameau, Chailly-en-Biere, Seine-et-Marne July 19, 1926 PS.65 My dear Ivan Alekseevich! I just wanted to remind you that you are indeed one of the members of our Slavic Committee and Russia’s representative for the editorial commission of the Anthology of Slavic Poets (NB: it now appears that French has become our pan-Slavic language!) We are now in the process of preparing the material. Each country is allocated some fifty to a hundred pages of the original text and five pages of translation into French. You and I are asked to select Russian pieces for this publication. Let’s talk about it in more detail when we meet but meanwhile perhaps you could think of some pieces?—NK. My dearest friends, At long last we seem to have settled down and I can write to you a few lines in peace. Our last weeks in Paris were absolutely mad—so busy that neither ­Natalia Ivanovna, nor myself could reply to yours, and Vera Nikolaevna’s, ­letter. As always, we were thrilled to hear news about you. I was even fortunate enough to see a photograph of you and B. K. Zaitsev almost a la naturel, with only ­Yushkevich66 proudly spotting his distinctly European suit.67 Up until very recently our own situation has been somehow uncertain: we felt we had to go [on holiday] somewhere since Natalia Ivanovna felt so exhausted, and yet we couldn’t really afford anything we liked. But in the end all was resolved in a fairly simple way: Elena Nikolaevna Vyshnitskaya68 rented a house and invited us to join her. Natalia Ivanovna will be teaching Elena Nikolaevna’s daughter, while I will finally have a chance to honor my commitments to Vozrozhdenie, as well as start writing my courses for the next academic year. We arrived here two days ago, unpacked, had a look around, and today it is just pure bliss! We are thinking of you and look forward to the time when we will all be together again. Today’s papers report a sharp fall in the value of the franc. Clearly, democracy is costing France dear and it looks like the French are finally 65 Both Kulmans occasionally wrote their postscripts at the top of their letters. 66 Semen Yushkevich (1868–1927) was a Russian-Jewish writer. 67 Reference to a holiday photograph taken on the beach in Juan les Pins. It is true that Yushkevich looks distinctly overdressed in his full suit. 68 Natalia Kulman’s friend.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

coming to realize it. I expect some turbulence on the markets in the near future.69 We both read your wonderful poems in Vozrozhdenie and now look forward to new ones.70 I haven’t seen the last edition of Sovremennye zapiski— didn’t have the time to buy it [before leaving Paris]. Have you seen Adamovich’s review of the new piece by Gorky in Zveno?71 I haven’t actually read the original, but Adamovich72 quoted him [Gorky] so generously that I lost any appetite to read another sickening piece by dear Maxim.73 Adamovich seems to be full of praise and I am just wondering: is it Adamovich himself who has suddenly gone a bit mad; or, perhaps, his idea is that those quotes from Gorky accompanied by his praise are supposed to evoke some delicate irony? But I think it must be the former. I received a long letter from Shmelev. It seems like he often suffers from bouts of profound depression and almost cosmic anxiety. 69 Unlike his correspondent who was known to have no business acumen at all, Kulman was interested in business matters in Russia Abroad. He was on the board of directors of the Russian Trade and Finance Council (1920–1930), as well as one of the trustees of Russia Abroad Treasury—hence his active interest in the financial markets. 70 On February 3, 1927, Kulman published a review of Bunin’s Sunstroke, which was published in Vozrozhdenie 611: 2–3. Over twenty years later, Bunin recommended that review to Yulia Sazonova as reference. 71 Both names and the title Zveno are underlined in Bunin’s blue pencil. 72 A reference to Georgy Adamovich’s review of Gorky’s O tarakanakh (About Cockroaches), published in Zveno 1926. Georgy Adamovich (1892–1972) was, perhaps, one of the most prominent literary critics of Russia Abroad, who in the late 1920s became a life-long close friend of the Bunins and the Kulmans, despite the fact that their literary tastes occasionally differed. 73 Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) was a mutual acquaintance of Bunin and Kulman in the early 1900s (see introduction), but even then Bunin was always quite scathing about his literary talent. After 1917 Gorky, “the proletarian classic,” became a figure of acute class hatred for Bunin and Kulman, even though in the 1920s Gorky did not live in the USSR. Bunin and Kulman wrote a number of highly critical reviews about his work in the émigré press. Surprisingly, perhaps, Gorky had a different attitude towards Bunin’s talent. In her memoirs The Italics Are Mine Nina Berberova recalls an episode when Gorky was so profoundly enthralled when reading one of Bunin’s new stories that he forgot to put his false teeth in. She also said that “Bunin was like a wound to Gorky … he always remembered that Bunin was alive somewhere, in Paris, and that he hated Soviet power (and Gorky along with it)” (Marullo, From the Other Shore, 3). The class hatred became even more intense in the Russia Abroad camp when both Bunin and Gorky were nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1928–1933. At the same time, Gorky’s position was very different: as Thomas Marullo says in From the Other Shore, Gorky actively campaigned for Bunin’s works to be published in the USSR and strove to keep him in the Soviet public view.

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Lots of love, we look forward to any news—even if brief—about health, work, etc. Yours as ever, NK [Written in Natalia Kulman’s hand:] PS. Today is the first day that I feel remotely human. … I have been so exhausted lately that I could hardly stand up. As a result, I have missed out on so many things and haven’t written much. I will write to you separately about all our Parisian news very shortly. Hugs and kisses—Natalia Kulman.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

8 Propriété espérance, Chemin de la Lanterne, Nice, A. M.74 November 7, 192675 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, Today I got your letter with a note from Poslednie Novosti76 and then I read your wonderful response to that son of a bitch, Hofman!77 I read his “Open Letter” yesterday. What a nerve! And so many inaccuracies! The new orthography was never approved by the Academy of Sciences’ general meeting. It was, in fact, a small meeting of colleagues that took place in the building of the Academy of Sciences and was chaired by Shakhmatov.78 As far as I am aware, there were no more academicians present. The resolution was approved as a result of some considerable pressure from Gerasimov,79 then deputy minister for Education, who, I feel, was almost intoxicated by the revolution. I wrote about all this in my brochure published by Russkaya Mysl.80 I was going to write to you last night and advise you not to respond to Hofman’s letter, but in fact you responded 74 Alpes-Maritimes. 75 The Kulmans were regular guests at the Bunins’ villa in Grasse in 1925 and 1926. 76 Poslednie Novosti printed Bunin’s response to Hofman’s “Open Letter” on November 6, 1926. In his letter Hofman claimed that by calling the new, post-1917 orthography “pure evil,” Bunin essentially insulted and dismissed the hard work of many distinguished Russian linguists who had worked on orthography reform long before the 1917 Revolution. Hofman joined in a discussion—taking a broader perspective—that Bunin was conducting with literary critic Mark Slonim (1894–1976). The full text of Bunin’s brilliant response that Kulman is referring to can be found in Ivan Bunin, Okaiannye dni: Vospominaniia, stat′i (Cursed Days: Memoirs, Articles) (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel′, 1990), 380. 77 M. L. Hofman (1887–1959) was a literary critic, with expertise on Pushkin. The term “son of a bitch” is most probably used in a friendly rather than insulting tone since Hofman was a good friend of Kulman (with whom he worked at the Sorbonne) and Bunin. Incidentally, it was Hofman who introduced Bunin to Galina Kuznetsova, his last love and muse. 78 Academician Alexey Shakhmatov (1864–1920) was a distinguished scholar of Russian linguistics, one of the original architects of the orthographic reform (see introduction). 79 Osip Gerasimov (1863–1920) was a linguist, historian, and a private tutor to Leo Tolstoy’s children. He was twice deputy minister for education: first in Stolypin’s government (1905– 1908) and then as part of Kerensky’s Provisional Government (1917). Kulman’s words about his “intoxication with the revolution” definitely refer to the February Revolution, as in 1918 Gerasimov became one of the leaders of the anti-Bolshevik movement, was arrested by the Cheka in 1920, and died in prison. 80 Nikolai Kulman, O russkom pravopisanii (On Russian Orthography) (Berlin: Russkaia mysl′, 1923).

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so b­ rilliantly that I now would take that advice back. I did let you have that brochure, didn’t I? If you don’t have it now and will need it in the future, please ask. I do think, however, that Hofman will not carry on with his polemics any further. His silly reference that nonnative speakers pronounce Russian “ы”81 in some specific way actually points to his lack of knowledge of the subject. As far as Shakhmatov’s attitude to new orthography is concerned, I wrote quite a lot on this subject in my brochure and it’s certainly not as simplistic as Hofman describes it. The weather here is quite horrendous, so I am glad you decided to travel in comfort.82 We have bought our tickets and are leaving on November 14 with a stopover in Marseilles. The Blokhs83 send their regards. Yours as ever, NK

81 The Russian phoneme (and letter) “ы” does indeed present phonetical difficulty to nonnative Russian speakers. 82 A reference to the Bunins’ annual move from Grasse to Paris for winter. 83 Jacob Blokh (1892–1968) was a translator and the head of Petropolis publishing house in Berlin until late the 1930s. Bunin’s complete works was published by Petropolis in 1934– 1939. See more about this publication below.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

9 15 Rue Bouton-Gaillard, Vaux-le-Penil, Seine-et-Marne September 2, 1927 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, I had no doubt whatsoever that you will leave the Vozrozhdenie,84 although I realize that this might cause you some financial discomfort. I know that there were some skeptics around and am delighted that their skepticism regarding your departure is now fully crushed. Not only are you a great writer, but have long been regarded as our consciousness85 and that is precisely why public opinion is so much influenced by what you are doing and saying and not just by what you are writing. One would have thought that there could only be only one assessment of what Gukasov86 did. Even ­Milyukov, Struve’s87 doctor, condemned his actions. So it was only natural for us, colleagues of Struve and not Gukasov, to do what we have done. I have to admit, I am somehow surprised by Shmelev: he seems to have entangled himself in this web of convoluted Byzantine-style reflections—he wrote me a long letter trying to explain his position. Needless to say, I am not going to try and persuade him to leave but will address the issues he has raised. And it is probably too late for him to leave now: these sort of decisions have a certain expiry date and once left too long they happy then appear unconvincing and even pathetic.88 I am really looking forward to early October when we will meet again at last. Our friendship brings me enormous spiritual joy, so I am counting the days.

84 More details about the conflict within Vozrozhdenie and Poslednie Novosti and the subsequent departure of Bunin and Kulman from the former can be found in Solntseva, Ivan Shmelev. Also see note 87. 85 Underlined in blue by Bunin 86 Abram Gukasov (1872–1969) was a prominent figure in the Russian emigration. An oil industrialist and successful scholar, he financed many business ventures both before and after 1917. Vozrozhdenie was one of his many projects. In 1927 Gukasov replaced Peter Struve with Yuri Semenov as editor of Vozrozhdenie. In 1932, together with Nikolai Kulman, he actively campaigned for Bunin’s Nobel Prize nomination. 87 See footnote 167. 88 Shmelev never left Vozrozhdenie, which caused a temporary rift between him and his old friends, Bunin and Kulman, but only on professional level.

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It looks like there is a major turn in European public opinion against the Bolsheviks and the shadow of Digamels89 is not going to change this. It’s just a matter of time! Yours as always, NK

89 Alexandrs Digamels (1801–1880) was a Russian-Latvian general and diplomat. His name is underlined in blue by Bunin, although it is not quite clear why it is important in this context.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

10 Rue Paul Deroulede, Nice October 18, 1927 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, I am now returning your wonderful story The God’s Tree.90 Everything in it is just magnificent: the form, the language, Yakov.91 I have now read it again and again. Everything in it is so quintessentially Russian, and so I am not sure it could ever be rendered in a foreign language. And non-Russians will fail to understand Yakov’s character—it’s really not for the “genteel natives.” In fact, they will be bewildered as to why this shepherd is “snacking on his own trousers”?92 And the language—all our old life is in there! … [As for the manuscript], I have hardly corrected anything but I think it might be an idea to edit some things. Obviously, it’s entirely up to you but I would remove some of the phonetic nuances—after all, your story is not a study of dialects, even though I realize that this adds your own unique touch. Here is what I would change: [What follows is a list of proposed corrections to reflect some phonetic renderings, which are impossible to translate from Russian, as well as some typos that Bunin marked with a note: “My typo, correct!”] Yesterday we met a very interesting man: a Russian Jew and a passionate Tolstoyist! I thought it would be really good if you could meet him too. Let’s discuss it when we see each other next time—he could make such an interesting protagonist for one of your future stories! Interestingly, this true Tolstoyist is also a proud owner of a villa, an automobile, etc., etc.

90 The God’s Tree was written in 1927 in Grasse but was first published in Paris in 1931. Kulman here clearly refers to the manuscript that Bunin sent for his commentary. In his review of The God’s Tree Vladislav Khodasevich wrote: “It is filled with events—but these events are nothing to do with the characters since the focus is firmly on the language. It’s the language that is undoubtedly the book’s genuine and principal, if not only, character” (Vozrozhdenie 2158 [April 30, 1931]: 2). 91 Main character of The God’s Tree. 92 A reference to a play on words in the story.

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Many happy returns for your coming birthday! I know you don’t like it but I am so delighted that you were born!93 You have brought so much joy and beauty into this world and that is why we love and cherish this day. Love to you and Vera Nikolaevna. Say hello to your “young authors” from us.94

93 It was a well-known fact among Bunin’s friends that he hated his birthday, considering it to be the worst day of the year. See Natalia Kodryanskaya’s (1901–1983) notes in Bunin bez gliantsa (Bunin without Gloss) (Moscow: Palmira, 2016). 94 The “young authors” are Leonid Zurov (1902–1971) and Galina Kuznetsova (1900– 1976)—see footnotes 127 and 210. Both Zurov and Kuznetsova lived with the Bunins at the time. This line in Kulman’s letter is important because it is symptomatic of the fact that they remained fiercely loyal to Vera Nikolaevna and never acknowledged the presence of another woman in Bunin’s life—hence this nameless reference to “young authors.” Galina Kuznetsova’s name is never mentioned in the Kulmans’ letters—a striking difference from the majority of friends and acquaintances who dutifully sign off their letters to Bunin from 1926, when the affair started, to 1942, when it ended, by saying, “Our warmest regards to both Vera Nikolaevna and Galina Nikolaevna.”

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

11 November 26, 1927 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, Fondaminsky95 has only just left—however hard we tried, we just couldn’t find the time to finally meet! He is such an intelligent and talented man, and also seems very kind. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to him and he is clearly very fond of you. As always, I have been reading your new work96 with total admiration. It truly is superb, on so many levels. I feel I have to point out one thing though: this piece has an element that is, in my opinion, absolutely crucial for the first part of the story but I feel it might pose a certain danger for later chapters, should you choose to leave it unchanged. I am talking about the abundance of psychological reflections: however deep, sophisticated, and elegant they are, they still remain just that—reflections. Obviously, their lyricism and profound melancholy make a deep impression on the reader, and they could be seen as something that is more like poetry than prose. And they feel quite organic in this part since it describes the first awakening and impressions of the child’s soul when everything around is so complex, so dark, so mysterious. But if you carry on with these reflections further, they might turn into a burden. Belinsky97 was right when he said that every artist thinks by means of his characters. You are one of the most amazing artists98—but your strength is in the narrative descriptive discourse and therefore I personally see no reason why you should change that. However, I believe some readers might feel very differently. I have corrected some mistakes and typos—see “Christmas.” Also, Gogol always says “Carpathian mountain” in the singular and I think you should keep it that way. 95 Ilya Fondaminsky (1880–1942) was an author who published under the pseudonym Bunakov, political activist, editor, and one of the key figures in the prewar Russian emigration in France. He was a close friend of the Bunins before 1917 and it looks like his long friendship with Kulman just began in the 1930s. In 1933 Fondaminsky and Kulman both worked on the committee to distribute Bunin’s Nobel Prize award among Russian writers and scholars in need. In July 1941, during the Nazi occupation, Fondaminsky, who was born Jewish but converted to Russian Orthodoxy, was arrested and sent to Auschwitz where he died a year later. Fondaminsky was pronounced a Russian Orthodox saint and martyr in 2003. 96 The reference here is to Bunin’s The Life of Arseniev, the book that would win him his Nobel Prize. He started writing it in summer 1927 in Grasse and, as this letter illustrates, was sending parts of the manuscript to Kulman for comments. 97 Vissarion Belinsky (1811–1848) was a prominent Russian literary critic 98 This part is marked by a cross in Bunin’s blue pencil.

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Are you planning to publish some new chapters in the papers? May I advise you to think about it sooner rather than later since Sovremennye zapisky is now planning much in advance. But please don’t sell it cheap! Fondamisnky told me that you might stay in Grasse till January. I am glad for you and that your work will not suffer—you will not be left in peace here (in Paris)!—but I am also saddened that as a result I might not see or hear from you for months. I look forward to receiving the proof of Arseniev for the final edit. Let us know how you are, even if briefly. Yours as always, NK

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

12 Hotel Thermal, Royat September 12, 1928 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, Today Natalia Ivanovna received a letter from Vera Alekseevna Zaitseva99 and that is how I learnt, with some sadness, that you are not going to Belgrade.100 Although I should be happy on your behalf—it’s not an easy trip!—but it’s really disappointing for [the future of] our literature. Not just because you are its glory, but because what will be discussed there requires a certain amount of calm, grace, and common sense and I am not at all convinced that those who are going will have enough. They are likely to have their heads in the clouds instead. This sort of approach might be quite intolerable for those business people who will be there to make new contacts.101 I was also disappointed not to see the next instalment of The Life of Arseniev in Soveremennye zapiski. Although I haven’t received the copy yet, I know that it has not been included in the latest issue. I am not going to Belgrade either but I sent them my paper “Russian Literature Abroad and in Soviet Russia.” Although the paper is purely academic, I feel it could be presented at the Writers’ Congress.102 I am thinking of publishing it anyway but am not sure where yet: I was going to discuss it with Fondaminsky to see if Sovremennye zapiski might be interested, since they are proud of representing authors of different political views. Although I would rather not touch politics at all and instead focus on my research on history and literature. The text of my lecture about you, which I read in the Sorbonne three months ago, was finally sent to me for proofreading by Le Monde Slav, but 99 Vera Zaitseva (1878–1965) was the wife of Boris Zaitsev, one of Bunin’s closest friends until 1947, when the relationship was severed, and a childhood friend of Vera Bunina. More on this very public and painful conflict between the Bunins and the Zaitsevs can be found in Natalia Kulman’s letters to Vera Bunina and my commentary. 100 Bunin was invited to attend the congress to present a paper on Leo Tolstoy but was also offered a position as visiting professor at Belgrade University for six months. Bunin declined both. 101 See footnote 238. Kulman refers to a number of important business talks with potential publishers of Russian émigré authors that were to take place during the congress in Belgrade. 102 The text of this paper could not be sourced, so it remains unclear whether it was ever delivered or published.

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the brochure is still not out yet for some reason.103 I had some interesting correspondence with the publisher regarding a number of passages from my lecture and I will tell you more when I see you next time and perhaps even show it to you. It’s interesting to see how this republican censorship—which is supposed to officially not exist—is actually quite rigid! This correspondence is a truly interesting document!104 Look forward to seeing you both—definitely in October. We are here for two more weeks, then will head back to Paris for a few days and finally will come to the South. Yours as always, NK

103 N. Koulmann, “Ivan Bunin: Son activité litteraire en France,” Le Monde Slav 188 (April 1928). The copy of the article has Kulman’s autograph that reads: “To my dear writer and friend. N. Kulman. December 29, 1928” (RAL, MS1066/9147). 104 This paragraph is marked by Bunin’s blue pencil.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

13 Hotel Thermal, Royat November 11, 1928 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, Three hours ago, as we were setting off for a walk with Natalia Ivanovna, I popped to the post office to drop off my letter to you. (I seem to have dated it the twelfth, while, in fact, today is the eleventh!) and now I’ve got yours. Seems like we are writing to each other on the same subject. Unfortunately, I cannot go [to Belgrade]105 and this is why: just under ten years ago, when in Nikolaev, I was sentenced to execution by [a Red] firing squad. Natalia Ivanovna, who was in Kiev at the time, received a telegram that informed her that I had either been executed or was in terrible danger. She set off [from Kiev] immediately to find me and during two weeks106 of travel she couldn’t sleep because as soon as she closed her eyes, she would vividly see the scene of my execution by the Cheka.107 This experience had such an effect on her life that even now if I am delayed sometimes, she imagines the absolute worst-case scenario. And this is why we never part. And, unfortunately, we cannot travel to Serbia together because, firstly, Natalia Ivanovna is not well and is currently undergoing some treatment, which, thank goodness, is going well. Secondly, even if she finished her treatment by then, it would not be advisable for her to travel since her heart requires some rest. Thirdly, such a trip would be tricky from a financial point of view, although that is of least importance, of course. Vera Nikolaevna must have misunderstood what Natalia Ivanovna said in her letter: I am indeed writing my paper for Serbia108 but am not planning to go there. I informed them of my nonattendance a while ago.

105 Kulman refers to the Congress of Russian Writers, which took place in Belgrade in June 1928. 106 This line illustrates the chaos of traveling during the civil war: the distance between Kiev and Nikolaev is approximately 480 kilometers (or 298 miles). It took Natalia two weeks to make it. 107 Cheka is the abbreviation for Chrezvychainaia komissiia (full name “Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution, Profiteering, and Corruption”). It was set up by Lenin in December 1917, and was effectively a predecessor to the NKVD and KGB. The Cheka is widely associated with the Red Terror campaign. 108 The paper that Kulman intended to be published in absentia.

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I will do what you have asked me to do: I will write about Khodasevich, although I am not sure whether it would do any good: he is not very popular at the moment, I’m afraid. The majority simply doesn’t seem to trust him.109 Personally, I have always held him in high regard, so will be happy to do what I can. Do you know what his relationship with Struve is? What was his position during the Gukasov-Semenov-Struve conflict?110 It would be good if he was not involved in all this plotting. I am really appalled by the way the Merezhkovskys111 treat Struve,112 and it’s not about the fact that they don’t share his political views or consider him to be a bad editor. What I cannot accept is that when they start plotting against him, they try to involve a foreigner—albeit a Serb!113—in all this. It really will 109 Khodasevich’s reputation amongst the Russian emigration was controversial. As Vera Bunina writes in her memoirs, “he was never afraid to say what he really thought” (I. A. Bunin—novye materialy, vol. 3, 105). Up until 1929 Bunin did everything he could to support Khodasevich, who was in poor health and struggled financially. He lobbied for Khodasevich to be given commissions, such as to write a commentary to Eugene Onegin, which was originally to be published in Belgrade, but was eventually published by Petropolis in Brussels in 1937. Bunin also invited him and his partner Nina Berberova to live at his villa in Grasse in summer 1928. However, in 1929 Khodasevich wrote a very critical review of Bunin’s poetry in Vozhrozhdenie (August 15, 1929) and their relationship became much cooler, although Khodasevich enthusiastically supported Bunin’s candidacy for the 1933 Nobel Prize and Bunin donated a considerable amount of money to support Khodasevich when he won. It is not known whether the review of Khodasevich’s work that Kulman mentions in the letter was ever published. 110 See footnote 219. 111 Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1866–1941) and his wife Zinaida Gippius (1869–1945) were key figures of Russian Silver Age and, later, prewar literary and cultural circles of the Russian emigration in Paris. Kulman’s view of their relationships with Bunin seems a little categorical: in fact, even though Merezhkovsky and Bunin were nominated for the Nobel Prize together several times and were seen by many as archrivals, their personal relationship, especially in the 1920s, was quite cordial and united by joint hatred of the Bolsheviks. According to Vera Bunina’s diaries, the Merezhkovskys made an effort to have Bunin’s works translated into French and were generally very supportive. The Bunins and the Merezhkovskys spent a number of summers together. For more on this relationship and Kulman’s role, see footnote 294. 112 This line is marked by a blue cross. 113 Most probably this is a reference to Alexander Belich (1876–1960), a distinguished linguist and the chairman of the Serbian Academy of Science. Belich was also the chairman of the Royal Commission that allocated funds for publication of Russian émigré writers and their personal grants (pensions) and was involved in the workings of the Russian Scientific Institute, an émigré parallel to the Russian Academy of Science, which existed up until April 1941. More details about these institutions can be found in A. V. Bakuntsev, “Ivan Bunin i Russkii Akademicheskii Institut v Belgrade” (“Ivan Bunin and the Russian Scientific Institute in Belgrade”), Slavianovedenie 4 (2018).

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

not be a huge loss if the Merezhkovskys are not published in the magazines and it’s unlikely that this fact would put anyone off. I actually believe that Struve would make a great editor, although he might not be the most popular one—which is hardly surprising given that we only have one magazine to accommodate a whole army of writers, with most of them genuinely believing themselves to be if not pure geniuses than at least hugely talented. In the good old days all these tiny writers managed to find themselves some tiny magazine to publish their work in, but now we only have one and it’s very tough for an editor to be all genteel and soft with everyone. Of course, the Merezhkovskys will not really harm Struve’s reputation in any way, but they will not earn any glory for themselves either. Struve’s choice and strategy have long been worked out and they are determined by many factors, not all of them of a purely literary nature. It is a shame though that the Merezhkovskys’ behavior might be perceived as typical of Russians in ­general.114 They [the Merezhkovskys] thrive on intrigue and plotting, they are jealous and intolerant people.115 But they are also Russian writers, so people might think that perhaps all Russian writers are like this? … I will write to Spektorsky116 tomorrow. Yours as ever, NK

114 Vera Bunina wrote in her diary on October, 8, 1928: “Merezhkovsky writes that … Slavs were all tenderness and delight [at the Literary Congress on Belgrade] and … shed tears from their love to Russians. But idiots in Paris sit like stone blockheads” (Ustami Buninykh, vol. 2). 115 This line is marked by Bunin’s blue cross. 116 Evgeny Spektorsky (1875–1951) was a philosopher, a scholar of Russian literature, and a professor at Belgrade University. He was also one of the founders and key figures of the Russian Scientific Institute in Belgrade. In 1928 Spektorsky liaised with Bunin regarding his attendance at the Congress and potential lectureship in Belgrade University for six months. Both invitations were declined.

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14 Villa Nu Soleil d’Or, Capbreton, Laudres August 21, 1929 My dear Ivan Alekseevich,117 You were absolutely right to sense that there was something wrong in the abstracts for The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.118 Indeed, Sabashnikov’s publication119 very accurately reproduces the original 1800 edition, but u­ nfortunately it contained quite a few errors—both intentional and unintentional. The Tale describes the events of 1185, while, as professor Zhdanov,120 who taught me at the University, proved so convincingly, it was actually written in 1187. The manuscript that was used for the 1800 edition dates back mostly to the sixteenth century, with parts probably written in the late fourteenth century.121 Needless to say that by then, the original text had been rewritten many times by hand and so parts of it were distorted by the transcribers. The latest of those distortions were copied again and can now be found in the 1800 edition. While the publishers tried to do their best, they failed to deliver a satisfactory result 117 This is the first letter where Kulman responds to Bunin’s queries about the text of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign as an expert in medieval Russian language (Old East Slavic) and paleography. The reason for Bunin’s request is that he was going to incorporate some extracts from this source in his Life of Arseniev—the book he was working on at the time. In Bunin’s novel, the protagonist is reflecting on the beauty of this piece and introduces the quotes, which Kulman refers to in his letter. See footnote 251. 118 An anonymous Russian epic composed in Old East Slavic in the twelfth century. Kulman’s linguistic expertise in Old East Slavic and the culture of medieval Russia were well known. Later, he also advised Konstantin Balmont, who worked on his own translation while both spent their summers in Capbreton and became good friends. When Balmont’s translation was finally published in Rossiia i slavianstvo in 1930, it contained a poetic dedication to Professor Nikolai Kulman. Balmont describes his experience of working with Kulman in his article “Joy—A Letter from France,” published in the newspaper Segodnia, August 25, 1930, 2. 119 Sabashnikov’s Publishing House was active in 1890–1930 The reference here is to The Tale of Igor’s Campaign published in Moscow in 1920. 120 Ivan Zhdanov (1846–1901) was Professor of Medieval Russian literature at St. Petersburg University. 121 For Bunin, The Tale was a crucial part of recreating his own vision of his homeland that was violated and had to be set free from the “Tatar-Bolshevik yoke,” as he put it in his “Mission of Russian Emigration” speech (Ivan Bunin, Missiia russkoi emigratsii [Mission of the Russian Emigration] [Moscow: Litres, Moscow, 2019]). Other émigrés saw it in a similar way: see references to the translations of The Tale by Kulman and Balmont, all made in the 1920–1930s.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

because a) they were not familiar with paleography in general, and b) they did not know the history of the Russian language. And I cannot really blame them since at the time neither had been regarded as “proper” academic subjects. But the result is that the 1800 edition contains numerous errors and inaccuracies. For example, they use [both] “ь” and “ъ” in first person singular verbs. There is no doubt that the transcribers of the sixteenth-century manuscript would use “ъ,” while the twelfth-century authors would only use it because of the shift in pronunciation. I hope you don’t mind this brief introduction! And now I will point out some specific examples. …122 We are going to be in Nice in October and look forward to seeing you as much as we can then. We are also likely to go to Royat—it’s lovely there and it always makes Natalia Ivanovna feel better. The Shmelevs are sending their regards—we go fishing a lot with Ivan Sergeevich (Shmelev). But I know you don’t quite share this passion. …123 Yours as always, NK

122 Here Kulman lists his fourteen corrections to the Old East Slavic. 123 Natalia Kulman did not share this passion either, but had to endure it. He letters to Vera Bunina are full of ironic remarks about “carrying her cross”.The only surviving picture of the Kulmans together includes a fishing rod.

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15 October 29, 1929 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, On my return, I read the fourth part of your Life of Arseniev in one sitting—it seems even more wonderful than the previous part. But I am not writing to you just to express my delight and sing praises but to point out to some errors— hope it’s not too late to do that. I have noticed that on page 48 the word “entered” is not preceded by “too early.” On page 62, the 15th line from the bottom, the word “unspoken” is missing a “ъ,” which of course cannot be right. Perhaps there are other typos but I was so lost in the beauty of the text that I could have missed some others. So sorry we will miss you before returning to Paris so will not see you and Vera Nikolaevna there. Yours as always, NK

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

16124 March 7, 1931125 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, I am not entirely sure how Osorgin126 counted the “errors” and what he actually regarded to be an error? The fact is that the first publication of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign contained numerous errors since the editors clearly didn’t know how to read the old shorthand. And, of course, the manuscript itself contained quite a lot of errors as well. So I would say that Osorgin’s list is, to put it mildly, not thorough enough. Here is an example: there is an ongoing ­confusion between two Old [East] Slavic letters (ѣ/ъ). I also attach some parallel text to the quotes that you sent from the first copy edited by Tikhomirov127 and from Buslaev’s128 text. …129

124 Chronologically, the next letter here should be no. 27—see footnote 321. 125 A body of letters from Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin between 1929 and 1931 appears to have been lost, but it seems that the theme of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign carries on. In 1931, Kulman acted as official supporter for Bunin’s Nobel Prize nomination for the first time— this theme appears in the next letter. This is the first (unfinished) letter of that period with a handwritten note in the margin made by Vera Bunina. It says “Professor N. Kulman.” 126 Mikhail Osorgin (Ilyin) (1878–1942) was a literary critic, writer, and philosopher. It is not quite clear what Osorgin’s part in “counting the errors” was or whether this is a reference to a critical review written by Osorgin. 127 Mikhail Tikhomirov (1893–1965) was the leading Soviet expert in medieval Russian paleography. 128 Fedor Buslaev (1818–1898) was a linguist, folklorist, and one of the founders of the Russian Mythological school of comparative literature 129 The rest of this letter is missing.

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17 April 20, 1931 Dear Ivan Alekseevich, Two days ago we received a copy of your The God’s Tree130 and wanted to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for this wonderful present. Judging by the date of the autograph, the book spent a few days with our concierge, but these delays seem so common these days that there was no point raising any objections. … I am glad you edited out the original reference to Pushkin regarding “his love of sculpting.” Indeed, Pushkin used the old form of the verb “to sculpt” and in his grammar commentary that was never published in his lifetime, he wrote: “In the last sixteen years of my books being published, no critic has ever spotted my five grammatical errors—and quite rightly so! I have always been grateful to them for this lack of vigilance and corrected them myself where I could. …” How is your health these days? Are you still hurting? Are you working on Life of Arseniev? I still remember my promise to contact Hossar,131 although I’ve heard that they were not that interested in publishing it. … I will still try to approach them and, of course, will let you know once I hear anything definite. Hugs and kisses to you and Vera Nikolaevna. Yours as ever, NK

130 Bozh′e Drevo (The God’s Tree) was published by Sovremennye zapiski in Paris in 1931. 131 The name is not written clearly, so it is impossible to identify with certainty. Some parts of the book were first published in 1927 in the newspaper Rossiia (Russia) in Paris, followed by partial publication in Poslednie novosti and Sovremennye zapiski. Life of Arseniev was first published as a book in 1930 by the publishing house Sovremennye zapiski, but its full version only appeared in 1952, prepared by Izdatel′stvo Chekhova in New York.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

18 My dear Ivan Alekseevich,132 Sorry it took me so long to reply—there was so much work before the holidays and then our flat was invaded by the whole army of painters and decorators who turned it into some arche aux ouces. …133 Nothing was left unturned. And so it’s only today that Natalia Ivanovna finally restored some order and peace and I can at last sit at my desk and write to you. I seem to remember that I have already sent you the brochure written by Baroness Vrangel134 and was going to ask for another copy but it seems that you already have two. I am not quite sure which of the Russian writers, except for you and Merezhkovsky, could be nominated as candidates for the Nobel Prize. Although I’ve heard rumors that some are lobbying for Osorgin and Kuprin.135 Most likely it’s nonsense, although as the French say “Every fool always finds another who admires him,” but who can seriously nominate Osorgin? He is undoubtedly clever, talented, outspoken, daring, but he is not a writer! As for Kuprin, he is of a different kind from Osorgin, no doubt, but I am at a loss as to who would nominate him as a candidate.136 Having said that, it might actually be that too 132 This letter is not dated. 133 “Fleas’ ark.” 134 Baroness Maria Dmitrievna Vrangel (1858–1944) was the mother of Baron Peter Vrangel, the legendary last commander of the White Army who was considered the archenemy of the Bolsheviks, so much so that he even features in the famous civil war song in which he is referred to as the “Black Baron.” Despite that, Baroness Vrangel stayed in Soviet Russia and managed to survive there until the early 1920s under a false name, even working as a typist in a Soviet organization. She later wrote her critically acclaimed memoirs “My Life in the Communist Paradise.” Once in emigration, Baroness Vrangel became a prolific writer, journalist, and archivist, so it is difficult to establish which particular brochure Kulman is referring to here. 135 Alexander Kuprin (1870–1938) was a prominent Russian writer who lived in Paris from 1920 to 1937, but chose to return to the USSR where he died soon after arrival. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize together with Merezhkovsky and Bunin on a number of occasions. 136 The first attempt to nominate Bunin for the Nobel Prize dates back to 1922 when he was put forward together with Merezhkovsky and Kuprin. That first attempt was unsuccessful since the members of Swedish Academy thought that Bunin’s prose lost its power in translation. Preparation for the second attempt started in 1931 when, together with Maklakov and Gukasov, Kulman acted as Bunin’s official backer—in early 1931 he submitted a formal letter of support to the Nobel Prize committee. He then actively and very vocally campaigned for his nominee, but this second attempt did not bring the desired effect either. In

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many Russian candidates wouldn’t do us any harm: your name is put forward by some very influential people in Europe, so other candidates are bound to pale into insignificance. But Merezhkovsky is really throwing his weight around: his new book is about to be published in Germany and they expect it to be a hit. I am not quite sure who is supporting him but I suspect he doesn’t have that many admirers. I still feel that you shouldn’t have responded to Osorgin’s critique regarding The Tale [of Igor’s Campaign].137 Osorgin is not really a writer, he is a journalist, and as Chekhov once said, there is no point arguing with journalists—it has the same effect as pulling a cat’s tail or trying to shout over an angry peasant woman. You really are too talented a writer to argue with Osorgin. You said you were not feeling well—what’s wrong? It must be warm in Grasse now and the air must be amazing. Or is it that your villa is too cold and you are freezing there? How I wish you could shake all these things off and work in peace. All our love to you and Vera Nikolaevna. How is her health? Yours as ever, NK

her excellent book, Tatyana Marchenko tells a fascinating story of lobbying, campaigning, tensions, expectations, formed and broken alliances and friendships, triumphs, and defeats (Marcenko, Russische Schriftsteller). 137 Most probably a reference to Osorgin’s commentary regarding the way Bunin incorporated references to The Tale of Igor’s Campaign in his Life of Arseniev. Bunin consulted Kulman on these passages—see earlier letters and footnotes.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

19 June 11, 1931 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, We returned home at 5 a.m. yesterday and now I have to go to the Sorbonne to read two lectures, so will have to be brief. It was a truly amazing ­evening—I cannot recall anything like this before.138 All the participants were there, except, sadly, for N. N. Kedrov,139 who is quite unwell. Even Chekhov140 made it, although he is not very well either—but he performed the Hamlet monologue absolutely brilliantly. In addition to this, there was also my introduction and then a lecture about your work, which lasted some twenty-five minutes. Everyone present asked me to send you their regards and very best wishes. I attach autographs of some of those who later went out to dinner. Again, everyone sends their warm regards to you and Vera Nikolaevna. Yours as ever, NK [A note from Natalia Ivanovna Kulman:] My dearest friends! Just a short note—have to rush to my lesson and my head is still a bit heavy after last night, which was quite an eventful one! So far, we have raised 6,200 francs. I also hope that some of those who couldn’t attend but didn’t return their tickets will send some money separately. We will see in a few days.

138 This fundraising event, specifically held for Bunin, took place at Mikhail and Maria Tsetlin’s place in Paris on June 10, 1931 and was obviously a success financially (see Natalia’s note below). Apart from those mentioned in the Kulmans’ letter, M. Kurenko (an opera singer) and D. Gort also took part. Poslednie Novosti 3731 ( June 10, 1931) published a short report about the event. The author is grateful to Dr S. Morozov of IMLI (Moscow) for his help in obtaining this information. 139 Nikolai Kedrov (1871–1940) was a famous Russian composer of liturgical music, a central figure in the Russian emigration cultural scene, and the founder of the famous Quatuor Kedroff that still performs today. His version of The Lord’s Prayer (Otche Nash) is still performed in Russian churches. 140 Mikhail Chekhov (1891–1955), Anton Chekhov’s nephew, was a successful theatre and film actor and director in Paris.

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All those who performed at the event were absolutely incredible, especially Pitoeva,141 Lifar,142 Spesivtseva.143 Pitoeva recited Ivan Alekseevich’s pieces brilliantly and Lifar is such a talented performer, quite unique, in fact. His art is almost infectious and he is clearly totally devoted to it. Both Pitoeva and Lifar also appear to be really lovely, unpretentious, kind people. All my love, Natalia Kulman

141 Lyudmila Pitoeva (1899–1951) was an actress, who worked in both Russian and French theater companies and in film. She was well known for her Chekhovian roles (Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, The Seagull). 142 Sergei Lifar (1905–1986) was a prominent figure in the cultural heritage of the Russian emigration: a talented ballet dancer, producer, activist, and a patron of the arts. He danced for Diaghilev’s company and was a principal dancer in the Paris Opera Garnier for many years. Later Lifar established the first Academy of Dance in Paris. 143 Olga Spesivtseva (1895–1991) was one of the finest Russian ballet dancers of the twentieth century who danced in the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and the Balanchin and Fokin ballet companies.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

20 Villa Marquet, Menthon-St. Bernard (Haute-Savoie) September 21, 1933144 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, We received both your letters yesterday and are really touched by your attention and concern. All things pass, apparently. … We were hoping for some news from the Kartashevs145 but have heard nothing yet. Natalia Ivanovna wrote to them—just in case—that we would like to rent the rooms for October and are hoping to be there on the seventh, maybe even earlier. We are so delighted that we will soon be near you—we miss you so much! Yours as ever, NK Please say hello to your “young ones”146 from us. PS. From Mikhail Blokh’s letter I learnt that Mr. Krymov,147 that famous profiteer and writer, recently made an appearance at their chateau. Apparently, he

144 Over two years’ worth of letters is missing. 145 Anton Kartashev (1875–1960) was a distinguished Russian theologian, who served as Minister for Religious Affairs in Prince Lvov’s Government. Kartashev was arrested by the Bolsheviks but managed to escape to France via Finland. One of the founders of St. Sergy Theological Orthodox Institute in Paris, Kartashev worked with Nikolai Kulman at the Sorbonne and was a close friend of both the Kulmans and the Bunins. On February 16, 1924 all three were key speakers at the famous “Mission of the Russian Emigration” gathering in Paris, where Kartashev delivered a speech “On Intransigence (with the Bolsheviks).” See above, footnotes 104, 254. The reference here is most probably to trying to find a place to rent in Capbreton. The Kulmans, the Kartashevs, the Denikins, the Shmelevs, as well as the philosophers Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Ilyin, and their families loved spending time there. 146 Galina Kuznetsova and Leonid Zurov (see footnote 227). 147 Mikhail Blokh was Kulman’s colleague and neighbour. Vladimir Krymov (1978–1968) was quite a famous figure of prewar Russian Paris. Krymov came from a poor family of OldBelievers and had made his fortune before the February Revolution. A shrewd businessman, he felt that February 1917 was the beginning of the end for his ventures and promptly moved all his money out of Russia. His luxury villa Vlaber in Chatou, an affluent Parisian suburb, attracted a lot of attention from his compatriots. Krymov saw himself as a writer, while literary Paris called him a writing money-lender. He never donated any of his considerable wealth to literary causes and was considered very tight with his money. Interestingly, he strongly defended Bunin when in 1933–1934 he was accused of not donating more of his Nobel Prize award to Russian émigré writers and scholars in need.

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recently bought himself a villa facing the Seine—for 400,000 francs, no less! Profiteer on holidays—absolutely, but definitely not a writer. … [A note from Natalia Kulman:] My dearest friends! Thank you so much for all your help and support in finding us somewhere to rent. If we are based in Cannet and not in Nice, it will be so much easier for us to see you! I am not sure yet whether Nikolai Karlovich’s daughter who is arriving on October 11 will stay with us there, but I asked the Kartashevs to reserve the rooms for us. If it proves too small for the three of us to share, I will find Olya148 a room nearby. We are leaving on the morning of October 1 via Lyon, then planning to spend the night in Toulon. If the weather is nice, we will probably make a short trip to the islands on October 3 and hope to be in Cannet by the fourth. So we will be there any time between the third and the seventh. How are your “young ones”?149 I know that mumps can be quite unpredictable—I had it twice when under the Bolsheviks and it was quite serious. Incubation period is about three weeks and it takes the same time to fully recover. How on earth did they manage to contract mumps? Has Vera Nikolaevna now fully recovered from it? We’ve had a wonderful time here. We usually have breakfast with the Zheslenkos,150 so not many of domestic chores are left to think about. The climate and the nature here are quite spectacular and we go “fishing” almost every day—even if it rains!—but luckily, this fishing is not as relentless as it usually is in Capbreton.151 We don’t catch that much but what we do is eaten for dinner. The fish here is amazing. My “Viking”152 consumes it with great ­enthusiasm. So glad you are feeling better. Do you still have rash on your face?

148 Olga Nikolaevna Kulman (1898–?) was Nikolay Kulman’s second daughter from his previous marriage to Ekaterina Iasonovna Kulman. Olga emigrated with her mother and other siblings in 1920 and eventually settled in Prague. Little is known about the life of Kulman’s daughters afterwards, but Olga appears to have been the only one who occasionally joined her father and stepmother in France on holidays. 149 Galina Kuznetsova and Leonid Zurov (see footnote 227). 150 Unidentified. 151 See earlier references. 152 This was Natalia’s nickname for Nikolai—presumably, a reference to his Danish roots.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

I’ve heard that some Tsetlin died. Hope it’s not Mikhail Osipovich’s father?153 Please let me know—if that is the case, I would like to send my condolences to him. So looking forward to seeing you soon.154 Yours, Natalia Kulman

153 It was, in fact, Osip Sergeevich Tsetlin (1856–1933), Mikhail Tsetlin’s father. 154 The Kulmans stayed with the Bunins at Belvedere in Grasse for a month in September– October 1933. On October 29 Vera Bunina wrote in her diary: “I spent the whole evening with the Kulmans. So sad that they are leaving” (Ustami Buninykh, vol. 2, 151).

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21 November 9, 1933 7.30 p.m.155 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, [Mikhail] Blokh just phoned to say that you have won the Nobel Prize! What joy, what happiness!156 I am so delighted and thrilled—not just because my favorite writer and my dearest friend has finally got what he so fully deserved, but also because it is our Russia and its great literature that have now been ­recognized.157 Thank goodness, you can now carry on your mission as a true artist for many years to come and work in the knowledge that you don’t have to worry about what tomorrow might bring. I have always found it deeply upsetting to see how you have had to live your life in this never-ending financial struggle— it’s so humiliating for a true talent like yours!158 Natalia Ivanovna is teaching now, but will be here any minute. Please kiss Vera Nikolaevna for me. I am so excited, I can hardly write! I hope to see you very soon. Yours as ever, Nikolai Kulman

155 The telephone call from Stockholm to Belvedere informing Vera Bunina that her husband received the 1933 Nobel Prize for literature came through at some stage after 4 p.m. when Bunin and Kuznetsova were in a cinema in the center of Grasse, some twenty minutes’ walk from the Belvedere, watching the film Baby with Kuprin’s daughter in the leading role. So news traveled reasonably fast for 1933 if by 7.30 p.m. Nikolai Kulman was writing his letter in Paris. 156 Underlined in red pencil. 157 In this brief sentence Kulman touches upon two key elements of the Russian emigration’s ongoing search for its identity: the affirmation of the country that no longer existed and only remained in their memory, so beautifully depicted by Bunin, and its literature, which, in Greta Slobin’s words, “placed remembrance in the sphere of the sacred” (Greta Slobin, Russians Abroad. Literary and Cultural Politics of Diaspora [1919–1939] [Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013], 24). See also footnote 291. 158 Nikolai Kulman’s role in supporting Bunin’s candidature for the Nobel Prize can hardly be underestimated. He served as his official supporter twice, in 1931 and then in 1933, and on both occasions he campaigned relentlessly to secure Bunin’s victory, liaising with the Swedish Academy and its decision-makers, academics, publishers, translators, and journalists. In her postscript to the letter, Natalia Ivanovna writes: “I so wish I could actually see him the moment he found out!” (see letter 21). This line really sums up the overwhelming feeling of joy and triumph, to which Kulman contributed quite tangibly.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

[A note from Natalia Kulman:] My dearest friends! I heard the wonderful news while teaching at the Vyshegradskys.159 I then phoned the Gukasovs160 and they confirmed that Ivan Alekseevich was announced to be the Nobel Prize winner this year. To say that we are delighted is to say nothing! Maria Nikolaevna, a deeply religious person, started praying immediately to thank God for this joy. I rushed home to Nikolai Karlovich to tell him the news, but he had already heard it from Blokh. I so wish I could actually see him the moment he found out! I understand that now you will soon be coming to Paris—and I’ve only recently written to Vera Nikolaevna! May God grant you a new happy life, do not be disheartened by petty jealousy and meanness.161

159 One of the families where Natalia Ivanovna worked as a private tutor of Russian. 160 Abram Gukasov (see footnote 219) 161 Most probably a reference to the Merezhkovskys and their circle: see footnote 244. The Kulmans were not great admirers of the Gippius-Merezhkovsky circle and stayed fiercely loyal and protective of Bunin. It is true that Merezhkovsky and Bunin became archrivals in their race for the Nobel Prize and were nominated together several times. In fact, it was suggested that they should share the prize should one of them win, something that Bunin categorically rejected. This rivalry reached its peak in the 1933 nomination and in early November 1932 Vozrozhdenie (which supported Merezhkovsky) wrote that Merezhkovsky had a better chance of winning the prize. Inevitably, the personal relationship between Bunin and Merezhkovsky cooled down over the years, but Zinaida Gippius remained very graceful (some argued—manipulative). In her letter to Vera Bunina dated November 9, 1932, the year when both Merezhkovsky and Bunin were unsuccessfully nominated again, Gippius wrote that she realized how difficult it must have been to wait for the news, but that she had heard from a reliable source in Sweden that “Ivan Alekseevich has the strongest chance … while Dmitry Sergeevich is deemed too vocal in his anti-Soviet views” (Ustami Buninykh, vol. 2, 276). In her response to the actual news of Bunin’s win the following year, Zinaida Gippius wrote: “Bunin embodies that last, most valuable part of Russia which no one will be able to take away from us now” (Z. Gippius, “V etot chas” [“In this hour”], Poslednie novosti 4621 [November 16, 1933]: 3). It should also be said that although the Merezhkovskys did not attend any of the celebratory evenings that were held all over Paris in November and December 1933, they sent a very graceful note to Bunin, which Kulman delivered.

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22 59 Rue Nicolo,162 Paris November 9, 1933 11.30 p.m. My dear Ivan Alekseevich, It seems like I am writing to you for the third time today! The first163 was about Hollywood164 and Polonsky, the second probably didn’t make much sense at all, as I was too excited and thrilled,165 and this one is back to business again. We have had a meeting in Sovremennye zapiski to discuss its disastrous financial state, which you are, of course, fully aware of. It would be a blow to all of us if this magazine ceases to exist.166 You have always been its highly valued and regular contributor, but now you are a world-renowned author, who could do something quite tangible to put the magazine firmly back on its feet. 162 This address is printed at the top of the letter and could be the Sovremennye zapiski address at the time, although the letter was clearly written at home (given the time, 11.30 p.m.) 163 This letter was either lost or not posted. 164 The year 1933, when Bunin finally won the Nobel Prize, was particularly difficult for the Bunins financially. Bunin writes in his diary: “No money. Monotonous life. Nervous exhaustion. Total crisis—I am even short of ink, just a few drops left” (Bunin and Bunina, Ustami Buninykh, 286). In mid-1933, Khodasevich had the idea if approaching a Hollywood studio to see if it might be interested in acquiring the rights to produce a film version of Bunin’s “The Gentleman from San Francisco.” In his letter to Bunin (October 15, 1933), Mark Aldanov wrote: “[The idea] would be well worth your while materially and would enhance your name in America. But don’t expect it to be an artistic kind of film” (Marullo, Twilight, 277). This potentially lucrative venture never materialized, but on October 19, 1933, days before the announcement that Bunin had won the Nobel Prize, Vera Bunina wrote in her diary: “Our only hope now is cinema. Polonsky from Hollywood asks to sell him either the title or the whole thing. If only this project materialized! We would be saved. Otherwise, it’s a disaster” (Ustami Buninykh, vol. 2, 287). To further illustrate the Bunins’ financial state, a few days before the official announcement, Bunin wrote in his diary: “Vera’s Saint’s Day today. To celebrate Galya (Kuznetsova) bought a small piece of salami. Haven’t I done well for myself in this life?” (Ustami Buninykh, vol. 2, 290, 292). 165 See letter 3437/22 where Kulman congratulates Bunin on winning the Nobel Prize for ­literature. 166 Kulman’s concern proved a little premature: Sovremennye zapiski survived for seven more years until it was closed in 1940 with the Nazi occupation of Paris.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

Needless to say, your triumph will now be widely celebrated everywhere and I was wondering how you would feel if Sovremennye zapiski holds a celebratory banquet in your honor and invites you as our special guest, with the proceeds from this banquet going to Sovremennye zapiski?167 Please let me know you thoughts at your earliest convenience. I do hope that you can support this idea—after all the years of contributing to the ­magazine—and will agree to help us in this most straightforward and reliable way. Yours as ever, Nikolai Kulman Let us know how your health is. We have sent you a telegram—addressed to Belvedere—you can afford it now!168 Yours as ever, NK

167 Kulman’s brilliant business brain kicked in: hours before all the Parisian papers came out with the news of Bunin’s Nobel Prize win on their front pages, he was keen to secure a deal for his beloved magazine. The October 1933 issue of Sovremennye zapiski opened with the next installment of Bunin’s Life of Arseniev, the book that, it was rumored, would win him the Noble Prize in just a few weeks’ time. The next issue of the magazine published in January 1934 opened with a portrait of Bunin and his autograph, with no commentary. It has not been established whether a banquet in honor of Ivan Bunin proposed by Kulman was ever held, but Bunin remained a regular contributor to the magazine. A special celebratory evening was held in the office of Poslednie novosti in Paris on November 16, 1933, at which the Kulmans were present, just before the Bunins’ departure to Stockholm, and a “Bunin Gala Evening” took place on November 26, 1933 in the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, also attended by the Kulmans. They were also among an intimate group of friends who came to see the Bunins off to Stockholm at Gare du Nord on December, 3, 1933. 168 Up until this day the Kulmans tried not to send telegrams to Grasse since the Bunins had to pay five francs for every delivery. But on November 9, 1933 Bunin wrote in his diary: “I was horrified—I have no money to pay for the telegrams that started pouring in, so I thought that perhaps I should leave the house, just like Leo Tolstoy! But what shall I do with my wife who will have to stay here?” (Ustami Buninykh, vol. 2, 293.)

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23 Faculte de Lettres Russe pres l’Universite de Paris 7 Rue Boucicaut, Paris, XV [arrondisment]169 November 17, 1933 The Faculty of Russian History and Philology in Paris is rejoicing together with you, dearest Ivan Alekseevich, that you not only have been recognized as Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences but have now joined the World Academy of Fine Letters. While this is a tremendous academic achievement, our joy as Russian patriots is even stronger.170 We wish you many happy years and new victories in the future.

169 The letter is printed on paper with a letterhead saying “The Faculty of Russian Literature affiliated to the University of Paris,” where Kulman was first professor and then the dean. Interestingly, this headed paper contains the Kulmans’ private address of 7, Rue Boucicaut. 170 The 1933 Nobel Prize award was, for Bunin, much more than just a recognition of his literary genius and contribution to the Russian literary tradition. One of his contenders was Maxim Gorky, who represented the USSR and Soviet literature. The decision to give the prize to Bunin showed the Nobel committee’s preference for the “Other Russia” over the USSR. It had a tremendous patriotic significance for those who had to live in exile and united various factions within Russia Abroad. In his congratulatory letter Archbishop Anastasy, head of the Russian mission in Jerusalem, said: “Your literary genius became the symbol of unity of all the Russia Abroad” (November 21, 1933, RAL MS1066/620). Other émigré Russians wrote to Bunin: “Life is so grey, so boring, and burdensome. And then I recall that Bunin has won the Nobel Prize. And Good Lord! How good, how great the world suddenly becomes!” (Marullo, From the Other Shore, 367). Not all Russian émigrés joined in with this chorus, though: Marina Tsvetaeva wrote: “Gorky is bigger, more human, more original, and more necessary than Bunin. Gorky is an epoch, Bunin is the end of an epoch” (ibid., 368). The French Communist Party paper Humanité joined in: ‘There is something comic in the fact that this award has been given to a relic of that old world that has been swept away by the proletarian revolution … and especially at the time when Russian literature in the USSR, having been sprinkled with the living water of revolution and of socialist construction has attained a success that is well known to all” (ibid.). Predictably, the USSR boycotted the event: it was not mentioned in any Soviet newspapers, and Alexandra Kolontay, then USSR ambassador to Sweden, not only declined to attend the ceremony, but even failed to mention either the event, or the winner, in her private diaries. Bunin’s status during the ceremony was declared as “without country” and, unprecedentedly, no national flag was present.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

Your colleagues, N. Kulman, L. Shestov,171 A. Gulevich,172 A. Kartashev,173 Lozinsky,174 Sergei Eliseev175

171 Lev Shestov (1866–1938) was a prominent Russian-Jewish thinker, philosopher, scholar, and a colleague of Kulman’s at the Russian Institute in Paris. Interestingly, in 1930 Bunin asked Shestov to support his nomination but this request was declined. In his letter to Bunin Shestov wrote: “I have been thinking about your request for the last three days and I have now decided that I am not in a position to offer you my official support and nominate you to the Nobel Prize committee. You ask me to represent ‘Russian literature’ but I do not represent Russian literature” (RAL, 1066/5039). Shestov continued that he felt neglected and abandoned by the Russian emigration “establishment” and was never asked to take part in any significant cultural events. Thus, he believed that his name might be counterproductive, as no one actually knew who he was! However, Shestov put his name forward to support the 1933 nomination, together with Kulmand and Kartashev. See N. Baranova-Shestova, Zhizn′ L. Shestova (Life of L. Shestov) (Moscow: DirectMedia, 2016). 172 Arseny Gulevich (1866–1947), a military scholar and historian. 173 About Kartashev, see footnote 278. 174 Gregory Lozinsky (1889–1942) was one of the key members of the Russian Institute in Paris. Similarly to Nikolai Kulman, he was evangelical about preserving Russian language, literature, and culture among the young émigré Russians. His research interests focused on Pushkin and the translation of his works into French. In 1937, during the commemoration of the centenary of Pushkin’s death, he supervised the production of the new edition of Eugene Onegin. Lozinsky was also one of the founding members of Petropolis publishing house. 175 Sergei Eliseev (1889–1975) was a prominent scholar and an expert on Japan.

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24 Vozrozhdenie, daily newspaper Editor: Yu. F. Semenov 2 Rue de Seze, Paris, IX [arrondisment] January 22, 1934 Dear Nikolai Karlovich. I hope you don’t mind me bothering you with a request to not forget Fedor Ivanovich Blagov,176 the former editor of Russkoe Slovo [The Russian Word], when distributing the funds of I. A. Bunin that you currently manage. Fedor Ivanovich is now in a dire financial state and is suffering from an incurable disease.177 I. A. Bunin has already kindly promised to help Fedor Ivanovich and I would be grateful if you could possibly remind him of this promise. Please accept my assurances of deepest respect and loyalty. Signed, Yu. Semenov178 [Handwritten note by Nikolai Kulman:] January 25, 1934 Dear Ivan Alekseevich, Please find enclosed the letter I have just received from Yu. F. Semenov. I have responded to him to advise that we have already allocated all the money from the lump sum that you had already donated but I still promised him to pass this letter on to you. I am inundated with requests and pleas of help from “Bunin’s Fund” and find it almost impossible to answer each of them individually. I think we should place an official statement in the newspapers immediately to

176 Underlined in red pencil. 177 Fedor Ivanovich Blagov (1866–1934), journalist and writer. 178 Yury Semenov (1873–1947) was the editor of the Vozrozhdenie from 1927 until its closure in 1940.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

announce that the Committee179 has already allocated all the money available as instructed by you.180 How long are you planning to stay here?181 Yours as ever, Nikolai Kulman182 179 The Committee for Allocation of Funds from Ivan Bunin Nobel Prize was appointed in November 1933 with Nikolai Kulman as its chairman. It also included I. Fondaminsky and V. Elyashevich. 180 The total amount of Bunin’s Nobel Prize came to 170.331 Swedish kronor or 715.000 French francs—a fortune by 1933 standards. For comparison, the price of Belvedere, Bunin’s beloved villa in Grasse, which he failed to buy, was 87,000 French francs. Before his departure to Stockholm, Bunin presented Kulman with a list of ten people he wanted to give lump sums to that included Alexander Kuprin, Ivan Shmelev (who was not that happy about Bunin’s win but accepted the money), Nadezhda Teffi, Vladislav Khodasevich, Marina Tsvetaeva (also vocally anti-Bunin), and Alexander Amfiteatrov. According to various sources, Bunin donated over 100,000 francs to support Russian writers in exile. However, as Nadezhda Teffi brilliantly put it: “Among many Russian societies in Paris there is now a newcomer: The Society of Those Offended (or Left Out) by Bunin” (Teffi, Moia letopis′, 167). Indeed, on November 25, 1933 Vera Bunina wrote: “I already sense that many people feel that they will be, or are currently left out (financially)” (Ustami Buninkh, vol. 2, 294). Details of how the money was spent—or rather, misspent—can be found in Marcenko, Russische Schriftsteller. 181 The Bunins returned to Paris from Stockholm via Germany and stayed there for a few weeks before returning to Grasse in late January 1934. On January 21, 1934 Galina Kuznetsova, who accompanied the Bunins in Stockholm, wrote in her diary: “There is a strange feeling of emptiness, of finality. The noise of the last two months has now almost died down. Our lives have broken down somehow and now we have to start something new” (Kuznetsova, Grasskii dnevnik, 342). By 1934 most of the Nobel Prize money was gone, none of the lucrative publishing deals they expected had materialized, and the Bunins went back to their usual state of poverty. 182 This handwritten note visibly shows signs of considerable strain: Kulman’s usually neat, almost exemplary handwriting, fails him this time and his hand is almost impossible to recognize. A large corpus of correspondence between Kulman and Bunin in that pivotal year seems to be missing, or perhaps it was destroyed by Bunin, but there is a sense that Nikolai Karlovich’s brief tenure as Bunin’s fund manager left something of a scar. As a true friend, he represented Bunin as well as he could, but there were some incidents, including a dispute with the Committee for Help to Russian Writers and Scholars, which demanded that Bunin return all the grants he had received from them during the years of hardship. This dispute broke out in January 1934 and Nikolai Kulman successfully acted as a mediator to resolve it. It is important to note that Kulman was only managing the fund allocated to help Russian émigré writers in need and was not involved in any business ventures or ill-advised investments that led to Bunin’s Nobel Prize money disappearing very quickly. Their friendship remained as strong as ever, as the last few letters show.

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25 Chez Mme Bathereau, Arcy–sur–Cure August 29, 1935183 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, Thank you for your letter and the volume of your works that came with it. Please do send more if you can—we will be really grateful and delighted to read them again, especially now that summer offers more time and peace to do it. Whatever some critics say, I firmly believe that you are our greatest living writer and none of our contemporaries come even close.184 Not too long ago our former Finance Minister185 spent two days with us and we talked a lot on this subject together with Mikhail Blokh. Of course, we regularly discuss it with Natalia Ivanovna as well. Only those with a very unhealthy self-esteem and lack of objective judgement can possibly put themselves in the same league as you. Please be assured this belief is absolutely objective and I am not saying it only because I love you. I am so glad to hear that you are completing editing your full works. Once you finish with this, you can go back to The Life of Arseniev or start something new perhaps? You have to give us everything you can give! Yours as ever, Nikolai Kulman 183 Another lacuna (over a year) in the corpus of letters. 184 It is not quite clear which critics or critical works in particular Kulman has in mind here. However, his words, as well as Natalia’s note, clearly indicate that in the years that followed the Nobel Prize win, the almost universal glorification of Bunin’s writing gave way to a more critical appraisal. 185 This reference is most likely to Mikhail Tereshchenko (1886–1956), finance minister in Alexander Kerensky’s Provisional Government. He was arrested together with other members on October 26, 1917 in the Winter Palace and spent some time in Peter and Paul Fortress. Tereshchenko was quite an extraordinary figure, often referred to as the first Russian oligarch. He owned the largest private yacht, as well as one of the rarest diamonds in the world, and spoke some sixteen languages fluently. Tereshchenko was also involved in numerous charities and good causes, supporting Russian literature and arts. He was the owner of Sirius Publishing, famous for promoting and supporting Russian Silver Age authors, briefly worked for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and had one of the best collections of Russian and French art. After the revolution he remained a generous patron of Russian culture and education in exile and financed many ventures, including schools and orphanages for Russian émigré children, a cause that was very close to Kulman’s heart. Tereshchenko became the prototype for the protagonist of Mark Aldanov’s novel The Key (1929).

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

[A note from Natalia Kulman:] My dear Ivan Alekseevich, I have been rereading some of your works this summer and I told Nikolai Karlovich that, in my mind, what you write feels like a symphony in comparison with some modest solo of flute, or trombone, or even drums produced by other writers. So you can imagine how delighted I was to hear that you are preparing the full collection of your works!186 Natalia Kulman

186 The Kulmans refer to the Complete Works by Ivan Bunin that was being published by Petropolis in Berlin. The only post-Nobel Prize project that actually materialized, it turned out to be quite traumatic and far from profitable for Bunin. Nikolai Kulman was a colleague and friend of Georgy Lozinsky, one of the founders of Petropolis, who cosigned the congratulatory address (see footnote 307). Bunin chose Petropolis out of several publishing houses bidding to produce the fresh Nobel Prize laureate’s collection of works and signed a contract with them on March 31, 1934, according to which Petropolis was to publish ten volumes in twelve months. However, the actual process took over two years, with contractual battles going on up until 1939. Bunin was contractually bound not to publish e­ lsewhere. As a result, between 1934 and 1939 he only managed to publish one other book (Liberation of Tolstoy, 1937). The whole venture proved financially and psychologically almost catastrophic for Bunin, who ran out of Nobel Prize money by 1935 and at the same time was also suffering from the very traumatic end of his relationship with Galina Kuznetsova. On July 6, 1936 he writes in his diary: “This horrendous time goes on and on. What have I done with myself? …” (Ustami Buninykh, vol. 3, 56).

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26 Chez Mme Bathereau, Arcy–sur–Cure September 3, 1935 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, Thank you for the books and your very kind autographs. I would be really grateful if Kaplan187 could send me the rest as well. I will then have a chance to read it all again here, in peace, with no interruptions. So far I have only reread Mitya’s Love and Natalia Ivanovna will now probably read it for the fifth time. It’s been a while since I read it. I don’t know whether you have changed a lot for this edition, but it is now a complete work of art and I have discovered new beauty that I might have not noticed in full when I read it first. Some of the details I pointed out earlier (such as Katya’s “mother-of-pearl ring,” her “kisses with tongue”) are edited out and I believe the story benefited from it—I felt on first reading that these emphatic details somehow disturbed the harmony of your narrative. Your writing has a Pushkin spirit, it’s in your blood—your attention to even the tiniest of details, uncompromising crackdown on anything you feel is short of perfect, your clean artistic conscious are beyond words.188 And now I enclose that scoundrelly little piece by Alexei Tolstoy189 from Vecherniaia Moskva, which Andrey Blokh had sent me.190 One of his 187 Mikhail Kaplan (1894–1979) was a representative of Petropolis in Paris who conducted all negotiations with Bunin. Kaplan was also the owner of the House of Books (to echo the famous St Petersburg brand), a large Russian distributor and bookstore in Paris. 188 This sentence is underlined by Bunin’s blue pencil. 189 Alexei Tolstoy (1888–1945) was a prominent Russian and Soviet writer, author of The Road to Calvary, Peter the Great, and Aelita. Originally a devoted follower of Leo Tolstoy’s teachings, he became one of the most recognized writers of the Russian Silver Age. Tolstoy emigrated from Odessa in 1918 and played an important part in the cultural life of the Russian emigration in Paris and Berlin until his sudden and controversial return to Soviet Russia in 1923. There, he promptly became part of the establishment, was elected to the Supreme Soviet, and received a number of Stalin prizes, enjoying all the privileges of the higher echelons of the regime. He was widely known as “The Red Count” and after his death in 1945 numerous streets, schools, theatres, and publishing houses were named after him.   Bunin’s relationship with Alexey Tolstoy can probably be best described as intense lovehate. They were very close during their Odessa days before emigration—Tolstoy and his second wife, the poet Natalia Krandievskaya-Tolstaya (1888–1963), often appear in Bunin’s poignant Cursed Days. The Bunins and the Tolstoys remained close in Paris in the early 1920s, seeing each other as families almost on a daily basis. After Tolstoy’s return to Soviet Russia, he was seen by most of his former friends in Paris and Berlin, including the Kulmans,

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

acquaintances met Tolstoy in a small bar. Tolstoy claimed that you had sent him an offensive note, but said that he still loved you and was a genuine admirer of your talent. Apparently, he even wanted to go and see you and asked for your current address but then he said: “I would go and see him if I was certain that we would end up just having a verbal row, but I fear I might end up with a black eye. Let him say that I am a scoundrel and a scallywag, but I don’t want to have a physical fight with him.”191 Since he was in the company of Korovin192 and B. Lazarevsky,193 I presume he is referring to these two people in his nasty little article. as a traitor, a Judas, who had sold himself and his unquestionable talent, to the enemy. Tolstoy even rewrote most of his Road to Calvary to fit his new ideology. In his brilliant essay “The Third Tolstoy” (Paris: n.p., 1949), written three years after Tolstoy’s death in Moscow, Bunin expresses his views of him rather harshly, but admits that although he saw Tolstoy as a traitor with no moral principles, he always recognized and admired his enormous talent as a writer. Whenever Tolstoy’s name appears in the Kulmans’ letters, there is a note in Bunin’s hand saying: “He’s always been a son of a bitch!” (abbreviated to SS [sukin syn]). In one of his last known handwritten notes made on February 23, 1953, Bunin wrote sarcastically about Tolstoy “making up” his title (MS1066/543). This note offers a potential insight into why Bunin felt so passionate about Tolstoy: class was always important to Bunin; he even allowed himself some sharp remarks about Chekhov, whom he genuinely admired as a writer and a person, but who came from “the merchants” (kupechestvo) In Tolstoy Bunin saw an equal, a Russian nobleman with a long cultural history, so, perhaps, if Tolstoy’s title was allegedly semi-fake, Bunin could let go of their rivalry. It was also difficult for Bunin to forgive Tolstoy’s condescending, patronizing “official” pity to those who, unlike him, chose never to return to the USSR.    In 1962 a Soviet scholar, Yury Krestinsky, published a letter written to Stalin by Tolstoy asking if Bunin could return home. The letter caused enormous controversy and an explosion of theories about whether Bunin secretly contemplated repatriation (see Marullo, Twilight). The letter was dated June 17, 1941 and was delivered to the Kremlin the next day. In the early hours of June 22, 1941, Germany attacked the USSR, so the letter was never answered. In fact, Bunin wrote to Tolstoy in May 1941 asking if he could be paid for a number of unauthorized publications of his books in the USSR, since at the time he lived in poverty and very poor health in Nazi-occupied France. 190 Alexei Tolstoy’s Parizhskie teni (Paris shadows)—an openly condescending propaganda piece showing the “complete and utter moral degradation of the Russian emigration”—was written soon after Tolstoy’s attendance at the Writers’ Conference in Paris and published by the newspaper Vecherniaia Moskva (Moscow Tonight) in summer 1935. 191 This sentence is underlined in Bunin’s blue pencil. 192 Alexei Korovin (1897–1950) was an artist and son of the celebrated Russian impressionist Konstantin Korovin, who was also his teacher. He worked in theatre design and exhibited his works in Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Belgrade. 193 Boris Lazarevsky (1871–1936) was a talented writer of the Chekhovian school, a follower of Tolstoy about whom he wrote an interesting memoir. In Parizhskie teni, Alexey Tolstoy describes Lazarevsky as “belonging to the most anti-Bolshevik faction of Russian émigré writers in Paris,” while in fact Lazarevsky was not involved in political life.

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No doubt, you occasionally read some reviews of your works, so must know about the recent one of The Life of Arseniev by François Porché,194 ­published in Le Journal. Yours as ever, Nikolai Kulman [A note by Natalia Kulman:] My dear Ivan Alekseevich, I was so touched by your inscription on my favorite book.195 As always, I have started reading it again with a sense of admiration. It seems now that the pace of the story has become more urgent and it agrees with the story’s overall mood and its gloomy passion. Thank you again and I look forward to receiving your Arseniev,196 which I haven’t reread for a while. My love to you and Vera Nikolaevna. My regards to Galina Nikolaevna.197 How is her health? With all my love, Natalia Kulman

194 François Porché (1877–1944) was a playwright, a poet, a literary critic, and the author of Tsar Lenin—A Mystery in Three Acts and an Epilogue (1930). In the early twentieth century he taught French literature at the French Alliance mission in Moscow, where he lived for some ten years. Fluent in Russian, he was known in France for his reviews of Russian literature—in particular, of Leo Tolstoy. His review of Bunin’s Life of Arseniev, published in French translation as “A la Source de Jours” is titled “Tolstoy and Bunin.” See Klassik bez retushi: literaturnyi mir o tvorchestve I. A. Bunina (1890–1950) (The Maitre as he Was: The literary World on the Works of I. A. Bunin (1890–1950), ed. N. Melnikov and T. Marchenko (Moscow: Russkii put′, 2010), 137. 195 Most likely, Mitya’s Love. 196 Life of Arseniev. 197 See footnote 227.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1922–1935)

27198 MG199 The committee responsible for organizing the literary evening for Ivan Alekseevich Bunin that is to take place in the Grand Hall Gaveau (45–47 Rue la Boetie) on Sunday, April 13, 1930, would like to offer you the chance to purchase the tickets to attend this event. The committee would like to thank you in advance and requests that you send the money due to one of the addresses listed below: M. Aldanov, 156 Avenue de Versailles, Paris, XVI [arrondisment]. M. Demidov, Les Dernieres Nouvelles, 51 Rue Turbigo, Paris, III [arrondisment]. In case you do not wish to attend this event, please return the enclosed tickets no later than April 3 to either of these addresses. Signed: Professor N. Kulman, Teffi, M. Aldanov200 [A handwritten note by someone returning the tickets that says: “April, 13, is the first day of our ( Jewish) Easter, so we cannot attend the theater.”] This is the last private letter of Nikolai Kulman to Ivan Bunin according to the RAL Catalogue’s listing. The rest must have been lost. The narrative of their friendship, however, continues in references that can be found throughout the next two corpora of letters: Nikolai Kulman’s letters to Vera Bunina (with some newly discovered ones) and, to a certain extent, Natalia Kulman’s letters to Ivan Bunin.

198 This letter has no date, but chronologically it should have been placed earlier because of its reference to April 13, 1930. I have kept it in its catalogued order. The literary evening in Grand Hall Gaveau did take place and Bunin read his works to a large audience. 199 The letters “MG” typed at the top are most likely the initials of Militsa Green (1912–1998), who inherited, systemized, and catalogued Ivan and Vera Bunins’ archive when it first arrived in Edinburgh from Paris in 1971. 200 This standard invitation to attend a fundraising event is an intriguing document of from that era of Russian Paris: tickets were sent by organizers in advance while the money was expected to be paid later.

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CHAPTER 5

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina (1928–1938)

T

he Catalogue of the Bunin, Bunina, Zurov and Lopatina Collections by Anthony J. Heywood, also known as the inventory of the Russian Archives in Leeds (RAL), lists only three letters from Nikolai Karlovich Kulman to Vera Nikolaevna Bunina.1 These catalogued letters (3702–3704) are the first to appear below. However, while working with Natalia Kulman’s letters to her friend Vera Bunina, another sub-corpus of five letters written by Nikolai Kulman was discovered: although they were added to his wife’s correspondence, they are, in fact, quite independent and should certainly be treated as separate items. These letters, which have not been itemized in the catalogue, quoted, or published before, are of special interest. To a certain extent, this misnumbering continues the unfortunate trend of the “disappearing Professor Nikolai Kulman” and his legacy as discussed in the introduction. Ironically, the first three originally listed letters are quite brief and, as opposed to the newly discovered “add-ons” to Natalia Kulman’s messages, seem quite formal. This makes this discovery even more precious. There are no records to suggest when or where precisely Nikolai Kulman and Vera Bunina first met and became friends, although it is safe to suggest that this friendship stemmed from Kulman’s long-term friendship with Ivan Bunin. The two men first met in 1902 in Crimea. Bunin had known Vera Nikolaevna since 1896, but they only got together in 1906 and married in the Russian Orthodox Cathedral on Rue Daru in Paris in 1922, after Bunin’s divorce from his first wife Anna Tsakni finally came through. It is likely that Nikolai Kulman and Vera Bunina had been introduced to each other before the 1917 Revolution and subsequent flight to emigration, perhaps at a literary salon in Moscow or St. Petersburg, even though Kulman was a true St. Petersburgian and the Bunins spent most of their “city” time in Moscow. They could also have met through 1

Heywood, Davies, and Rieneker, eds., Catalogue, 321.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina (1928–1938)

numerous mutual friends and acquaintances, both in literary and academic circles of prerevolutionary Russia. Vera Bunina came from a distinguished Moscow academic family and even before meeting Bunin in the late 1890s she attended numerous literary gatherings. Although this relationship, on the surface, looks like a polite extension to Kulman’s long-term friendship with Bunin, the tone of the letters is unmistakably and genuinely affectionate, almost intimate, and certainly very informal, suggesting that they were not written purely out of politeness or duty. Most of the letters that survived are written in December and are usually a response to Vera Nikolaevna’s birthday or Saint’s Day2 greetings—Kulman’s birthday was on December 1, and his Saint’s Day was also in early December. It is true that the opening paragraphs appear almost an exact word-for word repetition of polite gratitude for birthday or Saint’s Day wishes, but the rest of the letters do not follow a set pattern and offer an authentic and fascinating insight into the ever-changing times, fortunes, and moods of the Russian emigration in Paris. The catalogue states that this collection of letters covers 1928 to 1934, while in fact, taking into account the newly identified additions, they stretch up to 1938. There is no doubt that this is a very small fragment of what must have been an active and lively correspondence: Vera Bunina and Nikolai Kulman had many interests and pursuits in common. Of course, their shared activities often centered around Bunin. Vera Bunina and Nikolai Kulman were involved in organizing various fundraising events and publications to support his work, sat on the same committees to promote the sale of Bunin’s books by subscription, and, of course, Vera was part of Nikolai Kulman’s campaign for nominating Bunin for the Nobel Prize. Later, Kulman was appointed the chairman of the committee set up to allocate and distribute part of the Nobel Prize amongst Russian writers in need, a task in which Vera Bunina also helped. Their love, affection, and sometimes concern for their beloved “Ivan Alekseevich” is an obvious bond. Some joint projects included both the Bunin and the Kulman pairs: for example, they all took part in the preparation for the famous “Mission of the Russian Emigration” meeting in Paris on February 16, 1924 (although, predictably, only Bunin’s name is now mentioned in this context). On December 23, 1923, Vera Bunina writes in her diary: “Today we had a meeting at the Manukhins’ place3 regarding the forthcoming ‘Mission of the Russian ­Emigration’ gathering and have had 2 3

Den′ angela (“Angel’s Day” or “Saint’s Day”) was often regarded as more important than one’s birthday in prerevolutionary Russia. For more details about Dr Ivan Manukhin see earlier references to Grand Duke Gavriil, Gleb Bokii, and Maxim Gorky.

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some really heated debates! The list of participants was discussed and so far we have: Father George Spassky,4 Merezhkovsky, Shmelev, Bunin, Kartashev, N. Kulman, Manukhin, Natalia Kulman. Planning to charge an entrance fee of two francs.”5 Nikolai Kulman and Vera Bunina also arranged joint holidays and gettogethers for the two couples in the South of France; they often saw the New Year in together with other friends and exchanged views on new authors, publications, politics, literary events, and sometimes simple gossip. The two did not always share the same opinion—Nikolai sometimes appears quite categorical in his responses to Vera—but the overall tone of this correspondence is that of continuous affection, respect, and a need to stay in touch, regardless of their “other halves,” as expressed so eloquently in the opening paragraph of the first letter. Finally, as the newly discovered letters show, in 1931 Vera Bunina and Nikolai Kulman became almost related (in Russian Orthodox Church terms), as they became godparents to Alexei Bernstein, the son of Elena Bernstein (née Blokh), a close friend of Natalia Kulman. From 1931 onwards Nikolai affectionately addressed Vera Bunina as kuma, a Russian informal term for one’s “baptizing partner.” Aesthetically, these letters—written, of course, in “old style” Russian, in a very delicate, almost calligraphic hand, which, as the years go by, ages with its writer—are a unique example of the elegant style of prerevolutionary written Russian. Like the country itself, this language, together with its “old” alphabet, disappeared in 1917. As such, this collection presents is genuine material culture that brings back memory and history.

4 Father Georgy Spassky (1877–1934) was one of the key church leaders of the Russian emigration. During the civil war he was the chief priest of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and the command of Baron Vrangel. He moved to Paris in 1923 where he served at Alexander Nevsky Cathedral on Rue Daru. Father Georgy was one of the founding members of St. Sergy Academy. 5 Ustami Buninykh, vol. 2, 121.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina (1928–1938)

1 January 4, 1928 My dear Vera Nikolaevna, I finally wrote to Ivan Alekseevich today, after a long pause. And now I would also like to take this opportunity to have a conversation with you. I have been meaning to write to you for a while: first, to say thank you for your best wishes on my Saint’s Day, but also to allow myself this pleasure of talking to you, although, of course, these written conversations are so much less satisfying than when you can see your beloved interlocutor and enjoy this closeness of souls. We so much enjoyed reading the description of the trip you made to Hyères—it sounded quite amusing! We’ve been meaning to go there for a while. There are some interesting literary connections, of course: Leo Tolstoy stayed there and his brother, Nikolai, died in Hyères and is buried there, at the local cemetery.6 But there are even more “ancient” literary connections with that place. Yesterday was the last day of my week of so-called “holidays”—it seems that I have been busier than ever. Tomorrow my lectures at the Sorbonne resume and I will even be reading a lecture about Tolstoy on Christmas Eve!7 I’m so happy to know that you are sorting out your diaries—it’s not only your beautiful soul that will be shining through, but lots of other things that would be of interest to everybody. I would really love to read them, even if just some extracts. We had a literary soiree last Wednesday. Boris Zaitsev8 and Nikolai Roshchin9 read their works, and I recited a new poem by Blokh,10 which I think 6 Nikolai Tolstoy (1823–1860) was Leo Tolstoy’s elder brother. He died of tuberculosis in Hyères (Var), near Marseilles, and was buried at a local cemetery, where Leo Tolstoy bought a plot of land for his brother. In 1882, Nikolai Tolstoy’s remains were moved to a new municipal cemetery, which still exists. 7 A reference to Russian Orthodox Christmas ( January 6–7). 8 See footnote 403. 9 Nikolai Roshchin (1896–1956), a writer, was once very close to the Bunins and lived with them at Belvedere in Grasse. Once a White Army officer, he acquired the nickname “Captain,” and that is how he is often referred to in the Bunins’ diaries and letters, as well as in Galina Kuznetsova’s Grasskii dnevnik. During the Nazi occupation of France he joined the Resistance and in 1946 returned to the USSR where he published in numerous Soviet literary magazines. Roshchin died in Moscow. 10 Alexander Blokh (1878–?), literary critic, lawyer, and poet.

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is not bad at all. I also read some very beautiful poetry by Radionov.11 Both were too shy to recite their works, so I stepped in! I also recited “A Knight for an Hour”12 and two short stories by Chekhov.13 The atmosphere was lively and relaxed, although perhaps it was a bit crowded, with some guests staying as late as 1.30 in the morning. We might have a repeat—hopefully, when you are back in town? At least, we all hope so. My warmest hugs and seasonal greetings—both for New Year and “our” Christmas.14 May only most wonderful, happy things and kindness come your way this year: this is especially important as it’s a leap year! Your always faithful and loving, Nikolai Kulman PS. I have quite a few students in my History of the Russian Language course— some thirty or thirty-two people, so some have to stand in my rather small teaching room. About sixteen of them will take a Licentiate exam. But lectures about Tolstoy usually draw some fifty people or more. I so wish you could be among them. …15

11 Vadim Radionov (1890–1963), recognized for his poetic talent, was highly praised by Bunin. However, Radionov was painfully shy and never published his works. The only edition of his poetry was posthumous (1963). 12 “A Knight for an Hour” (1863), by Nikolai Nekrasov (1821–1877). 13 Nikolai Kulman was an excellent and very experienced reciter. His “Thursdays” at the Grand Duke Konstantin’s Marble Palace in St. Petersburg, where he led by example reciting Russian prose and poetry, were famous in the capital and drew a large audience. 14 Russian Orthodox Christmas is celebrated on January 6–7. 15 In her diaries, Vera Bunina mentions a number of lectures by Kulman. Like her husband, she was a great admirer of Tolstoy (as well as, to Bunin’s annoyance, Dostoyevsky), so it is very likely that Nikolai’s “wish you were here” is quite genuine.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina (1928–1938)

2 December 22, 1928 My dear Vera Nikolaevna, I am so grateful to you for remembering my Saint’s Day, thank you for your card and all the good wishes. We were so delighted to hear the good news about life in Grasse. I am, actually, also really pleased that, as you say in your letter, Ivan Alekseevich “stopped seeing and hearing anything and anyone around him.” You see, I believe that what it means is that he is now gone deep into his own world where he can see, hear, and understand perfectly and that it will all be later poured into his new stories and their protagonists. By the way, I quite liked the way Ivan Alekseevich criticized Adamovich for his phrase-mongering: all those verbal pyrotechnics, very few ideas, and often no sense whatsoever.16 My lecture about Ivan Alekseevich is finally published in Le Monde Slave17— with some creative editing, exercised by their censors, of an expressly republican kind.18 They never sent me the final proofs, with no excuse whatsoever. Once I have my complimentary copies, I will send you one straight away and would be grateful if you could think of a list of names of people in French circles to whom I could forward them—all under the auspices of glorifying and promoting all things Russian, of course! About a month ago I also sent Fondaminsky19 a copy of the lecture that I delivered at the Congress of Russian Scholars in Belgrade20—it is called “Russian 16 It is not quite clear which publication Kulman is referring to here. Bunin always regarded Adamovich as the best literary critic of the Russian emigration and highly valued his talent, often seeking advice—the large corpus of correspondence between the Bunins and Adamovich, now in RAL, covering the period of 1926 to 1961, is a testament of genuine friendship and mutual respect. But of course, the two had some mild disagreements, primarily to do with Adamovich’s admiration for Alexander Blok, which always irritated Bunin. 17 Koulmann, “Ivan Bunin.” 18 On October 28, 1924, France became one of the first European states to establish diplomatic relationships with the newly formed USSR and, in view of many Russian émigrés, quickly adopted a pro-Soviet censorship regime with regard to Russia-related publications. Any strong expressions of an anti-Soviet nature or glorification of Russia’s past could become subject to severe intervention. The White émigrés suddenly felt they were in a double ideological exile. When Bunin received his Nobel Prize for literature in 1933, the French Communist Party newspaper Humanité wrote: “There is something comic in the fact that this award has been given to a relic of that old world that has been swept away by the proletarian revolution” (Marullo, Twilight, 96). Unfortunately, this trend continued well into the 1960s and the 1970s—see Rene Guerra’s Kogda my v Rossiiu vernemsia … (When We Come Back to Russia …) (St. Petersburg: Vostok, 2010). 19 See footnote 228. 20 See footnotes 235 and 238.

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Literature in Soviet Russia.” I thought he might want to publish it in Sovremennye zapiski but heard nothing back for a while, so yesterday I thought I’d remind him. Not sure whether any sort of censorship would be applied to Sovremennye zapiski publication. I wouldn’t be that surprised if Vishnyak wouldn’t want to publish my things there anyway. Apparently, he is now the key decision-maker there.21 I was really enjoying my lively correspondence with the editors at Le Monde Slave: it brought back all those “happy” memories of my regular visits to our very own Censorship Committee, God bless its soul, where I had to fight Engelgardt and Katenin22—they were not happy with my lecture on Tolstoy and its publication. …23 Having said that, those tsarist censors never bothered to talk about freedom, while the republican ones certainly do. All that in the spirit of the “grandfather” Krylov’s Quaib: to avoid any disputes, that very Quaib used to say to the members of his divan: “Dear sirs, I would like anyone who objects to this decision, to declare his objection freely—and at that very moment he will be granted 500 lashes administered with a bull’s vein, but afterwards we will consider his objections most carefully.”24 So my correspondence with Le Monde Slave regarding my publication about Ivan Alekseevich really reminds me of the freedom-loving Quaib. … My lectures are going fine, although I have fewer students this year than I have in my History of Russian class. I haven’t seen Olshin25 yet. When are you coming back to Paris?26 They really want me to go to Belgrade this autumn, and it looks like I will have to go. … All my love, N. Kulman.

21 Mark Vishnyak (1883–1976) was one of the editors of Sovremennye zapiski. While Vishnyak leaned towards the right wing of the SR Party and was keen to use this publication to unite the anti-Bolshevik forces of Russia Abroad, he also had to play a careful diplomatic game in these new circumstances (see footnote 351). Kulman, on the other hand, was known for his uncompromising tone. Business aside, Kulman and Vishnyak were good friends. 22 Vladimir Engelgardt (1862–?) was appointed senior censor for the Russian Interior Ministry in 1896. Alexander Katenin (1849–1917) served as the chairman of St. Petersburg Censorship committee from 1899 till 1913. 23 The text of the lecture was eventually published in St. Petersburg in 1903. 24 Ivan Krylov (1769–1844) was a popular Russian fable writer. His story “Quaib” was written in 1792. 25 Unidentified 26 While normally the Bunins would spend winters in Paris, this was the year when they decided to stay in Grasse.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina (1928–1938)

3 December 3, 1934 My dearest and beloved Kuma,27 Thank you for your kind birthday wishes. I so wish you could be here with us, amongst friends, on that day. Please say thank you to Leonid Fedorovich28 for me—I am touched that he remembered this day and sent me his best wishes. I very much hope to make some of these wishes come true, partly with his help.29 I hear that we might see you here in Paris quite soon? I think it would be so very useful for Leonid Fedorovich to spend some time here.30 Hugs and kisses. Always yours, Nikolai Kulman

27 Kuma in Russian is an intimate form of address to your Godchild (kum is the masculine form). In 1931, Vera Bunina and Nikolai Kulman became godparents to Alexei Bernstein, a son of Elena Bernstein (née Blokh), a close friend of the Kulmans. Natalia Kulman was godmother to Vera, Elena Blokh’s older daughter. Therefore, from 1931 onwards Nikolai Kulman addresses Vera Bunina as kuma (which he spells with a capital letter) in all his correspondence. 28 Leonid Zurov (1902–1971) was an aspiring writer who became the Bunins’ adopted son. Vera Bunina was particularly fond and protective of him. See footnote 120 about Zurov’s role in the Bunins’ lives and in the story of the Bunins’ archive. 29 Nikolai Kulman and Leonid Zurov shared a passion for fishing and were planning to join forces to arrange some fishing trips. 30 A reference to promoting Zurov’s books in Paris. In fact, both Nikolai Karlovich and especially Natalia Ivanovna Kulman took an active part in those promotions, organizing various subscriptions, literary soirees, and readings. More about this can be read in Natalia Kulman’s letters to Vera Bunina.

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431 December 1, 1932 My dearest Kuma, I would like to wish you all the best things in this coming leap year! I was quite ill recently and was feeling really exhausted as a result. Thank you for the wonderful photo of you next to a mandarin tree. I was wondering: has your house become more mandarin-colored as a result of all the renovations that have been done to it? I am planning to read Teffi’s book shortly,32 but now I am starting Boris Zaitsev’s Life of Turgenev.33 Denis Roche34 now visits me regularly: he tried his hand at translating The Tale of Igor’s Campaign using the vocabulary of The Song of Roland [Chanson de Roland].35 I think it’s a splendid idea and I quite like his work, but now that I finished proofreading his translation, I found quite a lot of errors because he simply misunderstood the original text. So here I am— correcting away! Yours most faithfully, Nikolai Kulman

31 The remaining letters form the part of the corpus of correspondence between Natalia Ivanovna Kulman and Vera Nikolaevna Bunina (RAL, Vera Bunina Collection, fond 3500) and are placed in chronological order. As mentioned in the foreword, these letters have never been released before. 32 About Teffi, see footnote 172. Most likely, the reference here is to Nadezhda Teffi’s Memoirs, published by Lev Publishers in Paris in 1932. 33 Boris Zaitsev started writing Life of Turgenev in 1929. It was first published in Paris in 1932. It was Ilya Fondaminsky’s idea that several leading writers of Russia Abroad would each create a biographical novel dedicated to one prominent literary or historical figure of prerevolutionary Russia. Bunin chose Mikhail Lermontov (although he never produced the novel), Khodasevich wrote about Pushkin but did not complete the manuscript due to his premature death. Many other projects remained unfinished. However, Zaitsev’s Life of Turgenev became a success and is still published in Russia. 34 Denis Roche was a prominent translator of Russian literature, mostly known for his translations of Turgenev and Chekhov. There is no record of his translation of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, therefore it would be safe to assume that this project did not come to completion. 35 A French medieval epic written approximately at the same time as The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina (1928–1938)

5 December 25, 1932 Dear Kuma, Thank you for your card—I got it right on my Saint’s Day. We both worked very hard on that day and only got home by 7.30 p.m.—to greet some international guests: one of my students, an American vice-consul, and his sister,36 Natalia Ivanovna’s pupil, who is French, then our friends the Gandelmans,37 who are Russian Jews, and Professor Savich38 with his daughter, who is now a Norwegian citizen! Kepinov39 and the Shmelevs40 were also with us. We all had such a wonderful time! And I am sorry for my late response—I was lecturing up until three days ago. Ivan Alekseevich came to see us on Thursday and we also made dinner for him yesterday. It was so wonderful to see him in good health! And today I read an abstract from the latest of his Life of Arseniev in Poslednie novosti—I cannot wait to read it in full when it finally comes out.41 We also talked a lot about best ways to sell his new volume of poetry – it is all becoming so difficult these days but we will place our hope and trust in Natalia Ivanovna’s energetic and capable hands. Now, about The Fatherland—I really wish they didn’t print books like this. Of course, it is difficult to judge the whole book based on just one extract, but I believe it’s more suitable for home, rather than public consumption. And yet there are more and more of those “home” writers—Tamanin(a) is not the first and most certainly not the last!42 36 Unidentified 37 Most probably a reference to Georgy Gandelman, a Russian Jewish banker, the head of Hosque Bank in Paris, and a generous supporter of Russian literature and arts in exile. 38 Sergei Savich (1864–1946), deputy chairman of the Russian Academic Group in Paris. 39 Leon Kepinov (1881–1962) was a physician and scholar, head of the Physiology Laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He was also a colleague of Nikolai Kulman in the Russian Academic Group in Paris. 40 See footnote 49. 41 For more details, see Nikolai Kulman’s letters to Ivan Bunin. 42 Otechestvo (The Fatherland) was published by YMCA Press in Paris in 1933. Its author was Tatyana Manukhina (1886–1962), who wrote under the pseudonym “T. Tamanin.” Not only was she one of Kulman’s students back in St. Petersburg, she also a correspondent and very good friend of Vera Bunina. Her husband was the famous and highly respected doctor, Ivan Manukhin (1882–1958), who treated everyone from Maxim Gorky and Gleb Bokii to the grand dukes. He was credited with saving the life of Grand Duke Konstantin’s son

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I hear our godson is well.43 Love and kisses from both of us. Yours as ever, N. Kulman [A note from Natalia Ivanovna Kulman:] Dear Vera Nikolaevna I got your letter yesterday. It’s such a shame that we cannot see you here in ­Paris.44 Last night we talked a lot with Ivan Alekseevich about establishing some sort of committee to support the sales of his book.45 The situation here is quite tricky since some ladies now really want nothing to do with Maria Samoilovna.46 I actually told Ivan Alekseevich how much I wished you were here now: things would have been so much easier because everybody loves you and would put their differences aside and work together for this worthy cause. I am sending a little present for you with Ivan Alekseevich—I hope he will be able to fit it into his suitcase. Love and kisses from both of us. Yours as ever, Natalia Kulman

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46

Gavriil, one of Kulman’s pupils. Manukhin was generally admired by the Russian émigré community in Paris since he treated, for free, those who could not afford a French doctor. In this light, Kulman’s patronizing comment appears somewhat surprising and probably unfair. As for The Fatherland, the book was very well received and had glowing reviews from even, among others, Zinaida Gippius. See previous reference. While Bunin and Kuznetsova traveled to Paris in December 1932, Vera Bunina stayed behind in Grasse. Life of Arseniev was the book that would win Bunin his Nobel Prize for literature in just over a year’s time. Bunin started working on it in Grasse in summer 1927 and kept writing up until 1938. Parts of the book were serialized in various Russian émigré newspapers and magazines over the years. There were plans to publish the book by subscription in early 1932, but it was only in 1933–1935 that Life of Arseniev was first released in book form by Petropolis. Maria Tsetlina (1882–1976) was a key figure in the cultural life of prewar Russian Paris; the extent of her influence and involvement in various ventures cannot be overestimated. Maria Tsetlina was also a very powerful personality, so it is difficult to establish why, in this particular context, she upset “some ladies.”

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina (1928–1938)

6 December 21, 1934 My dearest Kuma, Thank you for your card and please pass on my gratitude to Leonid Fedorovich47 for his good wishes. I had a really lovely Saint’s Day: in the morning Natalia Ivanovna and I went to the church service, I then worked in the afternoon, and spent the evening in the company of close friends and acquaintances. So sorry neither you nor Ivan Alekseevich could be with us. The Shmelevs, the Kepinovs, the Zaitsevs, Teffi, Radionov,48 and Trakhterev49 were here, as well as two of my students: Madame Lot (née Borodina),50 who dates back to my “ancient period”51 and Mlle Behaghel,52 from a more contemporary one. It was quite noisy, everyone shouted as we Russians do when we discuss something interesting, all talking at the same time and all energetically attacking Madame Lot, who happens to be a good friend of Berdyaev,53 for giving some credit to the Bolsheviks. But, of course, she is a fiercely intelligent and witty woman and so repelled these attacks quite brilliantly. All in all it was such fun, albeit very noisy. 47 Zurov. 48 See footnote 344. 49 Osip Trakhterev (1876–1944) was another remarkable figure in prewar Russian Paris. One of the most brilliant lawyers in pre-1917 St. Petersburg/Petrograd, Trakhterev also taught law in the Women’s Institute where Nikolai Kulman worked. From 1926, he was the chairman of the Association of Russian Lawyers in Paris and actively campaigned for the émigrés’ human rights. Trakhterev was also a journalist and a published writer. During the Nazi occupation of Paris he was arrested for defending the rights of Jewish people and was sent to Auschwitz where he died. 50 Mirra Lot-Borodina (1882–1957), a historian, theologian, poet, translator, and the niece of the composer Alexander Borodin, was Nikolai Kulman’s student in St. Petersburg’s Bestuzhev School and later joined him and Natalia Kulman at Professor Grevs’s seminar. She moved to Paris in 1906 to study philosophy at the Sorbonne and married Ferdinand Lot, a prominent French historian and medievalist. She was one of the founding members of the Russian Academic Group in Paris (from 1920) and also a generous benefactor of numerous charitable foundations. 51 Kulman refers to his pre-1917 period. 52 See footnote 391. 53 Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) was a prominent Russian political and Christian philosopher, thinker, and writer. In 1903–1904, together with Struve, he was an active member of the Union for Liberation. In September 1922 he left Russia on the famous Philosophers’ Steamer. Berdyaev was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature six times but never won. Berdyaev’s position regarding the USSR was not as categorically negative as that of the Kulmans and their close circle, and in 1946 he accepted Soviet citizenship.

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I fully support Leonid Fedorovich’s idea to keep you away from the kitchen. I do hope that he remains firm and uncompromising in this respect! When he talks about his young friends with whom he goes fishing, it fills me with some rose-colored hope for the coming fishing season. Will look forward to hearing all about their Christmas fishing in Trieste. Natalia Ivanovna asks me not to post this letter as she wants to write to you. Please give my friendly regards to Leonid Fedorovich and my very best wishes for his literary endeavors. All my love, N. Kulman PS. When, oh when, will you come here? …

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina (1928–1938)

7 December 1, 193854 My dear Kuma, Thank you again for your congratulations and best wishes. As is always the case, I lectured in the Sorbonne on December 1, but spent the evening in the company of good friends. Such a shame that you and Ivan A ­ lekseevich were so far away! Amongst our guests were the Zaitsevs, the Gandelmans, the Kepinovs, the Blokhs,55 Teffi, L. D. Kampanari,56 Aldanov.57 Radionov popped in very briefly— he has recently had an operation (double hernia) and was still not feeling well. Unfortunately, Maria Lyudvigovna Behaghel,58 my collaborator on the translation of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, could not be with us this time since she now lives in Bailleule, almost next to the Belgian border. But still, it was very lively and fun. Now, can I only say this: there was no point in going all the way south if you feel even more exhausted there! Do something about it, my dear Kuma! You have to start looking after yourself properly! We went to see the Zaitsevs last night and they informed me that Ivan Alekseevich might be coming here shortly for a brief period of time. I so much hope that there will be a chance to catch up with him. This Sunday we attended a memorial service for Shestov.59 There weren’t that many people attending. The French rabbi made a generally good speech but there were some oddities: first, he never mentioned that Shestov was, in fact, a Russian philosopher, so those who were not aware of it could have easily assumed that he was a Jewish philosopher writing in Hebrew! Secondly, 54 This letter has no year, just the day (December 1). I dated it 1938 due to its reference to Lev Shestov’s memorial service: Shestov died on November 18, 1938 (see footnotes 304 and 392). 55 Jakob Blokh (1892–1968), the head of Petropolis publishing, and his wife, Elena Blokh (1895–?). 56 Unidentified. 57 See footnote 414. 58 Maria Behaghel, a French translator and linguist, was Nikolay Kulman’s student at the Sorbonne. Their joint work, a translation of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, was published in 1937 and is still recognized as one of the best translations of this medieval Russian epic into French (Le dit de la campagne d’Igor: Poème médiéval russe 1187–1937, trans. N. Koulmann and M.-L. Behaghel [Paris: n.p., 1937]). 59 Lev Shestov (1866–1938) was a Russian-Jewish existentialist scholar and philosopher. See footnote 304.

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he said that the Great War had a huge effect on Shestov, and yet, he never mentioned the Bolsheviks! My hugs and kisses to you and Ivan Alekseevich. Natalia Ivanovna is still asleep, but I am sure she will write to you separately when she wakes up. Yours as ever, N. Kulman

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina (1928–1938)

8 December 20, 1938 7 Rue Boucicaut My dearest Kuma, Please accept my belated gratitude for your best wishes both on my Saint’s Day and on New Year’s Eve. I so sincerely hope that 1939 will be a happy and joyful year for you. As always, I wish you were here with us, at out festive table, on my Saint’s Day. And I am confident that even Plevitskaya60 would not spoil this joy: first of all, she is such a ghastly character and one should not fall out with friends because of her; and secondly, yes, her trial was quite harsh but I cannot agree with you that it was outrageous—I happen to believe that it was quite fair! If you base your 60 Nadezhda Plevitskaya (1884–1940) was at the center of one of the largest espionage scandals that shook Paris in 1937–1938. Born to a peasant family, Plevitskaya climbed to extraordinary glory in prerevolutionary Russia to become Nicholas II’s favorite folk singer. The tsar called her a “Kursk nightingale” and gave her his own ring as a present. She was also believed to be one of the best paid performers in Russia at the time. Later, in emigration, Plevitskaya was equally successful and collaborated with Rakhmaninov and Shalyapin, among others. In 1921 she married General Nikolai Skoblin (1893–?), one of the key figures of the White movement, who was the youngest commander of the Kornilov Division and, while in emigration in France, became an active member of the ROVS (The Russian All-Military Union) founded by Baron Vrangel in 1924. In 1930–1931 Skoblin was recruited as an NKVD agent and in 1937 played a key role in the kidnapping of the head of ROVS, General Evgeny Miller (1867–1939). Miller was captured in broad daylight in Paris as he was heading to a meeting and smuggled to Moscow where he was subjected to torture and interrogations in the best traditions of the Great Terror. According to NKVD archives that were declassified after 1991, Stalin planned to give General Miller a show trial, but the NKVD could not get any significant information out of him and he was executed at Lubyanka in 1939. Skoblin disappeared straight after the kidnapping. In his absence, his wife, who never admitted to being an NKVD agent, was arrested, tried for Miller’s kidnapping, and sentenced to twenty years’ hard labor. Her final words in court were: “I only loved my husband” (Teffi, Moia letopis′, 218). Plevitskaya died in prison in 1940, while the precise fate of her husband remains unknown and is the subject of many conspiracy theories.    The Russian emigration’s opinion as to whether Plevitskaya was guilty or not, and whether the sentence was too harsh, was dramatically split. Nadezhda Teffi, who attended the trial, saw Plevitskaya as a fictional victim of love: “What kind of person is the heroine of the trial? A vividly talented woman. She was born a simple peasant and then became a general’s wife, a celebrated singer loved by so many. And she loved her Skoblin. Lady Macbeth says with trembling pale lips: ‘I only loved my husband.’—‘Twenty years of hard labor,’ answered the just but merciless judge” (ibid.). In The Italics Are Mine, Nina Berberova expresses the view that is similar to that of Kulman. Vladimir Nabokov’s Assistant Director is based on Plevitskaya and Skoblin’s story.

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opinion about this trial only on what the Poslednie novosti has been reporting, then I don’t think that you have a full picture of what has actually been going on. No one doubts that she was a culprit and an accomplice in the most appalling crime. As for the harshness of her sentence, I think this has something to do with the way she behaved at the trial: those who were there say it was a piece of really bad acting. I have to say, though, that her defense was below any acceptable standard. I agree with you that the sentence might seem a bit hard, but this view is quite rare: when I mentioned it to Professor Labrie, who is quite left of center in his outlook and is, in fact, a known socialist radical, he replied that, in his view, the sentence was far too soft and that she should have been given a life sentence, just as the prosecution demanded. Mind you, we Russians always tend to see a sufferer in any criminal and even tend to feel sorry for them, but I think that here one should only feel sorry for the Miller family. Do you know that Mme Miller61 and her brother—like true Slavic souls!—actually asked M. Ribes, the prosecutor, to plead the jury for some leniency since they believed that the sentence would be too harsh! Apparently, M. Ribes found this request inappropriate and profoundly strange. Personally, I don’t see why the Russian emigration should feel guilty in any way about all this: yes, a talented Russian singer is accused of being part of a horrendous crime. But Russian émigrés cannot be held responsible for all the Russian villains, especially the ones like Plevitskaya, or, for that matter, Sergei Efron,62 Marina Tsvetaeva’s husband. I have a feeling that Plevitskaya’s conduct at the trial was that of a simple peasant woman, albeit a devious one. What she didn’t realize was that her amateurish acting was not going to fool anyone. And there was enough evidence to convict her anyway. I feel that your sentiments about Plevitskaya reflect, first and foremost, the kindness of your heart. But there really is no ground for compassion—all facts are against it. 61 Natalia Miller (1870–1945), General Miller’s widow, was the granddaughter of Natalia Pushkina, Alexander Pushkin’s wife. 62 Sergei Efron (1893–1941), a poet and a writer, husband of Marina Tsvetaeva, was a White Army officer who, in the late 1920s, got involved in the Eurasia movement and in the 1930s became active in the Union of Repatriation of Russians Abroad. Efron was recruited by the NKVD and took part in the kidnapping of General Miller. In 1937, he returned to the USSR, was arrested two years later, and executed in 1941. His daughter Ariadna (1912–1975) shared his beliefs and followed her father to Moscow, only to be arrested herself in 1939. She spent seventeen years in prison. Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941) returned to the USSR in 1939, following her husband and daughter, and hanged herself two years later.

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina (1928–1938)

Natalia Ivanovna saw Ivan Alekseevich recently and will see him tomorrow at the ball.63 I didn’t see him and will not be present at the ball either, unfortunately. I hope you now have a chance to relax a little at last—it is long overdue. Yours, as always, loving N. Kulman. This is Nikolai’s last letter. In fact, his health was deteriorating from about late 1935: in her letter to Galina Kuznetsova of June 9, 1936, Vera Bunina wrote: I received a letter from Natalia Ivanovna Kulman.64 Nikolai Karlovich had an operation on his eye. Thank Goodness, it seems to have gone well, although it was very painful, but he now plays bridge! But poor Natalia Ivanovna is exhausted. I am seriously concerned for her own health: she has problems with her heart and this sort of stress cannot be good in her condition. She also works so hard. …65

In her letters to Vera Bunina, Natalia Kulman wrote that the operation took place on August 4, 1936 and that they left for their dacha in Arcy-sur-Cure two weeks later. In mid-August 1936 Nadezhda Teffi wrote to the Bunins, the Zaitsevs, and Leonid Zurov: “I know that you are all worried about Kulman’s health and so I thought I’d write to you all to say that I went to see him yesterday. He is quite perky and lively, plays bridge, and they are going to their dacha soon. He was so brave during the operation that even the doctors were surprised. They had to remove his eye—under local anesthetic only—since the tests showed it was cancer. Poor Natalia Ivanovna is absolutely exhausted: she has lost a lot of weight, looks very pale, her lips are trembling. …”66 Nikolai Kulman had four more years to live. No doubt, during that time he tried to carry on working as much as he could, however challenging it must have been. Kulman was on the Central Committee of the 1937 Pushkin 63 The traditional Russian New Year’s Ball was an annual charitable event. A very amusing account of this ball can be found in Nadezhda Teffi’s letter to Vera Bunina of January 3, 1939. It was the last one that Bunin ever attended. 64 See Natalia Kulman’s letter to Vera Bunina in part 2 of this book. 65 I. A. Bunin—novye materialy, vol. 3, 63. 66 Nadezhda Teffi, “Pis′ma k Buninym” (“Letters to the Bunins”), Diaspora 1 (2001): 402.

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Figure 32.  The Kulmans’ grave at St. Genevieve des Bois

­ estival which was organized in Paris to commemorate the hundredth anniF versary of Alexander Pushkin’s death and also served as the editor of a one-day special edition newspaper dedicated to Pushkin’s legacy. According to Natalia Kulman’s letters to Vera Bunina of that time, Nikolai carried on working with the Russian Academic Group. He also read lectures—­according

Letters of Nikolai Kulman to Vera Bunina (1928–1938)

to his letter of December 1, 1938, he was still working at the ­Sorbonne at the time. In that difficult period the Bunins, as well as other close friends, did their absolute best to raise money for a number of operations that Nikolai had to undergo, and offered their help in numerous other ways. Natalia’s letters to Vera are full of gratitude and love. Nikolai Kulman died on October 17, 1940 in Nazi-occupied Paris.67 During the occupation, the Bunins lived in Grasse, in the so-called “free zone,” and communication with their friends in Paris was extremely difficult. They found out about Kulman’s death only a week after it happened and of course could not be present at his funeral. It appears that the Bunins learnt about Nikolai Kulman’s death from the two postcards received on the same day (October 24, 1940): one was from Boris Zaitsev and the other, from Nina Berberova. These postcards were written in French, according to the rules of that time. On October 26, 1940 Vera Bunina wrote in her diary: “Just got a letter from Zaitsev. Nikolai Karlovich Kulman died on October 17 and was buried at St. Genevieve des Bois on October 19. It feels that our émigré life as we knew it—so long and so relatively happy—is now coming to a close. …”68 Natalia Kulman’s friendship and correspondence with Vera Bunina would continue throughout the war and up until Natalia’s death in 1958. Her letters to Vera, one of the largest holdings in the Vera Bunina archives in RAL, comprise almost 230 messages and will be published in the second part of this book.

67 All sources state that Kulman died in Paris, although according to Natalia Kulman’s postcards to Vera Bunina at that time, they had been living in Breuil Bois Robert up until early October 1940. However, given that Nikolai was buried in St. Genevieve des Bois on October 19, it is likely that they had returned to their Rue Boucicaut flat several days before his death. 68 Ustami Buninykh, vol. 3, 73.

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CHAPTER 6

Letters of Natalia Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1944–1953)

A

s opposed to Nikolai Kulman’s letters to Ivan and Vera Bunina, which were mostly written in the 1920s and the late 1930s, this corpus of letters chronologically belongs to a very different time, covering almost a decade from 1944 to 1953—another era in the life of the Russian emigration in postwar Paris and in Bunin’s life and writing. Even though there are a number of letters to the Bunins written by Nikolai Kulman to which Natalia added several lines, the postwar ones have a noticeably different tone. After 1940 Natalia was a widow, and it seems that her relationship with Bunin became stronger and deeper. Whereas, previously, she had been part of a relationship between two couples, she now enjoyed two individual relationships—one with Ivan Bunin and one with Vera Bunina—each of which had its own nuances and level of intimacy. Similarly to Nikolai Kulman and Vera Bunina, it has so far been impossible to establish with certainty when and where Ivan Bunin and Natalia Kulman met—whether it was in prerevolutionary Russia or in the early 1920s in Paris.1 It could be either. As discussed in the introduction, although Kulman had been married to another woman before the 1917 Revolution, his relationship with Natalia Likhareva (née Bokii) was quite settled by around 1911; and it is possible that Nikolai could have introduced Natalia to some of his friends, including the Bunins, before their emigration. One thing is quite beyond doubt, though: every reference to Natalia Kulman that could be found in the huge body of Bunin’s correspondence with hundreds of people or in his diaries is always full of warmth, gratitude, respect, admiration, and compassion. It would not be right to suggest that they always agreed on everything—far from it!— but the foundations of their relationship did not suffer. 1 This is mostly because of the uncertainty as to what happened to the Kulmans’ archive, as discussed in the introduction. Only a very few documents were found in the Russian archives about their life before 1917, and, unfortunately, there are no diaries or relevant letters. Therefore, many assumptions remain hypothetical.

Letters of Natalia Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1944–1953)

These letters are from the last decade of Bunin’s life (1944–1953). It is obvious that after Nikolai Kulman’s death in 1940, Natalia, in a way, came out of his shadow, to become “I” as opposed to “we,” and courageously asserted her own identity and relationships with her dear friends that survived a number of serious turbulences in the life of the Russian emigration soon after the war ended. Some other once close, long-term friendships (for example, with the Zaitsevs,2 Maria Tsetlina, and Nina Berberova), ended quite publicly and acrimoniously in 1946 and 1947, and created two separate camps of friends3 and former friends. But Natalia Kulman remained part of the Bunins’ lives to the end and demonstrated true integrity, decency, and loyalty. According to Vera Bunina’s correspondence with Galina Kuznetsova and Marga Stepun, as well as her letters to Georgy Adamovich from the late 1940s up to 1958, Natalia Kulman was always there to offer her support and help during Bunin’s last days and was always there by Vera’s side after he died on November 7, 1953.4 Natalia’s letters to Ivan Bunin are full of love, respect, and admiration. And yet, she is not afraid to speak out—as is the case with one of her letters where she categorically asserts that Chekhov’s cherry orchard actually existed!5—or expresses her opinion about some stories in the Dark Alleys cycle quite frankly. Finally, this fairly small collection of surviving letters contains something of a surprise discovery: on the blank part of Natalia’s penultimate letter, there is a list of stories, written in Bunin’s hand.6 The letter bears no indication of the year, just the day and the month, but while there is reason to believe that the letter itself was written in the late 1920s or the early 1930s, Bunin’s writing is clearly a much later addition. It could be, perhaps, one of the last things he ever wrote, as Natalia’s last letter to Bunin is dated April 7, 1953, that is, seven months before Bunin’s death. In the bottom part of the penultimate letter, just below Natalia’s signature, Bunin left a note in an almost unrecognizable handwriting. It is not just the hand of someone who is quite old, but of someone for whom composition is a huge effort. The list is written in quite sporadic manner,

2 Boris Zaitsev (1881–1972) was probably Ivan Bunin’s closest friend long before their emigration. He was the only person who addressed Bunin using the informal second-person pronoun ty. His wife, Vera Zaitseva (1878–1965) was Vera Bunina’s (then Muromtseva) childhood friend. It was Vera Zaitseva who introduced the Bunins to each other. 3 Of the close circle of the Bunins’ personal friends before 1947, it would be fair to say that Nadezhda Teffi (see footnote 172) and Natalia Kulman, alongside very few others, remained. 4 I. A. Bunin—novye materialy, vol. 3, 318, 327, 335, 348, and 370. 5 Letter 2, July 15, 1951. 6 See footnote 472.

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almost zigzagged, and is in red and blue ink. One line is striking: “Here are the faces of my stories. Quite a variety. I am among friends.” Hypothetically, it is possible to assume that it could be one of many lists that Bunin was preparing for Yulia Sazonova,7 who started working on Bunin’s biography in 1952–1953 and was liaising with some of his publishers in the United States at the time.8 As mentioned earlier, Natalia’s letters to Vera Bunina present one of the largest holdings in RAL and, due to the considerable volume of this collection, will be published in part two of this book.

7 Yulia Sazonova (1884–1957) was a writer, theatre critic, historian, and a puppeteer. She entered a very lively correspondence with Bunin in his final years and wrote a number of reviews of his works. She was also planning to write a biography of Bunin. 8 See K. Tribble, O. Korostelev, and R. Davies, “Dragotsennaia skupost′ slov: perepiska I. A. i V. N. Buninykh s Iu. L. Sazonovoi (Slonimskoi) (1952–1954)” (“Precious Frugality with Words: Correspondence of I. A. and V. N. Bunins and Yu. L. Sazonova (Slonimskaya) [1952–1954]”), in I. A. Bunin—novye materialy, vol. 3, 267.

Letters of Natalia Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1944–1953)

1 February 14, 1944 My dearest friend, The other day the Zaitsevs9 told me that you wrote to them and said you wished they didn’t give me your new stories10 to read because you thought that once I read them, I would stop loving you! I was very touched by this but let me tell you that I cannot possibly ever stop loving you because I know you so well. I love you because I know your tender soul, your brilliant mind, your amazing talent. I also love you because you were so loved by the one person in the world who meant everything to me, and I know that you loved him too.11 So how could such minor thing as a few phrases that I might not like that much change that? That very love makes me tell you what I felt about some of your stories. I really begged the Zaitsevs to let me read them and since they knew you were going to publish them soon, they didn’t feel it was wrong for them to let me have a copy.12 Once I read the stories, I was going to write to you immediately but somehow hesitated—I didn’t want to upset you in any way. But you do know that if I speak, I always speak my mind. And now that you mentioned it yourself, I feel I have to finally share some of my thoughts with you. I strongly believe that true friends have to warn each other against taking wrong steps, if they genuinely love each other. So please don’t get cross with me, my dear Ivan Alekseevich, if you find some of my remarks hurtful and please remember that it’s only my loyalty and highest respect for your talent that make me take the 9 The reference here is to the short stories that would later form the collection Dark Alleys (Paris: La presse française et étrangère, 1943), also translated into English as Dark Avenues. Bunin started writing the stories in Grasse around 1937 and sent the manuscripts to Boris Zaitsev as he completed them. 10 Bunin wrote most of the stories that would later become Dark Alleys in 1937–1946, with one story added in 1953. Based on the date of Natalia’s letter (February 1944), she should be referring to “Kuma” (September 25, 1943), “The Beginning” (October 23, 1943), “The River Tavern” (October 27, 1943), and “Little Oak Trees” (October 30, 1943), but in fact she is referring to the stories that had been written much earlier (see footnote 416). It suggests that there was a considerable delay in Bunin’s stories reaching his Paris audience. 11 Nikolai Kulman died in 1940 and was buried in St. Genevieve des Bois. The Bunins were cut off in Grasse, which was under Vichy rule, during the whole war. 12 All Russian newspapers and publishers in Paris were closed right at the start of the Nazi occupation, so Bunin’s new stories were only available as manuscripts, except for one publication that came out in 1943. The collection was serialized sporadically by several publishers, including Petropolis in Berlin and Novyi zhurnal in New York, as they appeared.

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risk of upsetting you. But I am worried that you could start translating and publishing some of your stories, and that this might irrevocably hurt your artistic reputation and at the same time present your ill-wishers and enviers with a gift of such an enormous joy.13 Let me tell you first that my favorite writers are Pushkin, Tyutchev,14 Leo Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bunin. So I’ll start with “Nathalie,”15 a charming story that shows that your talent is as fresh as ever. It could be there in the same league as “Ida,”16 one of your most poetic and wonderful works. But why spoil it with those vulgar naturalistic details, which add absolutely nothing to the psychological portraits of the story’s protagonists? The same applies to some other stories as well, where I feel that the lack of those details of physiological nature, including references to gynecological “diseases,” would only be beneficial. I believe that

13 Natalia is right in that Dark Alleys did provoke an intensely controversial reaction. Even among loyal friends and fierce supporters, Natalia Kulman was by far not the only one to express concern because of some explicit passages. Boris Zaitsev echoes Natalia Kulman in his letter to Bunin of November 28, 1943: “I myself am not a prude … but literature doesn’t gain anything from such details. I am alluding to aesthetics, not the morals” (Marullo, Twilight, 228). Mark Aldanov (1886–1957) wrote in his letter of August 2, 1941: “The stories … are superb and many of them left me enthralled. You are a brave man, Ivan Alekseevich! People will scold you for the boldness of several scenes. They will say that this is ‘pornography’ and that you are holding ‘the laurels of Lady Chatterley.’” (ibid., 154). Later Aldanov represented Bunin’s interests in the United States, actively lobbying to have Dark Alleys published there. He believed that the manuscript would have to be pared down so that it did not appear too shocking for the more sensitive and puritan American readership. Georgy Adamovich (1892–1972) joined in expressing his concern. It looks like the only exception was Nadezhda Teffi, who was not only full of praise, but felt that those scenes were absolutely crucial. In her letter to Bunin of May 15, 1944, she said: “Recently I bumped into some friends of Mikhailov. ‘Have you heard,’ they asked, ‘that Bunin wrote some obscene stories?’ You see, they will never understand and I feel so angry” (ibid.). Natalia was, of course, right in predicting that people would accuse Bunin of “falling into senility” and becoming a “dirty old man.” Such prominent literary critics as Andrey Sedykh, Georgy Grebenshchikov, and Mark Vishnyak were very vocal on the subject. In his letter of January 25, 1945 to Mark Aldanov, Mark Vishnyak wrote: “No doubt, Bunin shows himself to be a real master at times. But I am in shock overall—rape, corruption, rape again” (ibid.). And on February 14, 1946 Georgy ­Grebenshchikov wrote: “I wonder why no admirer of Bunin’s talent had the nerve to write to him directly to say that these stories are so below him?” (ibid.). (Clearly, he did not know of Aldanov, Zaitsev, and Natalia Kulman’s letters!) 14 Fedor Tyutchev (1803–1873) was a prominent Russian poet, diplomat, and statesman. 15 Written on April 4, 1941, published by Novyi zhurnal in 1942. 16 Written in 1925.

Letters of Natalia Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1944–1953)

by removing those details from such stories as “Rusya,”17 “Tanya,”18 “Galya Ganskaya,”19 “Genrikh,”20 “In Paris,”21 the psychology of your writing would only go deeper. As for “Smaragd”22 and “Zoika and Valeria,”23 but especially “The Guest”24 and “Antigone,”25 I do feel that your loyal reader would be26 genuinely bewildered. Boris Konstantinovich27 says that you wanted to show the duality that so often occurs in love: the idealistic love towards “the one and only” and the vulgar sensual attraction to “some abstract other.” But the thing is: there is no love in these stories, just one-night stands, and you cannot turn it into art just as you cannot artistically describe a stinking water closet. Let the likes of ­Odoevtseva, G. Ivanov,28 and Bakunina29 with her Bodies indulge in this (haven’t read the latter but know that it’s disgusting). Let them write about their filthy adolescents with sickening details of their one-night stands, let them dig into their water closets and cesspits: their aim is to reach out for the twisted tastes of their sick perverted readership and they believe that this is the way to attract it. And perhaps they succeed. But Bunin must not go down to their filthy level, he must be able to say what he needs to create the psychological portrait of his heroes without the humiliating descriptions of their bodies and gestures, like

Written on September 27, 1941, published by Novyi zhurnal in 1942. Written on October 22, 1941, published in Dark Alleys. Written on October 22 1941, published by Novyi zhurnal in 1946. Written on November 10 1940, published in Dark Alleys (Paris: La presse française et étrangère, 1946). 21 Written on October 26, 1940, published in Dark Alleys in 1943. 22 Written on October 3, 1940, published in Dark Alleys in 1946. 23 Written on October 13, 1940, published in The Russian Collection (Paris: La presse française et étrangère, 1946). 24 Written on October 3, 1940, published in Dark Alleys in 1946. 25 Written on October 2, 1940, published in Dark Alleys in 1946. 26 This subjunctive “would be” is underlined by Bunin’s pencil. 27 Zaitsev. 28 Irina Odoevtseva (1895–1990) and Georgy Ivanov (1894–1958) were a famous literary couple both in prerevolutionary St. Petersburg and in emigration. It is not quite clear which particular works Natalia Kulman refers to here. Irina Odoevtseva wrote very fondly of Bunin in her memoirs On the Banks of the Seine (1983). The couple was believed to have sympathized with the Germans during the Nazi occupation of Biarritz where they had a villa and were seen by many as collaborators unpopular amongst the Russian emigration during and after the war, so perhaps that detail clouded Natalia’s judgement. 29 Ekaterina Bakunina (1889–1976) was a writer, a poet, and a literary critic. The Body (Berlin, Parabola, 1933), her experimental existential novel, contained some graphic descriptions of the female body, which the writer considered to be “human documents.”

17 18 19 20

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Tolstoy and Chekhov always could. Remember how much dirt was poured over Pushkin for his unfortunate Gavriiliada30—a silly childish experiment—even though all his work is always so pure (I’m talking about his later things).31 Of course, the question of the purpose of art is extremely controversial and complex, but I would dare to suggest that it is not in the detailed description of water closets and “bodies” with all their dirt and disgusting gestures. I find it hard to believe that healthy people would welcome this genre becoming more widespread. Interestingly, many report that even in today’s Russia young people tend to turn against perversity and vulgarity and, instead, value innocence and restraint in verbal expressions.32 This is more or less what I wanted to tell you. I believe that you must have written these scenes because you were bored or lonely. Only a writer who is far removed from his audience might misjudge his readership so much and take this wrong path. This would not resonate today, for life is too tragic and serious as it is. Please do not be angry with me for these words, my dearest friend. Please write to me to say that you are not.33 30 Gavriiliada was a sexually explicit, blasphemous poetic work widely believed to have been written by Alexander Pushkin in 1821. 31 It would probably be appropriate here to quote Nadezhda Teffi’s letter to Bunin again since it offers such a different insight: “As I said, my impression of the book is that it is very serious, very significant, and very dark—from its first word to the very last. It is tragic and desperate. The easier the storyline is, the more cynical it gets, the more tragic and horrendous it feels. These stories are superb” (Teffi, Moia letopis′, 488). 32 This must be a reference to a shift from the sexual liberation of the early Soviet period where old moral norms were considered “a burp of the bourgeois past” and even marriage was seen as something old-fashioned. Later, a more puritan idea of the “New Soviet Man” was formed in the USSR. As for swearing, it is true that a law was introduced in the early 1930s whereby one could be fined on the spot for swearing in public places. (Ironically, a similar law was introduced by Vladimir Putin in 2014, although it only applies to media, film, and literature). 33 Bunin did respond to Natalia Kulman on February 22, 1944. In his letter to Nadezhda Teffi dated February 23, 1944, Bunin writes: “Last night I wrote to Natalia Ivanovna [Kulman] who is very upset by some ‘profoundly naturalistic’ details in some of these stories, while I believe they are far from being frivolous—they are, in fact, tragic. It is true that there were a few lines in some of these stories that might have appeared a little shocking, so I decided to delete them. As for the rest, I am prepared to defend them till the day I die: these details are crucial in their ‘naturalism,’ their tangibility, and without them (that is, if they are left abstract) one cannot express anything tragic, so it would be better not to say anything at all. Yet the Zaitsevs and Natalia Ivanovna seem to reproach me even for the fact that I dared to mention (and only to mention!) ‘women’s monthly illness.’ And I am asking them: why can one describe the process of labor in most graphic detail but I cannot mention periods? For even in the Bible Rachel tells Lavan: ‘Forgive

Letters of Natalia Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1944–1953)

Warmly embrace you and my dearest Vera Nikolaevna.34 I will write to her shortly, but am keen to post this letter to you first. All my love, Natalia Kulman PS. Have you received my previous letter? Please do write and say that you are not angry with me, will you? Let me know how you are feeling.

me, master, but I cannot get up since I have my period’? I also wonder why it is that artists and sculptors are free to depict the female body, or various Satyrs and Fawns, in extremely ‘naturalistic detail’ but we, writers, cannot do such a thing? Enough excuses though: see it as it is and tell me your honest opinion once you’ve read the stories—I will not be offended in any way” (Ivan Bunin—Pro et contra [St. Petersburg: RKhGI, 2001], 73). Bunin also responded to Boris Zaitsev’s comments “on arses and menstruation” in a similar way, giving same examples, in his letter to him dated December 3, 1943 (GARF, fond 76).    Despite controversial reviews, Bunin himself believed that Dark Alleys was his best book, although he later admitted that perhaps he should have edited some passages out. In his letter to Yulia Sazonova, written on April 24, 1953, Bunin said: “I was so, so happy to read what you wrote to me about Dark Alleys. Yes—it is a unique book (I’m sorry). (Perhaps I should cross out a number of lines, which are too direct and not very clever. I can see now that they were inappropriately rude and I put them there on the spur of the moment” (Tribble, Korostelev, and Davies, “Dragotsennaia skupost′ slov,” 333). 34 See Natalia Kulman’s letters to Vera Bunina in part 2 of this book.

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235 July 15, 1951 My dear Ivan Alekseevich, I have just finished reading your Memoirs36 and really wish I could have had a copy of it much earlier. I would then have a chance to counterargue with your ill-wishers who now spread rumors claiming that you intensely hate and despise absolutely everyone you’ve ever met!37 And I would substantiate my counterarguments with specific facts. It seems that these critics base their opinions on the first essay and appear not to bother to read the rest, presuming that the rest of your essays are of the same tone that you apply to Mayakovsky, Esenin, Blok, Gorky, and other so-called “singers of the revolution.”38 And yet, the most humble and modest of men, the protagonist of your “His Highness” is depicted with such a profound tenderness!39 I especially enjoyed reading about Ertel:40 the essay is composed with such style and elegance that it should be studied in the school curriculum as part of a history of literature course when it comes to creating individual literary portraits. 35 According to Natalia’s letters to Vera Bunina, her correspondence with Bunin had been quite active in the seven years since her previous letter. This corpus of letters must have been lost. 36 Bunin’s Memoirs were first published as a book in 1950 by Vozrozhdenie in Paris, while the majority of essays had been written in the 1920–1930s. However, some essays date back to as early as 1916 and were certainly published in other places, including magazines and collections of Bunin’s works. Bunin also often read some of the essays at his literary evenings. Natalia’s commentary concerns two essays: “The Semenovs and the Bunins” (1932) and “Notes on Autobiography,” which Bunin edited several times over the years. 37 Not only ill-wishers found the tone of Bunin’s Memoirs highly offensive and not always objective. In his essay “On Bunin’s Memoirs” in Solitude and Freedom (Moscow: Azbuka-Klasssika, 2006), 67. Georgy Adamovich, one of Bunin’s close friends and life-long admirers admits that some remarks are unjustifiably harsh. 38 Indeed, the opening essay, “Notes on Autobiography,” often diverts from its main narrative to rather scathing remarks on Nemirovich-Danchenko, Esenin, Gorky, and Block. “The singer of the revolution” is the title that was often applied to Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930). To carry on with the “music and revolution” theme, Bunin could never forgive Alexander Blok, who in his 1918 poem “The Twelve” urged: “Listen, listen, listen to the music of the revolution!” 39 The protagonist of “His Highness” is Prince Peter of Oldenburg (1868–1924), once Nicholas II’s brother-in-law. When in emigration, he tried his hand at writing short stories, which he would send to Bunin for advice and guidance, and always signed them “Peter Alexandrov,” wishing for his royal status to remain unknown. Bunin writes very warmly about this “most humble of men.” 40 Alexander Ertel (1855–1908) was a Russian writer, whose principal novel The Gardenins was highly praised by Leo Tolstoy.

Letters of Natalia Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1944–1953)

However, allow me to correct a couple of minor points—perhaps you would consider them for the later editions. The first one concerns the essay “The Semenovs and the Bunins”—and I am happy to provide you with a number of scholarly references to substantiate my point. I suspect that you were misled by Mr. Semenov.41 The fact is that the poet Bunina42 was never a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She was, in fact, a member of the Imperial Russian Academy, which was founded by Catherine II as a result of Princess Dashkova’s43 initiative. And it was, of course, Princess Dashkova herself who served as its first president from 1783 to 1796 but was forced to resign by Paul I.44 The principal mission of this academy was “to purify and enrich the Russian language.” The Imperial Russian Academy was much later merged with the Russian Academy of Sciences and became its second subsidiary.45 However, these two establishments were completely separate during Alexander’s reign.46 Alexander I appointed Shishkov47 as the president of the Russian Academy, and Karamzin48 was once a member. But Karamzin was never a member of the Colloqui of Lovers of the Russian Word.49 He couldn’t have been—in fact, this society fought against Karamzin and his circle, so they established 41 Valery Semenov-Tian-Shansky (1871–1968) was a lawyer and an art critic. In the opening paragraph of this essay Bunin refers to him as his correspondent, saying that “he currently lives in exile in Helsinki and we occasionally write to each other since we are relatives” (Bunin, Okaiannye dni, 263). 42 Anna Bunina (1774–1829) was the first officially recognized Russian female poet who made poetry her profession; she succeeded in living solely from her writing income, which was, in her time, unusual on many levels. Anna Bunina was Ivan Bunin’s direct ancestor, and he was very proud of this fact. 43 Princess Ekaterina Dashkova (1743–1810) was one of the key figures of the Russian Enlightenment, the first female president of the Imperial Russian Academy, and once a close ally of Catherine the Great. 44 (Russian) Emperor Paul I (1754–1801) was the son of Catherine the Great, whom he succeeded to the throne in 1796. 45 Underlined in red pencil. 46 Alexander I (1777–1825), Russian emperor from 1801 to 1825. 47 Alexander Shishkov (1754–1841) was a writer, a critic, and a statesman. He was also a longserving president of the Russian Academy (1813–1841). 48 Nikolai Karamzin (1766–1826) was a historian, writer, poet, and literary critic. He wrote The History of the Russian State, the first attempt at a comprehensive study of Russian history (1816–1826; twelve volumes), which was not completed due to his sudden death. 49 The Colloqui of Lovers of the Russian Word was a conservative, proto-Slavophile literary society founded in St. Petersburg around 1806–1807 and headed by Alexander Shishkov and Gavrila Derzhavin. It was strongly opposed and mocked by the more progressive Arzamas society (see below). At various times its members included A. K. Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Fedor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Ivan Bunin.

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their Arzamas,50 which was headed by Zhukovsky.51 And of course, both Shishkov and Bunina were constant targets of those who attended the Arzamas gatherings. I happen to have a copy of the minutes of some of their meetings to prove it!52 My second comment is a bit shorter. It is about Chekhov, or, to be more precise, about his Cherry Orchard. The fact is that this cherry orchard did exist53 in one of the estates in Kharkov province.54 A neighboring estate belonged to my relative, Mikhail Danilovich Delarue,55 who was “Pushkin’s grandson.” 50 Arzamas (1815–1818), also known as The Arzamas Society of Unknown People, was an informal literary society set up to oppose archaic literary tastes and traditions. Despite its slightly ironic full name, its members included some of the most prominent literary figures of the time such as Vasily Zhukovsky, Konstantin Batyushkov, and Alexander Pushkin. 51 Vasily Zhukovsky (1783–1852) was a prominent poet who introduced Romanticism to Russian literature, a close friend of Alexander Pushkin, a courtier, and a mentor to Alexander II. There is also an interesting connection with Ivan Bunin: Zhukovsky was an illegitimate son of Bunin’s great-great-grandfather and was raised by the Bunin family from infancy. He kept his name unchanged, however. 52 It is difficult to assert with absolute certainty whether Bunin followed Natalia Ivanovna’s advice, but in later editions he quotes directly from Alexander Chekhov (1855–1913), Anton Chekhov’s elder brother. In his article about Anna Bunina, Chekhov says: “… her portrait can still be found in the Academy of Sciences” (Bunin, Okaiannye dni, 266). The printed text of Bunin’s essay now says: “Collection of her [Bunina’s] works was published by the Academy of Sciences” (ibid.). No mention of Anna Bunina being a member of the Academy of Sciences can now be found, so there are reasonable grounds to suggest that Natalia’s correction was implemented. 53 Part of the sentence is underlined in Bunin’s blue pencil. In the opening essay of his Memoirs, “Notes on Autobiography,” Bunin recalls the estate where he grew up: “It was a remote estate in the steppe, but with a large orchard, although not quite the cherry orchard that Chekhov described—for there were no such cherry orchards in Russia: only parts of gardens, sometimes rather large parts, were given to cherry trees. And, contrary to what Chekhov wrote, they were never planted right outside the main house. There was nothing marvelous about them—there couldn’t be!—since cherry trees are not that pretty, they are crooked, with small leaves, and tiny blossoms. So unlike what one can see in the magnificent blossoms of the Arts Theatre production” (ibid., 173). Bunin’s Memoirs include a separate essay on Chekhov, which was first written in 1915. 54 Kharkov Province is now part of Ukraine. 55 Mikhail Delarue (1867–1912) came from a distinguished Russian family of French origin which arrived in Russia at the invitation of Catherine II. His grandfather, also called Mikhail Delarue (1811–1868), was once a fairly recognized Romantic poet who idolized Alexander Pushkin and reportedly won some praise from him. Hence, perhaps, Natalia’s reference to him as “Pushkin’s grandson,” which could be either a quote or a figure of speech as there is no evidence to suggest that the Delarue family was related to Alexander Pushkin.

Letters of Natalia Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1944–1953)

I spent every summer at his estate and heard many times about a certain cherry orchard that was part of their relatives’ estate nearby.56 Chekhov stayed at that estate one summer. In fact, the estate was far from being desolate, but Chekhov could certainly have met some of the local land owners whose estates were, indeed, desolate—just as it is described in his play.57 Your loving, Natalia Kulman

56 The Luka estate in the Sumy region of Kharkov province belonged to Alexandra Lintvareva (1830–1909), a distant relative of the Delarues. Chekhov befriended her son, Georgy Lintvarev (1865–1943), and rented an annex on this estate in the summers of 1888 and 1889. Chekhov wrote to his friend, literary critic, and publisher Aleksei Suvorin (1834–1912): “Both nature and life here are of a type that is currently seen as old-fashioned and ‘unrealistic’ by contemporary critics: there are nightingales singing day and night, there are old neglected orchards, there are poetic, melancholic manor houses. …” (A. Reviakin, Tvorcheskaia istoriia p′esy “Vishnevyi sad” [The History of “The Cherry Orchard”] [Moscow: MGPI, 1960], 89). 57 In contemporary editions of Bunin’s Memoirs, there is no mention of “desolate estate” or “desolate landowners,” so there is reason to believe that this reference was edited out on the recommendation of Natalia Kulman. It should be mentioned separately that Bunin considered Chekhov to be one of the greatest Russian writers, admired him as a person, and highly valued their friendship, but he always maintained that he did not hold a high opinion of Chekhov’s plays—and for one particular reason. Bunin believed that Chekhov, who was not of noble background, could not and did not know or understand the realities of the life of the Russian nobility and landed gentry of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1950, Bunin added some notes to his essay about Chekhov (originally written in 1916), in which he said: “About eighteen months ago I was reading my Memoirs about Chekhov in Paris and said that I considered him to be one of the most extraordinary Russian writers. I also carelessly said that I didn’t like his plays at all and that I found them rather poor. I believe he should not have been writing about the everyday life of noble landowners since he didn’t know that life at all! That provoked quite an indignant response as if I had offended Chekhov and E. Kuskova even wrote two satirical pieces on this matter in Novoe russkoe slovo!” See T. Murav′eva-Loginova, “Zhivoe proshloe—vospominaniia o I. A. i V. N. Buninykh” (“The Living Past—Memoirs about I. A. and V. N. Bunins”), in Literatutnoe nasledstvo—Ivan Bunin (Moscow: Nauka, 1973), 266. Countess Zinaida Shakhovskaya (1906–2001) also wrote in her memoirs of Bunin: “Chekhov fans always criticized me for not liking his plays. Suddenly I found full support of my views in Bunin. He asked me why and I said it was because my early memories of living on an estate have nothing to do with Ranevskaya [the Cherry Orchard protagonist] and with her ‘undying love for her old wardrobe.’ Bunin fully agreed: ‘Oh yes, yes! And then—what merchant would ever dream of cutting down a cherry orchard while it’s still in bloom? He would first harvest his trees and then sell!’” (Shakhovskaia, Takoi moi vek, 89).

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3 Friday, October 24, 1952 Dear Ivan Alekseevich, You know that I have always tried to congratulate you on your Saint’s Day58 in person and to wish you all the most wonderful things in the world, but my heart doesn’t seem to be working that well these days, so I thought I would write to you to say that I am with you—with all my heart. I pray to God that he lets you write more and more things like that wonderful poem—”The Night.”59 I don’t think there are many poems that come even close to its artistic potency. I often read it to my pupils who understand Russian reasonably well.60 The other poems that they always love reading are “Driving Through the Black Forest,” “Sudden Storm,” “Golden peaks.” Have you seen the recent Soviet edition of Lev Tolstoy in Russian Critical Thought?61 Predictably, it’s all Lenin, Lunacharsky,62 Plekhanov.63 I couldn’t help noticing some notes by Gorky: I have absolutely detested him since I was quite young and turned down several invitations to meet him. These notes are so full of this strange combination of acute jealousy verging on hatred, mixed with veneration, that they send shivers down my spine! There was a lot of darkness in his soul. Although there was some humanity there, too: it seems that Gorky [in his notes] was trying to prove to everyone that Tolstoy did not believe in God.64 58 Bunin’s Saint’s Day was October 25, and his birthday was October 22 (old style). This was Bunin’s last but one Saint’s Day. 59 The poem “Noch′” (“The Night”), written in 1901. 60 Natalia Kulman taught Russian to French children and students privately for many years, religiously using her husband’s textbooks. Amongst her many pupils was Olga Zhirova (1933–1964), the Bunins’ “adopted granddaughter.” 61 L. N. Tolstoi v russkoi kritike (L. N. Tolstoy in Russian Critical Thought) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel′stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1949). 62 Anatoly Lunacharsky (1875–1933) was one of the key members of the first Soviet government. He was, unusually, from a noble Russian background, educated in Zurich University, lived in Europe for many years, spoke many languages, wrote poetry, and was considered to be an expert in literature, music, arts, and critical thought. A prolific writer and critic, Lunacharsky served in the first Soviet government as the People’s Commissar for Enlightenment and was one of the first Soviet academicians. 63 Georgy Plekhanov (1856–1918) was a Marxist theoretician, widely considered to be the founder of the social-democratic movement in Russia. He lived mostly in emigration in Europe and, disappointed with the Bolsheviks, left Russia after the 1917 revolution. 64 The whole paragraph is highlighted in Bunin’s pen.

Letters of Natalia Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1944–1953)

I do hope to come and see you tomorrow, on Saturday, even if just for a minute—if you feel well enough.65 Do remember my never-changing love for both of you, my dearest friends.66 A big hug to you and Vera Nikolaevna. Yours as always, Natalia Kulman

65 In late 1952 Bunin was about to turn eighty-two and was quite ill: he was effectively bedridden and hardly allowed anyone to come and see him in person. Not only was it an effort to speak, but he had always been quite vain about his appearance, and said in one of his letters that he did not want people to remember him the way he looked then—a cross between “Voltaire” (Shakhovskaia, Takoi moi vek, 367) and “a mummy of Ramses” (ibid., 361). Natalia Kulman was a very rare exception and, according to Vera Bunina’s letter to Georgy Adamovich, was one of the last people to have visited Bunin on November 6, 1953, the day before he died. 66 Indeed, this almost unconditional friendship survived through most difficult periods: while the Bunins were stuck in Grasse during the war, with no money and severe food shortages, Natalia Kulman, by then widowed, tried her best to send them some food from Paris. On February 22, 1945 Bunin writes in his diary: “A tiny—but so touching—parcel from Natalia Ivanovna today. She is just an absolutely extraordinary woman!” (Ustami Buninykh, vol. 3, 73). This is a unique comment from Bunin.

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4 April 7, 1953 7 Rue Boucicaut My dear Ivan Alekseevich, It appears that both “schools” are right: you can spell it both ways.67 The Dal’s dictionary68 (edited by Professor Baudouin de Courtenay,69 I believe, other editions seem to be out of date) says that this adjective could be spelled both as -listyi and -listnyi … meaning something that contains three leaves. I am glad I could be of help in such a tiny matter though! May God protect you both. Yours—always loving— Natalia Kulman70

67 Bunin appears to have asked Natalia Ivanovna’s advice on the correct spelling of the adjective trilistyi or trilistnyi. 68 Vladimir Dal (1801–1872) was the author of The Explanatory Dictionary of the Great Russian Language. First published in 1880, it is still widely used today. 69 Professor Ivan Baudouin de Courtenay (1845–1929), a prominent linguist, was once Nikolai Kulman’s tutor at St. Petersburg University. 70 Chronologically, this is the last letter written by Natalia Kulman to Bunin—six months before his death. For almost thirty years they lived at the same addresses in the sixteenth and fifteenth arrondissements in Paris: the Bunins at 1 Rue Jacque Offenbach, and the Kulmans at 7 Rue Boucicaut, a relatively short walk across the Seine from each other. Natalia Ivanovna carried on visiting Vera Nikolaevna Bunina once she was widowed until her own death in 1958. There are numerous references to these visits in Vera Bunina’s diary and letters to other people confirming that Natalia Kulman remained one of her very few constant visitors. Kulman and Bunina also regularly visited St. Genevieve des Bois cemetery together where Nikolai Kulman and Ivan Bunin were buried close to each other. It is quite a long and difficult journey even in contemporary Paris. Natalia Kulman died in 1958 of a heart attack, Vera Bunina died in 1961. The two graves where the Bunins and the Kulmans are now buried are very close to each other in St. Genevieve des Bois Russian cemetery. The only difference, of course, is that Bunin’s grave is now a shrine, even with a sign asking not to place any more flowers, while the Kulmans’ grave looks abandoned and neglected—but the names and dates of their lives can just about be read.

Letters of Natalia Kulman to Ivan Bunin (1944–1953)

571 January 1 Having returned from my lessons last night at 8.30 p.m., I found your letter but couldn’t send a reply straight away. I know that you are coming to Struve today, so I am handing it to him. Today being Sunday, it’s difficult to send a pneumo,72 and I have a terrible headache on top of all that. I spoke to Maria Samoilovna73 yesterday and she agreed to be on the committee but suggested that we start selling [this subscription] in late February so that it doesn’t overlap and compete with the subscription to Sovremennye zapiski. She suggested that we put fixed prices of thirty and fifty francs. She also thought it was unrealistic to put the price up any higher. Last night I also spoke on the phone with Faina Osipovna.74 She said she would buy a book (not sure whether she was prepared to pay thirty or fifty francs) but is not keen on trying to sell it to others. I will see her tomorrow night and ask again. You should also sign five more copies: perhaps you could pop in 71 This letter appears to be the last in both the RAL catalogue listing and the last in the individual folder, but chronologically it clearly refers to an earlier period. Peter Struve (see footnote 167), who is mentioned in the first paragraph, died in 1944, Maria Tsetlina emigrated to the United States in 1940, and her relationship with the Bunins was broken off in 1947. When Natalia Kulman says, “We are both busy,” she obviously refers to Nikolai Kulman who died in 1940. Finally, the practice of subscribing to forthcoming books was common before the war. Some other indicators also give reason to suggest that this letter was most probably written in the late 1920s or early 1930s and must have been put in last place in the folder because there was no year at the top of the letter, just the day. This letter also contains Bunin’s autograph—it appears to have been used as a notepad to write a list of his stories much later, most probably in 1952 and 1953. See footnote 407. 72 The Post pnemautique de Paris (pneumo) was a common way of quick communication used in Paris from the 1850s to the early 1970s that allowed sending short messages in tubes. 73 Maria Tsetlina (1882–1976) was one of the key figures in the cultural life of prewar Paris. A generous patron of the arts, she and her husband Mikhail provided financial backing and support for numerous fundraising events, literary evenings, publications, and grants. It was as a result of Mikhail and Maria Tsetlins’ efforts that, against all odds, the Bunins were granted entry visas to France, where they arrived on March 28, 1920. On their arrival in Paris, they enjoyed the Tsetlins’ hospitality and lived in their flat for around three months. They maintained a close friendship with the Tsetlins and received ongoing financial support from them up until 1947, when the relationship broke down irrevocably. More details about those dramatic events can be found in Natalia Kulman’s letters to Vera Bunina. 74 Faina (Osipovna) Elyashevich (1877–1941) was a translator, an activist, a member of the Committee for Allocation of Help to Russian Writers and Scholars in France (1929) and a number of other voluntary organizations offering financial support to those in need. She was also a close friend of Natalia Kulman, Vera Bunina, and Nadezhda Teffi.

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to our place tomorrow, on Monday, about 6 p.m.? I am afraid we are both busy all day teaching, so we will not be in till then. It would be really good to have at least twenty-five more copies of the book. We have already tried to sell it directly, but got nowhere really, apart from some verbal assurances from K.75 that he would buy it. Others declined, I am afraid, saying they had no money. I am sorry: perhaps I do not make much sense—­ terrible headache, cannot think straight! Yours as ever, Natalia Kulman

75 Unidentified.

Bibliography Adamovich, G. “O literature v emigratsii.” (“On Literature in Exile”). Sovremennye zapiski 50 (1932): 321–327. ———. “O ‘Vospominaniiakh’ Bunina” (“On Bunin’s Memoirs). In Odinochestvo i svoboda (­Solitude and freedom). Moscow: Azbuka-Klassika, 2006. Agabekov, G. Sekretnyi terror (Secret Terror). Moscow: Terra, 1998. Alekseeva, T., and N. Matveev. Dovereno zashchishat′ revoliutsiiu—o Glebe Bokii (Entrusted to ­Defend the Revolution—about Gleb Bokii). Moscow: IPL, 1987. Alexander, Great Duke of Russia. Once a Great Duke. Plano, TX: Borodino Books, 2017. Altaev, A. “Istoriia Gleba Bokiia” (“Story of Gleb Bokii”). Pskov 14–15 (2001): 203–210. Applebaum, A. Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps. New York: Doubleday, 2003. Arkhangelsky, A. Russkie pisateli—laureaty Nobelevskoi premii (Russian Writers Awarded the Nobel Prize). Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1996. Bakhrakh, A. Bunin v khalate (Bunin in a Dressing Gown). Moscow: Soglasie, 2000. Bakuntsev, A. “Ivan Bunin i Russkii Nauchnyi Institut v Belgrade” (“Ivan Bunin and the Russian Academic Institute in Belgrade”). Slavianovedenie 4 (2018): 71–80. Baranova-Shestova, N. Zhizn′ L. Shestova (Life of L. Shestov). Moscow: DirectMedia, 2016. Berberova, N. The Italics Are Mine. London: Vintage, 1993. ———. Moura. The Dangerous Life of the Baroness Budberg. New York: NYRB Classics, 2005. ———. Liudi i lozhi—russkie masony XX stoletiia (People and Lodges—Russian Masons of the Twentieth Century). Moscow: Progress-Traditsia, 1997. Berezhkov, V. Iskushenie chekista Bokiia (Temptation of Chekist Bokii). Moscow: GIORD, 1999. Brackman, R. The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life. London: Frank Cass, 2001. Bunin, I. A. Missiia russkoi emigratsii (Mission of the Russian Emigration). Moscow: Litres, 2019. ———. Okaiannye dni: Vospominaniia, stat′i (Cursed Days: Memoirs, Articles) Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel′, 1990. Combes, André. La Franc-Maçonnerie sous l’Occupation. Monaco: Rocher, 2001. Denikin, A. Ocherki russkoi smuty (Chronicles of the Russian Time of Troubles), Moscow: Nauka, 2002. Elpatievskii, S. Vospominaniia za 50 let (My Memoirs of Fifty Years). Leningrad: Priboi, 1929. Figes, O. A People’s Tragedy: the Russian Revolution, 1891–1924. London: Pimlico, 1996. ———. Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. London: Penguin Books, 2003. Flamm, C., ed. Trascending the Borders of Countries, Languages and Disciplines in Russian Émigré Culture. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018.

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Autographs Don’t Burn Gavriil Konstantinovich. Mramornyi dvorets: Khroniki nashei sem′i (The Marble Palace: Chronicles of our Family). New York: Izdatel′stvo imeni Chekhova, 1955. ———. Dnevnik kniazia imperatorskoi krovi Gavriila Konstantinovicha. 1897–1916 (Diaries of the Royal Blood Prince Gavriil Konstantinovich, 1897–1916), edited by T. A. Lobashkova. ­Moscow: Buki Vedi, 2016. Glenny, M., and N. Stone, N., eds. The Other Russia. London: F&F, 1990. Green, M., et al., eds. Ustami Buninykh: Dnevniki (As the Bunins Spoke: Diaries). Frankfurt: ­Posev, 1977–1982. Grekova, T. Tibetskii lekar′ kremlevskikh vozhdei. (The Tibetian Healer of the Kremlin Leaders). Moscow: OLMA Media Group, 2002. Gruzdeva, E. “Akademicheskoye intermezzo”: Ocherki istorii Sankt-Peterburgskogo imperatorskogo zhenskogo universiteta. (“Academic Intermezzo”: Chronicles and History of the St. Petersburg ­Imperial Women’s Institute) St. Petersburg: n.p., 2009. Guerra, R. Kogda my v Rossiiu vernemsia … (When We Return to Russia …). St. Petersburg: Vostok, 2010. Gul′, R. Nachalo terrora—Dzerzhinskii (The Start of Terror—Dzerzhinsky) New York: Most, 1974. Gunther, J. Inside Russia Today. London: The Reprint Society, 1959. Haber, E. Teffi. A Life of Letters and of Laughter. London: I. B. Tauris, 2019. Hashlam, J. Near and Distant Neighbours: A New History of Soviet Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Hill, Elizabeth. In the Mind’s Eye: The Memoirs of Dame Elizabeth Hill, edited by J. S. Smith. Lewes: The Book Guild, 1999. I. A. Bunin: Novye materialy (I. A. Bunin: New Materials), edited by O. Korostylev and R. Davies, vol. 1. Moscow: Russki put’, 2004. I. A. Bunin: Novye materialy (I. A. Bunin: New Materials), edited by O. Korostylev and R. Davies, vol. 2. Moscow: Russki put’, 2010. I. A. Bunin: Novye materialy (I. A. Bunin: New Materials), edited by O. Korostylev and R. Davies, vol. 3. Moscow: Russki put’, 2014. I. A. Bunin—Pro et contra. St. Petersburg: RKhGI, 2001. Klassik bez retushi: literaturnyi mir o tvorchestve I. A. Bunina (1890–1950) (The Maitre as He Was: The Literary World on the Works of I. A. Bunin [1890–1950]), edited by N. Melnikov and T. Marchenko, Moscow: Russkii put′, 2010. Kodrianskaia, Natalia. Bunin bez gliantsa (Bunin without Gloss). Moscow: Palmira, 2016. Konstantin Konstantinovich. Dnevnik velikogo kniazia Konstantina Konstantinovicha Romanova. 1911–1915 (Diaries of the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov. 1911–1915), edited by V. Khrustalev. Moscow: PROZAiK, 2013. Korliakov, A. L’emmigration russe en photos 1917–1947 (Russian Emigration in Photos, 1917– 1947). Paris: YMCA Press, 1999. Kuznetsova, G. Grasskii dnevnik (The Grasse Diary). Washington, D.C.: Victor Kamkin, 1967. Marchenko, T. Russkie pisateli i Nobelevskaia Premiia (1901–1955) (Russian Writers and the Nobel Prize [1901–1955]). Cologne: Bohlau, 2007.

Bibliography Marullo, T. G. Ivan Bunin: From the Other Shore (1920–1933). Chicago: Ivan R Dee, 1995. ———. Ivan Bunin: The Twilight of Émigré Russia. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002. Mjor, K. J. Reformulating Russia. The Cultural and Intellectual Historiography of Russian First-Wave Émigré Writers. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Morozov, S. Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva I. A. Bunina (Chronicles of I. A. Bunin’s Life and Letters), vol. 1: 1870–1909. Moscow: IMLI, 2011. Murav′eva-Loginova, T. “Zhivoe proshloe—vospominaniia o I. A. i V. N. Buninykh” (“The Living Past—Memoirs about I. A. and V. N. Bunins”). In Literatutnoe nasledstvo—Ivan Bunin. Moscow: Nauka, 1973. Muromtseva-Bunina, V. Zhizn′ Bunina. Besedy s pamiat′iu (Life of Bunin: Conversations with ­Memory). Moscow: Vagrius, 1989. Norra, P. “Between Memory and History,” Representations 26: Memory and Counter-Memory (Spring 1989): 7–24. Odoevtseva, I. Na beregakh Seny (On the Banks of the Seine). Paris: La presse libre, 1983. Oleg Konstantinovich. Dnevnik kniazia imperatorskoi krovi Olega Konstantinovicha. 1900–1914 (Diary of Royal Blood Duke Oleg Konstantinovich, 1900–1914). Moscow: Buki Vedi, 2016. Padenie tsarskogo rezhima—stenograficheskie otchety komissii vremennogo pravitel′stva (The Fall of the Tsarist Regime—Stenography Records of the Provisional Government Commission), vol. 4. Leningrad: n.p., 1925. Rabinovich, A. The Bolsheviks in Power. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Raeff, M. Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919–1939. Oxford: ­Oxford University Press, 1990. Reviakin, A. Tvorcheskaia istoriia p′esy “Vishnevyi sad” (The History of “The Cherry Orchard”). Moscow: MGPI, 1960. Rubens, M. Russkii Monparnas: parizhskaia proza 1920–1930 godov (The Russian Montparnasse: Parisian Prose of 1920–1930s). Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2017. Rubens, M. Russian Montparnasse: Transnational Writing in Interwar Paris. London: Pallgrave Macmillan, 2015. Shakhovskaia, Z. Takoi moi vek (That Was My Century). Moscow: Russkii put′, 2008. Shein, I. “Mobilizatsiia russkoi armii i ee popolnenie liudskimi resursami v gody Pervoi mirovoi voiny (1914–1918 gg.)” (“Mobilization of the Russian Army and Its Personnel Reinforcement in the First World War [1914–1918]”). Voennyi akademicheskii zhurnal 3 (2016): 72–76. Slobin, G. Russians Abroad. Literary and Cultural Politics of Diaspora (1919–1939). Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013. Smith, D. Former People: The Last Days of the Russian Aristocracy. London: Macmillan, 2012. Soboleva, I. Velikie kniaz′ia doma Romanovykh (The Grand Dukes of the House of Romanovs). St. Petersburg: Piter, 2014. Solntseva, I. Ivan Shmelev—zhizn′ i tvorchestvo (Ivan Shmelev—Life and Works). Moscow: Ellis Lak, 2007. Solzhenitsyn, A. The GULAG Archipelago (1918–1956), translated by Thomas P Whitney and Harry Willets. London: The Harvill Press, 2003.

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Autographs Don’t Burn Stashkov, G. Avgusteishii bunt: dom Romanovykh nakanune revolutsii (The Royal Revolt: The House of Romanovs on the Eve of the Revolution). St. Petersburg: BKhV, 2013. Struve, G. Russian Writers in Exile: Problems of Émigré Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959. Teffi, N. Moia letopis′ (My Chronicles). Moscow: Prozaik, 2015. ———. “Pis′ma k Buninym” (“Letters to the Bunins”). Diaspora 1 (2001): 348–421. Tyrkova-Williams, A. Na putiakh k svobode (Our Ways to Freedom). New York: Izdatel′stvo imeni Chekhova, 1952. Vassoevich, A. L. “Petrogradskii golodomor kak orudie tsivilizatsionnogo sloma” (“The Petrograd Golodomor as a Means to Destroy Civilization”). In Russkii Iskhod kak rezul′tat natsional′noi katastrofy (The Russian Exodus as a Result of National Catastrophe), edited by M. Smolin and V. Filianova, 112–119. Moscow: Rossiiskii institut strategicheskikh issledovanii, 2011. Vrangel, M. “Moia zhizn′ v kommunisticheskom raiu” (“My Life in the Communist Paradise”). In Barony Vrangeli—Vospominaniia, 277–297. Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2006. Zaitsev, B. Moi sovremenniki (My Contemporaries), ed. N. Zaitseva-Sollogub, London: Overseas Publications Interchange, 1988. Zygar, M. Imperiia dolzhna umeret′. Istoriia russkikh revolutsii v litsakh, 1900–1917 (The Empire Must Die. History of the People in the Russian Revolutions, 1900—1917). Moscow: Al′pina, 2018.

Index Adamovich, Georgy, 85n26, 105, 151, 167, 170n13, 174n37, 179n65 Solitude and Freedom, 174n37 Akhmatova, Anna, 64, 67 Aldanov, Mark, 134n164, 140n185, 145, 159, 170n13 Key, The, 140n185 Alekseev, Mikhail V., 40 Alekseeva, T., 63n76 His Calling Was to Defend the Revolution, 62–63 Aleksinsky, I. P., 95 Alexander, King of Serbia, 31n16, 74 Alexander I, 18, 175, Alexander II, 36, 47, 54, 176n51 Alexandra (Tsarina), 32, 34, 92n11 Amfiteatrov, Alexander, 139n180 Anastasy, Archbishop, 136n170 Applebaum, Anne, 65, 66n85 Argutinsky, V. N., 95 Avksentiev, Nikolai, 92 Bakunina, Ekaterina, 171 Body, The, 171 Balmont, Konstantin, 8, 41–42, 78, 83–84, 91, 120n118 Barchenko, Alexander, 67 Batyushkov, Konstantin, 176n50 Baudouin de Courtenay, Ivan, 180 Behaghel, Maria Lyudvigovna, 157, 159 Belich, Alexander, 118n113 Belinsky, Vissarion, 113

Berberova, Nina, 19n6, 37n32, 59, 83n17, 84, 87, 105n73, 118n109, 161n60, 165, 167 Italics Are Mine, The, 37n32, 59, 105n73, 161n60 Berdyaev, Nikolai, 129n145, 157 Berezhkov, V., 63n76, 64, 68–69 Temptation of the Chekist Bokii, 63 Beria, Lavrentii, 69 Bernstein, Alexei, 148, 153n27 Bernstein, Elena, 148, 153n27 Beryatsky, M. V., 95 Blagov, Fedor Ivanovich, 138 Blok, Alexander, 50, 151n16, 174 “Twelve, The,” 174n38 Blokh, Alexander, 149 Blokh, Andrey, 142 Blokh, Elena, 148, 153, 159, see also Bernstein, Elena Blokh, Gregory. A., 90 Blokh, Jacob, 108, 159 Bloch, Mikhail, 129, 132–133, 140 Bokii, Aleksandra Kuzminichna, 44 Bokii, Boris, 45, 47, 49–50, 69–70 Bokii, Gleb, 35, 45, 47, 53, 58, 60–70, 73, 155n42 Bokii, Ivan Dmitrievich, 44, 50 Bokii, Nataliia I., 44–52, see also Kulman, Natalia Bokii-Moskvina, Sofia A., 70n94 Bokii-Pechekhvostsky, Fedor, 45 Briand, Aristide, 101

188

Index Brunot, Ferdinand, 94 Budberg, Moura, 66n86 Bulgakov, Mikhail, 1, 7, 65, 68 Heart of a Dog, 68 Master and Margarita, 1, 65, 68 Bulgakov, Sergey N., 129n145 Bunin, Ivan, 3–8, 10–12, 14, 16, 20n8, 24, 35–37, 40, 44–45, 50, 59, 65–66, 73–78, 80–81, 83–166 “Cicadae, The,” 99 Chasha zhizni (Cup of Life), 7n3 Cursed Days, The, 74, 90n3, 100, 142n189 Dark Alleys, 167, 169n9, 170n13, 171–173 “Antigone,” 171 “Galya Ganskaya,” 171 “Genrikh,” 171 “Guest, The,” 171 “In Paris,” 171 “Nathalie,” 170 “Rusya,” 171 “Smaragd”, 171 “Tanya,” 171 “Zoika and Valeria,” 171 “Driving Through the Black Forest,” 178 Dry Valley, 103 God’s Tree, The, 111, 124 “Golden Peaks,” 178 Liberation of Tolstoy, 141n186 Life of Arseniev, 5, 86n27, 113n96, 115, 120n117, 122, 124, 126n137, 135n167, 140, 144, 155, 156n45 Memoirs, 174 Mitya’s love (Mitina liubov′), 3, 5 “Night,” 178 Shadow of a Bird (Ten′ Ptitsy), 7 “Sudden Storm,” 178 Bunina, Anna, 175, 176n52

Bunina, Vera, 8, 12–14, 27n14, 34n23, 35, 44, 52, 56, 69–70, 75, 77, 80, 83–166 Life of Bunin: Conversations with Memory (Zhizn′ Bunina. Besedy s pamiat′iu), 35 Buslaev, Fedor, 123 Catherine II, 175, 176n55 Chekhov, Alexander, 176n52 Chekhov, Anton, 3, 35–37, 126–127, 143n189, 150, 154n34, 167, 170, 172, 176–177 Cherry Orchard, 176–177 Chekhov, Mikhail, 127 Chicherin, Georgy, 68 Chukovsky, Kornei, 103 Churchill, Winston, 60 Dashkova, Ekaterina, 175 Dashkova, Paulina, 70 Source of Happiness, The, 70 Dal, Vladimir, 180 Explanatory Dictionary of the Great Russian Language, The, 180n68 Davies, Richard, xi, 56n66, 84n21, 84n23, 168n8 Delarue, Mikhail, 45, 176n55 Delarue, Mikhail, Danilovich., 19, 45, 52, 176 Demidov, M., 145 Denikin, Anton, 20, 39–42, 129n145 Denikin, Pavel, 8, 20, 39 Denisov, N. Kh., 95 Derzhavin, Gavrila, 175n49 Digamels, A., 110 Dostoyevsky, Fedor, 3, 175n49 Dumesnil de Gramont, Michel, 97n32 Education, 50 Efron, Ariadna, 162n62

Index Efron, Sergey, 162 Eliseev, Sergei, 137 Elpatievsky, Sergey Ya., 35–37 Elyashevich, Faina Osipovna, 181, 181n74 Elyashevich, V., 139n179 Engelgardt, E. A., 19 Engelgardt, Vladimir, 152 Engels, Friedrich, 47 Encyclopedic Dictionary (Brockhaus and Efron), 50 Ertel, Alexander, 174 Gardenins, The, 174n40 Esenin, Sergey, 50, 174 Ezhov, Nikolai, 69 Flandene, E., 50 Political Institutions of Europe Today, 50 Fondaminsky, Ilya, 113, 115, 139n179, 151, 154n33 Fortunatov, F. F., 21 Gandelman, Georgy, 155, 159 Gerasimov, Osip, 107 Gippius, Zinaida, 71, 76, 90n3, 99n38, 103, 118–119, 133n161, 156n42 “V etot chas” (In this Hour), 133n161 Gogol, Nikolai, 10, 16, 18–19, 80, 93n16, 113 Dead Souls, 18 Gorky, Maxim, 34–37, 50, 61, 64n80, 66–67, 97n32, 105, 136n170, 155n42, 174, 178 Gort, D., 127n138 Graham, Stephen, 100 Grebenshchikov, Georgy, 93, 170n13 Churaevs, The, 93 Green, Militsa, 85, 145n199

Grevs, Ivan M., 50–52, 157n50 Guiro, P., 50 Ancient Greeks—Their Public and Private Lives, 50 Gukasov, Abram, 99, 109, 118, 125n136, 133 Gukasov, Pavel.O., 95 Gumilev, Nikolai, 64 Halbwachs, Maurice, 8 Haumant, Emile, 76, 97 Herzen, Alexander, 45, 47 Heywood, Anthony, J., 84, 146 Hill, Elizabeth, 5 History of Pedagogic Thought: Methodology of Teaching Russian History from the Eighteenth Century, 50 History of State Institutions in Medieval France, 50 Hofman, M.L., 107–108 How the French Revolution Happened, 50 Humanite, 136n170, 151n18 Iskra (Spark, The), 99n37 Ivan the Terrible, 45 Ivanov, Georgy, 171 Jaloux, Edmond, 91 Kamenev, Lev, 69 Kampanari, L. D., 159 Kannegisser, Leonid, 64 Kant, Immanuel, 65 Kaplan, Fanya, 70n94 Kaplan, Mikhail, 142 Karamzin, Nikolai, 175 History of the Russian State, The, 175n48 Kartashev, Anton, 77, 129–130, 137, 148 Katenin, Alexander, 152

189

190

Index Kedrov, Nikolai N., 127 Kepinov, L.I., 95, 155, 157, 159 Kepinova, E. P., 95 Khodasevich, Vladislav, 8, 111n90, 118, 134n164, 139n180, 154n33 Khrushchev, Nikita, 69 Kirov, Sergey, 70 Kolchak, A. V., 40 Kolos (Wheat Stalk: Russian Writers to Russian Youth), 78 Knowing (Future) Russia, 90n2 Kolontay, Alexandra, 136n170 Korlyakov, Andrei, xi, 42–43 L’emmigration russe en photos 1917–1947, xi, 42–43 Kornilov, Lavr G., 40, 161n60 Korovin, Alexey, 143 Korovin, Konstantin, 143n192 Krandievskaya-Tolstaya, Natalia, 142n189 Krestinsky, Yury, 143n189 Krupskaya, Nadezhda, 20, 49 Krylov, Ivan, 152 “Quaib” (Pokhval′naia rech′: vostochnaia povest’), 152n24 Krymov, Vladimir, 129 Kshesinskaya, Matilda, 34 Kulman, Alexander Karlovich, (Father Alexander), 16, 69 Kulman, Ekaterina Iasonovna, 54 Kulman, Elena N., 54–55 Kulman, Gustav, G., 13 Kulman, Karl, 16 Kulman, Konstantin N., 54–55 Kulman, Ekaterina, 49 Kulman, Maria, 16, 54 Kulman, Maria (nee Zernova), 12–13 Kulman, Natalia. Ivanovna, 4, 7–14, 44–60, 63, 65, 69–75, 81–89, 93–96, 100n38, 102–104, 106, 115, 117, 121, 125, 127–133, 140–142,

144–146, 148, 153n27, 153n30, 154n31, 155–158, 160, 163–182 Kulman, Nikolai Karlovich, 4, 6–46, 52–60, 65, 69–169, 181n71 Alexander Pushkin and Romanticism, 18 Collection of Pushkin’s Bibliography, 16, 18 Elementary and Practical Grammar of Russian {Etymology}, 19 Elementary and Practical Grammar of Russian {Syntax}, 19 Elementary Grammar of Russian, 19, 80 History of Freemasons in Russia: Study of the Kishinev Lodge, 18 History of Public Movements in Russia during the Reign of Emperor Alexander I, 17–18, 29 How Shall We Teach Russian to Our Children?, 80 Gogol’s Hans Kuheltargen and Foss’s Louisa, 18 In Memory of Maykov: the Poet’s Letters to Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich. Texts and Commentary, 18 In Celebration of Fifty Years of L. N. Tolstoy’s Literary Activity., 18, 24n10 Lectures on the theory of the Russian Language, 19 Letters of E. A. Engelgardt to M. D. Delarue: Publication and Commentary, 19 Methodology of Teaching Russian, The, 19 Nikolai Gogol and His Time, 18 On Russian Spelling, 19, 21 On the History of Russian Grammar, 19

Index Prince Oleg, 19, 25, 27, 32, 38 Prince Vyazemsky as a Literary Critic, 18, 29 Psychological Drama of Nikolai Gogol, 18 V. Zhukovsky’s Manuscripts from the Private Collection of Counts A. A. and A. A. Bobrinsky: Texts, History and Commentary, 18, 29 Kulman, Olga N., 54–56, 130 Kulman, Vladimir, N., 44, 54–56, 69, 86 Kuprin, Alexander, 78, 80, 100n43, 125, 132n155, 139 Kurbsky, Andrei, 45 Kurenko, M., 127n138 Kuskova, E., 177n57 Kuznetsova, Galina, 56, 89n4, 107n77, 112n94, 129n146, 130n149, 132n155, 134n164, 139n181, 141n186, 149n9, 156n44, 163, 167 Grasse Diary, The (Grasskii dnevnik), 89n4, 139n181, 149n9 Lazarevsky, Boris, 143 Lenin, Vladimir, 20, 34, 36–37, 49, 58, 64, 67–68, 70, 99n37, 117n107, 178 Leskov, Nikolai, 93 Steel Flea, The, 93 Letopis’ srednei shkoly (Chronicles of middle school), 22 Lev Tolstoy in Russian Critical Thought, 178 Levina, M. G., 95 Lianozov, S. G., 95 Liebknecht, Karl, 34 Lifar, Sergei, 128 Likhareva, Natalia, 44, 51–53, 56, 65, 95n25, 96, 166, see also Kulman, Natalia

Lintvareva, Alexandra, 177n56 Lintvarev, Georgy, 177n56 Lot, Ferdinand, 157n50 Lot-Borodina, Mirra, 157 Lozinsky, Gregory, 137, 141n186 Lunacharsky, A., 22, 78 Luxemburg, Rosa, 34 Malsagov, Sozerko, 66–67 Island Hell, An, 66–67 Manukhin, Ivan I., 34n23, 35n27, 64n80, 95, 147–148, 155n42 Manukhina, Tatyana, 155n42 Fatherland, The (Otechestvo), 155, 155n42 Marx, Adolf, 91 Marx, Karl, 47, 99n37 Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 50, 174 Merezhkovsky, Dmitry, 77, 97n32, 100n43, 118–119, 125–126, 133n161, 148 Methodius, Father, 44, 54, 56, 69, 86, see also Kulman, Vladimir N. Mikhailov, P.A., 95, 170n13 Miller, Evgeny, 161n60, 162, 162n62 Miller, Natalia, 162n61 Milyukov, P., 100n44 Molotov, Viacheslav, 67 Monde Slave, Le, 151–152 Mongault, M., 93 Morozov, S., xi, 127n138 Muromtseva, Vera, 167n2, see also Bunina, Vera Nabokov, Vladimir Dmitrievich, 52 Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 161n60 Assistant Director, 161n60 Nekhlyudov, Anatoly, 101 Nekhlyudova, Nadezhda, 101 Nekhlyudova, Elena, 101n51

191

192

Index Nekrasov, Nikolai, 150n12 “Knight for an Hour,” 150 Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vladimir, 174n38 Nesterovskaya, Nina, 34 Nicholas I, 45n48, 101n53 Nicholas II, 32–34, 39, 45, 70n94, 92n11, 101n53, 161n60, 174n39 Novoe russkoe slovo, 177n57 Novyi zhurnal, 169n12, 170n15 Odoevtseva, Irina, 8–9, 171 Okno (Window), 93 Osorgin, Mikhail, 100, 123, 125–126 Ostrogradsky, Mikhail V., 45, 68 Paul I, 175 Peshkov, Alexey, 35, see also Gorky, Maxim Peter the Great, 16, 142 Peter of Oldenburg, 174n39 Pink Floyd, 1 Animals, 1 Pitoeva, Lyudmila, 128 Plekhanov, Georgy, 178 Plevitskaya, Nadezhda, 161–162 Porche, Francois, 144 Tsar Lenin—A Mystery in Three Acts and an Epilogue, 144n194 Poslednie novosti (Latest News), 100, 107, 109n84, 124n131, 127n138, 135n167, 155, 162 Prilepin, Zakhar, 70 Retreat, 70 Pushkin, Alexander, 10, 14, 16, 19, 32–33, 45, 80–81, 107n77, 124, 137n174, 142, 154n33, 162n61, 163–164, 170, 172, 176 Eugene Onegin, 118n109, 137n174 Gavriiliada, 172 Putin, Vladimir, 172n32

Radionov, Vadim, 150, 157, 159 Rakhmaninov, Sergey, 161n60 Rasputin, Grigory, 32, 45, 92 Remizov, Alexey, 100 Ribes, M., 162 Romanov, Gavriil, Konstantinovich, 30, 33–35, 64, 147n3, 156n42 Romanov, Igor Konstantinovich, 34 Romanov, Ioann Konstantinovich, 34, 74 Romanov Kirill Vladimirovich, 102 Romanov, Konstantin, Konstantinovich, 18, 21, 25–32, 34, 37–38, 55, 74, 81, 150n13, 155/156n42 Romanov, Mikhail Nikolaevich, 45 Romanov, Nikolai Mikhailovich, 37 Romanov Nikolai Nikolaevich, 77, 101, 102n55 Romanov, Oleg Konstantinovich, 25–27, 31–34, 38 Romanov, Sergei Mikhailovich, 34 Romanova, Elizaveta, 25, 27 Romanova, Tatyana Konstantinovna, 34 Roche, Denis, 154 Roshchin, Nikolai, 149 Roshkov, V. A., 91 Rossiia i slavianstvo (Russia and the Slavic world), 41, 80, 120n118 Russkii mir (The Russian World), 80 Russkii narodnyi uchitel′ (Russian people’s teacher), 22 Russkoe Slovo (The Russian Word), 138 Savich, Sergey, 153 Sazonova, Yulia, 83n17, 105n70, 168 Scott, Giles Gilbert, 1 Sedykh, Andrey, 170n13 Semenov, Yuri, 109n86, 118, 138, Semenov-Tian-Shansky, Valery, 174n36, 175 Shakespeare, William, 16n5, 25 Hamlet, 16n5, 25, 127

Index Shakhmatov, Alexey, 22, 107–108 Shakhovskaya, Zinaida, 177n57 Shakhovskoi, Dmitry, 20 Shalyapin, Fyodor, 161n60 Shaw, Bernard, 80 Shestov, Lev, 137, 159–160 Shramko, Olga, xi, 97n33 Shirinsky-Shikhmatov, Georgy, 91 Shirinsky-Shikhmatov, Alexei, 91n9 Shishkov, Alexander, 175, 175n49, 176 Shklovsky, Isaac, 7n3 Shmelev, Ivan, 8, 41–42, 59, 78, 83, 99n36, 102, 105, 109, 121, 129, 139n180, 148, 155, 157 Sun of the Dead, The, 59 Skoblin, Nikolai, 161n60 Slobin, Greta, 132n157 Slonim, Mark, 107n76 Slonimskaya, Yulia, see Sazonova Yulia Smirnova, Ekaterina, 44, 54, also see Kulman, Ekaterina Iasonovna Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 63, 65–66 GULAG Archipelago, The, 63, 66–67 Song of Roland, The, 154 Sovremennye zapiski (Contemporary chronicles), 80, 97, 99, 105, 115, 124n131, 134–135, 152, 181 Spassky, George, 148 Spektorsky, Evgeny, 119 Spesivtseva, Olga, 128 Stalin, Iosif, 36, 59–60, 66–69, 103n61, 142n189, 143n189, 161n60 Stelletsky, Dmitry, 103 Stepun, Marga, 167 Stravinsky, Igor, 52 Struve, Gleb, 71 Struve, Peter, 47, 78, 99, 101, 109, 118–119, 157n53, 181 Suvorin, Aleksei, 177n56

Tale of Igor’s Campaign, The, 41, 42n44, 80, 91n8, 120, 123, 126, 154, 159 Tamanin, T., 155 see also Manukhina, Tatyana Tchaikovsky, Petr, 25 Teffi, Nadezhda, 7n3, 8, 57, 60, 71, 78, 85n26, 88–89, 100, 139n180, 145, 154, 157, 159, 161n60, 163, 167n3, 170n13, 172n31, 172n33, 181n74 Tereshchenko, Mikhail, 140n185 Tikhomirov, Mikhail, 123 Tolstoy, Alexei, 7n3, 88n2, 142–143, 143n189 Aelita, 142n189 Parizhskie Teni [Paris shadows], 143n190, 143n193 Peter the Great, 142n189 Road to Calvary, The, 142n189 Tolstoy, A. K., 175n49 Tolstoy, Leo, 3, 10, 16, 18–19, 22, 24, 35–37, 80, 93n16, 98, 107n79, 115n100, 135n168, 142n189, 144n194, 149–150, 152, 170, 172, 174n40, 175n49, 178 Death of Ivan Ilyich, The, 24 Tolstoy, Nikolai, 149 Trakhterev, Osip, 157 Tretyakov, S. N., 95 Tsakni, Anna, 146 Tsetlin, Mikhail, 91, 93n21, 181n73 Tsetlin, Osip, 127n138, 131, 181n73 Tsetlina, Maria, 84, 87, 91n5, 127n138, 156, 167, 181, 181n71 Tsvetaeva, Marina, 40n38, 78, 85n26, 136n170, 139n180, 162 Turgenev, Ivan, 154, 175n49 Tyrkova-Williams, Ariadna, 49 Tyutchev, Fedor I., 30, 170 Ulyanov, Anna, 20 Ulyanov, Olga, 20 Uritsky, Moisei, 35, 58, 61, 64

193

194

Index Vecherniaia Moskva, 142, 143n190 Vishnyak, Mark, 152, 170n13 Vozrozhdenie (Renaissance), 80, 99n36–37, 100–101, 104–105, 109, 133n161, 138, 174n36 Vrangel, Petr, 40–41, 125n134, 148n4, 161n60 Vrangel, Maria, 57–58, 125 Vyazemsky, Petr, 18, 29, 45 Vyshnegradskaya, E. N., 95 Vyshnegradsky, A. I., 95 Vyshnitskaya, Elena N., 104 Wells, H. G., 66n86 Yagoda, Genrikh, 69 Yaroshenko, N., 47–48 Yurovsky, Yakov, 70n94 Yushkevich, Semen, 104 Yusupov, Felix, 45

Zaitsev, Boris, 8, 78, 83n17, 84, 85n26, 87, 104, 115n99, 149, 153–154, 157, 159, 163, 165, 167, 169, 170n13, 171, 172n33, 173n33 Life of Turgenev, 154 Zaitseva, Vera, 115, 167n2 Zaitseva-Sollogub, Natalia, 43 Zernova, Maria, 13, see also Kulman, Maria Zhdanov, Ivan, 120n120 Zhirova, Olga, 178n60 Zhukovsky, Vasily, 16, 18, 29, 176 Zinoviev, Grigory, 57–58, 64, 69 Zoshchenko, Mikhail, 103n61 Zveno, 105, 105n72 Zurov, Leonid, 84–85, 112n94, 129n146, 130n149, 146, 153, 157, 163 Zygar, Mikhail, 62