Description
Book SynopsisIn the middle of the night of October 28, 1910, Leo Tolstoy, the most famous man in Russia, vanished. A secular saint revered for his literary genius, pacificism, and dedication to the earth and the poor, Tolstoy had left his home in secret to embark on a final journey. His disappearance immediately became a national sensation. Two days later he was located at a monastery, but was soon gone again. When he turned up next at Astapovo, a small, remote railway station, all of Russia was following the story. As he lay dying of pneumonia, he became the hero of a national narrative of immense significance.
In The Death of Tolstoy, William Nickell describes a Russia engaged in a war of words over how this story should be told. The Orthodox Church, which had excommunicated Tolstoy in 1901, first argued that he had returned to the fold and then came out against his beliefs more vehemently than ever. Police spies sent by the state tracked his every move, fearing that his death wou
Trade Review
William Nickell describes the death drama itself as Russia's first great mass media event. The room in the stationmaster's house in Astapovo where the dying Tolstoy was lodged was the eye of a news hurricane.... It comes through from Nickell's account that Russians believed something died for ever at Astapovo.
-- James Meek * London Review of Books *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. The Family Crisis as a Public Event
2. Narrative Transfigurations of Tolstoy's Final Journey
3. The Media at Astapovo and the Creation of a Modern Pastoral
4. Tolstoyan Violence upon the Funeral Rites of the State
5. On or About November 1910
Conclusion: The Posthumous Notes of Fyodor KuzmichA Word on My Sources
Notes
Index
