P. V. Palievsky as My First Reader

Abstract

The article is devoted to memories of P. V. Palievsky’s role in the preparation by its author of the unfinished novel by L. N. Tolstoy from Peter the Great’s era for the Complete works of the writer. Comparison of the episode about Prince V. V. Golitsyn from L. N. Tolstoy’s unfinished novel with an episode of the same content from A. N. Tolstoy’s novel “Peter the Great” reveals correspondences and parallels between the two episodes. It gives every reason to conclude that the episode about Prince V. V. Golitsyn from L. N. Tolstoy’s work is a literary source of an episode from A. N. Tolstoy’s novel. The article establishes the source of A. N. Tolstoy’s acquaintance with the rough fragments of his predecessor’s work, that is their publication, carried out in 1925 by T. I. Polner in one of the emigrant publications in Prague. The role of P. V. Palievsky in this discovery lies primarily in the proposal to the author of the article to search for points of convergence between the novels of the two Tolstoys about the first Russian emperor and his time.