Breaking crockery over Russia

 This is a guest post by Miranda Ingram, a well-known English international journalist. While we all watch in shock the events in Ukraine, this is what she has to say addressing the Russians.

To Sasha, my husband, and your Russian friends – our Russian friends…

Not only the best, but almost all the years of my life have been inseparable from my love of Russia, Russians. Russian-ness. 

Those of us who are afflicted call it “the Russian disease”.

I had a mother who talked incessantly about Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn. About Lenin, even.  When I was a child, she wrote an essay about Vladimir Ilyich for an international competition and won a tour of the Soviet Union. The local papers wrote about it.

Thus my enchantment with everything Russian was a fait accompli even before my first faltering words when I chose Russian as a second language at school.

I soaked up Russian literature through my teens, took my degree in Russian history and politics, visited the country both as a student and, later, for work.

I moved to Russia!

I got to know every inch of Moscow, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, spent weekends at dachas, swimming in rivers, picking mushrooms in the forest, eating new potatoes and dill and sour cream and berries. 

I travelled right across Russia and all over the former Soviet Union.

I married a Russian, for God’s sake. 

I have Russian children. Sasha doesn’t like me to say “half-Russian” – ‘they are both Russian and English’, he says.

Since we left Moscow, I have missed Russia more than he does. He calls me part-Russian.

I was with you in August 1991, outside the White House, watching tracer bullets in the sky and cheering for Yeltsin. I breathed that hope and joy that filled the air. ‘In two years, maybe five at most,’ my future husband promised, ‘Russia will be a normal country’. 

We laughed; it seemed possible.

Of course, the 90s were wild, then along came Putin with a simple deal. He would put sausages into those empty shops and nobody need bother themselves about what was going on in the Kremlin. 

Not rich, by any means, but comfortable, a Russian middle class started to shop at Zara and Ikea, drink Starbucks coffee and watch Netflix on tv.

Just like people all over the world.

A modest professional class also learned to travel, eat oysters, choose French cheeses. Civilised global participants, some of you emigrated - to the States, France, the UK. Some of you stayed. On Facebook, via WhatsApp, in person when possible, you continued to debate politics. 

You were appalled by the death of Politkovskaya. 

You bemoaned curbs on freedom and wrote articles that were just inoffensive enough to slip past the censor.

You admired, or didn’t admire, Pussy Riot and Navalny. 

And now you are in shock. My husband, Sasha, rings Ukrainian friends to apologise even while he can’t take in what is happening. 

He is depressed. He feels it is somehow his fault. 

Don’t be silly, I comforted. It’s not your fault. We watched the news and grieved together.

And then I snapped. You know what – I turned on him – you are right: this is your fault. All of you - you, Andrei, Mikhail, Sergei, Lev, Alexei, Vasily…

Like the sausage-buying masses, you took your eyes off the Kremlin.

How could you? With your history? With your story? 

A few years ago, I wrote a novel set in 1990s Russia in which I despaired that within a couple of years of the defeat of a one-Party state, “ordinary” Russians had already lost interest in politics. 

And among you intellectuals, that post-putsch appetite for opening the files and learning the truth about the past quickly waned. 

Who wanted to rake through all that?

Yet if you don’t know your past, I argued, what was done to you, how you responded –  who you are, in other words – how can you hope to avoid the same mistakes again? Sleepwalking into yet another dictatorship?

This was your job - you, Sasha, and your friends, our friends, I ranted as I smashed crockery and burst into tears.

And you, Sasha, agreed with me, for once. You’re right, you said.

Oh, I don’t blame you New Intelligentsia entirely. I was uneasy with Western boasts of “winning” the cold war. I understood the humiliation of nozhki busha. I was livid at Britain’s spineless response to the Litvinenko murder in the heart of London and Europe’s and the West’s pusillanimous acceptance of Putin’s various annexations.

Nevertheless, I feel cheated. I must be like those true-believing communists who were told in 1991 that what they had believed in all their lives was a cruel joke.

I have loved, admired – romanticised, yes, been frustrated by, of course – Russia nearly all my life. And now those years of belief have been jerked from under me and my hand-woven Russian carpet turns out to be just a moth-eaten doormat.

After a lifetime of extolling the wonder that is Russia – the literature, art, music, science, warmth and that vast, vast nature – I no longer wish to recall my adventures, tell my anecdotes, bring out my photographs and souvenirs, cook Russian food for friends.

Will I be able to love Russia and Russians and Russian-ness again?

And you, does protesting that you “never supported Putin” make your hands feel clean when you introduce yourselves: “I am Russian”?

©M.Ingram 2022 ©publication A.Anichkin

Tolstoy and Dolokhov.

Fyodor Tolstoy the American.
Photo of C19 o/c portrait by Shakko.

Tolstoy based Dolokhov, a curious secondary character in 'War and Peace", on several real-life men. One of them was Fyodor Tolstoy the American (Толстой-Американец), Leo Tolstoy's cousin-uncle. As a young boy Tolstoy the future writer knew him personally and was very impressed by his personality and the legends that surrounded him.

Fyodor Tolstoy, among other things, killed eleven people at duels and was demoted to the ranks several times but got restored after feats of heroism in Russia's many wars of the time, including the main battle with Napoleon in 1812, the Battle of Borodino. He got the nickname 'Amerikanets' after taking part in a round-the-world sea expedition.

There is a portrait of Fyodor Tolstoy as a young man in Leo Tolstoy's Moscow house, now a museum.

The new TV adaptation of 'War and Peace,' currently running on BBC 1 and cable channels around the world, plays up the characters of Dolokhov and Sonia to the point of overshadowing the main characters, Pierre, Andrei and Natasha.

At first glance, it may seem a fault with the script author Andrew Davies and director Tim Harper. However, a more careful look at the character of Fyodor Dolokhov makes it clear that 'reading up' Dolokhov is a valid choice that may explain a lot in Leo Tolstoy's novel and the reappraise the comparative weight of characters in the book.

In a sense, Dolokhov is as much a Leo Tolstoy as Pierre, into whom the writer and thinker put most of himself, as conventional interpretation tells us. A writer, especially a great one, cannot help splitting his soul and putting bits of it into the characters he creates. Dolokhov is a kind of horcrux of Tolstoy himself. He reflects the character of Tolstoy the man as much as the floppy humanist Pierre. The cold fury, the anger against conventions, the scornful nationalism, the desire to be accepted rivalling only the desire to humiliate the accepting, the grand society, — those are the traits that were driving Leo Tolstoy too, in life and in writing.

The writer, before his marriage, was not alien to excessive drinking, partying with the gypsies and losing and winning, though mostly losing, in card games.

Tolstoy's appearance and peculiar mannerisms bear striking resemblance with that of Dolokhov. Here is how WS Maugham describes Tolstoy:
"He was irritable, brutally contradictory and arrogantly indifferent to other people's feelings. Turgenev has said that he never met anything more disconcerting than Tolstoy's inquisitorial look, which, accompanied by a few biting words, could goad a man to fury."

Tolstoy challenged Turgenev to a duel and friends had difficulty in preventing him from actually fighting while reconciliation took more than ten years. Tolstoy's stare, that unnerved Turgenev so much, is the same as Dolokhov's: "Dolokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, and that smile of his which seemed to say, 'Ah! This is what I like!'" (from Garnett's translation.) This is from the scene at the English Club in Moscow when Pierre challenges Dolokhov to a duel.

That same straight, cruel inquisitional look follows Dolokhov in all his appearances in the novel, all the way to the last episode with him, when he orders that no French prisoners should be kept alive. Before that final scene with Dolokhov, he and Denisov, both commanders of small partisan troops that raided Napoleon's army behind the lines, have a fierce argument about the treatment of the prisoners. It appears that Dolokhov, unlike Denisov, was systematically slaughtering them. Denisov is repulsed by that.

But where does Tolstoy, the great humanist, stand in that argument? Curiously, when Pierre meets Prince Andrew on the eve of the Battle of Borodino and listens to his friend's famous monologue on the 'latent patriotism' of the Russians, Prince Andrew says exactly what later Dolokhov says to Denisov, even with greater clarity and ferocity: "One thing I would do if I had the power," he began again, "I would not take prisoners. Why take prisoners? It's chivalry! The French have destroyed my home and are on their way to destroy Moscow, they have outraged and are outraging me every moment. They are my enemies. In my opinion they are all criminals. And so thinks Timokhin and the whole army. They should be executed!" And later, in the same monologue: "Take no prisoners, but kill and be killed!" Pierre looks at Andrew, both frightened and compassionate, but agrees with everything he said.

Horcruxes are from JK Rowling's Harry Potter. They are magical objects where the dark wizard hides parts of his split soul. In Somerset Maugham's essay on Tolstoy in the book 'Great Novelists and Their Novels' (1954) there is a shrewd observation:
"There is a point in the writer's psychology that I have never seen mentioned, though it must be obvious to anyone who has studied the lives of authors. Every creative writer's work is, to some extent at least, a sublimation of instincts, desires, daydreams, call them what you like, which for one cause or another he has repressed, and by giving them literary expression he is freed of the compulsion to give them the further release of action. But it is not a complete satisfaction. He is left with a feeling of inadequacy. That is the ground of the man of letters' glorification of the man of action and the unwilling, envious admiration with which he regards him."

Applying this to Dolokhov, it becomes apparent that the character is part of Tolstoy, the part that the writer couldn't admit in himself or couldn't allow in himself, and so decided to give it to his literary creation.

And yes, JK Rowling took her Antonin Dolohov, a Death Eater, one of the cruellest wizards, from Tolstoy's 'War and Peace.'

Note: Wikipedia has an article on Maugham's book, referring to it as 'Ten Novels and Their Authors' of 1954. My American paper edition of the book is titled 'Great Novelists and Their Novels' with copyright dated 1948. 

In this video Dolokhov and Pierre duel, from Sergey Bondarchuk's cinema version (1965-67) -



The Borodino Battle, 1972 series, Prince Andrei's monologue with 'No quarter!' at 24 min. into the video -

BBC's new War and Peace: where is the music?

(The Hussars' Ballad)

A hussar hero of 1812, Denis Davydov

I know what I really-really miss in BBC's new TV adaptation of Tolstoy's 'War and Peace', it's the music.

Many greatest scenes in the novel, and in previous screen versions, are accompanied by great musical background: Natasha singing and dancing, armies marching and the great ball with the Emperor. In the first two episodes of the BBC series there is hardly any music, if at all.

BBC's guide to War and Peace and the new TV series has a dedicated page here. Don't get lost in Russian names and complicated narrative.

The lack of music on the one hand, and the obvious 'sexing-up' of Tolstoy in the new adaptation reminded me of a tremendously popular Soviet musical comedy 'The Hussars Ballad' ("Гусарская баллада", Wikipedia article in English here). Eldar Ryazanov's film is based on a play 'A Long Time Ago' ("Давным-давно") by Alexander Gladkov with original score by Tikhon Khrennikov.

The story is a comedy of errors. Shurochka (Alexandra), a young patriotically minded girl runs away from home dressed up as a hussar cornet (second lieutenant, like the young Churchill) and joins the Russian army fighting Napoleon's invasion in 1812. There, she finds her own true love, gets decorated with a medal, meets field-marshal Kutuzov and the hussar hero of the war Denis Davydov (Davyd Vassiliev in the film and Vassily Denisov in Tolstoy's novel). All along she and others sing beautiful songs.

The film and the musical numbers are still very popular and Poruchik (lieutenant) Rzhevsky, the main male character, since the film has started a folk lore life of its own as a hero of numerous bawdy jokes. This is where the 'sexing-up' reference comes in.

Story lines in the film are reminiscent of Tolstoy's many subplots and there really was a woman in 1812 who sneaked in disguise into the Russian cavalry during the war.

The film is available in full on the Mosfilm's YouTube channel here. (no subtitles, but you won't need them). And here is the Song of King Henry IV from the film, the whole Napoleonic invasion of 1812 in 100 seconds (lyrics unrelated to the story).

 

Banging on the table. War and Peace on BBC (2016)

(epsiode 2)

Dolokhov prototype.

Dolokhov (Tom Burke) banging Helene (Tuppence Middleton) on a dining table is definitely the high point of Episode 2 in the new BBC adaptation of Tolstoy's novel.

NB: wine in glasses and carafe in the foreground wasn't moving! How does one achieve that, I don't know.

Pierre is wonderful and Andrei still disappointing.

Picture: Colonel Alexander Figner (1887-1813) on whom Tolstoy is said to have based the character of Dolokhov. (wikipedia)

According to BBC, the adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel averaged 6.3 million viewers, peaking at 6.7 million. It was up against ITV's Endeavour and spy drama Deutschland 83 on Channel 4, which averaged 4.4 million and 1.2 million viewers respectively.

Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' New BBC Adaptation (2016)

Tolstoy.

BBC 1 (TV) started a new TV adaptation of Tolstoy's epic 'War and Peace' (by the way, not rpt not the longest novel ever) with Lily James (Downton's Lady Rose) as Natasha, Paul Dano as Pierre and James Norton as Andrei. (article about the cast in Radio Times)

Actors playing leading characters admitted to not having read the book before, and Andrew Davies (script) and Tom Harper (director) skipped a few crucial bits in the opening episode.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, it’s a 6-part series. Prince Andrei, a central character, was only sketched through his dislike of women, while his dislike of the high society and his ideas on Napoleon have all but disappeared;  and with Pierre-Helene they modified the entrapment scene, leaving out the most exciting moment, Pierre's feeble declaration of love, in French, which they had in the 1972 TV series with Anthony Hopkins.

Rebecca Front (wikipedia about her) as Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya, a very minor character in the novel, definitely upstaged all others in the first episode in her confrontation with Prince Vassily (Stephen Rea, wikipedia). Front, a very well-known British comedian and actress, has such a strong presence that everybody else around her somehow disappears into the shadows.

Some viewers were also puzzled by the skull on Natasha's cleavage seen on a very steampunk promotional poster (here). What is it? Steampunk or not, it may be interpreted, at least jokingly,
as a surreptitious hint on Pierre, him becoming a free mason in the course of the book, with the skull, or Adam's head, being the masons’ secret symbol. Tolstoy devotes much attention to masons in the novel. Let's see how the makers of the film tackled this, or not tackled at all.

Pierre and Helene entrappment scene ("Je vous aime") from the 1972 series —

Feelin' Levin. (Maudes' version)

Hay harvest. (scrrenshot from 'Anna Karenina', 1967)

A few months ago I compared here the three translations of a passage from Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina' to show the various devices used by different translators, and a few amusing errors they made in interpreting the text written over a hundred years ago (1877).

The three translations quoted were by Constance Garnett, Richard Peaver/Larissa Volokhonsky and Nathan Haskell Dole. I was rearranging books on my Russian bookshelf and had a look at another version, the 1918 translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude. The couple were Tolstoy's contemporaries and friends. There are books by Aylmer Maude in Tolstoy's library at Yasnaya Polyana. At least there were when I last visited.

This is the passage from Tolstoy with a few words highlighted for comparison:  

Тит освободил место, и Левин пошел за ним. Трава была низкая, придорожная, и Левин, давно не косивший и смущенный обращенными на себя взглядами, в первые минуты косил дурно, хотя и махал сильно. Сзади его послышались голоса:— Насажена неладно, рукоятка высока, вишь, ему сгибаться как, —сказал один.— Пяткой больше налягай, — сказал другой.— Ничего, ладно, настрыкается, — продолжал старик. — Вишь, пошел... Широк ряд берешь, умаешься... Хозяин, нельзя, для себя старается! А вишь, подрядье-то! За это нашего брата по горбу, бывало.

And here is the corresponding passage by the Maudes (from the Oxford University Press / Humphrey Milford edition, the World's Classics, 1926):

Titus made room for Levin, and Levin followed him. By the roadside the grass was short and tough, and Levin, who had not done any mowing for a long time and was confused by so many eyes upon him, mowed badly for the first ten minutes, though he swung his scythe with much vigour. He heard voices behind him:
'It's not properly adjusted, the grip is not right. See how he has to stoop!' said one.
'Hold the heel lower,' said another.
'Never mind! It's all right: he'll get into it,' said the old man. 'There he goes...'
'You are taking too wide a swath, you'll get knocked up.' ... 'He's the master, he must work; he's working for himself!'... 'But look how uneven! ... 'That's what the likes of us used to get a thump on the back for.'

There is more to think about than it seems when just reading the passage. What is this освободил место/made room, is it that Tit/Titus had mown a space out for Levin to follow him, or did he just move to the side within a row of harvesters who were about to move through the field in formation? What exactly is смущенный — confused, embarassed, unsettled or disconcerted (Garnett)? Instead of 'had not done any mowing for a long time', Peaver/Volokhonsky write 'had done no mowing for a long time.' Which is a better way of conveying Tolstoy? Or there is no difference? Strunk and White in their 'Elements of Style' recommend putting statements in positive form (Part II, 15). Does it apply here?

The bolded words show, I think, that in Maudes' approach there is a tendency to explain Tolstoy's detail while slightly deviating from the text itself. Tolstoy doesn't say the grass was tough, it is just short by the roadside. Adding 'tough' adds to why it was difficult to cut. Tolstoy's muzhik just says 'Hey, look at the swath!' But what about it? And Maudes add: 'Look how uneven!'

They avoid explaining why it makes it awkward to mow when the grip on the scythe is set too high for Levin. They just say 'it's not right.' Evasive, but the reader understands what is going on.

Read a more detailed analysis in 'Feeling Levin. The Scythe, the Swath and the Hired Men.'

This is the first part of 'Anna Karenina', the 1967 Soviet film version of the Tolstoy's novel. Hay harvest scene begins at 57:10 min. - 

Feeling Levin. The scythe, the swath and the hired men.

(three translations compared)

Anichkin, who had not done any mowing for a long while, and was disconcerted by the eyes fastened upon him, cut badly for the first moments... 

It then came back to me, both the technique and the enjoyment. A friend came to help with clearing the garden, he had a scythe, and I had a good go. My uncle, a forester in a small village near Pskov, taught me to mow with a scythe and explained how it worked. 

It also made me ‘feel Levin’, and I looked up the famous mowing scene (hay harvesting) in Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’, when Levin joins in with the muzhiks. (Watch the hay harvest scene in a clip from the Soviet screen version of 'Anna Karenina', 1967 at the end of this post)

This is the passage from Tolstoy:  

Тит освободил место, и Левин пошел за ним. Трава была низкая, придорожная, и Левин, давно не косивший и смущенный обращенными на себя взглядами, в первые минуты косил дурно, хотя и махал сильно. Сзади его послышались голоса:— Насажена неладно, рукоятка высока, вишь, ему сгибаться как, —сказал один.— Пяткой больше налягай, — сказал другой.— Ничего, ладно, настрыкается, — продолжал старик. — Вишь, пошел... Широк ряд берешь, умаешься... Хозяин, нельзя, для себя старается! А вишь, подрядье-то! За это нашего брата по горбу, бывало.

Same passage in Constance Garnett’s translation:

Tit made room, and Levin started behind him. The grass was short close to the road, and Levin, who had not done any mowing for a long while, and was disconcerted by the eyes fastened upon him, cut badly for the first moments, though he swung his scythe vigorously. Behind him he heard voices:"It’s not set right; handle’s too high; see how he has to stoop to it," said one."Press more on the heel," said another."Never mind, he’ll get on all right," the old man resumed."He’s made a start... You swing it too wide, you’ll tire yourself out.... The master, sure, does his best for himself! But see the grass missed out! For such work us fellows would catch it!"

Same passage in Richard Pevear / Larissa Volokhonsky’s translation:

Titus cleared his place and Levin followed him. The grass near the road was low, and Levin, who had done no mowing for a long time and was embarassed by the looks directed at him, mowed poorly for the first few minutes, though he swung strongly. Voices were heard behind him:
‘It’s not hafted right, the handle’s too long see how he had to bend,’ one voice said.‘Bear down on the heel,’ said another.‘Never mind, he’ll get himself set right,’ the old man went on. ‘See, there he goes... The swath’s too wide, you’ll get tired... He’s the owner, never fear, he’s doing his best! And look at the hired men! Our kind would get it in the neck for that.’

Same passage translated by Nathan Haskell Dole:

Sef opened the way, and Levin followed in his track. The grass was short and tough; and Levin, who had not mowed in a long time, and was confused by the watchful eyes of the men, at first made very bad work of it, though he swung the scythe energetically. Voices were heard behind him:
"He does not hold his scythe right: the sned is too high. See how he stoops like," said one. "Bears his hand on too much," said another. "No matter, it goes pretty well," said the head man. "Look, he goes at a great rate ! Cuts a wide swath! .... He'll get played out. The master is trying it for himself as hard as he can, but look at his row! For such work my brother was beaten once." 

(upd: see the Maudes' version a the end of this post, 9 Dec 2015)

Russian scythe
Photo by Vladimir Menkov

Garnett and Dole are Tolstoy’s younger contemporaries, and perhaps they could visualise the scythe and may have seen mowers at work with it. Pevear/Volokhonsky’s translation was published in 2000, when few, except a number of country dwelling aficionados would have good acquaintance with the scythe, especially with the old Russian type of the scythe. It has a long, straight, not curved, wooden shaft, a relatively narrow but long blade, longer than the modern Western garden scythe, and a V-shaped wooden handle, that grips the shaft somewhere around the middle. It can be clearly seen in this modern photo (2006, Nizhny Novgorod region on the Volga).

The V-shaped grip was tightened by a piece of rope, or leather, or sometimes with strips of fresh soft bark, as my uncle did. The trick was to adjust the handle on the shaft, higher or lower, in such a way that you could hold your back practically straight while making the right-left, left-right swaying movements, keeping the ‘heel’ (the place where the blade is attached to the shaft) as low to the ground as possible and stepping forward step by step. The grass would fall neatly in a row to your left. A team of mowers would move across the field in a staggered formation, leaving the rows across the whole harvested area. Now, these rows are called подрядье - podrYAdye. (Подрядье: ср. Край скошенной полосы, ряда. Толковый словарь Ефремовой. Т. Ф. Ефремова. 2000.), i.e a swath, edge of the line of mowed grass or crop. A swath is also, of course, the width of grass that the mower catches in one swing, which in Russian in this sense is ряд, same as row. The muzhiks are criticising the messiness, untidiness of the swaths that Levin is leaving behind him. 

As you see, the two Tolstoy contemporaries caught his meaning regarding the set-up of the scythe and the mowing techniques, while the modern duo of Pevear/Volokhonsky completely missed both. From their translation it appears that they took the scythe to be hafted incorrectly and its shaft too long, while in fact it was just the V-shaped grip for the right hand (рукоятка), that apparently wasn’t adjusted to suit Levin’s height. It also shows in the incorrectly ‘corrected’ word that Tolstoy uses: рукоятка высока — the handle’s too long, instead of the correct translation in two other versions: handle’s too high (Garnett) and the sned is too high (Dole), though the latter uses a rarer word (Collins’ definition here).

Dole stumbles on придорожная grass, omitting this detail and adding ‘tough’ unnecessarily, while Garnett understands Tolstoy’s meaning — near the road. And in Dole’s, there is a really funny misunderstanding of the phrase ‘наш брат’ at the end of the passage. The expression is quite common and simply means ‘our lot’ (compare ‘all men are brothers’), not our or my brother.

Pevear/Volokhonsky boldly translate подрядье (swath) as ‘hired men.’ They were probably thrown off by the previous sentence ‘He’s the owner, never fear, he’s doing his best!’ (for himself as opposed to the hired mowers). Подряд (podryad) means contract, so the translators must have read подрядье as a collective noun for ‘men on contract’ without suspecting that there may be another meaning.

Out of the three, based on this passage, the winner is Garnett. Apart from being correct, to my, admittedly non-native ear, her translation flows more naturally, has a rhythm resembling Tolstoy’s. But that, of course, is a matter or taste.

Add. 9 Dec. 2015 (read a short analysis on Tetradki here):

And here is the corresponding passage by Louise and Aylmer Maude (from the Oxford University Press / Humphrey Milford edition, the World's Classics, 1926):

Titus made room for Levin, and Levin followed him. By the roadside the grass was short and tough, and Levin, who had not done any mowing for a long time and was confused by so many eyes upon him, mowed badly for the first ten minutes, though he swung his scythe with much vigour. He heard voices behind him:
'It's not properly adjusted, the grip is not right. See how he has to stoop!' said one.
'Hold the heel lower,' said another.
'Never mind! It's all right: he'll get into it,' said the old man. 'There he goes...'
'You are taking too wide a swath, you'll get knocked up.' ... 'He's the master, he must work; he's working for himself!'... 'But look how uneven! ... 'That's what the likes of us used to get a thump on the back for.'

Hay harvest scene from 'Anna Karenina', 1967 —

Tolstoy.ru, Official.

This news came a while ago. I have checked the Tolstoy.ru website today and seems to be an impressive piece of work with 'official' full texts of his huge body of work with commentary. It appears to be largely based on the 90 volume Anniversary edition of Tolstoy's collected works that came out in the Soviet Union around 1928, the 100th anniversary of the writer's birth. The site also features news on conferences and seminars related to Tolstoy and his legacy.

Here is what RIA Novosti says about the project:

“We wanted to come up with an official website that will contain academically justified information,” said Fyokla Tolstaya, the writer’s great-great-granddaughter, who works at Moscow’s Tolstoy museum. “Nowadays, it’s very important [to know] who posts information online.”
[...]
All of his novels, short stories, fairy tales, essays and personal letters will be available online for free and be downloadable in PDF, FB2 and EPUB formats, recognized by most e-book readers and computers, she said.
Tolstoy’s works were part of the obligatory high-school curriculum in the Soviet Union and Russia. Generations of Russian students have had to read the more than 800-page “War and Peace” – with boys preferring the war and girls the peace, according to a popular saying.

Crimean words in English.

The Thin Red Line.

Ukrainian crisis has brought back place names and events in Crimea that gave English a number of words and phrases some of which are hardly associated now with the war between Russia and a coalition of Britain, France and Turkey (plus the Kingdom of Sardinia) in 1853-1856. 

Here is a short list of Crimean words and phrases in English.

My top three are:

Balaklava (or Balaclava) — a small port to the East of Sevastopol that served as the main British base during the war. It gave name to the type of knitted hat that covers head, neck and most of the face. Patriotic English ladies are said to have produced them en masse for the troops ill-prepared for the harsh Winter campaign. Beloved of terrorists, robbers and spetsnaz in late 20th Century its name became disconnected from its origins. What's interesting is that 'balaclava' wasn't used in the hat sense in Russian until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It was imported in the English sense only recently. (choose from a selection of Balaclava articles on Wikipedia.)

Raglan — Lord Raglan was the commander of the British army in Crimea (and died there towards the end of the war.) The invention of raglan, a type of clothing that has sleeves without seams on the shoulders, is named after him. Seamless shoulders allowed freer movement and prevented rainwater from getting under coats. Raglan is still popular. (wiki article about him)

Cardigan — Lord Cardigan was the commander of British light cavalry during the Battle of Balaclava. The Charge of the Light Brigade immortalised him. Tennyson wrote the poem based on a report in The Times and when Cardigan returned to England before the end of the war he was mobbed as a national hero. Only later doubts about his role and character began to emerge. The type of knitted jacket, buttoned down the front and with thick turn-down collar is said to have been introduced by Lord Cardigan. (wiki article about him, wiki about cardigans.) 

Other Crimean words:

Crimea, Crimean War

Sevastopol (often Sebastopol) — Russian naval base and city on the Western tip of Crimea. Site of two long land sieges, during the Crimean War and during the second world war. Young Leo Tolstoy was a front-line artillery officer during the siege and wrote Sebastopol Sketches about the war. They were quickly published, were a huge success and secured Tolstoy's reputation as one of the foremost Russian writers. His method, that fully flourished in War and Peace, can already be seen in the Sketches.

Charge of the Light Brigade, see above.

The Thin Red Line — the phrase comes from the Times correspondent W.H.Russel's account the Highlanders action against the Russian cavalry charge. They formed a line only two deep. It was their gallantry that saved the day at the Battle of Balaclava. Later the phrase came to mean an overstretched defensive effort. 

Alma — is a river in Crimea, site of the first major battle between the coalition and the Russians, won by the invading army. Alma became a popular name in Britain after the battle. Crimean Alma is of Turkic origin. In Crimean Tartar it means 'apple.'

Potemkin, the battleship and the fake villages are also linked to Crimea but of an earlier period. Prince Grigory Potemkin was a favourite of Empress Catherine II. In 1780s he directed Russian military and political advances in the south against Turkey and the Tartars. He annexed Crimea for Russia in 1783. The episode with the building of fake prosperous villages, sometimes just the fronts of houses, is disputed by contemporaries and later historians. It refers to the visit of Catherine to Crimea in 1787. A German account of the trip described the massive building of fake villages on the orders of Potemkin to impress Catherine. 

The Battleship Potemkin, made famous by Eisenstein's 1925 film, was built at the end of 1890s and named after Prince Potemkin. The mutiny described in Eisenstein's film happened in 1905, during the first Russian revolution. 

There are many other references to Crimea in English. Chekhov, for example, lived in Crimea towards the end of his life. The Lady and the Dog was written there and describes Yalta, the fashionable resort city on the southern coast of Crimea. 

If you have additions to my list, they are most welcome.

Picture: The Thin Red Line, painting, o/c, by Robert Gibb, 1881, National War Museum of Scotland. Image from here.

Read this story in Russian here.

Tolstoy is my Cat.

Almost by accident — I was looking up a favourite quote on scrambled eggs and the Russian revolution — I stumbled upon a literary blog called 'Tolstoy is my Cat'. Aptly, as the publisher, Lyndsay Wheble, has a cat grandly called Tolstoy.

As both names suggest, she has an interest in Russian literature and blogs about it. This is why I decided to recommend her blog to whoever studies Russia or shares the interest in things Russian.

I've only read a dozen posts by Lyndsay but I was impressed with here original and unpretentiously fresh take on what she reads. Don't expect academic depth or emotional width, which, to me, is a plus. Expect clean and appealing sincerety/

Here is a short excerpt from the Cat's review of  'Tolstoy: A Russian Life', by Rosamund Bartlett

It struck me some way through this book that Tolstoy's character and idiosyncrasies bear a  striking resemblance to Charles Dickens's; in particular, his huge energy, socialist reformist missions and sadly, his unkindness to his wife. Both also neglected their families in favour of looking after the fortunes of the country at large, worrying about other people's families and children rather than their own. They could also both be remarkably unfeeling: for instance, Tolstoy's wife Sonya gave birth to 7 children AFTER telling Tolstoy that she'd had enough (by that point I think she'd had 5) (!!) as he refused to allow her an opinion on the subject; Dickens's domestic flaws are well-known enough for me not to have to go into them here. Both, I think it would be fair to say, were essential men for their time, but people you wanted to admire from afar, rather than live close to.

Tolstoy's verdict on Pussy Riot.

Please read the Russian version of this post, including the quote, on "Тетрадки" here.

'No one present seemed conscious that all that was going on here was the greatest blasphemy and a supreme mockery of that same Christ in whose name it was being done.'

This passage is from Chapter XL of The Resurrection, or the Awakening, translation is by Louise Maude. (The full text of the Chapter is here.) This chapter and many other passages deemed harmful to the prestige of the Russian government and the Orhtodox Church were banned by the tsar's censors and were not published until 1917. 

From the passage below, you can see how relevant Tolstoy's train of thought is to what's happening today around the feminist punk group Pussy Riot condemned to two years in a colony for 'hooliganism', i.e. doing a few jumps and hand-waves while dressed in brightly colored balaklavas, dresses and leggings. They were filmed and the footage was made into a YouTube hit 'punk-prayer' with the title 'Virgin Mary, rid us of Putin.'  

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Mariya Alekhina and Ekaterina Samutsevitch, two of them with small children, had already spent nearly half a year in pre-trial detention. They were denied bail. 

This is the quote:

'And none of those present, from the inspector down to Maslova, seemed conscious of the fact that this Jesus, whose name the priest repeated such a great number of times, and whom he praised with all these curious expressions, had forbidden the very things that were being done there; that He had prohibited not only this meaningless much-speaking and the blasphemous incantation over the bread and wine, but had also, in the clearest words, forbidden men to call other men their master, and to pray in temples; and had ordered that every one should pray in solitude, had forbidden to erect temples, saying that He had come to destroy them, and that one should worship, not in a temple, but in spirit and in truth; and, above all, that He had forbidden not only to judge, to imprison, to torment, to execute men, as was being done here, but had prohibited any kind of violence, saying that He had come to give freedom to the captives.

No one present seemed conscious that all that was going on here was the greatest blasphemy and a supreme mockery of that same Christ in whose name it was being done. No one seemed to realise that the gilt cross with the enamel medallions at the ends, which the priest held out to the people to be kissed, was nothing but the emblem of that gallows on which Christ had been executed for denouncing just what was going on here. That these priests, who imagined they were eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine, did in reality eat and drink His flesh and His blood, but not as wine and bits of bread, but by ensnaring "these little ones" with whom He identified Himself, by depriving them of the greatest blessings and submitting them to most cruel torments, and by hiding from men the tidings of great joy which He had brought. That thought did not enter into the mind of any one present.'

The painting by Ilya Repin 'Tolstoy Barefoot' was painted in Pussy Riot colours by Tetradki/©Anichkin.

BBC's Map to Life and Fate: Wrong Beard?

Readers of Russian novels often complain that it is difficult to follow the narrative because of the complexity of names. People can be called by their name, nickname, full formal name and patronymic, or by surname or title. Add to this numerous affectionate-familiar suffixes used with the main name and it can be a nightmare!

I can assure you that not only it is difficult for a non-Russian reader. It can be quite a challenge for a native Russian reader too.

Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate dramatised on BBC's Radio 4 this week has about a thousand characters, as many as Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Producers of the radioplay found a clever solution: on the programme web-page there is a map of the main characters complete with cartoon portraits and dotted lines showing their relationships.

I found one cartoon a bit puzzling, though. Viktor Shtrum, the physicist working on the Soviet nuclear programme, is given a short beard of the kind that became fashionable among the young Russian intellectuals in 1960s, perhaps after Ernest Hemingway. In 1940s only the eccentric few would wear such a beard, certainly not a relatively young man like Shtrum, raised under Soviet rule.

I wonder if the drawing is after the beard that is currently worn by Kenneth Branagh who plays Shtrum, or Branagh was made to grow a 'Russian' beard for the Life and Fate photoshoot which is now on the BBC web-site?

The episodes broadcasted so far are brilliant. They can be downloaded from the Radio 4 web-site as podcasts.

Can! or Another Example of Russian Conciseness

'Russian verbosity' is a long-standing stereotype supported by mammoths like 'War and Peace' and 'The Brothers Karamazov'. Maugham, in Ashenden, even goes so far as to claim that all his carefully laid plans to stop the bolshevik takeover in 1917 (the writer was on a secret mission in Petrograd during the events) were ruined because members of his team preferred to talk and not to act.

Anyone, who really works with the language, would agree with the opposite: Russian in fact is very concise. Take for instance The Penguin Russian Course AБВ. Before saying anything else about the language it warns: Russian doesn't have articles, 'is' and 'are' are omitted in the present tense and there is no need for additional 'do' or 'does' in the interrogative. How many words do we instantly drop?

Here is a good illustration. I was experimenting with various 'inspirational' designs, in English and Russian, and came up with this one, based on Howard Miller's 'We Can Do It' poster (also referred to as 'Rosie the Riveter', confusing it with Norman Rockwell's Rosie). There is a wonderful story behind it illustrating the evolution of American socrealism (read here), but in this post I just want to point out the conciseness of Russian phrase structure.

In English it wouldn't look or sound right if you just put 'Can!' even though Buzz Lightyear does use it after a flight skills demo in response to Woody's 'Toys can't fly!' challenge.

But in Russian not only the auxiliary 'to be' is dropped in the present tense, but it is also grammatically correct, stylistically neutral (usually) and very common in speech if the first person pronoun is dropped. The sentence appears to be without a subject which is only implied. The object 'it' is also omitted in sentences like this. The three-word English sentence 'it is light' in Russian is just 'светло". (A little note: what is this 'It' in 'It's light'? is it some sort of Higher Power or Superior Being running things for us? Has anyone investigated it?)

These features of Russian sentence structure pose certain difficulties for students and translators, but once mastered – not that difficult! – they provide obvious advantages in speech and, as seen here, in design.

Note: We Can Do It poster is not copyrighted and is in free domain. Which partly explains its popularity compared for instance to Rockwell's Rosie, which is copyrighted. This design is ©A.Anichkin.

Rapture Delayed. But Debbie Harry Loves Dostoyevsky, and Chooses War and Peace

Read the Russian version of this post here.

Rapture, promised for 21 May 2011, did not materialise. Again.



I was wondering why Blondie's Rapture was all over the internet. Until, listening to the evening news, I heard about that poor old sod Harold Camping thanks to whose inspirational prophecy the world got a good occasion to celebrate the glorious weekend.

Over the Rapture weekend, by coincidence or not, Debbie Harry was featured as a guest on the Desert Island Discs programme on Radio 4 and chose Dostoyevsky to take to the island – because he wrote long novels. The very strict presenter reminded her that a title has to bo chosen. Debbie, bless her, only hesitated for a second – and chose War and Peace, also synonymic with long Russian novels.

Never mind it's by Tolstoy – good choice, Debbie! We still love you.

Oxy morons. Russian Means Sober.

A Boulevard Run, by Alexander Deyneka,
from Deyneka.ru

(watch video below)

The beginning of this year has been marked in Russia by a curious clash between the young oxys (sharp ones) and the official morons.

Leo Tolstoy wrote The Living Corpse (1900). Vsevolod Vishnevsky wrote The Optimistic Tragedy (1934).

Both titles are examples of oxymoron, a figure of literary speech where a seeming contradiction in terms is used to create a striking semantic effect. The term is from two Greek words ‘oxus’ (sharp) and ‘moros’ (foolish). 

Sober Russian may be another oxymoron. Consumption figures vary from 9.3 litres of pure alcohol per person per year to 18 litres, depending on who and how counts. But alcohol abuse is often cited as the main factor in Russia’s catastrophic demographic situation. The nation’s population has not been growing since 1991, but declining by several hundred thousand each year. Researchers attribute 600-700 hundred thousand deaths a year to alcohol. 

Since mid-1980s there has been no serious concerted effort to stem the vodka tide.  The problem has long been exacerbated by the fact that tax and excise revenue from alcohol sales is necessary to finance public spending. ‘How do we pay teachers and doctors, if we stop selling vodka?’ is one killing argument I’ve often heard.  

Another factor is the rich culture surrounding drinking which portrays excesses in a largely positive light. 

From the beginning of this year groups of young men and women, mostly students, have been organising mass runs in city parks. They communicate through the internet social networks and bypass official channels. Runners seem to appear from nowhere and in numbers reach 200-400, sometimes up to a thousand. Participants chant the slogan ‘Russki znachit trezvy’ – [being] ‘Russian means [being] sober’. They warm up, run and some have dips in holes made in city ponds for Epiphnay rites. The atmosphere apparently is good-natured and the young people seem to be well-behaved.

This youth action caught officials unprepared and struggling to work out how to react. Nervous and tetchy after ugly race riots in Moscow last December, they took it as another ‘fascist’ or ‘nationalist’ demonstration. Police were sent in and arrests were made. The official reaction caused much amusement – and growing anger among the sober runners and general public. 

Here is what an organiser of one recent run says on gradmar.ru web-site:

‘It isn’t correct to compare the new initiative with the story-line of, let’s say, Forrest Gump. The main character there was running across the USA ‘to get away from himself’, or if you will, ‘to find himself’ and later realised that there was no sense in what he was doing. The background was sharp satire of the American political system. Here we have a very clear aim, we know what we are running from and where to. Our action has a definite message – to dismantle the cast stereotype of a Russian as the moronic hard drinker.

The reaction of the authorities and law enforcement organs is bewildering. Does it mean that every runner-sportsperson who happens to be in the Botanical Gardens or any other Moscow park has to be checked to see if they belong to an ‘extremist organisation’? Or is it that the slogan ‘Russian Means Sober’ can be seen as extremist? What, with no other ethnicities mentioned, does it mean that to say to a Russian that he is sober is to humiliate and ‘insult the nation’?

Let’s just imagine that 400 alcoholics get together in a park to get legless. Militia wouldn’t probably dare to approach them. If there were fewer, the maximum what they’d get would be a night in the ‘monkey house’, emptied pockets and squashed mobile phones with an administrative protocol and a fine of a few hundred rubles. And no ‘politics’!

So, now if a person sticks to a healthy life style, doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke (no payments to the state through excise on vodka and tobacco), doesn’t watch [state controlled] TV (politically suspect!) and actively promotes these principles in society, then that person is an extremist! And even if that person goes further and creates a family (doesn’t spend on abortions, condoms, visits to a venereologist, etc.), and, despite everything, is raising two, three and sometimes more children, then they are Extremist with a capital letter.’

What to read about Tolstoy? A Guide

This year marks 100 years (only!)  since Leo Tolstoy's death. At the end of October 1910 he left home and died on 7 (20) November 1910.

The anniversary is widely marked around the world – from the meeting of over 100 living members of the writer's family at Yasnaya Polyana, his estate, to the film The Last Station, with Christopher Palmer and Helen Mirren, to a new biography by Tony Briggs, a leading Tolstoy translator and one of the most perceptive modern interpretators of his literary work and views. Briggs' book focuses on the last traumatic years of Tolstoy's life and the writer's relationship with Tolstoyans. 

This is a brief list of English language books and essays on Tolstoy, some of them well-known, others are less familiar to general readership.

Before anything else, especially if you are an impatient reader, I highly recommend W.Somerset Maugham's 22 page essay on Tolstoy from 'Great Novelists and Their Novels'. Maugham puts Tolstoy as number one on his list of the world's top ten novelists. It contains a comprehensive and very shrewd overview of Tolstoy's life and work, including a few very perceptive writer-about-writer theories on why Tolstoy wrote the way he did and why he didn't do as he preached. 

Aylmer Maude is a younger contemporary and friend of Tolstoy. He was introduced to the writer in Moscow in 1888 and together with his wife Louise became the most prominent translator and scholar of Tolstoy in the West. Maude's biography was authorised by Tolstoy in 1902 and remains a classic account of the writer's life. Maude was a great admirer of Tolstoy and glossed over darker episodes in his life. The Maudes supervised centenary edition of Tolstoy's works in England. His footnotes to translations are also a fascinating read as Maude explains details that may be completely lost to a modern reader. 

Prof Ernest J.Simmons – Leo Tolstoy.  This is the standard English language biography.  (Boston, Atlantic, Little Brown, 1947.)

Isaia Berlin. The Hedgehog and the Fox.: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History.  The brilliant short essay on Tolstoy's view of history is a masterpiece by one of the top English-Russian thinkers of the 20th Century. I'd suggest reading it before tackling War and Peace. (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1953.)

Maxim Gorky Reminiscences of Tolstoy. (The Hogarth Press, 1934.) In 1901 Tolstoy was ill and spent several months in the Crimea recuperating. It was then that the three great Russian writers, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Gorky, frequently met and had long conversations. Gorky wonderfully captures Tolstoy's physical features and his manner of speaking and  arguing. I suggest reading this alongside Gorky's reminiscences of Chekhov as many motives intertwine. In Gorky's essay V.I. Lenin there is a passage on Lenin's attitude to the writer: 

'Dropping in on him one day, I saw a volume of War and Peace on his desk.

"That's right. Tolstoy! I meant to read the scene of the hunt, but then remembered I had to write to a comrade. I have no time at all to read. It was only last night that I read your book on Tolstoy."

Smiling and squinting his eyes he stretched luxuriously in his armchair and, dropping his voice, went on quickly:

"What a rock, eh? What a giant of a man! That, my friend, is an artist... And – do you know what else amazes me? There was no real muzhik in literature before that Count came along."

He turned his twinkling eyes on me:

"Who in Europe could rank with him?"

He answered the question himself:

"No one."

Henri, Troyat  Tolstoy  A lively biography. Read Edmund Wilson's review of the book in NYRB .

Victor Schklovsky, one of the best critical minds in Russian literary studies, wrote a massive biography of Tolstoy, but so far as I know it is not available in English translation. Here is a link to Schklovsky's book 'The Energy of Delusion' ("Энергия заблуждения") where  Schklovsky provides several examples of Tolstoy's and others' 'method of seeing things out of their normal context'. Schklovsky once remarked that it was Tolstoy, not Gorky, who was the founder of 'socialist realism' (quoted by Solomon Volkov).

Boris Eikhenbaum, one of the most prominent Russian scholars of Tolstoy, here is a link to the English language compendium of his works on the writer.

Nikolai Gudzy wrote the standard Russian biography of Tolstoy ("Лев Толстой"). I think it's not available in English, but is refered to in Western studies.

Leo Tolstoy, edited by Henry Gifford A wide anthology of extracts from essays, letters, articles and other appraisals of Tolstoy from contemporary to 1960s. Includes: (C19th - earlly C20th) Nekrasov, Chernyshevsky, Turgenev, Dragomirov, Strakhov, Dostoyevsky, Melchior de Vogüé, Matthew Arnold, Leontiev, Chekhov, Edmund Gosse, W.D. Howells, Henry James (who famously called Tolstoy's novels 'loose and baggy monsters'), Bernard Shaw, Paul Boyer, Merezhkovsky, William James, Lev Shestov, Blok, Rilke, (claiming Tolstoy) Lenin, Plekhanov, Romain Rolland, D.H. Lawrence, Aylmer Maude, Gorky, Lubbock, Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf, Mirsky, E.M. Forster, Boris Eykhenbaum, André Gide, James Joyce, Georg Lukács, Isaac Babel and Sergei Eisenstein. (modern, up to 1960s) Berdyaev, Philip Rahv, George Orwell, Isaia Berlin, Lionel Trilling, Renato Poggioli, J.P.M. Stern, Joyce Cary, George Steiner, Henry Gifford, Raymond Williams, Barbara Hardy, Donald Davie, Logan Speirs, John Bailey, Dorothy Green, F.R.Leavis, Ted Hughes, G.W.Spence, Roy Fuller, R.F. Christian and Boris Pasternak.  (Penguin, 1971)

Tolstoy, edited by ed.Ralph E. Matlaw. A Collection of Critical Essays. (Prentice-Hall, Englewood cliffs, 1967, N.J.), includes Tolstoy as Man and Artist, by Renato Poggioli; Tolstoy and Enlightenment, by Isaiah Berlin; On Tolstoy's Crises, by Boris Eikhenmaum; Tolstoy, Seer of the Flesh, by Dmitri Merezhkovsky; Tolstoy's Art by Käte Hamburger; Tolstoy and the Development of Realism, by Georg Lukács; The Original of Tolstoy's Natasha, by Edmund Wilson; Style in War and Peace, by R.F. Christian, The Moral Vision: Tolstoy, by Albert Cook; The Dialectic of Incarnation: Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, by R.P.Blackmur; Tolstoy's 'The Death of Ivan Ilytch' and Jamesian Fictional Imperatives, by Edward Wasiolek; The Last Judgment: Tolstoy's Last Works, by Leo Shestov.

Orlando Figes, Natasha's Dance includes numerous references to Tolstoy and his work.

Richard F. Christian Tolstoy's War and Peace, (Oxford, ClarendonPress, 1962). 'An analysis of the evolution of the novel, its structure and style, containing much source material otherwise not available in English'. (quote from Matlaw)

Charles Du Bos. Approximations. Quatrieme serie. Paris, Correa, 1930. 'A study of Tolstoy's moral and spiritual development as evidenced in his work'. (Matlaw)

James T. Farrel, Literature and Morality. (New York, Vanguard Press, 1947). 'Contains a series of articles on War and Peace'. (Matlaw) 

George Gibian. Tolstoy and Shakespeare. (The Hague, Mouton an Co. 1957). 'A brief but thorough consideration of Tolstoy's attitudes toward Shakespeare and the drama in general'. (Matlaw)

A.B.Goldenveizer  Talks with Tolstoy. (Richmond, 1923). 'Contains only part of the  original Russian versions, a repository of Tolstoy's prnouncements on art literature, and life'. (Matlaw)  

Percy Lubbock. The Craft of Fiction. (New York, Peter Smith, 1947). 'Two excellent essays, marred by te notion that the two main novels would have been even better if Tolstoy had written them according to Lubbock's notions rather than to his own'. (Matlaw)

Thomas Mann. 'Goethe and Tolstoy' in Essay of Three Decades, (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1947). 'A famous essay on literary giants and the nature of art'. (Matlaw) 

Renato Poggioli  The Phoenix and the Spider.  (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1957). 'Contains a suggestive psychological-literary analysis entitled "A Portrait of Tolstoy as Alceste"'. (Matlaw) 

George Steiner. Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism. (New York, Alfred A. Knopf 1959). 'A pretentious and inaccurate book with occasional striking insights and juxtaposoitions'. (Matlaw)

Gleb Struve. 'Tolstoy in Soviet Criticism'. The Russian Review, April 1960. (article available online at JSTOR). 'A concise review of the vagaries and achievments of Tolstoy criticism in the last fifty years. The entire issue of he Review is devoted to Tolstoy.

Stefan Zweig. Master Builders: A Typology of the Spirit. New York, Viking Press, 1939. A stmulating and wll conidered biography of Tolstoy based on Tolstoy's artistic works.

Addition:

Charlotte Alston has recently published Tolstoy's Guiding Light on the History Today web-site. The article traces the influence of Tolstoyism throughout the world with an emphasis on lesser known episodes in Britain and America. (via Languagehat.com) 

A Russian TV programme on the last days of Tolstoy's life, includes documentary footage of the writer:


Лев Толстой