SUMMARY:

Under the archival rubric, Oleg Budniskii publishes letters by M. A. Aldanov to V. A. Maklakov and B. I. El’kin, Aldanov’s letter to A. A. Titov, and the exchange of Maklakov and A. F. Kerenskii. The letters are preserved in Oxford University, Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts. MS. Russian d. 7. Correspondence of Boris Elkin; Hoover Institution Archives, Vasily Maklakov Collection.
In the Introduction Budnitskii recreates the political and personal contexts of their exchange with a special focus on post–World War II Paris and the new postwar capital of Russian emigration, New York. The letter from Russian New Yorkers to Russian Parisians and vice versa discussed issues of new and old political and personal loyalties, the role of the Soviet Union in the war and the postwar world as well as the mission of Russian emigration in the new situation. Different wartime personal experiences now defined the stances of people who had known each other for years. The main protagonist of Budnitskii’s “Introduction” is Mark Aleksandrovich Aldanov, the well-known writer who left Paris for New York in December 1940. Budnitskii also introduces Aldanov’s addressees. They include Vasilii Alekseevich Maklakov, Boris Isaakovich El’kin, Aleksander Andreevich Titov, and Aleksandr Fedorovich Kerenskii. The major event discussed by this circle of people, and is correspondingly considered in the “Introduction,” is the well-known visit by a group of nine Paris-based emigrants to the Soviet Embassy that took place on February 12, 1945. This group included Aldanov’s friends Maklakov and M. M. Ter-Pogosian and his associates in the party of Popular Socialists, A. S. Al’perin and Titov. The selection of letters pertaining to this “episode” is helpful in revealing the attitudes and moods of Russian emigration from both sides of the ocean. The letters can also be used for political biographies of Aldanov and Maklakov.