РЕДАКТОР «РОССИИ»: БИОГРАФИЯ И.Г. ЛЕЖНЕВА – АРХИВНЫЕ ДОКУМЕНТЫ И ПУБЛИКАЦИИ. ЧАСТЬ 2

Abstract

The article considers the archival materials and printed sources related to the major milestones of the professional biography of I. G. Lezhnev (1891–1955), the writer and editor of the “Russia” magazine. I. G. Lezhnev’s ideological work in the first part of the 1920s connected with the issuing of «Russia» – the magazine which belonged to the «Smena Vekh» ideological project can be understood through his publications in that magazine, his letters to N.V. Ustryalov published by M. S. Agurskiy, as well as through the resources in the Russian archives. The sequence of events that ended up in the closure of the “Russia” magazine and in deporting its editor, I.G. Lezhnev, “beyond the boundaries of the USSR” are revealed in the documents kept in the funds of the Russian State Archives of the Social and Political History and the Central Archives of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. Following the information provided by the documents of the I.G. Lezhnev’s fund in the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art, the author reviews the professional duties of I.G. Lezhnev – the staff member of the Trade Mission of the USSR in Berlin. The article reviews the sources describing I.G. Lezhnev’s return from Germany to the USSR, the essential role of his ‘extended membership application’ for joining the Party, his autobiographical and repenting “Notes of a Contemporary” which in many ways defined the future of their author; much attention is also drawn to his work in the ‘Pravda’ newspaper and other milestones of his life. The present paper for the first time, analyzed the documents from the private collections, connected with the publication of Lezhnev’s “Notes of a Contemporary” in the USSR.