Editing Ivan Bunin (section)

=== Last years ===
[[File:Памятник И.А.Бунину в г. Грассе (Франция).jpg|thumb|left|upright|Bunin monument in Grasse]]
In May 1945 the Bunins returned to 1, rue Jacques Offenbach in Paris. Aside from several spells at the Russian House (a clinic in [[Juan-les-Pins]]) where he was convalescing, Bunin stayed in the French capital for the rest of his life.<ref name="heywood" /> On 15 June, ''Russkye Novosty'' newspaper published its correspondent's account of his meeting with an elderly writer who looked "as sprightly and lively as if he had never had to come through those five years of voluntary exile." According to Bunin's friend N. Roshchin, "the liberation of France was a cause of great celebration and exultation for Bunin".<ref name="complete_372_74">The Works by I.A.Bunin. Vol.VII. Commentaries. Pр. 372–374.</ref>

Once, in the audience at a Soviet ''Russian Theatre'' show in Paris, Bunin found himself sitting next to a young Red Army colonel. As the latter rose and bowed, saying: "Do I have the honour of sitting next to Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin?" the writer sprang to his feet: "I have the even higher honour of sitting next to an officer of the great Red Army!" he passionately retorted.<ref>''Vestnik'', Toronto, 1955, 20 July.</ref> On 19 June 1945, Bunin held a literary show in Paris where he read some of the ''Dark Avenue'' stories. In the autumn of 1945, on the wave of the great patriotic boom, Bunin's 75th birthday was widely celebrated in the Parisian Russian community. Bunin started to communicate closely with the Soviet connoisseurs, journalist [[Yuri Zhukov (journalist)|Yuri Zhukov]] and literary agent Boris Mikhailov, the latter receiving from the writer several new stories for proposed publishing in the USSR. Rumours started circulating that the Soviet version of ''The Complete Bunin'' was already in the works.

In the late 1940s Bunin, having become interested in the new Soviet literature, in particular the works of [[Aleksandr Tvardovsky]] and [[Konstantin Paustovsky]], entertained plans of returning to the Soviet Union, as [[Aleksandr Kuprin]] had done in the 1930s. In 1946, speaking to his Communist counterparts in Paris, Bunin praised the Supreme Soviet's decision to return Soviet citizenship to Russian exiles in France, still stopping short of saying "yes" to the continuous urging from the Soviet side for him to return.<ref name="complete_372_74" /> "It is hard for an old man to go back to places where he's pranced goat-like in better times. Friends and relatives are all buried... That for me would be a graveyard trip," he reportedly said to Zhukov, promising though, to "think more of it."<ref>Zhukov, Yuri. The West After the War. ''Oktyabr'' magazine, 1947, No. 10, pp. 130–131.</ref> Financial difficulties and the French reading public's relative indifference to the publication of ''Dark Avenues'' figured high among his motives. "Would you mind asking the Union of Writers to send me at least some of the money for books that've been published and re-issued in Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s? I am weak, I am short of breath, I need to go to the South but am too skinny to even dream of it," Bunin wrote to [[Nikolay Teleshov]] in a 19 November 1946, letter.<ref name="complete_372_74" />

Negotiations for the writer's return came to an end after the publication of his ''Memoirs'' (''Воспоминания'', 1950), full of scathing criticism of Soviet cultural life. Apparently aware of his own negativism, Bunin wrote: "I was born too late. If I had been born earlier, my literary memoirs would have been different. I wouldn't have been a witness to 1905, the First World War, then 1917 and what followed: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler... How can I not be jealous of our forefather [[Noah]]. He lived through only one flood in his lifetime".<ref name="bio_1" /> Reportedly, the infamous [[Zhdanov decree]] was one of the reasons for Bunin's change of mind.<ref name="bookmix" /> On 15 September 1947, Bunin wrote to [[Mark Aldanov]]: "I have a letter here from Teleshov, written on 7 September; 'what a pity (he writes) that you've missed all of this: how your book was set up, how everybody was waiting for you here, in the place where you could have been... rich, feasted, and held in such high honour!' Having read this I spent an hour hair-tearing. Then I suddenly became calm. It just came to me all of a sudden all those other things Zhdanov and [[Alexander Alexandrovich Fadeyev|Fadeev]] might have given me instead of feasts, riches and laurels..."<ref name="bio_1" />
[[File:Иван Бунин.jpg|thumb|Ivan Bunin's grave, [[Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery]]]]
After 1948, his health deteriorating, Bunin concentrated upon writing memoirs and a book on Anton Chekhov. He was aided by his wife, who, along with Zurov, completed the work after Bunin's death and saw to its publication in New York in 1955.<ref name="bio_2" /> In English translation it was entitled ''About Chekhov: The Unfinished Symphony''.<ref name="iniversalium">{{cite web | url = http://universalium.academic.ru/261084/Bunin,_Ivan_Alekseyevich| title  =  Bunin, Ivan Alekseyevich| publisher = universalium.academic.ru| access-date = 1 January 2011}}</ref> Bunin also revised a number of stories for publication in new collections, spent considerable time looking through his papers and annotated his collected works for a definitive edition.<ref name="heywood" /> In 1951 Bunin was elected the first ever hononary [[International PEN]] member, representing the community of writers in exile. According to [[A. J. Heywood]], one major event of Bunin's last years was his quarrel in 1948 with [[Maria Tsetlina]] and [[Boris Zaytsev (writer)|Boris Zaitsev]], following the decision by the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists in France to expel holders of Soviet passports from its membership. Bunin responded by resigning from the Union. The writer's last years were marred by bitterness, disillusionment and ill-health; he was suffering from [[asthma]], [[bronchitis]] and chronic [[pneumonia]].<ref name="heywood" /><ref name="vinokur" />