The Road to Calvary

For the 2017 miniseries based on the novels, see The Road to Calvary (TV series).

The Road to Calvary (Russian: Хождение по мукам, romanized: Khozhdenie po mukam) is a trilogy of novels by Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy, tracing the fate of the Russian intelligentsia on the eve, during and after the revolutionary events of 1917. It consists of the novels "Sisters" (1921-1922; «Сёстры»), "The Eighteenth Year" (1927-1928; «Восемнадцатый год») and "Gloomy Morning" (1940-1941; «Хмурое утро»).

Plot

In the first chapters of the epic, St. Petersburg is shown in the beginning of 1914. Sisters Dasha and Ekaterina (Katya) Bulaviny, originally from Samara, are carried away by the poet-decadent Bessonoff. Katya is married to Smokovnikov, a lawyer, and has an illicit affair behind his back.

Over time, Ekaterina Dmitrievna falls in love with officer Vadim Roshchin, and Dasha with Ivan Ilyich Telegin, an engineer at the Baltic plant. World War I, two revolutions and civil war carry the four main characters to different corners of the country. Their paths intersect more than once and again diverge. Roshchin joins the Volunteer Army, and Telegin joins the Red Army. At the end of the war, all four meet in the capital of Soviet Russia, where in the presence of Lenin and Stalin are enthusiastically listening to Krzhizhanovsky's historic report on the GOELRO plan.

Intended as realism:

"Walking through torment" is the walking of the author's conscience of suffering, hopes, enthusiasm, falls, despondency, take-offs - a feeling of a whole huge era.

— Tolstoy

Awards

For his trilogy Alexey Tolstoy was awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree in the amount of 100,000 rubles on March 19, 1943, which he transferred to the Defense Fund for the construction of the tank "Grozny" (T-34 No. 310-0929).

Adaptations

• The Road to Calvary — Soviet three-part feature film (1957-1959)
• The Road to Calvary — Soviet 13-episode miniseries (1977)
• The Road to Calvary — Russian 12-episode miniseries (2017)

Further reading

• G.N. Vorontsova (2014). Natalia Kornienko (ed.). A. Tolstoy's novel "The Road to Calvary" (1919-1921). Creative history and textology problems. Moscow: IMLI RAN. p. 344. ISBN 978-5-9208-0441-9.