Focusing on the evolution of Anna Karenina’s plotlines, this talk seeks to identify a number of turning points in the four-year course of the novel’s writing. It revisits the historical reality of that time to uncover the origins of Tolstoy’s anxiety about the 1876 outburst of Pan-Slavism in Russia. The theme of high society and the motif of divorce serve as a guide to understanding Tolstoy’s interest – still keen even on the eve of his larger existential quest – in capturing the zesty minutiae of
contemporaneous political and cultural life. Thus, the question of why Anna and Vronsky are exposed to such severe public opprobrium, when similar unmarried couples in real life might well have been treated more leniently, can be approached from the perspective of the imperial court’s politics.

Mikhail Dolbilov is an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park.