87 years ago - on May 31, 1937 Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin returned to the Motherland.
On May 29, 1937, from Paris's Gare du Nord, A.I. Kuprin, together with his wife Elizaveta Moritsevna, departed for Moscow after 17 years of emigration.
By the mid-1930s Kuprin's health had greatly deteriorated; due to progressive sclerosis and loss of sight his capacity for work declined. The writer had lost many people close to him. Under these circumstances the idea of returning to his homeland took on a concrete form and became a matter of discussion.
The artist I. Ya. Bilibin, having received permission to return from France to the USSR, proposed that he undertake preliminary negotiations with the Soviet embassy on behalf of the Kuprin family about returning to the Motherland. And on August 7, 1936 the USSR's plenipotentiary in France, V.P. Potemkin, informed I.V. Stalin of Kuprin's request to return to Russia.
On October 27, 1936, at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party, a decision was taken by vote: "Allow the entry into the USSR of the writer A.I. Kuprin."
Having received permission, the Kuprins left Paris for Moscow on May 29, 1937.
On May 31, 1937 the Kuprins arrived in Moscow at the Belorussky railway station, where they were met by a delegation of Soviet writers; they were then accommodated at the Metropol Hotel.
Kuprin was surrounded by care and attention: he was provided with medical treatment, rest in Golitsyno near Moscow, a four-room apartment in Leningrad, a two-volume edition of his works was published, a contract was signed for the production of a film based on the story "Staff-Captain Rybnikov", and much more, which allowed the old and ill writer to live peacefully in the final months of his life.
Fourteen months after his return, on August 25, 1938, after a severe illness Kuprin died at the age of 68.
T. A. Kaimanova. "Kuprin's Return from Emigration" // Kuprin Encyclopedia. – Penza, 2016.
