In memory of Nikita Struve - enlightener, scientist, book publisher

PARIS. Three months after the 85th anniversary, the publisher and translator Nikita Struve passed away.

The word “patriotism” was not included in the active vocabulary of Nikita Alekseevich Struve. And the possibility of a painless transition to ideal democracy in post-Soviet Russia was rather skeptical. However, the descendant of the noble families of Struve and Catoire, born in the Paris suburbs, did much more for the homeland of their ancestors than many of the eloquent ambitious people. Everything that he did contributed to the preservation of the cultural heritage of Russia and its revival. This was once dreamed of by his grandfather, philosopher and politician Peter Struve, an active participant in the London "Committee for the Liberation of Russia."

He defended his doctoral dissertation on Mandelstam in those years when freedom could be paid for interest in his work in the USSR. The YMCA-PRESS publishing house headed by him saw the light of novels by Solzhenitsyn, works by Bunin, Shmelev, Bulgakov, and the composition of the “Holy Four” (figurative expression of Struve): Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Pasternak, Mandelstam, whose verses he himself translated into French. For decades, the YMCA has remained an intellectual platform for those who were denied the right to vote in their native country. Nikita Alekseevich not only published memoirs of representatives of several generations of Russian emigration, but also wrote an extensive study on this topic. Among Struve’s publications is his uncle’s book on Russian literature in exile. Penetrating roundabout ways into the country behind the Iron Curtain, YMCA books — fiction, textbooks, philosophical and religious works — helped set the stage for future changes in the country.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru