I have not seen Volya Rossii and do not know what came of this translation of a Russian novel from a foreign language back into Russian. From Ehrenburg I learned one more thing: the fragments from We published in Volya Rossii were supplied with a preface, informing the reader that the novel was being published in translation from Czech into Russian. Volya Rossii chose to ignore my demands.Ħ. Soon after that, in the summer of 1927, Ehrenburg wrote at my request to the editors of Volya Rossii, demanding in my name that they discontinue publication of fragments from We.Ī similar demand was sent to Volya Rossii in my name by another Soviet writer who was then abroad. This was how I first learned about my 'act.'ĥ. Ehrenburg was comradely enough to inform me of this in a Jetter from Paris. In the spring of 1927 fragments of the novel appeared in the Prague journal Volya Rossii. These offers came from the publisher Grzhebin and, later, from Petropolis (the latest offer came in 1929 ).Ĥ. In view of this, I declined all offers to publish We in Russian abroad. In 1924 it became clear that, owing to difficulties with the censorship, my novel We could not be published in Soviet Russia. Up to now, I have not heard any protests in connection with the appearance of these translations.ģ. I made public mention of the appearance of We in translation several times (in my bibliographies and autobiographies -see Vestnik Literatury, Literaturnaya Rossiya, etc.) there were also items about it in Soviet newspapers. At the end of 1923 a copy of this manuscript was made available by the publisher for translation into English (this translation appeared only in 1925 ), and later into Czech. This publishing house had branches at that time in Berlin, Moscow, and Petrograd, and I was bound to it by contracts.Ģ. In 1921 the manuscript of the novel was sent (by the simplest method-by registered mail through the Petrograd Post Office ) to the Grzhebin Publishing House in Berlin. And I want to make these facts known to my readers.

Every fact can be confirmed by documents or people. When I returned to Moscow after a summer journey, the entire affair concerning my novel We was already finished : it had been decided that the publication of excerpts from We in the Prague journal Volya Rossii was my act, and all the appropriate resolutions in regard to this 'act' had already been passed.īut facts are stubborn, they are more stubborn than resolutions. Letter of Resignation from the Writers' Union

Zamyatin