Неизвестные стенограммы жены Ф. М. Достоевского, или Из истории одного автографа Л. Н. Толстого
Unknown Transcripts of Fedor Dostoevsky’s Wife, or On the History of One Lev Tolstoy’s Manuscript

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with the unique materials kept in the Dostoevsky archive, namely the documents containing shorthand notes of the writer’s wife. There is a description of the transcripts deciphered by Ceciliya Poshemanskaya as well as of those that are not deciphered yet. It is defined that the famous Leningrad stenographer had an unknown predecessor who had deciphered the letter of Anna Dostoevskaya addressed to S. A. Kashina. The main subject of the study became the unknown shorthand records on the back of draft letters of Anna Dostoevskaya to V. I. NemirovichDanchenko. For the first time they have been deciphered and proved to be two draft letters of Anna Dostoevskaya. The study involved the third transcript, deciphered by C. Poshemanskaya, but left non-attributed. All three transcripts date back to May 1911 and have a common theme of the return of Leo Tolstoy’s letter ended up in the hands of Dostoevsky shortly before his death and kept in the Dostoevsky archive for 30 years. In her verbatim draft Anna Dostoevskaya indicates the number of pages of the returned letter by Tolstoy. It coincides with the number of pages of the letter dated back to February 2–3, 1880 and confirms the hypothesis of the researchers about what kind of Tolstoy’s letter shocked Dostoevsky. In this letter Tolstoy expressed his “confession of faith” and new mindsets that aroused the interest of the author of “The Brothers Karamazov”. The letter was given to Dostoevsky by Countess A. A. Tolstaya who was Leo Tolstoy’s opponent in the matter of faith. On May 6, 1911 Dostoevsky’s widow gave back the letter to the publishers of Tolstoy’s legacy. Their addressees are M. N. Galkin-Vraskoy, executor of the estate of A. A. Tolstaya, and Vs. I. Sreznevsky, scientific Secretary of the Manuscripts Department of the Library of the Academy of Sciences and publisher of Tosltoy’s legacy. This study presents the first decipherment of Anna Dostoevskaya’s transcripts after a half-century break. The established facts reveal the history of Tolstoy’s letter read by Dostoevsky, and contribute to the systematization and the most detailed description of the materials of the Dostoevsky archive.

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