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Abstract:

The article examines the work of the writer on his memoirs “The Story of My Books” based on the material of never published handwritten and typewritten fragments from the archive of Vsevolod Ivanov. The author notes abbreviations that have become the object of auto-censorship, which affected the portraits of the writers with whom the author communicated throughout his life. Typically, these copyright abbreviations were motivated by political considerations. The article considers the initial lists of portraits of the writers, which Ivanov intended to include in the text of his memoirs. The article gives fragments of memoirs about the Siberian, Petrograd and Moscow meetings of Ivanov with various writers and political fi gures, in particular those which are related to the history of the creation of the publishing house “Сircle.” These fragments are not included in the published version of “The Story of My Books.” Particular attention is paid to the editing that Ivanov introduced into the portraits of A.A. Block and S.A. Esenin. It is shown how Ivanov transformed the text of his memoirs and did not include portrait of V.B. Shklovsky in “The Story of My Books.” The author of the publication gives brief comments to the deleted fragments of the writer’s memoirs published in the article.