Why Are Copies of the Manuscript of "Anna Karenina" Displayed on the Fence of the Khrushchev-Seleznev Urban Noble Estate?

Why are copies of the manuscript of "Anna Karenina" displayed on the fence of the Khrushchev-Seleznev urban noble estate? Because in the garden of the State Pushkin Museum the new season of the "Tolstoy" Theatre Festival is being presented. It will take place at Yasnaya Polyana from 7 to 9 July and will be devoted precisely to "Anna Karenina", on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the start of work on the novel, marked this year.

The festival is still run by Katya Tolstaya, the cheerful and amiable great-great-great-granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy, whom I met when I was preparing for Tatler a piece about the Tolstoy family.

The festival, long one of the country's principal theatrical events, traditionally presents both large-scale productions and small projects such as walking performances. The year before last it was a route across the grounds of Yasnaya Polyana, whose length was matched to the number of characters in "War and Peace", with individual stops linked to quotations from the epic.

The main news of this year's "Tolstoy" festival is the participation of the Bolshoi Theatre. On 8 and 9 July the ballet "Anna Karenina", in John Neumeier's production, will be shown in the open air at Yasnaya Polyana. I very much want to see it, so I shall certainly try to be there. More than 120 performers are involved in the production, among them Alexander Volchkov, Kristina Kretova and Alexander Vodopetov.