Without any doubt, the main literary date of this spring is the 135th anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Bulgakov, one of the best-selling writers in Russia. Half a million copies of his works (not only the great novel The Master and Margarita, but other works) were published last year. In today’s gadget age, this number is truly fantastic! In this issue of the Russian Mind magazine his biographer Alexei Varlamov discusses this most incontestable and at the same time controversial Russian author. I fully admit that readers may disagree somewhere with the author of the book about Mikhail Afanasyevich in the legendary The Lives of Wonderful People biographical series. After all, everyone has their own Bulgakov…
The onset of summer is directly associated with the memorable dates of Russian culture, to which this issue of our magazine is dedicated. There are two of them on 6 June at once – Pushkin Day in Russia and International Day of the Russian Language.
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin – “our everything” – was born 227 years ago. The great poet’s birthday is celebrated not only in Russia, but also in all countries of the globe where there is a Russian-speaking community. That is, virtually everywhere. Pushkin is the “father” of the modern Russian literary language, and his remembrance day was established by the United Nations in 2010. I strongly advise you not to miss a very interesting article, A Sketch on the World of the Russian Language, by our new author Alexander Rudyakov, a PhD in Philology, at the very beginning of the issue.
Our modern culture can and should be judged by the Red Square Book Festival, which is traditionally held in the very centre of the Russian capital in early June. It is an annual large-scale literary event with a grandiose programme: tens of thousands of readers meet with writers, poets, playwrights, publishers, librarians, scholars, actors, and film directors. Over 400 Russian publishing houses present their publications at fifteen sites.
It is gratifying to note that the oldest pan-European Russian-language Russian Mind magazine was presented at the festival venue as well. The line from then to now still holds…
To mark the 140th birth anniversary of the amazing poet and translator Vladislav Khodasevich we are publishing an essay by Vladimir Nabokov and the poem that Khodasevich published in the Russian Mind in 1912.
The cycle of Russian culture continues.
By Leonid Kolpakov
