History and Culture: Exhibition, dedicated to Aleksey Tolstoy’s novel “Peter I”, opens in Moscow

From January 26 until April 23, 2023, the Dal State Museum of the History of Russian Literature (Moscow) hosts the exhibition Portrait against the Background of the Epoch. Emperor. Reformer. Human based on Aleksey Tolstoy’s novel Peter I. The exposition features exhibits from the collections of the GMIRLI, as well as from the archives of the IMLI of the RAS.

Aleksey Tolstoy worked on the historical novel Peter I almost all his life. The exhibition tells about the writer exploring his favourite topic, the historical materials he used, and the subject realities that helped him to recreate the colours of the Petrine era.

The semantic centre of the exhibition consists of Aleksey Tolstoy’s rare diary entries, related to his work on historical and literary sources, reference materials on the Peter the Great era. Visitors will have an opportunity to see drafts of the novel with the author’s edits, Tolstoy’s correspondence with book publishers and editors of the Novy Mir (New World) journal, where the magazine version of Peter I was printed, and other handwritten materials.

A significant section of the exhibition is dedicated to the history of Tolstoy’s work on Peter’s theme: the stories Obsession, Marta Rabe, Peter’s Day, the plays On the Rack and Peter I, written before the novel.

The exhibition also presents a large display of illustrations from different years, including ones for the lifetime editions of the novel Peter I. Guests will have a chance to see not only historical works, but the latest illustrations created specifically for the exhibition by contemporary artists: Anatoly Itkin, Viktor Goppe, Alla Vysotskaya, Yevgenia Kokoreva, Anna Sarycheva, and Irina Girshman.