Literary merits of A.I. Kuprin before the Soviet state

For the first time, the documents of the pension case of A. I. Kuprin are presented, which allowed the writer’s widow to be assigned a personal pension of republican significance. The conclusion containing an assessment and characterization of the writer’s work was prepared by the Soviet literary critic V. I. Boychevsky, who repeats the writer’s assessments of pre-revolutionary criticism. But at the same time, he places accents in his own way, paying special attention to the writer’s denunciation of the pre-revolutionary past and the closeness of his works to the spirit of the new Soviet system, thus asserting A. I. Kuprin as an important writer for modern literature, putting him on a par with recognized classics and including his work in a single historical and literary process. The very fact of assigning a very high-status personal pension to the writer’s wife testifies to the recognition of A. I. Kuprin as one of the most significant writers of the pre-October era.