Issues

This publication presents the correspondence between two literary historians from different countries — the Soviet Union and capitalist Italy. It spans nearly two decades, and the correspondents represent different generations of scholars: moscovite Nikolai Ivanovich Khardzhiev (1903–1996), by the time he met his counterpart and their correspondence began, was already “a living legend,” a close acquaintance of many leading figures in Soviet culture of the 1920s and 1930s, who preserved the legacy of these figures and had assembled an invaluable literary archive and art collection; Stefano Garzonio (b. 1952) of Florence, a young Slavicist was working on his thesis about Mayakovsky and was fascinated by the history of the Russian avant-garde, and later by 18th- and 19th-century Russian literature. The young Italian scholar immediately won the trust and affection of Khardzhiev, who was reserved and wary of people. Their correspondence is an interesting example of an informal, cross-border scholarly dialogue during the late Soviet era.