Abstract
The introductory note to the publication analyzes the reasons for the success of A. A. Verbitskaya “modern novels” “The Spirit of Time” and “ Keys of Happiness” with the young reading audience of the 1910s. In these two bestsellers the writer was able to combine a diverse, aesthetically and politically relevant topic of interest to the younger generation with the poetics of the adventure and adventure novel genres that descended from the heights of classics into the field of fiction. Verbitskaya managed to achieve, as K. Chukovsky put it, a successful “combination of Rockambole and Darwin, Pinkerton and Marx”. Having banned Verbitskaya’s novels in 1924, the new government, represented by N. Bukharin, gave the writers the task of creating new entertaining literature, their own “communist Pinkerton”, in effect urging them to continue the stylistic traditions of Verbitskaya’s rejected and banned literary experiments. In the Appendix, Verbitskaya’s stories from the 1920s are published for the first time from archival sources: “Joy”, “How Buttercup became a communist”, “Our pioneers”, “Memories of Lenin by pioneer Shura Andreeva, recorded from her words”.
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