V. Ya. Bryusov’s Plan for publishing A. S. Pushkin’s Complete Works

Abstract

The article is devoted to the plan for the publication of certain volumes of the Complete Works of Pushkin, edited by V. Ya. Bryusov. In 1920, the only volume of this edition was published, which caused honest discussions in the circle of Pushkinists, reflected in the press of those years. The following volumes, prepared for publication, were never published, but the editor did a large-scale job, leaving a lot of Pushkin’s drafts and fair copies along with this edition’s proofreads and layouts for future volumes. The purpose of the author of the article is to collect and study the archival documents preserved in the Bryusov fund at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, related to the further publication of the Complete Works. The article uses previously unpublished materials, describes the features of the unrealized Bryusov’s plan in comparison with other plans of the Collected Works of Pushkin of previous scholarly publications, analyzes the goals of the editor, the composition of the works included in the next volumes, the principles of the arrangement of the material, the methods of Bryusov’s work on notes and biographical articles in the collected works. As a result, the author comes to the conclusion that Bryusov did a monumental work on the preparation of the following parts of the Complete Collected Works, which could solve the problem initially set by the editor for himself — to prepare an edition that would summarize everything that Pushkin’s researchers had done at the time of the publication of the collection.