Internet and culture: The International online project “Karenina. Live edition” started

August 6, 2014 was the start of a unique international online project "Karenina. Live edition". This joint idea of ​​the Museum-Estate "Yasnaya Polyana" and the Google Company aims to unite lovers of Russian classics throughout the world.

The project is a veritable library marathon: for the first time in the world, more than 700 people from different cities and countries live on Google+ for more than 30 hours will read the famous novel "Anna Karenina". Among the readers who will come in direct online broadcast from different cities around the world are theater and film actor, journalists, musicians, descendants of Tolstoy, artists, scientists, popular video bloggers and, of course, ordinary web users.

The project is supported by the Advisor of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Tolstoy, who first presented his idea at the Moscow International Open Book Festival as a revival of the traditions of Tolstoy's readings with the help of modern Internet technologies.

Participating in the project is very simple. To do this, you need to subscribe to the official page of "Karenina. Live Edition" on Google+ and select one of the 4 fragments of the work or suggest your own. Then expressively read it on camera, laid in a period of 30 to 60 seconds, and post your video on YouTube with the hashtag #KareninaLive until September 4 inclusive. After that, a competent jury will select the most talented readers to participate in the marathon.

Director of the Museum-Estate "Yasnaya Polyana" Ekaterina Alexandrovna Tolstaya speaks about the project: "Everyone is talking about the fact that people read less. We, the museum "Yasnaya Polyana", it is important to introduce, first of all, the young reader to the works of Leo Tolstoy, to give them the opportunity to hear the beautiful text of Tolstoy, and hope that then they would take a book and read it. The compound of the classical heritage with modern technologies attracts a new audience, it is very important. The text of the great novel "Anna Karenina", born on paper, can now live in other forms, for example, in the form of a live edition in the Internet".

Reader's marathon will be held on October 3-4 at the sites of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yasnaya Polyana, Vladivostok, Novosibirsk, New York, Paris, London and others. Among the sites are the Russian State Library, bookstore "Moscow", the Museum-Estate of Leo Tolstoy "Yasnaya Polyana», London YouTube Space and many others. The readings will be combined into a single webcast on YouTube.

In the future all the videos and the text of the work will be available at the website. Thanks to internet services like Wikipedia, Street View, Maps, Search, users will be able to see the places where the action of the novel took place, learn more about the characters, and, of course, to see "live edition" recorded.