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Abstract:

In Russian literary studies, the image of Olga Zotova, the main character of The Viper, a story by A.N. Tolstoy, is traditionally associated with the personality of a writer’s distant relative Tatyana Sikorskaya. However, this relationship is interpreted differently by different researchers, that prompted a closer look into Tatyana Sergeevna’s life. As a result of the analysis, the author of the article concludes that the commonality of a literary character with a possible prototype can be traced only at the most obvious formal level and in the main they do not match. Nevertheless, Sikorskaya’s relations with the writer in 1920s, apparently, became the starting point in the creative history of the work.