Introduction: Russian Montparnasse as a Transnational Community

Abstract

Liberal immigration policies, grand-scale reconstruction projects, and a dynamic creative environment transformed post-World War I Paris into a magnet for foreign migrants, including thousands of artists, writers, and musicians. During les années folles (as the Jazz Age is known in France), the city rapidly gained a reputation as the cultural capital of the world, becoming a site of rich artistic production and the birthplace of a number of transnational aesthetic trends. From 1925, Paris also became the main center of Russia Abroad, a diaspora of millions, formed in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution and stretching from Western Europe to China and South America. The Russian Parisian community counted over 45,000, exceeding even American expatriates in number. As opposed to Americans, the majority of Russians arrived in “Gay Paree” as refugees and not in search of relaxed artistic and drinking policies, entertainment or inspiration. But the concentration of writers and intellectuals among these involuntary exiles was no less impressive. During the interwar decades, they generated a Russian Parisian literature, rivaling in vibrancy the American Parisian writing of Stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, or Miller. The Russians’ achievements were far less recognized for a number of reasons, including the impoverished condition of émigré cultural networks, small print runs, limited translations into European languages, and the diaspora leaders’ focus on an eventual return to Russia, leading consequently to a neglect of promotion among potential Western readers.

“So, you are not Russian? … Write in French then.” But we will write about Russia and not in French, but the way we want, and with Western sincerity …