An exhibition about “Peter the Great” was opened in the museum-apartment of Alexei Tolstoy

Emperor in jeans and paper boats

On January 26, an exhibition dedicated to the creation of the historical novel “Peter the Great” was opened in the Moscow Museum-Apartment of Alexei Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Correspondent “MK” went to the branch GMIRL on the street. Spiridonovka to write a report from the scene. “Places” in the broadest sense of the word, because it was in this location that the last book of the main work of the classic was written.

In the wing of the former mansion of Stepan Ryabushinsky, Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy spent the last few years – from 1941 to 1945 (the writer died in February 1945). So it is specifically with this building that the third book of the novel about Peter is connected.

The researchers found that the starting point of interest in the Petrine theme for Tolstoy was not 1929, when he began writing the unfinished trilogy, but earlier years. So, in one of the glass showcases of the exposition you can see the text of the unpublished poem “The Black Horseman” (“Peter”). Its author (we pick up a calculator) turned eighteen in 1909.

Here are the newspaper publications in “Evening Life” for 1918. The article is again about the emperor, or rather about the Preobrazhensky order, a sort of “tsarist secret police” of the 17th century. At the end of the clipping is the name of the author: “Alexey Tolstoy.” This is, so to speak, the origins. They were followed by the stories “Obsession”, “Marta Rabe”, “Peter’s Day”, the play “On the Rack” and “Peter the Great”. And only then did the writer feel ready to start the novel – the most “heavy” genre.

Note that the presentation of Tolstoy’s and Peter’s artifacts was divided into several parts by the organizers. This is a rather “cunning” move: if you like it or not, and having looked at the exhibition, you will bypass the entire museum. In order not to get lost, paper boats are scattered along the route.

But the main origami flotilla is gathered at the feet of Peter the Great, dressed – attention – in denim pants and a jacket. The author of the sculpture, Katya Kys, made the figure of the ruler out of polymer clay, steel mesh and plaster. Why in jeans – it makes no sense to ask. This is how the artist sees it. Moreover, there is also a time machine nearby (resembling a toy for kids, but this is also a manifestation of the author’s originality). By car, Peter from his time arrived in ours – and dressed according to the requirements of the era. And since we saw Ivan the Terrible in a Soviet tracksuit at Gaidai’s, we will get used to the updated image of the naval builder and founder of St. Petersburg.

Any such notions, immersiveness, interactivity and technical tricks are just ways to “drag” visitors to an event dedicated to a purely literary topic. Because for many ordinary people all these books, old gizmos and handwritten sheets are boring.

But, to be honest, I froze in front of a shelf flooded with artificial light. It exhibited the author’s typescript with corrections, sent by Alexei Nikolaevich to Novy Mir in 1929. Dated May 9 of the same year, a response to the writer Vyacheslav Polonsky with the approval of the editors. And, finally, the “pilot” (for internal use) covers of the magazine – notebooks 6-7 and 7-8 for 1944, where the third part of the novel was published. (And the last fragment – in January 1945, when Tolstoy was already on the verge of death).

How to explain to the “simple person” that these few pages of paper (if only the covers are not copies) should cost like an apartment in the center of Moscow? But I think our readers understand that such reprints of history have no price.

By the way, for “Peter I” Alexei Tolstoy was awarded the “Soviet Nobel” – the Stalin Prize of the first degree. The diploma with the profiles of the leaders on the cover and a facsimile of Molotov’s signature inside were placed on the second floor of the museum. It was possible to collect one hundred thousand rubles of the cash content of the award in neat piles here, taking into account the size of the pre-reform one hundred rubles – this was an impressive pile of money. But the writer had a habit of giving the sums received in this way from the state during the Second World War to the construction of tanks.

Probably, immortality grows out of this disinterestedness during life.