The case of the Keeper of antiquities. Materials from the1939 criminal case file

Abstract

The writer Yury Dombrovsky did not leave behind any diaries of memoirs. Glimpses of his life are scattered across autobiographical poems and prose. Although an important source for research, letters and reminiscences of friends are often limited to a single episode or a brief period, usually of the writer’s later life in Moscow. What proved indispensable in the process of recovering facts and compiling a good half of the biography — spanning a lengthy period from the 1920s to the 1950s — were materials of the criminal proceedings. They also help decipher the writer’s major two-part novel, a fact he acknowledged himself. However, the archive materials were only recently declassified. The article aims to reconstruct a period of Yury Dombrovsky’s life and introduces the hitherto unpublished materials of his third criminal case of 1939. The author compares testimonies found in Dombrovsky’s writings and memoirs of his friends and acquaintances with documents preserved in archives, including tip-offs to the authorities.