nikita struve

Biography

Nikita Struve was part of the Struve family, being the grandson of Peter Berngardovitch Struve and the son of Aleksey Petrovich Struve (+1976), founder of an important Russian library in Paris and brother of Gleb Struve (1898-1985) . He was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, in the suburbs of Paris, graduated from the Sorbonne where he taught Russian in the 1950s. In 1963, Nikita Struve published a book devoted to the history of the Church under the Soviet regime (“ Christians in the USSR). This book was translated into five languages. In 1979 Nikita Struve defended her doctoral thesis on Osip Mandelstam (published in French, then - in the author's translation, in Russian). The same year, he became full professor at the University of Paris X (Nanterre), then head of the Department of Slavic Studies. He had the first volume of "The Gulag Archipelago" by Alexander Soljenitsyn published in Russian, as a world exclusive on December 28, 1973. The translation was immediately started – at Le Seuil for the French-speaking readership –, while the impact of the event pushed the USSR to expel the writer in February 1974. As a Russian publisher, Struve, with Paul Flamand, CEO of Le Seuil and Claude Durand, French publisher, meet Alexandre Solzhenitsyn in Zurich in December. A strong and lasting friendship was then forged between the two men – the two couples in fact, and it was with their wives that Struve and Solzhenitsyn crisscrossed France for precious parentheses. It is of course Struve who accompanies the sulphurous dissident on the set of Apostrophes in April 1975 when he comes to present Le Chêne et le veau (Seuil), reuniting with Bernard Pivot who had invited him, as editor, to tell the crazy epic of The Gulag Archipelago at Open the quotes ten months earlier.

In 1978 he headed the Russian section of the YMCA Press publishing house. Although the young publisher very quickly had the opportunity to publish the manuscripts of the best representatives of Russian emigration – Ivan Chmeliov (1873-1950), Nikolaï Berdiaev (1874-1948), even Marina Tsvetaïeva (1892-1941) – he also the chance to meet Anna Akhmatova who, when she manages to leave the USSR to receive prizes in Sicily or Oxford, goes through the Russian Bookstore in Paris, the Editeurs Réunis, rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, place distribution of YMCA-Press publications. In 1991 he opened the "Russky Put'" publishing house in Moscow. He translated into French the poetry of Pushkin, Lermontov, Afanassy Fet, Akhmatova and many other Russian poets. In 1996 he wrote the study "70 years of Russian emigration". He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Saint-Filaret Orthodox Christian Institute, a professor at the University of Paris-Nanterre, editor-in-chief of the journal “Bulletin du Mouvement Chretienne Russe” and “Le Messager Orthodoxe”.

His personal closeness to Ivan Bunin, Alexei Remizov, Boris Zaitsev, Semyon Frank, Anna Akhmatova, Father Alexander Schmemann and Alexander Solzhenitsyn had a great influence on Nikita Struve as a researcher of Russian cultural history and theologian.

Address by Archbishop John in memory of Nikita Struve on May 6, 2017

Today we commemorate the first anniversary of the ascension to Heaven of the Servant of God Nikita Struve, our faithful parishioner, who has always been very close to Russia during its trials during the Soviet period, then knew how to open up to the resurrection that this country has known.

He acted as a conduit for any work that could stimulate thinking in times of darkness. Through his publishing work, he has made known a whole literature, both secular and spiritual, which inspires deep reflection, whether it is about great authors of the past or great authors of this period so dark and so difficult that the Russian people went through. He himself developed these themes in his books and articles, as well as in the journals he published in French and Russian: the Vestnik RKhD and the Messager Orthodoxe.

So we pay homage to him, which, I believe, comes from the hearts of each of us, who have known him, frequented him, or simply crossed paths. We are also grateful to him for having inspired a reflection on the life of our church, of the Archdiocese. I myself have been able to talk to him several times and talk about the different situations of our Churches. He was a man who had a vision of history, this great history he had known, which had accompanied him all his life.

We are grateful to him, as I think, many men and women in Russia are grateful to him for everything he has done, for the availability he has always shown until the last moments of his existence. I pray for his family too, all those who accompanied him and who keep him the lasting memory of a man who had a faith and a deep hope, as well as the firm conviction that man can always change no matter what. the turpitudes into which humanity can fall. The image of this great Russian writer whom he introduced to the West, Solzhenistsyne, also testifies to the capacity of the human heart to change, even under the most difficult circumstances.

Brothers and sisters, let us remember from Nikita Struve this confidence he had in the presence of God in history, let us remember the one who was fully committed throughout his life. Let us also keep in our prayers the memory of the one who was an Orthodox Christian, and who throughout his life campaigned so that the Orthodox faith is not only an accident of history, here in Europe, but that it is there. truly a sign and a living witness. Pray that God will help us to continue in the way he has shown us. And God bless you all! "