The response to L. Katsis's ‘On one ‘coterie' and its close-minded selectivity'

Abstract

V. Milchina responds to L. Katsis's polemic article ‘On one ‘coterie' and its close-minded selectivity' published in Voprosy Literatury (2020, No. 3). Katsis attacked the closed-system quality of the ‘circle' of literary scholars close to Milchina, claiming they tend to ignore discoveries made by outsiders (hence the detailed analysis of the misidentification of N. Nabokov with his more celebrated cousin the writer V. Nabokov and criticism of Chronicles of Post-Soviet Humanities [Khroniki postsovetskoy gumanitarnoy nauki], a book prepared by Milchina). In her attempt to disprove Katsis's arguments, Milchina points out that the aforementioned ‘coterie' includes more than a hundred and fifty scholars, hardly a definition of ‘a select few.' As for the error found by Katsis in D. Zubarev's paper included in the Chronicles, Milchina suggests that pointing out mistakes should be used to establish accurate facts rather than excoriate the community.