Rurik Ivnev (1891–1981) is a Russian poet, prose writer, playwright and memoirist who gained fame even before the October Revolution. In 1917, together with A. Blok and V. Mayakovsky, he came to Smolny and became the secretary of A.V. Lunacharsky. In 1920 he headed the All-Russian Union of Poets. Later he retired from active political activity and was engaged in creativity and journalism.

This novel was written 95 years ago by a 21-year-old student and has not yet been published. The manuscript was kept in the writer’s archive, unknown to anyone, and only now, having accidentally discovered it, I, his heir and executor, decided to present it to the readers.

Its author is Mikhail Aleksandrovich Kovalev (this is the real name of Rurik Ivnev ) never talked about “Youth”. This is not surprising; it was not customary to talk about the “oddities of love” in the Soviet Union, and one could not even dream of publishing such works... However, it is up to the readers to judge the novel “Youth”. I would like to thank everyone who helped make this work available to the reading public, and especially Alexander Valentinovich Leontiev, who analyzed the author’s very difficult handwriting and prepared the manuscript for publication.

(c) Nikolai Leontiev, 2007

< p>Published in the magazine “Khreshchatyk” 2007, No. 4