Andrey N. Kravtsov (Melbourne, Australia)

RUSSIAN ÉMIGRÉ SERIALS

AS A PHILOLOGICAL STUDY SOURCE

As it is known the memoirs is characterized by a mixture of fiction and documentary art, and in the XX century it was even a shift from the fiction to the documentary. But there is a reverse trend as the memoirs are becoming more artistic shaped texts so they can be viewed through an aesthetic perspective. A researcher E.Mestergazi writes of it noting the XX century had extruded a human from the usual stable relationships, and at the same time it has plunged him into the abyss of the unimaginable suffering up to now, deprivation and misery. The measures of human heroism and the depths of downs were beyond all possible representations about them itself. So a reality of the XX century was more fantastic than fiction, and to tell the truth of it became the most important task of a writer. It was a power of a few ones to decide it via the usual art means (Mestergazi, 2006). And a majority of the authors comes just to the non-fiction looking for assistance.

This is a reason why the memoirs of the twentieth century in Russia have became a subject of a constant attention of the researchers not like in the previous centuries, and by the end of the 1970s the memoir writers stand out as an independent genre foundation. However along with a desire to take control of the historical memory of the society in the USSR it has resulted to the publishing activity ceasing in the field of recent memoirs for a while. At the same time the memoirs of Russian émigrés received almost a paramount meaning. But if the written in the metropolis memoirs contain the principle of "a calm", the produced in exile ones have a certain element of the justification, even the self-justification, "fenced off" self, and an appreciable fight between the historical realities and their explanation. The self-deception is compounded by the deliberate rigging of the historical records. The explanation, interpretation, presentation and outlining become more important, there is a selection but not an understanding. There are some tensions between an objectivity of the data and a subjectivity of the recalled one. Obviously for a researcher and a historian the objective events and their presentation are more important. As per literary critic, the subjective component of memoirs is most. Search and find of the line and explain how the subjectivity is able to translate the text into another fiction level — a task of the memoirs’ researcher.

But the Soviet era memoirs "was stagnant in a hidden evolution as being thrown on the archaic and long overcome stage of its existence” in terms of the internal logic of development (Tartakovski, 1999). So there are so few summary reviews in regards of the memoir general features as a genre, as well as for the evolution of the form. It is still not made the annals of publications of the works. And there is no single comprehensive bibliography of the twentieth century Russian émigré memoirs (Kolyadich, 1999). One such attempt was made with the release of the four-annotated index named after “Russia and the Russian emigration in the memoirs and diaries” (Rossiya, 2003). However it is worth to say that the main work of researchers of this title was held in the US libraries, archives and collections, as well as in the collections of Russian state libraries and the State Archives of Russian Federation which certainly could not cover the entire layer of the ego-documents of the Russian diaspora completely. Thus the majority of works published in Australia were not included in the collection, for instance, and they were omitted due to their inaccessibility outside of Australia. For example, some of the missed works are "Visiting Stalin: 14 years in the Soviet concentration camps" by P.Nazarenko (Melbourne, 1969); "Russian family at home and in Manchuria: memories" by M.Gintze (Sydney, 1986); "One of many ones" by A.Khirdov (San Francisco, 1978-79).

In the 1990s and 2000s there were beginning to appear the dissertations on the creative writers of Russian emigration with the analysis of their memoir heritage attached, and the research works with the memoir analysis among the Russian diaspora commonly. The discussions of such perspectives are also occurring at the numerous conferences, scientific meetings and symposiums devoted to the Russian exile literature and to a new literary trend. Thus the interest of the Russian philology to the memoirs of the XX century Russian emigration might be considered as sustainable one. However it has been not always taken a wide range of the memoirs of a different nature, i.e. is belonging to the creators from the different occupations. And there are almost no studies especially to examine the memoirs published in the Russian émigré periodicals. But there were so many. For example, the Parisian newspaper "Renaissance" and the replaced it (after World War II) under the same name magazine gave the pages to some memoirists regularly. As a rule they were the little-known authors or sufficiently well-known and respected persons who were writing irregularly or sporadically. Their view of the described events is attractive as a confessional text primarily at the level of everyday life (Mestergazi, 2007) that is becoming the worthiest now. So the researcher N.Koznova observed a usual day in the life of an "ordinary" person could tell a lot about the military reality, about the moral and spiritual atmospheres arisen in a particular town near Paris as well as throughout Europe (Koznova, 2011). A researcher Yu.Azarov writes the same and is remarking that the émigré periodicals (serials) are a very important field of the literary activity abroad. The study of it will monitor the trends in the spiritual life, culture and literature, and their individual manifestations (Azarov, 2006).

Unfortunately the Russian émigré serials are remained on the periphery of the Russian philological study, staying the social journalism study rather than literature one. The concern in the study of it was manifested noticeably by a local science since late 1990s. At the same time it is clear it was not made enough, and the philological science in Russia has yet to discover the rich, vast and excited world of the literary serials of the Russian emigration. The interest of the our country philologists focused to this scientific area is definitely not enough, the influence of the ego-documentary to the literature already undeniable, and additionally there are the growing number of researchers are concerning to the “second level” writers. So look forward to see the new and interesting works in the study soon.

REFERENCES

Mestergazi, 2006: Местергази Е. Документальное начало в литературе XX века. М.: Флинта, Наука, 2006. С.8-9.

Tartakovski, 1999: Тартаковский А. Мемуаристика как феномен культуры // Вопросы литературы. 1999. № 1. С.53.

Kolyadich, 1999: Колядич Т.М. Воспоминания писателей XX века: Проблематика, поэтика. Дисс. ... д. филол. наук. М., 1999. С. 7.

Rossiya, 2003: Россия и российская эмиграция в воспоминаниях и дневниках = Russia and the Russian emigration in memoirs and diaries : Аннот. указ. кн., журн. и газ. публ., издан. за рубежом в 1917-1991 гг. : В 4 т. / Гос. публ. ист. б-ка России, Стэнфорд. ун-т ; Науч. рук., ред. и введ. А. Г. Тартаковского [и др.]. М.: РОССПЭН, 2003-2006.

Mestergazi, 2007: Местергази Е.Г. Литература нон-фикшн. Экспериментальная энциклопедия. М.: Совпадение, 2007. С.49-50.

Koznova, 2011: Кознова Н.Н. Мемуары русских писателей-эмигрантов первой волны: концепции истории и типология форм повествования. Дисс. ... д. филол. наук. М., 2011. С.391.

Azarov, 2006: Азаров Ю.А. Литературные центры первой русской эмиграции : история, развитие и взаимодействие. Дисс. ... д. филол. наук. М., 2006. С. 7.