Roman Gul


Roman Gul was a Russian émigré writer, his political position was leftist-liberal, he was critical towards the conservative, tsarist White Movement.

Biography

Gul was into the family of a notary and spent his childhood in Penza and on his family estate of Ramsay near Penza. He completed the 1st Penza Gymnasium and went to study at the Law Faculty of the Moscow State University in 1914.
Gul was conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army in 1916 and served with the infantry on the South Western Front becoming a company commander in the 417th Kinburn Regiment.
In 1917, after the October Revolution, Gul joined the Kornilov Shock regiment of the White Volunteer Army. He participated in the Ice March and was wounded. He was captured by the Ukrainian Army and imprisoned in late 1918. In 1919 he was transferred to Germany and settled in Berlin in 1920 becoming a writer.
In the 1920s Gul wrote for the Berlin-based newspaper Nakanunye, and acted as a correspondent for several Soviet newspapers. He also worked on the magazines Life, Time, The Russian Emigrant and Voice of Russia.
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Gul was arrested and put into the concentration camp Oranienburg near Berlin, but was freed after six months and emigrated to Paris. In France, he wrote for the liberal émigré newspaper Posledniye Novosti and the magazines Illustrirovannaya Rossiya, Sovremennye zapiski. During the Nazi occupation of France Gul went into hiding and avoided arrest working on a farm in southern France and in a glass factory.
Gul emigrated to the United States in 1950 and worked for the émigré literature magazine Novy Zhurnal becoming chief editor in 1966. Gul died of a lung infection in 1986 and is buried in Novo-Diveevo Cemetery in Spring Valley, New York.

Works

In Russian Language
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