A Letter as a Fact of Literature: Letters by L.Ya. Ginzburg and V.S. Baevsky

he archives of the literary critic V.S. Baevsky are kept in the fonds of the 
Literature Museum of Smolensk State University. The materials of the scholar’s 
archive have not been presented to the public yet. Meanwhile, the fonds contain 
a collection of more than a thousand letters from addressees from all over the 
world, including such outstanding scientists of the twentieth century as B.Ya. Bu- 
khshtab, M.L. Gasparov, L.Ya. Ginzburg, Yu.M. Lotman, B.F. Egorov and others. 
Correspondence was of particular importance for the philologists of that gener- 
ation, as it made it possible to combine life, history and science. Comparison of scientific views, the need for an independent censor and 
obtaining an objective assessment of scientific works are included in the topics 
reflected in the letters from L.Ya. Ginzburg to V.S. Baevsky. Their correspondence 
and memoirs testify to the coincident temporal rhythms and allow us to trace the 
scientific thought of the scholars that lived almost the entire twentieth century. 
This paper reconstructs the role of a letter as a fact of scientific autobiography. 
It shows its transformation from the genre of «human documents» (letters and 
diaries) into the genre of «intermediate literature» (memoirs). Thus, the personal 
letters of L.Ya. Ginzburg acquire the status of a literary fact, since they represent 
a narrative unit in V.S. Bayevsky’s life