News
International conference on the spiritual culture of the Slavs in honour of Nikita Tolstoi held in Russia (Iasnaia Poliana)
The Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences organised an international conference on the spiritual culture of the Slavs in commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the birth of Nikita Tolstoi, eminent Slavist and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The conference held 13–16 May in Iasnaia Poliana was titled Ethnolinguisitica Slavica. K 90-letiiu akademika Nikity Ilicha Tolstogo.
Ahead of the event, the renowned Moscow-based publishing house Indrik released the same-titled commemorative 520-page volume assembling the papers of all conference participants, Tolstoi’s associates and students from Russia, as well as scholars from Belarus, Ukraine, France and Serbia. The contributor from Serbia, Ljubinko Radenković, senior research fellow of the Institute for Balkan Studies, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, presented the paper “The devil and/or the boundary marker”.
During the conference held on Leo Tolstoi’s Estate, in Volkonski House, the exhibition From Serbia to Russia was opened. It reconstructed the life and work of Nikita Tolstoi through photographs, documents and artefacts. Nikita Tolstoi, great-grandson of Leo Tolstoi and a great friend of the Serbian people, was born to an aristocratic émigré family in Vršac, Serbia, in 1923, and died in Moscow in 1966. He was a member of several academies of sciences, including the Serbian. One display panel presented Nikita Tolstoi’s distinguished disciples, well-known Slavists of ethnolinguistic orientation. The work of Nikita Tolstoi is successfully continued by his widow, Svetlana Tolstaia, a distinguished Slavist and a foreign member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.