About 70 folders and notebooks relating to the proposed edition of Plato's Cratylus; biographical notes on Bachtin by academic colleagues and others; other miscellaneous folders and notebooks; various lectures and lecture notes on Tolstoy, Mayakovsky, Pushkin, linguistics, realism in drama, the place of poetry in a capitalist state; essays and essay notes on Homer and Greek history in French; le myth et la rlalit historique in French; notebooks in French; a mixture of lectures in Russian and English; writings; notes; correspondence; some newspaper articles by Bachtin in Russian; manuscript items sent by Russian emigre writers to Bachtin; poetry manuscripts in English and Russian.
A later deposit comprises writings, poetry, lectures, biographical sketches, records of conversations. A recent purchase comprises exercise and notebooks containing hundreds of poems in various stages of completion, largely unpublished and unknown; lectures, letters and other personal papers.