La survivance des traditions épistolaires en Russie soviétique dans les années vingt et trente du XXe siècle

The letters at the center of the article were sent from the Soviet Union by Olga Alexandrovna Voeykova, an elderly aristocratic lady, to her daughter and granddaughters, who had emigrated to Kharbin in Manchuria. They were written in unusually elegant Russian, with many excerpts from other languages, such as German, English or French, all meant to avoid censorship and to preserve the remaining of a disappearing aristocratic culture. The letters give us a unique and brilliantly observed picture of everyday life in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. Like so many people from her background, the author was highly educated and used to communicate with family and friends by letter. Her accounts describe in particular the difficult circumstances which her class had to endure from a government which considered them « socially foreign ».Jobert Véronique. La survivance des traditions épistolaires en Russie soviétique dans les années vingt et trente du XXe siècle. In: Revue Russe n°32, 2009. L’épistolaire en Russie du XVIIIème siècle à l’URSS post-stalinienne. pp. 111-123