RETURN TO THE HOMELAND: LIFE IN THE USSR OF PARTICIPANTS IN THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT I.N. GOLENISHCHEV-KUTUZOV AND YU.B. BEK-SOFIEV

Abstract

In recent decades, the ideology, practices and fate of Russian White émigrés — participants in the Resistance movement during the Second World War have attracted the attention of researchers. This study deals with Russian émigré returnees — heroes of the European Resistance movement. The article is based on documents from the collection of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russia Abroad, in particular from personal archives, containing unique information both about the French émigré period of the founders’ lives and about their arrangement in Soviet life after returning to the USSR. Thus, the article publishes the part of the correspondence between one of the founders of the Union of Soviet Patriots in Belgrade, the outstanding Slavic scholar I.N. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, who lived in Moscow after the war, and his friend, a participant in the Resistance movement in France, the poet Yuri Bek-Sofiev, who lived in Kazakhstan (Alma-Ata, now Almaty) after returning to the USSR. The documents helped to reconstruct some episodes from the lives of the resistance-returnees, related to their activities in the new conditions. The literary and artistic collection In Foreign Lands is considered as one of the channels of communication of former compatriots. The collection includes literary works of representatives of the white emigration who dreamed of returning to their homeland