Moscow, Vostochnaya Literatura Publishing Company of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2002.

(c) 2004

In accordance with the idea of a long-term research project aimed at studying the Russian diaspora in Africa, the staff of the Institute of Africa of the Russian Academy of Sciences A. B. Letnev and V. P. Khokhlova prepared a second collection on this topic. The first* was formed from review articles by historians about the stay on the Black Continent of emigrants of the first post-revolutionary wave. But these were second-hand accounts that could not fully convey the state of Russian refugees literally stranded on the African coast, as happens as a result of a shipwreck.

This collection differs from the first one not only in content, but also geographically (it covers most of the African continent). The main difference is that it is formed mainly from the original lifetime publications of the ros themselves-

* Russian Diaspora in Africa. 20-50 years. Moscow, 2001. For a review by E. A. Glushchenko, see: Vostok (Oriens). 2003. N 1. P. 196-198.

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the Syrian exiles (part I). The research aspect, of course, is also presented (part II), but it seems to fade into the background.

From the variety of topics related to the African stage of exile, the authors identified the most important ones and arranged the material in the "Publications" section under several headings: "Under a strange sky. The beginning of a new life", "Life writers", "Pioneers", "We are Russian Orthodox..." The Shepherd and his flock", "Fighters of the Second World War", "And another vision of Africa". The authors of the essays belong to various social and class strata: this is a young Don cadet, and a venerable St. Petersburg academician, and an unnamed doctor, and a famous artist of the Moscow Art Theater of the first composition, and a brilliant pre-revolutionary journalist, and a modest essayist, and an army lieutenant... But all of them are united by the depth of physical and moral experiences, bitter thoughts and aspirations of poor people, carried away by the terrible world political whirlwinds all the way to the African tropics.

Opens the "Publications" section of the essay "Letters of an Emigrant", owned by the journalist A. Yablonsky, who found himself in a former prisoner-of-war camp in the Egyptian desert, where the British allies took the Russian "guests of the English King" (as they called the refugees). He writes: "The life of Russian refugees in an English camp can be described in one word - poverty. Poverty uncovered, orphaned, bordering on utter poverty " (p. 9). The author draws out the camp existence of Russian "guests" with a few bright and convincing strokes and concludes the story with a reflection on the peculiarity of British hospitality: "Thank you for taking us away from the Bolsheviks and removing the noose from our necks... And yet, why the desert?.. After all, if it were not the English who saved us, but we who saved the English from trouble, would we have settled them in the Archangel tundra or in the waterless sands of Turkestan" (p.15). Soon the British soul, no less mysterious than the Russian one, will be open to hundreds of thousands of black migrants from the colonies, but in 1919 there was no place for a handful of homeless Russians in England. After" eating up " behind the barbed wire, Russian emigrants began to move to more civilized places.

The whirlwind of the revolution brought Russian people to the most African regions of Africa, for example, to Dahomey and the Congo. The essay (or rather, a chapter from the book) of the famous emigrant poet and writer, knight of the French Legion of Honor Zinaida Shakhovskaya is called simply, succinctly and accurately - "Congo". She lived here from 1928 to 1929. During these years, the writer formed a view of Africans, colonialism and colonialists. "And no matter how I felt about the whites who lived near me," she writes, " it was clear that without them, Africa would never come out of darkness and ignorance... How can we appreciate all the good that Catholic and Protestant missionaries have brought to Africa?" (p. 38). While convinced internationalists from the Comintern, who had never been to Africa, formulated their final attitude to colonialism: all the troubles of the unfortunate natives (then the term could still be used) - from the colonialists who subject the Negroes (then also a permitted word) to monstrous tortures, Zinaida Shakhovskaya, with "the only true teaching" not a friend, wrote: "In the twenties, for example, a fine was imposed on a white man for striking a black man" (p. 38).

There were not so few Russian people in the Congo - 600 people. Good specialists, they worked in different parts of a huge country: "Russian officers swim on the rivers. In Savannah, Russians build bridges, build highways, and conduct surveys" (p. 39). They worked in the real Congolese "outback" and knew a lot about it. If it were not for the ideological blindness and Bolshevik intolerance of Soviet bosses, Russian compatriots in Africa could become the most valuable informants for those scientific institutions where the foundations of Soviet African studies were being laid at that time (see: The formation of Russian African Studies. 1920s-early 1960s Moscow, 2003). Observant Russian specialists could provide crucial information. Here, for example, is what the writer and doctor, the "African doctor", as his compatriots in France called him, V. Unkovsky writes in his essay "In the World of Exotics": "Different tribes are at war with each other, they speak different languages. That is why the Dahomey soldiers in Senegal hate the local population and do not know how to explain themselves to them. The black army is always alien and hostile to the population - this is the system of colonial policy. Europeans plant culture. There is a fierce struggle for life " (p. 45). Or here is another observation that might have cooled the ardor of the Cominternists who wanted to carry out a socialist revolution in Africa. The most famous in Europe and

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An American scientist, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (since 1916) M. I. Rostovtsev traveled to Tunisia and Algeria for a month and a half in 1920 and came to the conclusion that European-type radicalism (Bolshevism) has an impact only on a thin layer of the Arab intelligentsia. "And the natives, by the way, have their own methods of fighting, very different from what we are used to. Their idols are Marabout guides and rebels, referred to here as "fellagas"" (p. 98).

Russian emigrants knew about Africa and Africans, what people of science were supposed to know, but representatives of Soviet science did not have such information, or ignored it and wrote their works according to approved schemes. A vicious circle was created: scientists received "scientific" data from the hands of their superiors, repeated them in a scientific form, and the superiors," relying "on these" scientific calculations", released money for the national liberation struggle. Monsters like Bokassa, Amin, Mobutu and others grew on the soil dewatered by Soviet petrodollars.

An independent category consists of essays about Russians who participated in the fighting against the Nazis as part of the Allied forces in the African Theater of Operations. General de Gaulle especially appreciated the participation of Russians in the actions of his army, and awarded many with French orders.

The second part of the collection is devoted to research problems. Among the interpreters are expatriate authors, foreign specialists, and modern Russian researchers. V. P. Khokhlova's short work "Scorched by War", which concludes this section, can serve as an excellent example of scientific research. According to archives, newspaper pages, and memoirs, it contains, although scanty, biographical information about natives of Russia who fought in the African (Mediterranean) theater of Operations. Among the hundreds of names torn out of oblivion, there are very modest, soldier's, and very sonorous, famous ones: Lossky Andrey Nikolaevich-son of the philosopher N. O. Lossky; Rubakin Alexander Nikolaevich-son of the writer and bibliographer N. A. Rubakin; Tolstoy Sergey Mikhailovich-grandson of L. N. Tolstoy; Werner Alexander-great-great-grandson of A. S. Pushkin; Frank Vasily Semyonovich-son of the philosopher S. L. Frank. About a hundred microbiographs were collected. Here is one of them: "Bulkin (Braslavsky) Alexander Yakovlevich is a poet. As a volunteer, he fought from Lake Chad to the Mediterranean Sea, and at the end of the war he served in General Leclair's 2nd Armored Division, which liberated Paris" (p. 188).

The book contains bright, unsophisticated essays by more or less professional authors, but the reviewed edition fully meets the declared "scientific" label, since it is impeccable in terms of bibliographic design. Detailed comments to the texts were compiled by A. B. Letnev. The book contains a list of modern names of cities, countries, and other geographical places mentioned in the text. Translations from French and English were made by Yu. V. Lukonin and G. M. Sidorova. The publication is well illustrated and tastefully decorated.

The book provides an opportunity for the modern reader to hear the voices of compatriots who lost their homeland and survived, as they now say, in extreme conditions. And Akhmatova's lines:" But we will preserve you, Russian speech, the Great Russian word " - relate primarily to them.

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