Sincerely devoted to you, S. Pregel. Correspondence between S.Yu. Pregel and L.F. Zurov, 1938-1971
Correspondence between the two well-known figures of the Russian literature abroad - poet, publisher, benefactor and public activist Sofia Yulievna Pregel (1897-1972) and noveslist Leonid Fedorovich Zurov (1902-1971) which introduces this publication is interesting in some reasons. First of all, it provides with some new biographical facts of the both correspondents that hitherto remains almost unexplored (for instance, their participation in the «I. Bunin Affair» - the story of the returning of the Bunin archives to the USSR that had been ended in a stalemate: the archives remained in the West). An important role has also the evolution of political views of Pregel and Zurov that can be partly traced in the published letters. The study of this evolution is valuable not only as itself, but as a part of post-war history of the Russian diaspora in general. In this sense the present correspondence expands the scientific understanding of the socio-cultural context in which the authors of the letters and their contemporaries really existed. As an appendix to this correspondence included the Leonid Zurov's unpublished story «Dagmarskii les» (Dagmar Forest), that has been mentioned in the letters.