Academic Studies Press Autographs Don’t Burn: Letters to the Bunins, Part 1

This book sprang from three handwritten lines by Ivan Bunin, Russia’s first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Found inside a first edition of Mitya’s Love, they led to the discovery of one of the largest corpora of letters written to Ivan and Vera Bunin by two people whose lives and legacy had been, until now, forgotten. These letters are now in the Russian Archive in Leeds (RAL), and are published here for the first time. The book also focuses on memory and history in its purest form, as narrated by witnesses who lived through the most tragic century in Russian history. Their stories involve Grand Dukes, Russian literary and political giants, as well as one of the architects of the Gulag, and show how these lives intertwined. It also sheds new light on the life and works of Chekhov, Gorky, A. Tolstoy, and Bunin. Review “By translating the letters of the Kulmans to the Bunins, the author of Autographs Don’t Burn: Letters to Bunins sheds light on the unknown life of Russian émigré intellectuals and their close friends who had to flee the country during the establishment of the Soviet Union and provides information on what these intellectuals went through during a very turbulent time in Russian history, as well as their life experiences and activities to preserve their culture and language in a foreign country.” ―Ayse Dietrich, International Journal of Russian Studies Review “The title of this book echoes Mikhail Bulgakov’s famous line ‘Manuscripts Don’t Burn.’ Unfortunately, however, manuscripts are often lost or damaged, while autographs sometimes disappear without a trace. The chance discovery of several books in Cambridge University Library autographed by Ivan Bunin inspired the author to undertake a journey into the lives and legacy of the addressees of Bunin’s autographs―professor Nikolai Karlovich Kulman, a prominent figure in pre-war ‘Russian Paris’, and his wife Natalia Ivanovna Kulman. By means of extensive research in various archive sources, Vera Tsareva-Brauner attempts to reconstruct the lives of two people who happened to live through the tragedy of the Russian revolution and their subsequent exile. The initial discovery of the autographs uncovered a large corpus of letters between the Bunins and the Kulmans, currently part of the Russian Archive in Leeds University Library. These letters present a perfect reflection of the microcosm of two private lives, as well as the macrocosm of Russia Abroad. It’s comforting and satisfying to know that some autographs do not burn but instead lead to new discoveries―not just into the life and works of Ivan Bunin, whose 150th anniversary of birth is widely celebrated in 2020, but also the lives of those whose names and legacy have been unjustifiably forgotten but are now brought back to life.” ―Tatiana Marchenko, Solzhenitsyn Centre for Russia Abroad Studies About the Author Vera Tsareva-Brauner works at Cambridge University, specializing in Russian language and translation studies. Born in St. Petersburg, she graduated from St. Petersburg State University, moving to Manchester, UK for her post-graduate studies. She edited the first full English translation of Yuri Tynyanov’s novel Death of the Vazir-Mukhtar and is currently editing a book on the challenges of translating from Slavic languages.