Contenu du sommaire

Wladimir Berelowitch, The beginnings of the family legislation in RSFSR. Why and how? The family legislation of the Soviet government was expressed in a series of regulations that shocked the mental habits, provoked passionate debates and still give rise, in our days, to interrogations as to their motives. This article endeavours to insert the family legislation of the 1920's in the Communist project as a whole. Expressing the will to destroy the existing family and to promote a transparent society in which matrimonial relations would be free from economic and legal compulsions, it was a contradictory attempt to abolish the old legislation by means of a law. The debates of 1925-1926 around the project of codification aimed at the part played by the Communist state in the regulation of family life. These laws, foreign to the Russian society of the time, destructive of its legislation, produced a series of "perverse effects" in matters of divorce and payment of alimony.

Elena Tolstaja-Segal, The background of the book : The tempering of steel. Published by Oktjabr' in the I920's, the book of Nikolai Ostrovskii, the masterpiece of socialist realism, belongs to what is termed the "prose of komsomol". The present article endeavours to trace the history of this work to determine the part played by the extreme left group Litfront and to analyze the modifications introduced into the next. Must we consider Ostrovskii only as an ingenuous, sincere writer, victim of ideological imperatives of the editorship that had mutilated his book? It results from the discussion that Ostrovskii was in fact the first to censure himself, which is necessary in order to become a professional writer.

Pierre Voillery, "Russophilia" or "francophilia" in the Bulgarian Renaissance ? About an "activist of the Bulgarian Renaissance". Autobiography of Alexander Exarh. 1810-1891. Born at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in Eski Zaara (Ottoman Bulgaria), Alexander Stoilov Bey Oglou Exarhos had a life completely integrated within his period. He was a central figure of the Bulgarian Renaissance and one of the founders of the independent Bulgaria. Until now, his activity was known to us by fragmentary or indirect evidence or by incomplete archival documentation deposited in Sofia. The original text, entirely reproduced here, is his manuscript autobiography. It is of essential interest for the Bulgarian and the Ottoman history. The narration that contributes to the broadening of research in connection with this figure, offers a rare example of evidence lived by a prominent Bulgarian Ottoman Christian of the nineteenth century and also brings a new vision of the events that occurred at the time in Rumelia.

Extracts from the Merezhkovskie Archives. I: Letters of Z. N. Hippius to I. A. Bunin ; II: Letters of D. S. Merezhkovskii to I. A. Bunin, presented by Temira Pachmuss. These letters spread over the years 1921 to 1936, and cover the period when the Merezhkovskii family left Poland to reside first in Germany, then in France. They are sprinkled with autobiographic information that throw a new light on the personality of their authors. Through the medium of these letters it is the cultural life of Russian writers in the emigration that is evoked: the difficulties they come up against, the organization of literary evenings, the important events such as the 1st Congress of Russian writers and journalists in Belgrad, in 1928, and naturally the award to Bunin of the Nobel prize in 1932.

Letters of Ivan Bunin to Mark Aldanov, presented by Rosa Fedoulova. The present publication covers the years 1941-1947 and includes only the letters that throw most light on the life of the writer and the genesis of his last book, a compilation of short stories Temnye allei (Dark lanes). They contain a number of particularly interesting opinions of Bunin as regards his work and writers such as L. Tolstoi, I. Turgenev, N. Leskov, F. Dostoevskii, V. Nabokov. Furthermore, these letters contain precious information on the periodical Novyi zhurnal, published in New York, and also on the literary life of the Russian emigration in France.