ABSTRACT
A Russian aristocrat and world famous author abandons — for a time at least — the production of his second great masterpiece in order to write and promulgate an ABC Book for beginning pupils developed through his concern for the education of peasant children. 'What's so difficult', he is to say later, 'about describing how an officer gets entangled with a woman? There's nothing difficult in that, and above all, nothing worthwhile. It's bad, and it serves no purpose.'1 Thus its author on Anna Karenina, regarded by many as the greatest novel ever written. Instead, he preferred to attend to the educational needs of the little muzhiks of Yasnaya Polyana, his country estate — and this for the second time in his life. Why?
