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The study is devoted to the analysis of the controversy between Zinaida Gippius and Mark Slonim that arose in the mid-1920s on the pages of periodicals of the Russian diaspora. Russian emigration was interested in the dispute over the two branches of literature development, as it concerned the issues of the state of literature of the Russian diaspora and literature of Soviet Russia, as well as the future of these literatures. Gippius argued that literature in Russia is in decline, because it is “torn from the roots”, and Russian literature is preserved only in emigration. Slonim insisted that the literature of emigration was stagnating, and the literature of Soviet Russia was giving new names, new literary groups. The field of criticism of literature of the Russian diaspora in the 1920s and 1930s is poorly studied at the present stage of literary criticism. The controversy between Slonim and Gippius has not been considered by researchers before, this is the novelty of the work. Russian literature the examination of different points of view on the state and future of the two branches of Russian literature in the mid-1920s makes it possible to understand the public mood among the Russian emigration and their view of contemporary literature. The paper traces the dispute between Slonim and Gippius, which influenced the literary life of emigration in the 1920s, identifies issues in which both critics agreed, as well as theses that the authors continued to prove. Russian literature historians emphasize that Slonim put forward a thesis, which will be developed in the future by historians of literature of the Russian diaspora, that the literature of the Russian diaspora is not an independent literature, but only one of the branches of Russian literature.