Existential Discourse of Russian Emigration in the 1920s-1930s: (B. Poplavsky, G. Gazdanov, A. Remizov)

Abstract

The Russian emigration of the 1920s–1930s gave rise to a distinct literary framework in which exile became a primary mode of existential inquiry. Separated from their homeland and confronted with poli­tical, cultural, and ontological rupture, émigré writers redefined exile as a condition that reshaped identity, memory, temporality, and metaphysical belonging. Exile was not merely a geographical displa­ce­ment but a transformation of human existence that destabilized relationships between past and present, self and world, continuity and meaning.

Boris Poplavsky portrayed exile as metaphysical collapse. His protagonists inhabit liminal spaces between life and death, searching for meaning in a fragmented and indifferent reality. In his texts, Paris is not a refuge but a realm of spiritual disorientation. Through symbolic, dream-like, and visionary language, Poplavsky merges internal chaos with external dissolution, presenting exile as ontological disintegration.

Gaito Gazdanov interpreted exile as a crisis of memory and temporal rupture. His narrators exist retrospectively, constructing identity through recollection rather than lived presence.

Aleksei Remizov, by contrast, viewed exile as spiritual continuity, treating language as a vessel of cultural memory and depicting emigration as a path of inner transformation.

Together, these authors shaped an existential model of exile defined by inward displacement and the search for meaning beyond historical rupture.