The Black Series

The Russian writer Mikhail Vasilyevich Shcherbakov was born in Moscow, graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Imperial Higher Technical School, and in 1914 was mobilized. He was sent to France with a group of young officers who knew French, where at the Lyon Air School he took courses in aerial photography.

After the war he served on the Balkan front; after the First World War he was granted French citizenship and offered a job at the Indochina Bank in Hanoi. In the spring of 1920, Mikhail Shcherbakov left his job at the bank and moved from Vietnam to Vladivostok, working as an editor for "The Peasant Gazette" and "Russian Edge." In 1922, like thousands of other Russian emigrants, Mikhail Shcherbakov left Vladivostok—literally a day before the Bolsheviks arrived.

As a French subject, he settled in the French concession in Shanghai and took a position at the Indochina Bank. From there he moved into the ranks of the French police. Mikhail Shcherbakov traveled extensively. He published travel essays and notes in Shanghai newspapers and magazines. He toured all of Southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific Ocean, and visited Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong more than once; he also went to Ceylon and Easter Island.

In 1931, the first issue of the literary-art collection "Bagulnik" is released, and among other publications there is M. V. Shcherbakov’s story "The Black Series"—the audio version of which we are pleased to present to you.