Mark Slonim

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Mark Lvovich Slonim (Russian: Марк Льво́вич Сло́ним, also known as Marc Slonim and Marco Slonim; March 23, 1894 – 1976) was a Russian politician, literary critic, scholar and translator. He was a lifelong member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and, in 1917, served as its deputy for Bessarabia in the Russian Constituent Assembly. He joined the Samara Government during the early phases of the Civil War, opposing both the Bolsheviks and the conservative elements of the White movement. Assigned to his party's Foreign Delegation, Slonim lobbied unsuccessfully for the return of Bessarabia to Russia during the Paris Peace Conference. After a short stay in Tuscany, he settled in Czechoslovakia in 1922, an editor of Volya Rossii review. Slonim, who was also an Italian-trained literary scholar, became Volya Rossii's literary theorist and columnist. From that vantage point, he gave encouraged the liberal-progressive and modernist side of the White émigré intellectuals. Slonim argued, against conservatives such as Zinaida Gippius, that the exiles needed to appreciate changes occurring in the Soviet Union and became one of the first popularizers of Soviet writers in the West. He was also one of the main backers (and an intimate friend) of poet Marina Tsvetaeva. In 1928, convinced that Russian literature in exile was in fact dead, Slonim moved to Paris and, as an anti-fascist, opened up to Soviet patriotism. His 1930s contacts with the Union for Repatriation were particularly controversial. He escaped World War II and arrived to the United States aboard the SS Navemar, spending the 1940s and '50s as a teacher at Sarah Lawrence College. He continued to publish tracts and textbooks on Russian literary topics, familiarizing the American public with the major trends of Soviet poetry and fiction. He spent his final years in Geneva, where he translated Andrei Bely's Silver Dove and...