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Abstract:

A.N. Tolstoy’s trilogy “The Road to Calvary” chronologically covers the period from 1913 to 1920. Its duration and richness of historical events suggest the presence of several prototypes of any character. In the novels “The Road to Calvary” (1919−1921) and “Sisters”, the prototype of Dasha Bulavina was Nadezhda Vasilyevna Krandievskaya, the sister of the writer’s wife. However, in the subsequent parts of the trilogy, the outline of her life does not coincide with the development of the plot of the work. In the novel “Gloomy Morning”, Dasha, the wife of the red commander, finds herself in a combat zone and is engaged in organizing a frontline theater, which brings the heroine closer to a good friend of V.V. Mayakovsky, Maria Alexandrovna Denisova-Shchadenko. In the context of Denisova’s biography, the article examines the hypothesis of her prototypical connection with the image of Dasha Bulavina, which makes it possible to assume a gradual expansion of the circle of real persons — prototypes of the heroes of Tolstoy’s trilogy “The Road to Calvary”, on which the writer worked more than 10 years.