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Abstract:

The article is devoted to the insufficiently studied Smolensk period of M.M. Prishvin (July 1920 – March 1922). In the small homeland of the first wife, E.P. Smogaleva, in the Dorogobuzh district of the Smolensk province, the writer showed himself in various guises: as a talented teacher, organizer of the museum of estate life, local historian, and enlightener. The surviving former estate of the Baryshnikovs in the village of Aleksino in the 18th–19th centuries (“Empire Palace”) is the main attraction of the Smolensk region, which is strongly associated with the writer’s name. Against the backdrop of the critical post-revolutionary time and the Civil War (1917–1922), the diverse life experience gained enriched the writer with new knowledge and impressions, which then formed the basis of his work in the 1920s: the story “The Worldly Chalice,” the essays “School Robinsonade,” “Hunting for Happiness,” diaries of 1920–1923. The work relies on the “Smolensk” materials of M. Prishvin identified in the funds of the RGALI (Coll. 1125. Aids 2 “Diaries, notebooks of M.M. Prishvin and his correspondence”). The publication introduces some official documents and letters from Dorogobuzh addressees of the writer into scientific circulation for the first time.