“… nominated to be torn apart by his environment…”: soviet writers about the Solomon Broyde case

UDC 82-94

https://doi.org/10.20339/PhS.1-21.125  

Nazarov Ivan A.,

Candidate of Philology, Head of the Research Activities Department,

Scientific Section of the State Budgetary Institution of Culture

«M.A. Bulgakov Museum» (Moscow)

e-mail: nazarov.postbox@gmail.com

The article focuses on the reaction of Soviet cultural figures to the case of writer Solomon Oskarovich Broyde. In the 1920s and 1930s, several novels and collections with little prose were published for the authorship of Broyde — later it became known that hired writers turned out to be the real authors of his books, and Broyde was certified by the domestic press as “literary Al Capone”. However, despite the convincing accusations against Broyde, several well-known Soviet writers (A.N. Tolstoy, A.N. Tikhonov, V.B. Shklovsky and others) appealed in 1934 to the Deputy Prosecutor General of the USSR A.Ya. Vyshinsky requested a mitigation of the sentence of Broyde and presented their views on the literary scandal.

Keywords: S.O. Broyde, A.N. Tolstoy, A.N. Tikhonov, V.B. Shklovsky, A.Ya. Vyshinsky, Soviet literature 1920–1930s, literary fraud.