Beschreibung:

Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg (1891-1967) On publishing Russian writers in the West. 1921-22 Autograph letter signed to Alexander Konstantinovich Voronsky at the journal Krasnaya Nov, [Berlin], n.d. [1921-22]. In Russian. Three pages, 235 x 138mm, on a bifolium, the last page containing a list of six writers' names in pencil in another hand (presumably Voronsky's). On publishing Russian writers in the West. Ehrenburg offers 'my assistance ... to easily and quickly sell manuscripts (prose as well as poetry) ... It is possible to transfer the money [back to Russia]. The only difficulty is sending material here, but I hope that you will be able to arrange this'; he provides his address in Berlin, and promises that for 'those manuscripts I receive – I personally guarantee – I will sell them on the most favourable terms'; money transfers will be made in an 'unshakeable currency'. He goes on to advise that 'It is easier to sell prose than poetry', and provides a list of the most 'sought-after' authors, including Fyodor Stepun, Mikhail Gershenzon, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Mikhail Kuzmin, Boris Pilnyak and Anna Akhmatova. He has tested the attitude of the Russian émigré press by placing two articles in periodicals. He requests a list of 20 writers who are 'not rationed' in order to send them food parcels. The letter ends with the politically freighted statement 'All the aforementioned comes personally from me, is my own initiative and is carried out with the total sense of my individual responsibility'. The writers listed by Voronsky on the last page presumably as suitable for food parcels are Elizaveta Polonskaya, Lev Lunts, Veniamin Kaverin, Ilya Gruzdev, Nikolai Tikhonov and Konstantin Vaginov. Although closely aligned with the Soviet regime, Ehrenburg spent much of the 1920s and 1930s either living or travelling in Western Europe. He lived in Berlin from 1921 to 1924, and the present letter can be dated by the address he gives in Prager Platz, where he lived for a year from October 1921. He made significant efforts during this period to connect the Western avant-garde with the new left of post-revolutionary Russia, including the foundation of the short-lived journal Veshch in 1922; but his focus in the present letter on providing currency and even food for writers in Russia speaks volumes about conditions at the time. A.K. Voronsky (1884-1937) was the founder of the influential literary and political journal Krasnaya Nov in June 1921, and its first editor; he lost the position in 1927 after disastrously siding with Trotsky in opposing the rise of Joseph Stalin. Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.