Two centuries of the Russian classics

2686-7494

IWL RAS

https://doi.org/10.22455/2686-7494-2025-7-4-374-395

Research Article

Articles

“ʽBehold, the Bridegroom Is Coming’: Historical Sources of Leo Tolstoy’s Writings on Feofan Prokopovich in the Materials for A Novel from the Time of Peter the Great.”

Kovaleva

Galina N.

red@rusklassika.ru

25 12 2025

7 4 374 395

L. N. Tolstoy A Novel from the Time of Peter the Great preparatory materials summary notes historical sources Feofan Prokopovich D. N. Bantysh-Kamensky S. M. Solovyov P. S. Popov

2026

This article examines Leo Tolstoy’s notes about Feofan Prokopovich, which are the part of the preparatory materials for his unfinished <Novel from the Time of Peter the Great>, and the historical sources for these notes, as established by P. S. Popov. The identified historical sources for these notes allow us to clarify the meaning of Tolstoy’s excerpts about Feofan Prokopovich from fundamental historical works, enrich and expand our understanding of the conception of Petrine’s unfinished novel, its historical basis, and the cast of characters, and elucidate the specific events from the bishop’s life and work that the writer intended to incorporate into the novel’s action. The discovered sources make it possible to speculate about the ways and means by which Tolstoy transformed real facts from Feofan Prokopovich’s life into fiction. Comparison of Tolstoy’s notes with the texts of factual sources reveals traces of the writer’s creative work with documentary materials.

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