A.N. Tolstoy’s Participation in M. Gorky’s Project The History of the Civil War
The article is devoted to the participation of A.N. Tolstoy in Gorky’s project The History of the Civil War, which was approved by the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) on July 30, 1931. The article examines two aspects of this involvement. The first aspect is Tolstoy’s work on edit...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Russian Academy of Sciences, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature
2025-06-01
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| Series: | Studia Litterarum |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://studlit.ru/images/2025-10-2/16_Bystrova.pdf |
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| Summary: | The article is devoted to the participation of A.N. Tolstoy in Gorky’s project The History of the Civil War, which was approved by the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) on July 30, 1931. The article examines two aspects of this involvement. The first aspect is Tolstoy’s work on editing the volumes of the History of the Civil War in the USSR. Tolstoy was supposed to be editing the third volume of The First Steps of Intervention and the Disruption of Respite. However, in 1943, after the release of the second volume of the series, the concept of the publication History of the Civil War in the USSR was changed, and there was no need for literary editing. The second aspect is the work on the novella Khleb (Oborona Tsaritsyna) (Bread (Defense of Tsaritsyn)) written as part of the The History of the Civil War series. For the first time, the article presents Tolstoy’s letters to the editor of the historical section of The History of the Civil War, I.I. Mints, and letters in reply, and letters from Mints to the writer’s literary secretary, O.B. Nikiforova, from the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) and State Literary Museum (GLM). The publication and introduction of this correspondence allow us to see and evaluate the writer’s creative process and the degree of immersion in the historical materials of described period of Soviet history. The article clarifies the dates of the beginning of work on the novella and its completion. The article presents some reader reviews, including J.V. Stalin. All of them influenced the text in further reprints. The materials of the article can be used when commenting on the novella in A.N. Tolstoy’s Complete Works. |
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| ISSN: | 2500-4247 2541-8564 |