“RUSSIAN REVOLUTION WAS PREPARED ON CAPRI...” MICHAIL PERVUKHIN ABOUT A RUSSIAN COLONY ON CAPRI (BASED ON THE A.M. GORKY ARCHIVE)

Title  “RUSSIAN REVOLUTION WAS PREPARED ON CAPRI...” MICHAIL PERVUKHIN ABOUT A RUSSIAN COLONY ON CAPRI (BASED ON THE A.M. GORKY ARCHIVE)
Author(s)  M.A. Arias-Vikhil
Information about the author(s) Marina A. Arias-Vikhil, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 а, 121069 Moscow, Russia. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
Received  January 28, 2017
Published  March 25, 2017
Issue 2017 Vol. 2, №1 
Department  Textology. Materials
Pages  306-328
DOI  10.22455/2500-4247-2017-2-1-306-327
UDK  82.0
BBK  80+ 63.2
Abstract In his essay “The Russians on Capri” (1924), a Russian journalist Mikhail Pervukhin describes the discovery of Capri by Russian artists and writers before the events of 1905 and the development of the Russian colony on the island afterwards. Pervukhin relates the origin and the history of the Russian colony on Capri to the period from 1906 through 1913, when the island became a residence of Russian political immigrants. He sees Gorky’s arrival on Capri as a major catalyzer in the development of the colony due to the defining and formative nature of the political and literary activity of the latter. The Russian revolution of 1905 had radically changed the structure of the Russian population on Capri: since that time it mostly consisted of political refugees. Pervukhin’s evidence is one of the most important documents on Gorky’s reception in Italy. Pervukhin left documentary and artistic evidence of Gorky’s residence on the island written with a special focus on Gorky’s role in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and its critical reconsideration. The author emphasized the political component in the life of the colony. He criticized activities of the Capri school for workers founded by Gorky and Lunacharsky. According to Pervukhin, Russian revolutionaries were indifferent to the beauty of the island and to the “eternal” values swept away by the storm of the October Revolution. 
Keywords Gorky, Lunacharsky, Pervukhin, the history of “The Russians on Capri,” the Capri school 
Works cited

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5 Strada V. L’altra rivoluzione. Gorkij — Lunacarskij — Bogdanov. La “Scuola di Capri” e la “Costruzione di Dio”. Capri, Edizioni La Conchiglia, 1994. 170 p. (In Italian) 
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