Опульский, Альберт (Игнатьевич). Вокруг имени Льва Толстого.
Сан-Франциско : Издательство «Глобус» (Globus Publishers), 1981. 169 с., с иллюстрациями. Обычный формат. Мягкая обложка. Первое издание.
Состояние хорошее: передняя обложка с незначительными пятнами и потёртостями; задняя обложка с выраженными пятнами по всему полю; блок крепкий, полный.
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Opulsky, Albert (Ignatyevich). Around the Name of Leo Tolstoy / illustrated.
San Francisco : Globus Publishers, 1981. 169 pp., with photographic illustrations. Standard format. Paper wrappers. First edition.
Condition good: front wrapper with minor spotting and rubbing; rear wrapper with pronounced surface spotting throughout; text block firm and complete.
A scarce Russian-language first edition published by the principal émigré Russian press of San Francisco, written by Albert Ignatyevich Opulsky, a scholar with a uniquely privileged relationship to the Tolstoy literary archive. Born in Yekaterinburg in 1921, Opulsky studied at the Institute of Philosophy and Literature (IFLI) under the renowned Pushkinist and textologist Boris Viktorovich Tomashevsky, graduating from Moscow State University in 1946 after the institute merged with the university during the war. He subsequently joined the Tolstoy Museum of the USSR Academy of Sciences, working in the manuscripts department and later as scientific secretary - a position that gave him direct access to the Tolstoy archive, the manuscript collections, and the personal and literary circle that preserved Tolstoy's memory in Soviet Russia. Among the figures he encountered at the museum were the dissident poet and mathematician Aleksandr Esenin-Volpin, and writers Aleksandr Tvardovsky, Konstantin Paustovsky, Veniamin Kaverin, Elya Grin, and Vladimir Lidin. In 1977 Opulsky emigrated to Canada, where he was appointed to professorships in classical Russian literature at McGill University and the University of Montreal. He subsequently lost his sight, and the present volume was composed with the assistance of his wife. It constitutes a personal and scholarly account of the Soviet literary and archival world centred on Tolstoy's legacy, drawing on the author's decades of insider experience at the Tolstoy Museum. Opulsky collaborated with the New York émigré journal Novy Zhurnal; his posthumous monograph on the lives of saints in Russian literature appeared after his death.