Year of Literature in Russia came to the end with the large-scale project of VGTRK “War and peace. Reading of the novel”, dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the writing of that great epic work of literature. Readings took place from December 8 to December 11, 2015, on one volume of the novel in a day. The reading of the novel, that has brought world glory to Leo Tolstoy, was broadcasted within 60 hours on air of the state channels “Russia-K” and “Russia-24”, radio station «Mayak», and also in the Internet. As a result the novel has been read from the first to the last line, and the scale of this action has no analogues in the world.
This project was created to show that the love to the literature is able to unite the world. 24 Russian cities, and also 10 cities of the near and far abroad took part in broadcasting: Moscow and St. Petersburg, Smolensk and Kazan, Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg, Ufa and Sochi, and many others, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, and also Vienna, Paris, London, Berlin, Washington, Beijing. Fragments of the novel could be heard in the Russian Arctic National Park and in the Yasnaya Polyana Museum, in the Hermitage Museum and in The Leo Tolstoy State Museum, from the stages of Mariinsky Theatre and from the stages of the Bolshoi Drama Theater, in the Kazan Kremlin and Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, in the high speed electric express train Sapsan and on the Moscow Metro stations, on the nuclear icebreaker Vaygach and on the The International Space Station.
The “War and peace” novel is the most readable Russian novel on the planet. It held a great number of editions, was translated into dozens of languages, first of all, in French, because it is the language spoken by many characters in the novel. “War and Peace” brings a huge patriotic charge, shows the life of the nation and of all social groups in Russia at a turning historical point. That is why the readings have involved both the professional readers like TV and radio actors and people of other professions like politicians, scientists, engineers, teachers, doctors, workers, students and pupils. Totally there have been involved more than 1,300 readers.
Among those who had been reading the novel fragments on the air were the well-known actors, such as Alice Friendlich, Oleg Tabakov, Renata Litvinova, Igor Vernik, Sergey Garmash, also the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, the Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko. On the last day of the marathon even Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev joned the project. The action was also attended by the foreigners, Polish director Andrzej Wajda, Italian actor Michele Placido, French actress Fanny Ardant and headmistress of the “Comedie Francaise Theatre” Muriel Maietti.
