Диалози за руската литература на ХХ век (I. Метрополия и емиграция)
Dialogues on the Russian Literature of the 20th Century (I. Metropolis and Emigration)

Summary/Abstract: This publication follows the model of the famous Jakobson – Pomorska Dialogues (1980) and offers G. Petkova’s interview with I. Belobrovtseva, Professor at the University of Tallinn, discussing the problems of Russian literature in the twentieth century through the prism of the emigration phenomenon. The conversation includes several research directions, separated into discrete rubrics, and touches upon the following topics: the philologist’s biography and professional career; Yuri Lotman’s teaching activity and the history of the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School; the study of Russian emigration centres in Bulgaria and Estonia after 1917; the literary generations of the Russian emigration and the authors of the young or ‘unnoticed’ generation which created existentialism in Russian literature; the works of the émigré writer L. Zurov; ‘forbidden’ literature in Soviet Russia and Mikhail Bulgakov and Stalin’s relationship; the principles of a scholarly commentary on the novel The Master and Margarita; dividing Russian literature after 1917 into émigré and Soviet. The questions and answers stress the necessity of not downplaying the reasons for the emergence of émigré literature, which stems from the Russian cultural tradition.

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