Exile and Literature: Russian Emigrant Writers in Bulgaria (A. M. Fedorov)

Research Team: Prof. Hristo Manolakev, Assoc. Prof. Radoslava Ilcheva, Senior Asst. Prof. Albena Ivanova; Vasil Vasilev, Olga Samotsvetova (Marina Tstetaeva Musem, Moscow, Russia)

The project is a continuation of the long-term and systematic research work of the scholars from the Institute for Literature, focusing on the culture, art, literature and science of the Russian émigré diaspora in Bulgaria in the 1920s and 1940s. It focuses on the problems of "emigration and literature", "exile and creativity" and aims mainly to bring out of oblivion to the Russian and Bulgarian readers the name and literary work of the Russian writer emigrant to Bulgaria Aleksandr Mitrofanovich Fedorov (1868, Saratov - 1949, Sofia).

Fedorov is a mystery and a special challenge for researchers. An unusually versatile creative person (poet, fiction writer, playwright, translator, journalist, artist, actor), who was very productive, influential and published in pre-revolutionary Russia author of novels, short stories, poems, plays, feuilletons, and articles. He emigrated to Bulgaria and continued to work hard for more than a quarter of a century. His archive is scattered in a number of parts of the world: in Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, USA. Few emigrant artists have had the opportunity to publish their works in so many Russian emigrant periodicals, published almost everywhere in Europe, where Russian emigrants create their own cultural and literary centers: Bulgaria, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Romania and others. And last but not least - through his translations of Bulgarian poetry and Bulgarian folklore he made an exceptional, but invaluable, contribution to the popularization of Bulgarian literature abroad through the mediation of the Russian language.
The project envisages conducting scientific research and publishing part of the creative heritage of A. M. Fedorov (mostly related to the Bulgarian period in his life, as well as unpublished so far) - poetry, translations of Bulgarian poems and folk songs, memoirs, correspondence.

The publication of the results of the research will significantly fill the information about the Russian emigrant presence in Bulgaria in the 20s and 40s of the last century, to which there has long been a serious scientific interest abroad.


Research Fund, Ministry of Education and Science (Contract KP-06-OPR 05/1 of 17.12.2018).