“Come and follow me”: reaction to the death of L.N. Tolstoy in Russian journalism

The article deals with the discourse that is a part of historical memory about L.N. Tolstoy in Russian educated society and is connected with the death of the great writer. The journalism examines the image of that event as a reflection of cultural codes on the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. The paper analyzes the works of famous contemporaries of L.N. Tolstoy where that loss is reflected. According to the contemporaries, the spiritual searchings of L.N. Tolstoy which intermingled with the destiny of Russia at the crucial stage of its development were the main feature in the image of the great writer. Besides, at this stage of forming the image of the event in historical memory, the binary model of Russian culture is clearly defined. It can be described as the gap between the extreme level of sin and the extreme level of sacredness.