A Prototype of Vadim Roshchin in the “White” Version of Alexey N. Tolstoy's Trilogy The Road to Calvary

Abstract

The article is devoted to the reconstruction of the idea of the white version of the second volume of A.N. Tolstoy's trilogy The Road to Calvary , created by the writer in the emigration in 1921-1923. This idea was fundamentally different from the one embodied by A.N. Tolstoy after his return to the USSR. Materials published in 1918 in the Rostov magazine Donskaya Volna ( Don Wave ) are used for the reconstruction. Those materials help to identify Colonel V.K. Manakin as a supposed prototype of one of the main characters, Vadim Roshchin, in the final chapters of the first volume of the trilogy and in the first chapters of the second volume of the white version. The prototype makes it feasible to reconstruct the possible idea of the second volume of the white version of The Road to Calvary . A.N. Tolstoy's notebooks are also used for the reconstruction. The reconstruction of A.N. Tolstoys plan turned out to be more logically consistent compared to the only existing Soviet version of the second and third volumes of the trilogy The Road to Calvary. Both Roshchin and Telegin, in the emigrant version of the first volume of the trilogy act as ideologists of the White Movement, find themselves in the White Armies of Southern Russia, and then in exile. The study shows that the transition of the main characters to the Red Movement in the Soviet version of The Road to Calvary is artistically unconvincing, since it does not correspond to the original plan of A.N. Tolstoy, embodied in the emigrant version of Sisters .

Keywords

• a.n. tolstoy
• v.k. manakin
• reconstruction
• prototype
• literary source
• censorship
• revolution
• civil war