Manuscripts of the Story by L.N. Tolstoy “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”: Evolution of the Plot

This article is devoted to the textual study of the manuscript fund of L.N. Tolstoy’s story “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” stored in the Manuscript Department of the L.N. Tolstoy State Museum. In the course of the work were analyzed the features of each manuscript of the story, starting from the autograph and ending with the proofs. The analysis of the autograph manuscript shows that the first edition of the story contained a general plot outline and was subsequently expanded with details and plot elements. The article substantiates that already in the autograph Tolstoy supplements the text with a second layer and inserts, introducing in particular such an important element for the work as a dream on the eve of round the field. Four copies of the story also contain numerous authorial corrections, which indicate intense work on the most significant semantic points of the story, in particular, the image of the devil and the psychological appearance of the main character, Pakhom. The general tendencies of the author’s corrections should be considered the reduction of the mystical element from the first edition to the last, the change in the procedure for going around the field and the nuances of Pakhom’s trip to the Bashkir steppe – all of them are aimed at strengthening the motif of the hero’s loneliness, who is left alone with the elements at the culmination of the story. The peculiarity of the first editions of the story is studied: the differences in the edition of the magazine “Russkoye Bogatstvo”, the collection of the publishing house “Posrednik” and in the 12th volume of the collected works published by S.A. Tolstaya indicate that different manuscripts of the story were used as typesetting.