Mark Aleksandrovich Aldanov was born on 7 November 1889 in Kiev in the Ukraine. He lived in St. Petersburg, but in 1919 he left the new Communist Russia for France before moving to the United States in 1941. As a writer he is best known for work bitterly critical of the Soviet system. His publications include Two revolutions (1921) which was a work comparing the Russian and French revolutions, a tetralogy on revolutionary France Myslitel (1923-25), a scientific treatise Actinic chemistry (1936), an anti-Soviet satire Nachalo kontsa (1939), and Istoki (1947) which was a picture of Europe in the 1870s. His works have been translated into some twenty-four languages. Mark Aleksandrovich Aldanov (M. A. Landau) died in Nice, in the south of France, on 25 February 1957.
From the guide to the Papers of Mark Aleksandrovich Aldanov (1889-1957), 1921-1957, (Edinburgh University Library)
