Editor of the “Russia” magazine. Biography of I.G. Lezhnev – archival documents and publications. Part 2

Abstract

The article considers the archival materials and printed sources related to the major milestones of the professional biography of I. G. Lezhnev (1891–1955), the writer and editor of the “Russia” magazine. I. G. Lezhnev’s ideological  work  in  the  first  part  of  the  1920s  connected  with  the  issuing  of «Russia» –  the  magazine  which  belonged  to  the  «Smena  Vekh»  ideological project can be understood through his publications in that magazine, his letters to N.V. Ustryalov published by M. S. Agurskiy, as well as through the resources in the Russian archives. The sequence of events that ended up in the closure of the “Russia” magazine and in deporting its editor, I.G. Lezhnev, “beyond the boundaries of the USSR” are revealed in the documents kept in the funds of the Russian State Archives of the Social and Political History and the Central Archives of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. Following the information provided by the documents of the I.G. Lezhnev’s fund in the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art, the author reviews the professional duties of I.G. Lezhnev – the staff member of the Trade Mission of the USSR in Berlin.

The  article  reviews  the  sources  describing  I.G.  Lezhnev’s  return  from Germany  to  the  USSR,  the  essential  role  of  his  ‘extended  membership application’  for  joining  the  Party,  his  autobiographical  and  repenting  “Notes of  a  Contemporary”  which  in  many  ways  defined  the  future  of  their  author; much attention is also drawn to his work in the ‘Pravda’ newspaper and other milestones of his life. The present paper for the first time, analyzed the documents from  the  private  collections,  connected  with  the  publication  of   Lezhnev’s “Notes of a Contemporary” in the USSR.