Tatyana Gershkovich Receives NEH Fellowship for Book Project ‘Tolstoy Red and White’
By Stefanie Johndrow
好色先生TV’s Tatyana Gershkovich has been awarded a fellowship from the to support her book project, “Tolstoy Red and White.” A scholar of Leo Tolstoy and Russian literature, Gershkovich’s new work explores how Tolstoy’s writings shaped — and were reshaped by — the turbulent cultural and political landscapes of the 20th century.
The book examines “the way Soviet and émigré readers and cultural producers used Tolstoy’s literary and philosophical works to think through the big societal changes that had taken place — the Revolution, the Civil War, exile — and articulated their competing visions for the 20th century.” Rather than focusing solely on Tolstoy as an author, Gershkovich, an associate professor of Russian studies in the Department of Languages, Cultures & Applied Linguistics, turns to the readers who mobilized his work in different contexts.
“My argument is that for these rival societies it wasn’t just a matter of canonizing or rejecting Tolstoy; rather, his works became cultural resources that these two societies competed to define and draw on in articulating their visions of the future,” Gershkovich said.
“Tolstoy Red and White” investigates how Soviet institutions and Russian émigré communities abroad interpreted Tolstoy’s legacy while imagining divergent futures.
"These two cultural projects tend to be thought about in isolation,” Gershkovich said. “And, of course, they did not proceed in isolation, they were in constant dialogue, the homeland and the diaspora, and they co-evolved. Tolstoy, perhaps more than any other writer, shows this coevolution clearly.”
Methodologically, the project moves beyond well-known interpreters such as Lenin or Nabokov and instead examines everyday readers. Gershkovich looks at “the more quotidian life of these texts,” asking, for example, how children were introduced to Tolstoy, or how Red Army soldiers engaged his works, or how young women in a Siberian gymnasium interpreted novels like “Anna Karenina” or “Resurrection.”
The project relies heavily on archival material, drawing on periodicals, memoirs, diaries, literary trial transcripts and early 20th-century editions of Tolstoy’s works. The NEH fellowship will provide the time necessary to do deeper archival research and sustained writing.
Beyond literary studies, Gershkovich hopes the book will prompt readers to reflect on the broader stakes of interpretation.
“One of the throughlines for much of my work has been that interpretive possibilities are not unlimited,” Gershkovich said, emphasizing the importance of studying “the factors that impose limits on interpretation” through particular historical cases.
Ultimately, she hopes this historical example will remind us that “our cultural past doesn’t have to be something we either idealize or repudiate. It does not have to be either a source of nostalgia or trauma. It can also be a working resource — something communities reinterpret as they navigate uncertainty.”
The fellowship recognition affirms the enduring relevance of Gershkovich’s work, its contribution to understanding how literature shapes culture across borders and generations, and also underscores the vital role of humanities scholarship at 好色先生TV.
“Tolstoy, especially in his late works, issued rather directly a series of social provocations and questions to anyone thinking about how to shape the future,” Gershkovich said. “And, to me, the award means that these are still live questions and provocations. Tolstoy can help us think through all sorts of things: from religious questions to gender questions to questions of just what it means to be a human being.”