ABSTRACT
Nikolai Litvin was the most active and gifted journalist on the Solovki during those years. Born in 1890 in Mogilev, on the Dnieper, he was, in all probability, of Byelorussian stock. An artist has left on the pages of The Solovetsky Islands portrait sketches of two of the journal's staff members, Litvin and Shiriayev. Photographs of them are lacking so that we see them only in thin and broken outline, rather vague, in fact. Like some of Bulgakov's characters, Litvin had left foreign lands, boisterous Sofia, to return to Russia. As an author of essays, sketches and feuilletons for The New Solovky, Shiriayev is interesting, rather professional, but hardly measures up to Litvin and Glubokovsky: he lacks a theme of his own and a kind of averageness, of thought, feeling and image, predominates.
