Citizen, Count, Grigoriy: Aleksey Tolstoy in A.P. Chudakov's Novel A Gloom is Cast Upon the Ancient Steps

The novel A Gloom is Cast Upon the Ancient Steps by A.P. Chudakov is analyzed in the article in the context of its allusions on Aleksey Tolstoy's biography and diverse direct references of his name. One of the secondary but very important characters in terms of the novel's literary characters is Count Grigoriy Sheremetev, writer and translator, who escaped repressions in the beginning of the 1930s because a passport girl added the soft sign to his noble surname. In the authors' opinion, A.N. Tolstoy is the prototype of this character. This suggestion explains the aim of this investigation: to reveal the method of the creation of Sheremetev's image and to analyze "Tolstoy's trace" in the novel. The material of the study is Chudakov's novel and diary, memoir evidence about Tolstoy by contemporaries (memories of Yu.P. Annenkov, I.G. Erenburg, D.A. Tolstoy). The authors used the research methodology of life-creating, the early Soviet works on language and culture by A.M. Selishchev and Sh. Fitzpatrik, M. Lipovetsky's works on the phenomenon of tricksterism. The authors came to the following conclusions. The prototype of Count Sheremetev was Tolstoy. The character signed his translations as "Gr. Sheremet'ev", which can be interpreted in three ways: the recipient can read it as an abbreviation for the name of the translator - Grigoriy, or it can be perceived as a mark of his social status ("grazhdanin" [citizen] or "graf" [count]). Aleksey Tolstoy used the same strategy in the transformed socio-cultural postrevolutionary circumstances: he put a sign plate on his office "Gr. Aleksey Tolstoy". Sheremetev and Tolstoy have a lot in common, e.g., professional writing and love for formal banquets. The important dialogue of the main character Anton near Tolstoy's portrait supports the version that Tolstoy was the prototype. However, there were also important differences between Tolstoy and Sheremetev. The distance between the character of the novel and his prototype, the change of the character's surname and the "whitewashing" of some Tolstoy's biography facts are consistent with the constructive concept of the novel which is the synthesis of fiction and non-fiction. In the novel, the writer, who became one of the classics of socialist realism in the 1930s-1940s, could not embody the ideal of the man who preserved pre-revolutionary culture. Sheremetev uses the trickster tactics for survival and artistry, Tolstoy's situation is much more complicated. He accepted the rules of the Soviet system and abandoned his previous views, at least in public discourse. One more fundamental difference between Sheremetev and Tolstoy is that Tolstoy's trickster strategy was rather successful and helped him to avoid prosecution while Chudakov's character experienced repression. Sheremetev's less luck resulted from the smaller scale of talent and some comicality of his behavior which culminated the distance between the character and his prototype.

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