Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (1870-1953)
Fury at Roshchin’s alignment with the Communists. 1944
Autograph letter (deliberately unsigned) to Nikolay Roshchin, [Villa Jeanette, Grasse], 18 December 1944.

In Russian. Two pages 268 x 208mm. Envelope (postmarked 30 December 1944).

'Why shit so immoderately in the trough, from which... I have been eating for a quarter of a century?': Bunin’s anger at Roshchin’s alignment with the Communists. A furious letter, reacting to Roshchin's endorsement of Communist Russia and repudiation of his (and Bunin's) émigré life. In lieu of a signature, the letter ends with a curt and final 'So goodbye'.

I did not write to you in the last letter, captain – although what sort of a captain are you now? I did not write that your 'redness' was a surprise to me personally, I wrote about something else – about your completely immoderate and unnecessary rudeness about your 'emigration', as you now put it ... I remember very well that you have long been tinkering with the red paint, dreaming and saying that in Russia you would immediately have – and will have! – both a car and a dacha... 'If Anton Palych Chekhov could rise from his coffin, he would **** you', as a Moscow second-hand bookseller once said [«Vot vstal by Anton Palych Chekhov iz groba – oblozhil by on tebya po ye<…>m<…>!» – kak skazal odin moskovskiy bukinist] ... Understand, I am not at all against your and many others going over to the side of Moscow. But ... why shit so immoderately in the trough, from which ... I have been eating for a quarter of a century, why shout that the 'émigrés' should be wheeled out for their 'criminality'? ... Why do you write such nonsense in a letter to me? ... – So goodbye.

Published in L. Golubeva, Istoria odnoy perepiski (Moscow, 1998), incorrectely dated 10 December. Nikolay Yakovlevich Roshchin (1896-1956) was a veteran of the First World War and Civil Wars, reaching the rank of captain in the anti-Bolshevik forces (whence Bunin’s nickname for him, ‘captain’). He emigrated to France, and became a close friend of the Bunins, spending several months each year with them in Grasse, and becoming a published author himself, under Bunin's guidance. During the Second World War he was active in the French Resistance, was several times arrested by the Gestapo, and took part in the Liberation of Paris. Having failed twice in requests to return to Russia during the early 1930s, in 1946 he was one of the first group of emigrants to return to the Soviet Union.

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