ИСТИНА

Russia and India have a long history of cultural and literary connections. One of the first examples of this fact is “Vidya Sundar” translated from Bengali into Russian by Gerasim Lebedev (1749-1817). He was not only a musician and an artist, but a prominent scholar, linguist, ethnographer, theatre producer. Lebedev is considered to be one of the founders of Modern Indian National Theatre also. Writings by the classic of Hindi and Urdu literature Premchand who translated into Hindi stories by Leo Tolstoy and was inspired by his ideas, clearly show importance of such literary interaction. Premchand read stories by Leo Tolstoy in 1914 , one of them was “Суратская кофейная” (A coffee-house of Surat), in which Tolstoy had shown that it was useless to argue whose faith was better. For India or Russia where people of different faiths live together from time immemorial such attitude was important and must have appealed to Premchand who studied in madrasa, began his writing in Urdu, and in the 1920-s shifted to Hindi. In 1922 Premchand translated some of Leo Tolstoy stories into Hindi. He also wrote Preface to “Talstay ki Kahaaniyaan” and a book review of his novel “Anna Karenina”. One of the main heroes of this novel is Levin, a prototype of whom was Leo Tolstoy himself, so the hero resembled the writer’s attitude to his peasants and his ideas regarding improvement of their life. It is important that Premchand’s translation of Leo Tolstoy stories was published in the series which popularized the Non-Cooperation movement. Premchand highly valued the idea of Tolstoy that the main quality of Literature was to “evoke love to all people”. Influence of Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi, who were in correspondence with each other, is clearly seen in some of Premchand’s stories and novels. The writer joined Asahayog movement in 1921 and just one year later, in 1922, his novel “Premashram” was published. The novel shows a life of three generations of landowners and changes which developed in Indian villages of that time. A kind of ideal farm called “Premashram” (Abode of Love) is presented in the novel as an example of peasants’ cooperation. They are supported by an educated and enlightened landowner. At the same time the Russian October Revolution also is mentioned. Premchand wrote a play “Sangram”, its main subject was peasants’ struggle for better destiny. In many other stories and some novels Premchand expressed the same ideas (compassion for people, wish for decent life for everybody), which was typical for Tolstoy and Gandhi. Such kind of literary interaction is confirmed by Premchand’s story “Qaidi” also. In the USSR, many years before they were translated into English or any other European language, more than 50 short stories and 6 novels by Premchand were translated into Russian. They became a valuable part of the World literary heritage cherished by Russian readers. It was a result of a dedicated work of Russian Indologists and translators. Many writings of Hindi writers and those who wrote in other Indian languages (Marathi, Panjabi, Tamil) were translated into Russian during that period. This process stopped in the 1990-s, slowly it improves now. Recent translations of stories and plays by K. B. Vaid, poetry of Kunvar Narain, prose by Mridula Garg and some other Hindi writers and poets fulfilled by Moscow and St. Petersburg Indology scholars along with their studies of Contemporary Indian literature will be discussed in the paper.