“We are an association, we are a community, but we are not a school” – to the 100th anniversary of the “Serapion brothers” association

This article reviews the materials of a multi-author monograph dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the literary association “Serapion brothers”. This project has united researchers from Saratov, Moscow, St Petersburg, considered to be renowned experts in the history of Russian literature of the 1920–1930s. The research is based on the unique documents from the Serapion brothers’ legacy being introduced into the scientifi c circulation (K. Fedin, Vs. Ivanov, N. Tikhonov, V. Kaverin, I. Gruzdev). The documents are kept in the funds of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), Literary Museum of the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (The Pushkin House), National Library of Russia (Saint Petersburg), State Museum of K. A. Fedin (Saratov). Their interpretation allows to fi ll the factual gaps in the history of the association and in the biographies of its members, to defi ne the system of creative and interpersonal relationships between them more precisely. The monograph’s intention is unifi ed by the material itself, by the general methodological principles of working with archive materials, by the presence of several recurrent plots, appearing in diff erent articles. Among them there is a plot, rather appropriate for the anniversary edition, about diff erent anniversaries of Serapion brothers, discussions of Eurasianism, of the nature of genre, of the “red Pinkerton”. The issues of censorship and self-censorship, questions of text studies and principles of ego-documents’ publication hold a prominent place on the pages of the monograph. These questions are not only theoretical, they have a rather practical signifi cance in preparing the full texts of K. A. Fedin’s diaries for publication, on which the creative team is working. The monograph itself manifests the implementation of the proclaimed principles, as it is supplemented by wide-ranging reference materials, which off er great opportunities of further research of the literary phenomenon of Serapion brothers.

Serapion Brothers, K. A. Fedin, ego-documents, writer’s diary, genre, censorship, test studies