most substantial are those who made their names before the War. There is the novelist Andrey Biely; there is Anna Akhmatova, but she belongs more to us than to them. Alexey Tolstoy left us, and he truly is a man of talent though of weak character."

In Bunin's opinion Alexey Tolstoy left Paris because he could raise no more money there. He liked to live in a broad way. But there was no means of earning the money he would spend. His friends were generous to him, but there came a time when they turned pale when they saw him, knowing that it would mean " Lend me a hundred francs till Friday". "Having fleeced us all in his care-free way, he came to the conclusion that Moscow offered more, and he went over to the enemy. To what state he has sunk may be judged by last summer's scandal. The Soviet asked him for a play, and he handed them a version of Capek's R.U.R. which was duly played as his own, though under a different title.

"Most of the young Bolshevik writers go in for the ultra-natural style, neo-realism they call it. It is a brutal product of the time, horrible and foul. Pilniak, for instance-he was among us before the revolution. I knew him. He stayed with the Bolsheviks, went with the time. He

goes in for this ultra-naturalism—looks on famine, bloodshed, typhus, bestiality, describes the most distressing and dreadful scenes on the Volga in the famine area, and feels nothing himself. He knows what the people have gone through, but condones it, gets famous on it."

"But they say that drama makes progress under Lunacharsky," I urged.

"What sort of progress? Not one single play has come out of Russia since the revolution. The Theatre of Art carries on with its old repertoire edited and censored by the Bolsheviks. Those in power have no taste for drama, do not understand anything that is really worth while. You find the Chekists instructing the Theatre of Art to do them a version of La Fille de Madame Angot. Is there anything new in that ? "

What do you think of the excuse commonly given by writers in Soviet Russia, that they feel they must remain in their country if they are to continue writing?" I asked.

"That's a fine old-fashioned excuse," said Bunin. "Did Alexey Tolstoy need to go and look at Russia again in order to refresh his memory? Do I need to go and look at the Russian peasant again to know what he is like and what is in him? One can write as well in exile as at home. Think

of Victor Hugo, or of Ovid, or again of our great Turgenief wandering over Western Europe nearly all his creative life!"

I thought of Dostoieffsky's quarrel with Turgenief in this matter, and his " Are you sure you can see us as well from Berlin? May I not send you a telescope so that you can see Russia better?" But I did not say it. It is a matter on which there can be two opinions. Certainly it should refresh the eyes of a Russian artist to see his Russia again, even in her misery, even in her despair. But Bunin is one of the literary political champions of the great "Emigration". He triumphantly expects the disintegration of Bolshevism and will not take half a step to break its fall. He is for the complete disassociation of Russian artists and writers from the Soviet power. He considers that the present rulers of Russia have destroyed even the minimum of liberty, have suffocated all creative thought, science, and literature; and having maimed art, go in now for artistic stunts solely for purposes of political agitation. And that being so, he considers it a crime against the real Russia to co-operate with the Bolsheviks in any way. He believes that a strong Conservative government of some kind will eventually take the place of the present tyranny: it may be a monarchy, it may be

a strong government of another kind, but the unity of the old Russia will be re-established, the emigrants will return, and the present rulers will be swept away. In Bunin one sees an uncompromising critic of the revolution and an unqualified believer in the coming restoration.

But how is it that in England there are so many sympathisers with Bolshevism?" he asked at parting. It seems so strange in a wise, clearsighted people like the English."

"You see," said I, "we had in England before the revolution a strong propaganda against Tsarism. Darkest Russia was preached by the Kropotkins, Stepniaks, and the rest. Half England still believes that Russia was foully and hideously governed under the Tsar, and that it was impossible to live happily there."

"How untrue that is," said Bunin in his deprecating sing-song voice.

66 You see we have a new set of visitors to Soviet Russia just now, and they do not find it so dreadful as the old picture we had of pogroms and prisons and knouts. They come back and report progress."

I could see a reproachful look in the novelist's eyes as I left him. He is right, of course. Russia was a happy place in the old days. But I cannot

but reflect how the Russian writers of prerevolution days lent themselves to that foreign hate of Russia which has now come and devoured them all.

Bunin's latest book, a collection of stories and poems, has just been published in Berlin, and is entitled The Rose of Jericho.

3. ALEXEY REMIZOF

The opinions of Alexey Remizof served as a useful corrective to those of Bunin. He lived with the Bolsheviks until 1921, serving in their Theatrical Department in Petrograd, and knows them more intimately. Although he fled to Berlin and then to Paris, he is quite willing to admit that there are some interesting writers in Soviet Russia. He does not think that the Communists have succeeded in destroying the national spiritual life of Russia within her borders, does not indeed think that that is possible.

Remizof is one of the few undoubted geniuses of modern Russia. If he is little known abroad it is because his most characteristic work is almost impossible to translate. Early in 1914 I wrote in the Times Literary Supplement about his fairy-tales, and received several invitations from