The Road to Calvary. Tolstoy A.N.

The first novel of his famous trilogy, Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy, began to write in 1918 in Odessa shortly before emigration. The sisters were published four years later in Berlin. The writer masterfully described the death of the “Silver Age” and how the whirlwinds of the First World War and the followed by the storm of two revolutions are carried on different sides of the barricades of Russian intellectuals, relatives, and close people. Tolstoy could not live outside Russia and soon returned to his homeland.

His novel “The Eighteenth” was published already in the USSR in 1928. He became the second part of the trilogy “Walking through the torment”, which gained its final form only in 1941. The writer repeatedly remade the text of the trilogy so that the book could fall into the hands of readers. In March 1943, this work was awarded the Stalin Prize. Commenting on his suffered trilogy, A. N. Tolstoy wrote that he tried to express in it a feeling of a huge era, and this work is “the author’s conscience by suffering, hopes, enthusiasm, falls, despondency and take -off”. As a result, along with the “Quiet Don” of Sholokhov and the “White Guard” by Bulgakov, the trilogy A. N. Tolstoy took a worthy place in the Golden Fund of Russian literature.

The book is decorated with illustrations made by Kukryniks. Under this unusual pseudonym, three artists did-Mikhail Vasilievich Kupriyanov (1903-1991), Porfiry Nikitich Krylov (1902-1990) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Sokolov (1903-2000). It is unlikely that in the Soviet Union there would be a man who did not see drawings, cartoons or cartoons made by Kukryniks. According to their expressive posters, it was possible to trace all the key events of the USSR war with fascist Germany, as well as the main points of the post -war period that took place in the world political arena. The drawings of the Kukryniks on the anger of the day regularly appeared in the most influential printed publication of the country - the newspaper Pravda. The acquaintance of the three artists took place when they were students of the Moscow VKhUTEMAS-the highest artistic and technical workshops. The Kukryniks began their creative path with illustrations to stories and satirical drawings, which caustically ridiculed the surrounding reality. Kukryniks showed themselves perfectly as book illustrators. The talented trinity of the masters began to experiment in this field at the dawn of their creative activity. The skill of Kukryniks allowed them to select the original style for each specific work, for the illustration of which they took. Their drawings to the trilogy of A. N. Tolstoy are perfectly proved by this.