A Transatlantic Dialogue of the Tostoy Family Descendants, Participants in “The Golden Book of the Russian Emigration” Project

Abstract

This article is devoted to the little-known but important details of a large-scale project of publishing a summarizing work on the life and activities of the post-1917 Russian emigration, named “The Golden Book of the Russian Emigration”. This project was conceived in the midst of the Society for the Protection of Russian Cultural Values Abroad in Paris (“OORKTs”) that was founded by D. P. Riabouchinsky, a prominent Russian émigré scientist in the field of aero and hydrodynamics, member of the French Academy of Science. In 1961, Riabouchinsky became the Chair of the Special European Executive Committee (Paris) for the Publication of the “Golden Book”. The American initiative group for the preparation and publication of the “Golden Book” was set up in September 1961. It was headed by Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya, the daughter of Leo Tolstoy and president of the Tolstoy Foundation (US). This article introduces for scientific use the previously correspondence between A. L. Tolstaya and Sergei Mikhailovich Tolstoy, Leo Tolstoy’s grandson, a doctor of medicine and deontologist, the author of works in tropical medicine and blood transfusion, who chaired the Special European Executive Committee for the Publication of the “Golden Book” since 1967. This correspondence that covers the period of 1966–1967 is concerned with establishing organizational relations between two centers of Russian dispersion, Paris and New York, and sheds light on the complicated workings of interpersonal relationships of project participants and on some causes of the project’s failure. The documents from two “Russian” archives in the USA, the Archive of the Russian Academic Group in the USA and the Archive of the Tolstoy Foundation, were used during the preparation of this article.