Society and Culture: Museum-Reserve "Karabikha" launched an exhibition devoted to his 200th anniversary and relationships with Leo Tolstoy

The Nikolai Nekrasov Museum-Reserve "Karabikha" (Yaroslavl Region) launched the exhibition "I Like Yours Great Hope of Russian Literature". Nekrasov about Tolstoy", marking the 200th anniversary of the great Russian poet Nikolai Nekrasov. It highlights the relationships of Nikolai Nekrasov and Leo Tolstoy. The dialogue of Nekrasov and Tolstoy lasted 23 years. Nikolai was the first who recognised the talent of a beginner writer, allowed Tolstoy to enter the world of literature and encouraged his talent.

In 1852, the still unknown Count Leo Tolstoy served in the Caucasus in the village of Starogladkovskaya. The ambitious writer sent the manuscript of his first literary experience (Childhood) to the best magazine Sovremennik. The September issue of the magazine published Tolstoy's first story Childhood, signed as "L.T."

Later, Nekrasov’s Sovremennik released such Tolstoy's works as Raid, Notes of a Marker, Childhood, Youth, Sevastopol Stories, Snowstorm.

After participating in the Crimean War, Tolstoy arrived in Saint-Petersburg, where he met Nekrasov and entered the editorial board of the Sovremennik magazine. Together with Turgenev and other prominent writers and poets, Tolstoy signed in February 1856 an "essential agreement" - a contract for four years, providing publishing of all of his new works only in Sovremennik.

In 1866, after the closing of the Sovremennik, Nekrasov became the head of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine. Years later, Tolstoy resumed partnership with Nekrasov: in 1874, the writer published an article On Public Education in Otechestvennye Zapiski.

Another point of contact between the two writers was the peasant theme. Tolstoy was close to Nekrasov in the moral and artistic interpretation of the folk character.

The exhibition features unique items: photographs, papers, reproductions, paintings and drawings from the collections of the Leo Tolstoy State Museum. The Nikolai Nekrasov State Literary and Memorial Museum-Reserve "Karabikha" provided items of that time and rare editions of Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski.

The exhibition will run in the West Wing until September 21, 2021.