5 Minutes With a Russian-Studies Scholar Who Retraced Tolstoy's Steps, ...

http://chronicle.com/article/5-Minutes-With-a/128112/

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July 3, 2011

'As Soon as the Russians Hear Tolstoy's Name, They'll Do Anything for You'
By Molly Redden In the 1880s, Leo Tolstoy made several walks from Moscow to his ancestral home, Yasnya Polyana, more than 100 miles away in rural Russia. In June, Michael A. Denner, an associate professor of Russian studies at Stetson University, and a colleague, Thomas Newlin, of Oberlin College, spent four and a half days recreating the journey. The Chronicle spoke with Mr. Denner shortly after the scholars finished their walk. Q. Why did Tolstoy make these walks? A. I think because he was a fidget. He made his own shoes, hauled his own water, emptied his own chamber pots. He was a crmede-la-crme aristocrat manually toiling at his house because he had an excess of energy. And he would just get sick and tired of being cooped up with his family in Moscow, so he would grab a stick and a bag, walk out the door, and walk home. Q. And what prompted you to do the same? A. It's a commonplace that if we want to know an author, we ought to know the works they're familiar with. But it's also important to share some of their experiences. I really felt like I would get a better idea of this physical side of Tolstoy if I were to do what he did. Q. Were you more prepared than Tolstoy? A. We didn't have an itinerary, like Tolstoy. We wanted to get to specific hotels that he had gotten to. But one night, we were near Andrey Bolotov's estatehe was like the Thomas Jefferson of Russiawhich is a museum now. They put us up in a shalash, which is a grass tent sort of in the shape of a tepee, in the middle of an apple orchard. And we had a delightful night with the director of the museum, who showed up with bottles of vodka, jars of pickles, black bread, tomatoes, herring, and an incredibly talented musician, whom apparently he could just produce with the wave of his hand. We sat up half the night drinking vodka and singing old Russian songs.

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7/12/2011 1:19 PM

5 Minutes With a Russian-Studies Scholar Who Retraced Tolstoy's Steps, ...

http://chronicle.com/article/5-Minutes-With-a/128112/

Q. What is the part of Russia you walked through like? A. It's just the middle of nowhere. I marveled as I walked, because the history of 19th-century Russia was about "the land problem," about how to properly give freed peasants their due. Tolstoy was at the center of the debate over land. It led unequivocally to the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, because their platform was, "We will distribute land freely." And what I'll always remember is, at hill after hill, coming to the crest and seeing nothing but the road disappearing in the distance. And I wonder, have ever so few people ever fought so bitterly over so much land? And that's absurd, of courseeveryone knows Russia is huge. But walk 100 miles of it, and you'll understand what that means. And we got lost a lot because maps of Russia are really, really bad. That's what really brought out the Russophile in me: how incredibly hospitable the Russians were. At one point we had to cross the Oka River. There was an ambulance there with a little aluminum boat, so I say, "Hi, we're Tolstoy experts and we're following the historical path of Tolstoy." I lie a little bit"Tolstoy would always ask the boats on the river for a ride across." And they shrug like this is a perfectly normal request they get every day, and they gave us a lift. As soon as the Russians hear Tolstoy's name, they'll do anything for you. Q. When people hear that you walked more than 100 miles to follow in Tolstoy's footsteps, how do they react? A. Everyone thought we were completely daft for doing this. We were repeatedly warned that we would be preyed upon, mugged, killed, hit by a car. When we got to Yasnya Polyana, there was a conference going on that turned into a very angry discussion about the sorry state of Russia and the disappearance of regard for culture. You can imagine the reaction as we tell this jaunty tale of our expedition through Russia, and tell these embittered and cynical Russians how great ordinary Russian people were. We were accused of not really "getting" Russia. And I ended it recommending that they all take a walk.
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7/12/2011 1:19 PM

5 Minutes With a Russian-Studies Scholar Who Retraced Tolstoy's Steps, ...

http://chronicle.com/article/5-Minutes-With-a/128112/

I'm suprised Denner got lost in Russia. Did he have a geographer along?

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7/12/2011 1:19 PM