Leonid Zurov Eestis
Leonid Zurov in Estonia

Summary/Abstract: Russian émigré writer Leonid Zurov (1902–1971) was born in the Pskov province. At 16 he became a volunteer in the Civil War, fighting against the Bolsheviks. Together with the Northwestern Army, Zurov, twice injured and contused, found himself in Estonia in 1919. There he suffered from spotted fever and relapsing fever. In 1920 Zurov graduated from high school in Riga, worked and wrote two books, „Cadet” and „Motherland”, both published in 1928. He sent them to Paris to his favourite writer Ivan Bunin and Bunin invited him to France. From the end of 1929 Zurov lived in Nobel Prize winner Bunin’s family. In 1927 Zurov joined an expedition from Riga to the Pskov-Pechory monastery, where he described the library and icons and made some local acquaintances. In 1935, 1937 and 1938 Zurov came to Pechory again, first alone, then commissioned by the Musée de L’Homme (Paris), and last time together with some scholars from Czechoslovakia and Switzerland. Zurov picked up articles of everyday life of the Setu people, wrote down their stories, omens, bought articles of their needlework, took photos of the locals. He turned his materials over to the archaeological office of Tartu University and to the Musée de L’Homme. He wrote a great article for the Swedish journal Folk-Liv, introducing the Setu ethnic group to the cultural and scholarly circles. After World War II he sent some reports on his Pechory expeditions to the Russian Academy of Sciences.

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