NEW
BOOK March 2008
Leo Tolstoy and Russian peasant
sectarian writers:
selected correspondence
Edited by Dr Andrew
Donskov (photo) and translated by John Woodsworth
(1944-2022). Published March 2008 by the Slavic Research Group,
University of Ottawa, Canada.Reprinted 2019 as Leo Tolstoy in Conversation with Four Peasant Sectarian Writers: The Complete Correspondence, 420 Pages, April 30 2019. Preview the Google book.
Dr Donskov, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is one of the world's leading experts on Leo Tolstoy.
"In 1992 he became the only scholar from outside of Russia to be appointed by the Russian Academy of Sciences and its editorial board as a participant in its new 100-volume edition of Tolstoy’s works. In 2002, he was elected Full Member of the Petrovskaja Academy of Arts and Sciences." (Placing Slavic studies in the limelight, Gazette, University of Ottawa. January 26, 2004, page 2.)
This 298-page book presents selected letters between Tolstoy and four peasant writers: the Molokan philosopher Fedor Zheltov, the Doukhobor leader Peter Vasil'evich Verigin, the Sabbatarian [Subbotnik] Timofej Bondarev and non-Orthodox Mikhail Novikov.
Michail Petrovich Novikov, a peasant of Tula Province, near Tolstoy's home, Yasnaya Polyana, served a year as an army scribe then became friends with with Tolstoy for which he was persecutioned and described in his letters.
While the letters themselves have appeared previously in scattered publications (some in Russian only, or his Journal), this new anthology helps show them in their mutual context. New annotations have been added, as well as new introductory material: a general essay followed by an extensive specific introduction to each of the four correspondents, along with a chapter each on the background of the Molokane and the Doukhobors. The book is entirely in English. I would think it would be of significant interest to all the Molokane in America.
Search the Google book. "Molokan" appears on 21 pages. "Molokans" on 30 pages.
Note that "Maksim Rudometkin" (page 47) was not a "Molokan prophet", but appeared among them as a leader of his own sect of Pryguny-Skakuny (Jumpers-Dancers). For lack of more information they were sometimes described as the "Molokans who dance when they pray."
Contents and Chapter Summaries. Full text available via JSTOR from local library.
Reviews
Sizova, Irina I. "Leo Tolstoy and Russian Peasant Sectarian Writers: Selected Correspondence." Tolstoy Studies Journal, vol. 20, annual 2008, pp. 105-106.
Purchase
Best buy as Google Ebook: $20
University of Ottawa Press:
- Paper book: ~$50
- Ebook: ~$35
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Citation: Leo Tolstoy and Russian peasant sectarian writers, edited by Andrew Donskov, F.R.S.C. Ottawa: Slavic Research Group at the University of Ottawa, released March 2008. ISBN 978-0-88927-334-4. x + 298 pp.
This new book combines material in English from these previous books and others:
MOLOKANS — L.N. Tolstoj i F.A. Zheltov: Perepiska [Leo Tolstoy and Fedor Zheltov: Correspondence] (with an editorial essay). Ottawa: Slavic Research Group at the University of Ottawa and Moscow: State L.N. Tolstoy Museum, 1999. x+155 pp.; also American edition — in an English translation by John Woodsworth, edited by Ethel Dunn: A Molokan's search for truth: the correspondence of Leo Tolstoy and Fedor Zheltov. Berkeley, Calif. USA: Highgate Road Social Science Research Station, 2001. xvi+155 pp. [Also see: Tolstoy helps Molokans from Samara, 1897]
DOUKHOBORS — L.N. Tolstoj i P.V. Verigin: Perepiska. St-Petersburg: Russian Academy of Sciences / Dmitrij Bulanin, 1995. 105 pp.; also Canadian edition: Leo Tolstoy and Peter Verigin: Correspondence, including an editor's preface and an English translation by John Woodsworth. Ottawa: Legas, 1995. ix+202 pp.
SUBBOTNIKI — L.N. Tolstoy i T.M. Bondarev: Perepiska [Leo Tolstoy and Timofej Bondarev: Correspondence]. München: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1996. 142 pp. [More about Bondarev and Tolstoy.]
OTHER — L.N. Tolstoy i M.P. Novikov: Perepiska [Leo Tolstoy and Mikhail Novikov: Correspondence]. München: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1996. 120 pp.