The Count with a changed face: look under the Lion
Writings in the genre of alternative history were super popular at one time, but in recent years, several seem to have fallen out of favor with both readers and authors. Nevertheless, the young writer Tatiana Dybovskaya ventured into these dangerous waters, aiming to rewrite the most important pages of not just history, but the literary history of the world. Lydia Maslova, a critic, looked into what happened as a result specifically for Izvestia.
Tatiana Dybovskaya
"The Beard Project"
Moscow : Alpina non-fiction, 2026. 472 p.
Tatiana Dybovskaya's intricately conceived novel takes place in two main dimensions. The first is the last quarter of the 19th century, when Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, a great lover of Europe, served as a link between the Russian and French literary milieu. The second plot layer takes place in modern Moscow, where an attractive blonde Olga Vladimirovna, a literature teacher, is experiencing a "post-divorce affair" with the director of a bakery, having met him in the interactive game "Muddy Meadow". By its ironic name, one can guess that the interests of the participants are concentrated around Leo Tolstoy, who in the alternative history of Dybovskaya serves as the main cause of the headache of the chief prosecutor of the Synod Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev. Considering it his duty to save Russia from Tolstoy, who was too carried away by harmful socialist ideas, Pobedonostsev hatches plans for the quiet liquidation of the great Russian writer, who would do well to "get lost hunting and freeze to death, or drown in a swamp," or get run over by a horse. "Count Tolstoy is too influential a figure in Russia,— says the chief prosecutor. — In his new socialist capacity, he is worse than a bomb. He's a walking national disaster."
However, sworn enemies Turgenev and Dostoevsky, united in love with Tolstoy, come up with an original way to save Lev Nikolaevich — in March 1878, he emigrated to Paris, where he continues to live and create under the legend of Emile Zola, who in fact never existed: this is a literary fiction created for laughter by a company of playful French writers. (According to Dybovskaya's humorous version, everything that came out under the name of Zola before The Trap, Tolstoy's first novel, was composed by Turgenev, Flaubert, Daudet and Goncourt Sr.)
Meanwhile, instead of Count Tolstoy, his double is sent to Yasnaya Polyana — a protege of Pobedonostsev and the Third Branch, count Mikhail Mikhailovich Kryltsov, who, according to the conservative ideologist, should pick up Tolstoy's pen in order to preach to his numerous admirers "peaceful non-resisting socialism" that excludes all rebellious tendencies: "No actions. No bombs and no revolutions." For all his apparent mediocrity, Mikhail Mikhailovich not only successfully copes with his writing mission, but even manages to conceive another child with Sofia Andreevna, who despises him, during a desperate attempt to take away from her the key to Tolstoy's desk with Lev Nikolaevich's secret diary.
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy rides a horse in Yasnaya Polyana
The secret "Beard Project" to neutralize Tolstoy's harmful influence on the Russian public quite convincingly explains Tolstoy's transformation, the spiritual turning point that turned the creator of the great "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" into a mediocre author of edifying and soul-saving writings. Dybovskaya's modern characters are quite ruthless towards them: "Tolstoy, whom we knew and loved, wrote perhaps no less in the second half of his life than in the first. But who loves him for this particular second half? For stuff like "Resurrection", "Kreutzer Sonata" and "Father Sergius"? Nobody. Because all three are clear evidence that the author was also, to put it mildly, not enthusiastic about us, ordinary people. He didn't like us. I couldn't stand it." In this pre—final conceptual dialogue, it is explained that Tolstoy, who left for France, took with him all his humanity in order to invest it in the naturalistic novels of the mythical Zola: "... after all, he saw through people both as a Russian count and as a French bourgeois. With all the deadly sins, with all the vices and weaknesses."
Dybovskaya amusingly describes the tricks that the emigrant Tolstoy has to take to bring his appearance in line with the French legend, in particular to get a haircut, make up and get fat. Turgenev instructs Tolstoy: "... you must be well—fed, because everyone knows that Monsieur Zola is in the habit of dining with Messrs. Flaubert, Goncourt, Daudet and Turgenev, and these four are gluttons. You, my dear Lev Nikolaevich, are simply inexcusably thin compared to us. So for the first time, put a pillow under your vest, and then, please, try to get better yourself." But even more important is the writer's mimicry, changing his own style of writing, adapting to the needs of the French public. And then Flaubert comes in handy, who did not like Lev Nikolaevich too much for his "bourgeois" appearance ("Yes, you look like a perfect bourgeois, Mr. Zola," was all he said, putting into this short phrase all the disgust he apparently felt for this class"), but nevertheless Tolstoy owes the crushing success of the novel "The Trap" precisely to the advice of the cynical Flaubert: "Naturalism, Mr. Zola, more bugs and chamber pots — and, you'll see, this shoddy nation will carry you in its arms."
Yasnaya Polyana Estate
Meanwhile, an intense ideological struggle is going on in Yasnaya Polyana, including with the participation of the curator of the Beard project from the Third Department named Ivan Ilyich (this name of the famous Tolstoy character, the deceased, will not be played out later without mocking wit). The curator recognizes only the social, ideological function of literature: "Moreover, he was deeply indifferent to literature as such: someone there fell in love with someone, shot himself, went bankrupt, died of influenza — petty, uninteresting. But the power with which a great writer is able to influence public opinion and even change it radically was fascinating." In principle, following Ivan Ilyich, it should be recognized that in Dybovskaya's novel, modern pieces are more likely to belong to shallow "literature as such," where too much attention is paid to the romantic experiences of Olga, who cannot in any way turn away her husband, who speaks in iambic, like an abandoned Vasisuali Lokhankin.
Perhaps one of the most interesting and touching lines of Dybovskaya's novel is connected with an unfulfilled meeting (or at least a written contact) between two main icons of Russian literature — Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. In the second half of the book, the modern storyline revolves around the search for the most valuable artifact — the missing letter written by Tolstoy to Dostoevsky from Paris and, in the course of various adventures, turned out to be embedded in the draft manuscript of The Brothers Karamazov (as you know, it was this novel by Dostoevsky that Tolstoy longed to read before his death). In the text of the letter itself, as Dybovskaya presents it, there is a hint of a certain feminine sentimentality ("... I cried reading your Brothers Karamazov and felt such love for Russia that I had never felt when I was allowed to live in it"), nevertheless, the very idea that two The titans of Russian literature could communicate in such a way that excites the imagination even more than Leo Tolstoy's successful career as a French naturalist who fearlessly explored the life of the Parisian working class and fallen women.
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