In 1920 year in Crimea bolsheviks hisson, - the Russian officer was shot, - which tomb Shmelev despaired to find. In these searches he appeared in Germany, then in France where he found a terrible message. The next 28 years - emigrant. To tell, that he loved unique son Sergey, - means to tell very little. Directly with parent tenderness he concerned about him, breathed above him, counted days up to a meeting, wrote gentle letters.
The son, the patient with a tuberculosis that is why not accepting participation in fights against Red Army, was shot under the order of the chairman of the Crimean revolutionary-military committee Is white Kuna in Feodosiya. Ivan Shmelev searches for rescue in work: "I Know one - it is necessary to work. Only in it rescue and draft of life. Otherwise - it is not necessary to exist".
Right after perusals of a novel of his she wrote to him the letter. He answered. To Olga was 35, Ivan Shmelev almost is twice more senior, but they so were involved in this correspondence and have felt such likeness of souls, that this pen-friendship gradually has developed into the real pen-love. Eight years they did not see, then have met all some times, but it has not affected in any way their Platonic relations. Olga became for him image which has filled in emptiness after death of the wife and the son.
Sometimes for three months he could write to Olga seventy seven(!) love letters, in some days he wrote on three, on four, on six letters. Those were really close relations. In two years after the beginning of their correspondence Ivan Shmelev writes:
"Olya, you can burn out my letters? I can not yours. For anything. It you, alive, eternal. You can close yourself to remove the name. But to take away from life the most valuable, similar was not in centuries is a sin. We sing each other. We find new in love.
So much spiritual, valuable, exclusive. These are exchanges of feelings. They are our children, it is light ours, this sacred ours. And to burn it is impossible."