Mark Aldanov

Mark Aldanov (1886–1957) was a Russian émigré novelist and essayist whose historical fiction examined political power, revolution, and Russian history.

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Russian Revolution: The political upheavals of 1917 that ended the Russian Empire and brought the Bolsheviks to power. Aldanov made the revolution and its political aftermath central subjects of his fiction.
The Ninth Thermidor: Aldanov's historical novel about the French Revolution and the fall of Robespierre. It shows his method of using a foreign revolution to explore political power.
Kyiv: The capital of Ukraine, historically known in English as Kiev. Aldanov was born in Kyiv when it was part of the Russian Empire.
Ivan Bunin: A Russian writer and the first Russian recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in 1933. Bunin was a fellow émigré author whose career overlapped with Aldanov's.
Russian Civil War: The conflict from 1917 to 1922 among Bolshevik forces, anti-Bolshevik groups, and other contenders for power. Its defeat of anti-Bolshevik forces helped shape the exile community in which Aldanov wrote.
The Beginning of the End: Aldanov's novel portraying the final period of the Russian Empire and the approach of revolution. The book brings his historical fiction directly to the crisis preceding 1917.
Russian Empire: A state ruled by the Russian monarchy from 1721 until the 1917 revolution. Aldanov's early life and the historical settings of his fiction were shaped by its collapse.
Dmitry Merezhkovsky: A Russian novelist, poet, and religious thinker who emigrated after the revolution. His historical novels offer a related émigré approach to Russia's past.
Russian emigration: The movement of people from Russia, especially the large exile waves following the 1917 revolutions and Civil War. Aldanov's career and publishing life unfolded outside Soviet Russia.
The Conspiracy: Aldanov's novel about political intrigue and revolutionary conspiracy in Russia. Its plot connects private schemes with the larger forces destabilizing Russian society.