years. Things started to deteriorate in the early 1930s; with the Czech and the French grants withdrawn and much feared Socialists rising high on the French political scene, Merezhkovskys looked southwards and found there a sympathizer in Benito Mussolini who took great interest in the work and views of a Russian writer, now a multiple Nobel Prize for literature nominee. Merezhkovsky's literary activities: 1925–1941 In the mid-1920s, disappointed by the Western cultural elite's reaction to his political manifestos, Merezhkovsky returned to religious and philosophical essays, but in the new format, that of a monumental free-form experimental-styled treatise. Some of his new books were biographies, some just extensive, amorphous researches in ancient history. Speaking of the first two of them, The Birth of Gods. Tutankhamen in Crete (1925) and Messiah (1928), Merezhkovsky thus explained his credo: "Many people think I am a historical novelist, which is wrong. What I use the Past for is only searching for the Future. The Present is a kind of exile to me. My true home is the Past/Future, which is where I belong." Of the three fundamental books Merezhkovsky created in the late 1920s early 1930s another trilogy took shape, loosely linked by the concept of man's possible way to salvation. The Mystery of the Three: Egypt and Babylon (Prague, 1925) was followed by the Mystery of the West: Atlantis-Europe (Berlin, 1930), where the cherished Third Testament idea took an apocalyptic, Nietzschean turn. The third, Unfamiliar Jesus (1932, Belgrade), is seen in retrospect as the strongest of the three. All of a sudden Merezhkovsky, a prolific writer again, drifted into the focus of the Nobel Prize committee attention. From 1930 onwards Sigurd Agrell, professor of Slavic languages in Lund University, started to methodically nominate Merezhkovsky for the Prize, although, invariably (and rather frustratingly for both), in tandem with Ivan Bunin. In November 1932 Gippius in a letter to Vera Bunina expressed her opinion that Merezhkovsky had no chance of winning "because of his anti-Communist stance," but the truth was, Bunin (no lesser a Communism-loather than his rival) wrote books that were more accessible and, generally, popular. Merezkovsky even suggested they should make a pact and divide the money should one of them ever win, but Bunin took seriously what was meant apparently as a joke and responded with outright refusal. He won the Prize in 1933. Agrell continued nominating Merezhkovsky up until his own death