Alexander Blok and Nikolai Gumilev in the Petrograd Union of Poets

Abstract

In this article, the author proposes a detailed reconstruction of the history of the Petrograd Union of Poets, which was established with an avid participation of both Alexander Blok and Nikolai Gumilev. The author focuses his attention on their literary and organizational activities within the framework of the Union of Poets, as well as on their professional relations that have now become a subject of several myths created by unreliable memoirs and supported by the poets’ credulous biographers. The article is based on archival materials, magazine reviews and newspaper chronicles from 1920–21. The author also uses Blok’s Notebooks, heavily censored in the Soviet times but now made available in autographs.

Keywords

• petrograd union of poets
• alexander blok
• nikolai gumilev
• vladislav khodasevich
• history of russian poetry
• literary institutions
• literary environment