The genre of a writer’s questionnaire is dismissed as marginal by high literature. It is, however, extremely useful to a researcher when it comes to garnering a rich body of historical and literary material. The article contains the first scholarly publication of the Russian section of the ‘International survey of populism,’ printed in the Parisian monthly La Grande Revue from October 1930 to February 1931. The writers who responded to the survey came from diverse generations and strata of Russian émigré literature: M. Aldanov, I. Bunin, B. Zaytsev, N. Gorodetsky, A. Ladinsky, V. Nabokov, M. Osorgin, M. Struve, I. Surguchyov, and V. Fokht. With rare exceptions (Struve and Surguchyov), the responses demonstrate the writers’ unanimous rejection of the class-based approach in literature and loathing of the populists’ openly leftist ideology, the bias of their obsolete aesthetic programme, and, prominently, the idea of subjugating artistic individuality to any doctrines. This incident of émigré writers’ collaborating in the French press complements the history of Franco-Russian cultural ties and throws light on the way Russian authors perceived such problems as literary movements, aesthetic agenda, and social mandate.