It showcases changes to popular locations, such as
Yasnaya Polyana, Mylta Power, Prison, as well as the many forests that dot the map.
Kvass, a beverage made from old rye bread, is a Russian delicacy and the table at Tolstoy's estate at
Yasnaya Polyana was never fully laid without a pitcher of the stuff.
**Nova Makedonija features an interview with Venko Andonovski, whose novel "The Navel of the World" has recently been nominated for the
Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award in the category of foreign authors.
He currently teaches at the Literary Institute, works as an editor at Rossiyskaya Gazeta and is a member of the jury for the
Yasnaya Polyana literary award.
Singhvi, wanted to develop Orwell's birthplace on the lines of Stratford- upon- Avon and
Yasnaya Polyana, birthplaces of William Shakespeare and Leo Tolstoy in England and Russia, respectively, which attract lakhs of tourists every year.
His formation of the
Yasnaya Polyana school, his second trip abroad, his marriage to Sophia Behrs, his creation of the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, his famous crisis (A Confession, The Power of Darkness, Resurrection), and the final years of his life are given detailed analysis.
The epicenter of d'Annunzianism--a relic of the Fascist epoch, yet akin to Goethe's shrine in Saxe-Weimar, Tolstoy's
Yasnaya Polyana, or Wagner's Bayreuth--is but a demagogue's shout away from Salo, where, in 1943, Mussolini established the Italian Social Republic, only to be hanged upside down from the roof of an Esso gas station for his trouble.
"Like so many Russian country estates at that time," writes Bartlett, "
Yasnaya Polyana was an almost self-sufficient kingdom, with its own population of serfs to till the fields, milk the cows, chop wood, weave carpets, cobble shoes, groom the horses, breed hounds for hunting, clear paths, complete the accounts, prepare meals, fetch water and do the laundry.
He espoused the abolition of personal property while living in luxury on his family estate,
Yasnaya Polyana; he preached celibacy but fathered 13 children with his wife; and he embraced pacifism despite his proud, distinguished military service during the Crimean War.
From his position of privilege at his estate at
Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy set out on a programme of educational work among the peasantry whom he revered, setting up schools and producing a reading primer in which ironically he took greater personal pride than in any of his literary achievements.
"He is just as inconvenient today as a century ago...to mark the date you have to think of Russia's past 100 years, which nobody wants to do," said Pavel Basinsky, author of "Flight From Heaven," a recent book on the circumstances of the writer's run in the dark of the night from his estate in
Yasnaya Polyana.