international intervention into Russia angered the left; rejecting the restoration of the Russian monarchy antagonized the right. His single ally at the time was Ivan Bunin; never sharing much personal affinity, the two men formed an alliance in their relentless anti-Soviet campaign. Besides, having maintained strong contacts with influential French politics lobbying the interests of the Russian immigrants, both ensured that the Russian writers should get some financial support from the French government. A couple of years later another sponsor was found in Tomáš Masaryk who granted personal pensions to some prominent figures in the immigrant Russian writers' community. Merezhkovsky insisted upon severing all the International PEN's contacts with Communist Russia and cancelling French help for the victims of mass hunger in Russian Volga Region arguing, not unreasonably, that those in need will not ever see any of the money or food sent. He criticised the exiled Russian Constituent Assembly's communique which was, in his opinion, too conciliatory in tone. In 1922 the collection of articles and essays of the four authors (Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Filosofov contacts with whom have been restored, and Zlobin) came out under the title The Kingdom of Antichrist, the general idea of the book being that the 'Russian fires', globalist in their nature and intent, promise "either brotherhood in slavery or the end in a common grave" for the European nations. In winter 1925 a small literary and philosophy circle was formed by Merezhkovsky and Gippius; two years later it was officially launched as the Green Lamp group. With the Novy Korabl (The New Ship) magazine of its own, the group attracted the whole of the Russian intellectual elite in exile and remained the important cultural center for the next ten years. "We are the Criticism of Russia as such, the latter's disembodied Thought and Conscience, free to judge its present and foresee its future," wrote Merezhkovsky of the Green Lamp mission. In 1928 at the First Congress of Russian writers in exile held in Belgrade, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia bestowed on Merezhkovsky the Order of Savva of the 1st Degree merited by his services for world culture. A series of lectures organised for Merezhkovsky and Gippius by the Serbian Academy signalled the launch of the Yugoslav-based "Russian Library" series, where the best works of Bunin, Merezhkovsky, Gippius, Alexander Kuprin, Aleksey Remizov, Konstantin Balmont, Ivan Shmelyov and Igor Severyanin came out over the next several