Russian writer Alexei Mikhailovich Remizov is a man with a difficult fate. Despite disagreements with the Bolsheviks who came to power as a result of the revolution, he did not want to leave his homeland so dramatically changed, but his life decided differently. As a result, Remizov lived the rest of his life away from his native country, constantly yearning for it.
The writer came from a merchant family. He wrote his first story about a fire in the village at the age of seven. He himself did not see fires then, and in writing he relied on the story of his nanny. Alexey Remizov decided to become a writer, while still a child, and, having matured, embodied this dream and the goal of his whole life. Despite the craving for literature, A. M. Remizov entered the Physics and Mathematics Department of Lomonosov Moscow State University. Due to a police mistake, he was arrested and eventually exiled to the north, to Penza, where he spent 6 long years. He was charged with resisting the police and participating in a demonstration, but the mistake due to which he was detained was revealed much later. The first work of Remizov was published in 1902.
The Remizov revolution met in St. Petersburg. He disliked the Bolsheviks, but had no problems with the authorities, so he avoided the “purges”. In 1921, the writer left the USSR, having gone to Germany for treatment. He planned to return, but did not fulfill his plan. A few years later he moved from Berlin to Paris, where he remained until the end of his life. Soviet citizenship was given to Remizov only in the last years of his life. Living in Paris, he published less and less books every year, gradually losing popularity. The situation was changed by the publication that he himself founded, in which he published his own works. The wife of A. M. Remizov was a paleographer. She studied the history of writing. The famous poetess Marina Tsvetaeva called Remizov’s work “a living treasury of the Russian soul and speech”.
A little-known fact – Alexei Remizov was also an artist, and very talented. He painted mainly drawings, not paintings, but Picasso himself admired his drawings. Remizov’s personal archive, located in France from his descendants, was bought in 2013 by the Russian Ministry of Culture and returned to his historical homeland. Now it is stored in Moscow, in the State Literary Museum. Dreams and everything connected with them occupied a special place in the writer’s work. The collected works of Remizov were published in 8 volumes. In total, he wrote about twenty major works.
