‘There’s been a whole campaign against you.’ Y. Zamyatin’s correspondence with I. Novikov

Abstract

A publication of the correspondence between the political ‘heretic’ and Leningrad-based writer Y. Zamyatin and the ‘pessimist’ and Moscow-based author I. Novikov. Covering the years from 1922 to 1929 and gleaned from the annals of the Gorky Institute of World Literature (IMLI RAN) and Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), it is supplied with an introduction and comments. The epistolary friendship of the two writers resulted from common interests and acquaintances in the literary world as well as the critic Zamyatin’s backing of Novikov in the 1924 article ‘On the current and the contemporary’ [‘O segodnyashnem i o sovremennom’]. In their letters, Novikov and Zamyatin bemoaned censorship and shared updates about new projects and upcoming productions of their plays, and discussed the life of literary organizations in Leningrad and Moscow as well as anthologies published in Leningrad. Stigmatized as a ‘fellow traveller’ (poputchik) during the 1929 persecution campaign, Zamyatin turned to Novikov in search for a like-minded supporter who would stand by him in print. The published correspondence offers a glimpse into the 1920s historical and ideological climate of Moscow and Petrograd-Leningrad, as well as the literary and theatrical process of the period.