The Role of Historical Sources in Commenting on A. N. Tolstoy’s Novel Peter the Great

The article is devoted to the review of the main historical sources for A.N. Tolstoy’s novel Peter the Great. Textual comparison of the text of the novel with the corresponding documentary materials might solve one of the most important problems of commenting on the novel, which is how and to what extent a documentary source could influence the writer, how he used a specific source and how he changed it. A.V. Alpatov wrote that Tolstoy borrowed the outline of events and factual material from the works of historians I.I. Golikov, N.G. Ustryalov, S.M. Solovyov. The most challenging thing to establish is to what extent these works were reflected in the novel. For instance, the sixth chapter (the First Azov Campaign) makes evident the use of works by Golikov and Solovyov, but not those by Ustryalov (contrary to what Alpatov believed). This judgement might be supported by the comparison of the texts of the novel and historical sources, as well as marginalia on the publications of Golikov and Solovyov from Tolstoy’s personal library.

Aleksey N. Tolstoy, historical novel, Peter the Great, historical sources, real-historical commentary, the role of the document in literature