THE CRIMEAN SUPPLEMENT TO THE “ZWEIG VERSION” OF THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF “THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV”

The Crimea, where Anna Dostoevskaya completed her earthly journey, is traditionally associated with the mysteries of the missing Fyodor Dostoevsky manuscripts. However, in the so-called “Zweig version” of the disappearance of the manuscript of “The Brothers Karamazov”, the peninsula is considered not as the actual place of disappearance, but as an information space in which, according to the epistolary testimony of Anna Falz-Fein, a message was printed about the sale of the white version of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel to an Austrian writer and journalist. Letter from Anna Falts-Fein to Vera Nechaev’s letter dated October 16–29, 1957, which contains a reference to an unknown newspaper trace of the “Zweig version”, was introduced into scientific circulation by Nicolay Bogdanov and Boris Tikhomirov. This message (along with a letter from Andrey Dostoevsky to Leonid Grossman dated September 26, 1958) made the once marginal “Zweig version” of Boris Bursov more convincing, but the lack of attribution of the newspaper report itself about Stefan Zweig’s purchase of the manuscript of “The Brothers Karamazov” revealed the need to find a «Crimean supplement» to the proposed hypothesis. Justifiably refuting the contradictory dates of the sought-after message presented in the listed letters, Boris Tikhomirov came to the conclusion that the reference to the sale of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s literary heritage abroad could have originated in the Crimean collaborationist press (for example, in the newspaper “Golos Kryma”). The researcher’s assumption is verified in this article. The contents of the files of The “Golos Kryma”, stored in the funds of the State Archive of the Republic, demonstrate the editorial staff’s focus on the work and post-biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky, as well as on the “Crimean branch” of his family tree. Nevertheless, the message confirming the “Zweig version” has not been found, which opens up the prospect of its further search both in the missing issues of the “Golos Kryma” in the archival funds of the Republic, and in other periodic sources available to residents of Simferopol during the German occupation.