«Я обращаюсь к вам на вашем языке». Три неопубликованных письма Елизаветы Мнацакановой Владимиру Максимову и редакции журнала «Континент» (май 1977 г.)

«Ja obrashchajus' k Vam na Vashem jazyke». Three unpublished letters by Elizaveta Mnatsakanova to Vladimir Maksimov and the editorial staff of the journal «Kontinent» (May 1977). The letter exchange between Elizaveta Mnatsakanova (1922-2019) and Violetta Iverni, found in the Manuscript Section of the National Austrian Library in Vienna and published here for the first time, shed light on a little-known episode in the poet’s biography, i.e. her involvement in the controversy surrounding the almanac «Apollon-77» (Paris, 1977) edited by the artist Michail Shemiakin with the collaboration of the poet Konstantin Kuz'minskii. Struck by the harshness of the attacks launched by representatives of the first wave of emigration against her fellow contributors, Mnatsakanova adopted the terminology of Soviet political dissent (to which she did not belong) to explain to the elderly emigrants that the censorious and offensive tones used against «Apollon-77» were incompatible with the image of freedom fighters that they claimed for themselves.