The civil case of the “red count”

Abstract

In 1924, the Leningrad Provincial Court considered the litigation between Alexei Tolstoy and the translator of a foreign play, which formed the basis of the stage work of the writer. In pre-revolutionary and soviet Russia, as well as in some other states, there were social, administrative and legal prerequisites for the free use of foreign works (i.e. reprint, translation, recast). The court dismissed the claim without considering the foreign element of the legal relationship. In the absence of cross-border agreements on copyright, the court decision did not eliminate all the questions about the “casus Tolstoy” not only among literary critics, but also among lawyers as well.