Emigrant Notebooks. Exodus

This edition publishes for the first time the manuscript of Fyodor Vasilevich Chelnokov (1866–1925) — a hereditary industrialist and honorary citizen of Moscow — written in emigration from 1919 to 1925. The "Balkan Notebooks," the first part of the manuscript,... describe the dramatic events of 1919: the invasion of the Red Army into the territory of Crimea leads to the so-called "Crimean evacuation" — the mass exodus of the population and the troops of the White Army and the Entente. Together with his brother, Mikhail Vasilevich Chelnokov — the former mayor of Moscow, a leader of the Cadets — and a large group of well-known representatives of the nobility and bourgeoisie, the author leaves Russia on a British ship and ends up in Serbia, which has just reclaimed its independence. As part of the Russian delegation, the Chelnokov brothers visit Bosnia and Herzegovina. Through war-torn Bulgaria, the author returns to Yalta — only to leave his homeland forever, which is narrated in the second part of the manuscript (the "Berlin Notebooks").