Information about the author:
Ekaterina A. Belikova
Ekaterina A. Belikova, Researcher, А.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya St., 25A, bld. 1, 121069 Moscow, Russia; Russian Christian Academy for Humanities named after Fyodor Dostoevsky, emb. Fontanka River, 15, 191011 St. Petersburg, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7436-4662
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Acknowledgements: This study was carried out at the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IWL RAS) with a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (project no. 23-28-00802).
Abstract:
The letters of Peter the Great are one of the most significant documents of the late 17th — early 18th centuries. These living testimonies of the events that took place interested Tolstoy first of all when he conceived the idea of a historical novel Peter the Great. Personal documents of Peter the Great turned out to be excellent material for studying the language of the epoch, because depending on the situation, the emperor and his associates used either a businesslike or friendly tone. The article considers a number of fragments and episodes for which Letters and Papers of Emperor Peter the Great served as sources. Tolstoy inserted the full text of a letter in the novel if the former was about any significant events (for example the order of Peter the Great to B.P. Sheremetiev in December 1700 about the devastation of Ingria). In some cases, Tolstoy used phrases from the letters to create dialogues between Peter the Great and his inner circle. When describing the siege of Dorpat in the summer of 1704, Tolstoy studied the tsar’s message to A.D. Menshikov and added Peter the Great’s emotions, his orders, and the characteristics of those around him to this episode. The article also deals with a more complicated question concerning the source of Peter’s letter to the future Catherine I in the third book of the novel.