Mark Lvovich Slonim (, also known as Marc Slonim and Marco Slonim; March 23, 1894 Giuseppina Giuliano, "Mark L'vovič Slonim", Russi in Italia database entry – 1976) was a Russian politician, literary critic, scholar and translator. He was a lifelong member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and, in 1917, served as its deputy for Bessarabia in the Russian Constituent Assembly. He joined the Samara Government during the early phases of the Civil War, opposing both the Bolsheviks and the conservative elements of the White movement. Assigned to his party's Foreign Delegation, Slonim lobbied unsuccessfully for the return of Bessarabia to Russia during the Paris Peace Conference. After a short stay in Tuscany, he settled in Czechoslovakia in 1922, an editor of Volya Rossii review.
Slonim, who was also an Italian-trained literary scholar, became Volya Rossiis literary theorist and columnist. From that vantage point, he gave encouraged the liberal-progressive and modernist side of the White émigré intellectuals. Slonim argued, against conservatives such as Zinaida Gippius, that the exiles needed to appreciate changes occurring in the Soviet Union and became one of the first popularizers of Soviet writers in the West. He was also one of the main backers (and an intimate friend) of poet Marina Tsvetaeva.
In 1928, convinced that Russian literature in exile was in fact dead, Slonim moved to Paris and, as an anti-fascist, opened up to Soviet patriotism. His 1930s contacts with the Union for Repatriation were particularly controversial. He escaped World War II and arrived to the United States aboard the SS Navemar, spending the 1940s and '50s as a teacher at Sarah Lawrence College. He continued to publish tracts and textbooks on Russian literary topics, familiarizing the American public with the major trends of Soviet poetry and fiction. He spent his final years in Geneva, where he translated Andrei Bely's Silver Dove and worked sporadically on his memoirs.
Biography
Early activities Slonim was born in the Russian Empire's port city of Odessa (now in Ukraine),Ukraine Master Index of Names , birth record at the office of the Odessa city rabbi, JewishGen although some sources mistakenly have Novgorod-Severskiy, Chernihiv Governorate.Aucouturier & Slonim (1977), p. 411; Aucouturier (1999), p. 379 His elder brother Vladimir was also born in Odessa in 1887. Their parents were upper-middle-class Russian Jewish intellectuals; Slonim's uncle was the literary critic Yuly Aykhenvald. The future critic was also a distant relative of Yevsey Lazarevich Slonim, whose daughter, Vera Yevseyevna, became the wife of novelist Vladimir Nabokov.Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, p. 85. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. According to Russologist Michel Aucouturier, Slonim's memoirs show him as an erudite and an adept of aestheticism, whose "socialist sympathies" were only cemented by the Russian Revolution.Aucouturier & Slonim (1977), p. 411 While completing his secondary studies at a classical gymnasium in Odessa, Slonim came into contact with the Socialist Revolutionaries (or "Esers"), and, like his older brother Vladimir before him, became their follower.Aucouturier & Slonim (1977), pp. 411, 413–415 Their radicalism pitted them against their father, who supported the moderate-liberal Kadet Party.Aucouturier & Slonim (1977), p. 413
Slonim, who regarded himself as a libertarian socialist rather than a Marxist, worked on establishing "self-instruction circles", circulating banned literature among students, artisans and workers, and traveled to Europe to meet with Osip Minor.Aucouturier & Slonim (1977), pp. 414–417 As he recalled in the 1960s, the Eser leadership was "appalled to discover than in Odessa and the nearby region most of the work was being done by boys and girls of 16 or 17."Aucouturier & Slonim (1977), p. 417 According to later sources, he was brought to the attention of the Okhrana and left Russia surreptitiously. From 1911, he studied philosophy and literature at the University of Florence, Claudia Scandura, "L'Emigrazione russa in Italia: 1918–1919", in Europa Orientalis, Vol. 14, Issue 2, 1995, p. 343 where he took his Ph.D.Katharine Reece, "Freedom of Thought, Freedom to Learn: Recovering Marc Slonim", in Sarah Lawrence Magazine, Spring 2015 In 1914, he published in Italy a translation of Ivan Turgenev's poetry cicle, Senility. By 1918, Slonim was also a graduate of Saint Petersburg Imperial University.White, p. 25
Upon the start of World War I, Slonim followed the "defensist" line of the Eser mainstream, supporting Russia's commitment to the Allies, and served in the Imperial Army. The February Revolution caught him on the Romanian Front,Constantin et al. (2011), pp. 394, 404; White, p. 25 but he soon returned to Petrograd, where (Aucouturier writes) "his talents as a propagandist and an orator soon made him one of his party's celebrities". Slonim supported the Russian Provisional Government and its "defensist" policies against the Left Esers, with public disputations against Vladimir Karelin and Maria Spiridonova.Aucouturier & Slonim (1977), pp. 424–428. See also White, p. 25 According to Slonim, he was one of the youths left in charge of party work: the more senior Esers were either in government or consumed by work in the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.Aucouturier & Slonim (1977), pp. 423–424
Constituent Assembly and Paris Conference In his memoirs, Slonim claims to have foreseen the danger posed by the reorganized Bolsheviks, having heard their leader, Vladimir Lenin, speak. He contrasts Bolshevik unity with the Esers' indecisiveness and factionalism.Aucouturier & Slonim (1977), pp. 429–434 He was still active after the October Revolution, which placed Russia under a Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars. Slonim became an Eser candidate for the Russian Constituent Assembly in the November 25 election, running in the southwestern province of Bessarabia.Constantin et al. (2011), p. 147; (2012), pp. 24, 391, 394, 404–406 He took his seat in the Eser landslide win, and, aged 23, was the youngest parliamentarian.Aucouturier & Slonim (1977), p. 411; Aucouturier (1999), p. 379 Laurent Béghin, "La revue Le Flambeau et les littératures slaves (1918–1940)", in Textyles, No. 45, 2014 Days after, Bessarabia formed its own government as the Moldavian Democratic Republic, and remained undecided about its future within the Russian Republic. The elections for the Constituent Assembly were chaotic, and the results were never fully recorded.Clark, pp. 144–145
Slonim was present in the Assembly on the morning of January 19, 1918, when the Bolsheviks dissolved it by force and opened fire on the supporting crowds. For a while, he was in the Ukrainian State, helping Gregory Zilboorg put out a clandestine paper which angered both the Bolsheviks and the Ukrainian nationalists.Zilboorg & Slonim, pp. xix–xx He later fled to Samara, where the Constituent Assembly had formed its own "Committee of Members" government. He joined the latter, then, upon its merger into the Provisional All-Russian Government, moved to Omsk.Aucouturier (1999), p. 379 As the Russian Civil War took hold of the countryside, Slonim followed the Czechoslovak Legion and became friends with its leaders, trailing across Siberia under an assumed name. Nevertheless, he disliked the concept of Allied intervention, and moved closer to the Left Esers. His party sent him abroad as a member of its Foreign Delegation, which originally existed to persuade the West not to recognize Alexander Kolchak as Russia's Supreme Ruler.White, pp. 25–26
In November 1918, Slonim had lost his Bessarabian constituency, as the region united with Romania. The writer became a strong critic of that merger, claiming that the Romanian identity in both Romania and Bessarabia had been recently fabricated by intellectuals, lacking popular support among the Moldavian peasants (see Moldovenism).White, p. 88 Slonim also claimed that the union process had been triggered by the German Empire in late 1917, as an anti-Bolshevik move, and supported by Russians who had discarded "personal and national dignity."White, p. 88. See also Clark, pp. 170–171 Building on such arguments, Slonim depicted the Russian Empire as a functional and organic economic entity, suggesting that Bessarabia had more in common with Ukraine than with Romania. He also argued that Bessarabia had not been renounced by Russia, not truly annexed by the Romanian Kingdom. "Sooner of later", he suggested, "there must come about [Bessarabia's] reunion with the Russian State."Clark, p. 236 Acknowledging that there was a "united front" between the White movement and Soviet Russia on the Bessarabian issue, he proposed to overcome the impasse by organizing a League of Nations referendum in the former Moldavian Republic.Clark, pp. 235–237 Scholar Charles Upson Clark, who sees Slonim's accounts as among "the best [...] from the Russian standpoint", rejects his theory about the German inspiration for the union, noting that it was in fact a traditional Romanian goal.Clark, pp. 166, 171
Slonim joined a self-appointed team of politicians and landowners who claimed to speak for Bessarabia, and attended the Paris Peace Conference to lobby for the Russian cause. Among the other members of this body were Alexander N. Krupensky, Alexandr K. Schmidt, Vladimir Tsyganko, and Mihail Savenco.Constantin et al. (2011), p. 147; (2012), pp. 391–394 Slonim, seconded by Tsyganko, circulated rumors of "unheard-of atrocities" committed by the Romanian Army, such as the massacre of 53 people in one village of after the Khotyn Uprising, and the torturing of many others. Interviewed by L'Humanité, the French Communist Party paper, Slonim also claimed the socialists were being repressed, and that unconditional union had been voted on "under the menace of machine guns".A. P., "Atrocités roumaines en Bessarabie. Le Récit de Marco Slonim, ex-député de la Constituante", in L'Humanité, June 22, 1919, p. 3 These statements were rejected outright by the Bessarabian unionists: Ion Inculeț, the former President of the Moldavian Republic, called the interview "idiotic", while his aide Ion Pelivan wrote to L'Humanité to restate that the union was expressing the free will of the Bessarabian people.Constantin et al. (2011), p. 148 In his notes, Pelivan referred to Slonim as a "deserter", an "impostor", and a Belarusian Jew.Constantin et al. (2012), pp. 394, 404–406
Tuscany, Berlin, and Volya Rossii