At the outbreak of the Russian Revolution many of the country's intelligentsia followed in the footsteps of previous political exiles by emigrating to France. Nearly one hundred thousand Russians emigrated between the First and Second World Wars, leading one French observer to remark, "almost all of Russia's brain will stay in France for a while." Russian Émigrés in the Intellectual and Literary Life of Interwar France is a sweeping account of the ways in which waves of anti-Soviet immigrants left a lasting impression on the culture of France.
In a pioneering exploration of the intellectual and literary exchange between Russian émigrés and French intelligentsia in the 1920s and 1930s, Leonid Livak provides an impressively comprehensive bibliographic overview of a veritable "who's who" of Russian intellectuals and literati, listing all the material published by Russian émigrés or on topics pertaining to them during the period under study. Focusing attention on a largely ignored chapter of European cultural history, this volume challenges historical assumptions by demonstrating processes of cultural cross-fertilization and illuminates the precedents Russians set for political exiles in the twentieth century. A remarkable achievement in scholarship, Russian Émigrés in the Intellectual and Literary Life of Interwar France is a valuable resource for admirers and researchers of French and Russian culture and European intellectual history.
Publication Type
- Book