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Abstract:

The author of the article examines epigraphs to the novels of the trilogy by A.N. Tolstoy “The Road to Calvary” — “Sisters,” “The Eighteenth Year” and “Gloomy Morning,” — which have become an essential part of their headline complexes. The sources for two of them, for the first and the third books, were monuments of the ancient Russian and Byzantine script. A quote from S.Z Fedorchenko’s book “The People at War” was taken as an epigraph to the novel “The Eighteenth Year” and was initially perceived by contemporaries, including Tolstoy, as a documentary evidence of the time. However, the reference to this source only existed in the first publication of the writing in the magazine “New World.” The subsequent writer’s rejection of it was a consequence of the events unfolded around “The People at War” in the second half of the 1920s, that mainly included the author’s confession of the literary origin of the book.