The article presents an attempt of commentary on the episode of M. Bakhtin’s biography preceding his arrest and exile. A line from Bakhtin’s conversations with V. Duvakin about the feuilleton “Ashes of the Oaks” by the Tur brothers becomes the object of a detailed analysis. The authors reconstruct the context of the scholar’s life in Leningrad and atry to identify the literary sources mentioned or implied by Bakhtin. A special role is assigned to the collection of stories and feuilletons Tour “Bombs and bonbonnières”, published in “Priboy” publishing house in 1929. The conclusion is made that the name of the Tur brothers was quite well known to Bakhtin, and the book itself was part of his reading in Leningrad. In turn, the material in the book not only conveys the atmosphere of Soviet cultural and everyday life at that time but also complements the details and facts to Bakhtin’s biography at the turn of the 1920 s-30 s.
M. Bakhtin; V. Duvakin; scientific biography; oral autobiography; commentary; the Tur brothers; feuilleton; “Bombs and bonbonnières”; “Ashes of Oaks”.
Osovskii, O.E., Dubrovskaya, S.A. “‘Then There Was the Article… Article by the Tur Brothers’: An Attempt of Commentary on One Line by M.M. Bakhtin”. Literaturovedcheskii zhurnal, no. 1(59), 2023, pp. 72–97. (In Russ.)