Festival to celebrate Tolstoy’s birthday

A celebration to honor the 190th birthday of Leo Tolstoy will be held Tuesday at the Sherman Library.

The distinguished Russian writer and philosopher wrote novels such as “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina.”

The festival is intended to promote awareness of his works and focus on cultural interchange between the two countries. The program will feature a discussion about Tolstoy’s life and work and an opportunity to visit the replica of Tolstoy’s Moscow garden study that was constructed there.

Speakers will include Aleksandr Burdin, consul of the Russian Federation in the USA; Don Lowe, Sherman first selectman; Vladimir Lebedev, director of Moscow Department for Expatriates; Natalia Moroz, representative of Rossotrudnichestvo (Center for Russia Culture); Ksenia Voyevodskaya, representative of Tolstoy Foundation in USA; Julian Lundfeld, American poet and translator of Russian poetry; Vladimir Alexandrov, professor of Russian literature at Yale University; John Varoly, writer, journalist and specialist in Russian studies, and Marina Adanovich, editor in chief for the Russian New Review.

For more information and registration, visit https://

bit.ly/2Nl3Ml4.

The event is organized with efforts of the English-Russian family of Robin Raybould, historian and writer, and Elena Mihailova, professor of Russian literature, who have built an exact copy of the garden study in Khamovniki estate, the museum of Tolstoy, where the writer used to spend every winter from 1882 to

1901.