Digital-surrogate hunt — catalogue probe, 2026-05-29

Session goal: batch the Phase 7 Swedish digital-surrogate hunt with the §1.6 Aldanov-reconciliation Berlin 1921 Russian-scan hunt, per the §7.2 decision recorded at session 3 close. Catalogue-probing motion, 1–2 h scoped.

Method: WebSearch + WebFetch across the standard Russian-émigré digital archives and standard Swedish public digital archives. No PDF downloads — the brief was locate-and-confirm, not capture-and-diff (the diff is the next-session executable).

Russian side — Berlin 1921 located, plus two unknown editions surfaced

1921 Berlin Ladyzhnikov three-volume reissue — full set on vtoraya-literatura.com

Page-count drift of +4 / +5 / +5 pp across the three volumes is consistent with front-matter or title-leaf counting variance; this is the same edition Egorov’s lot 192 photographed. All three are OCR’d PDFs with a searchable text layer beneath the page-image facsimiles; total ~109 MB. Site provenance: vtoraya-literatura.com is a Russian-émigré-literature digital archive; electronic editions of the Birukoff volumes prepared by Andrey Nikitin-Perensky and Stanislav Lvovskiy. Author catalogue page: http://vtoraya-literatura.com/author-168 (three entries; no Vol IV — Vol IV 1922 Berlin is already at az.lib.ru).

Effect on §1.6: the Aldanov reconciliation (3) residual is now fully unblockable. Next session: locate Глава 10 in Berlin 1921 Vol I, diff against az.lib.ru’s az-lib-vol1-roman-chapter-probe.md findings. The chapter numbering should be continuous across the volume (no first-edition part-1 / part-2 split) — read the TOC first.

1911 Moscow Кушнерёв second edition Vol I — at imwerden.de

• URL: https://imwerden.de/publ-18037
• Full title: «Павел Иванович Бирюков. Лев Николаевич Толстой. Биография. 2-е изд. Том 1»
• Publisher: Кушнерёв (Moscow)
• Year: 1911
• Page count: 544 pp (this copy has a 4-page lacuna at pp. 487–490)
• OCR’d PDF, 24.86 MB, downloadable; text layer underlying page-image facsimiles
• Scan prepared by Алексей Балакин; ImWerden acquisition 2026-01-24

New §1.1 row. Previously unknown to this research project. The 1911 Moscow Кушнерёв second edition sits between the 1906/1908 first edition and the 1921 Berlin reissue. Crucially: 1911 is pre-S. A. Tolstaya death (4 November 1919), so the suppression layer Aldanov names still applies — the second edition would not yet have restored anything held back out of deference to her.

Effect on §1.6 Aldanov reconciliation: the 1911 Кушнерёв becomes a third witness in the chapter-presence probe. - If Глава 10 with the Arsenyeva material is already in the 1911 Кушнерёв → reconciliation (3) gains weight (Aldanov’s “new chapter” must have been about a different woman, since Arsenyeva was already in the textual record). - If Глава 10 is absent or differently shaped (survey-only, name withheld) in the 1911 Кушнерёв → reconciliation (1) or (2) gains weight (the Berlin 1921 reissue is what introduced the Arsenyeva detail).

1923 Moscow + Petrograd Госиздат third edition Vol I — at the Presidential Library

• URL: https://www.prlib.ru/item/1163574
• Full title: «П. И. Бирюков. Биография Льва Николаевича Толстого. Том 1. Издание 3-е, исправленное и дополненное.»
• Publisher: Государственное издательство (Soviet state publishing house)
• Place: Moscow + Petrograd
• Year: 1923
• Page count: XX, 243 pp + 18 pp illustrations
• Source institution holding the physical book: Ural Federal University (УрФУ, Yekaterinburg); electronic copy held by the Presidential Library (Boris Yeltsin, St. Petersburg)
• Viewable via the Presidential Library’s online platform; the catalogue page surfaces thumbnails

New §1.1 row. Also previously unknown to this research project. Two open questions:

1. The 243-page count is anomalously small for a “full Vol I” — the 1921 Berlin Vol I is 576 pp, the 1911 Кушнерёв is 544 pp, the 1906 first edition was published as one volume in two parts. The 1923 Госиздат at 243 pp likely covers only part of Vol I’s scope (perhaps a single tom in a multi-tom Soviet reprint where Vol I was split into more physical volumes than the first edition), or possibly the condensed Краткая биография tradition (§1.1’s 1908 / 1912 condensations) — but the title “Биография Льва Николаевича Толстого” without “Краткая” argues against the condensed interpretation. Disambiguation needed against the actual title-page surface (next session, when the Presidential Library record’s image surface is captured).
2. Probable explanation for the rumoured “1923 Berlin reissue” (§1.8). The original WebSearch hit from session 2 that flagged a “1923 Berlin Vols I–III reissue” appears to have been a misattribution of this 1923 Госиздат Moscow + Petrograd 3rd edition. The §1.8 open question can be downgraded from “unverified search hit” to “candidate-for-retirement, pending one final WorldCat / German-national-library check to rule out a parallel 1923 Berlin event.”

Swedish side — clean negative at standard digital archives

Phase 7 digital-surrogate hunt for Leo Tolstoj — Hans lif och hans verk (trans. Erik Nordenström, Norstedt 1906–1909):

Effect on §7.2: the digital-surrogate hunt branch is exhausted at the cheap-probe layer. The remaining surrogate routes (Lund, Stockholm, Uppsala university digital collections directly; KB digitisation-on-demand request) are out of scope for a 1–2 h probe. The §7.2 fallback now reads: Phase 7 stays parked on Johan’s physical books or the V850 partial-scope scan (post-1880 chapters, ~8–10 h end-to-end) if/when Scenario A/B (§6.2) becomes a real downstream question.

Side-finds (small refinements to existing sections)

§1.7 — two independent digital surrogates of the 2000 «Алгоритм» print

The 2000 Алгоритм reprint Book II (Vols III + IV) is digitised twice, independently: - az.lib.ru — OCR by Виталий Адаменко, 10–20 January 2003. Underlying text_1922_tolstoy06.shtml (and text_1905_tolstoy05.shtml for Vol III, which is from Book I). - imwerden.de (publ-16339) — electronic edition by Andrey Nikitin-Perensky and Stanislav Lvovskiy, 658 pp, OCR PDF 33.4 MB, ISBN 5-888-78017-0 (= the Алгоритм 2000 ISBN itself, so this is the same print run).

The current §1.7 mentions only the az.lib.ru chain. Refinement to note both digital descendants is factually clean but not on the verdict’s critical path.

§2.1 — Erik Nordenström biographical clarification

Litteraturbanken’s Svenskt översättarlexikon does not have a dedicated Nordenström article, but its article on translator Sören Rydström (https://litteraturbanken.se/översättarlexikon/artiklar/Sören_Rydström) mentions Nordenström once, in this passage:

“Trots goda ryskkunskaper hade han dessutom sneglat på artillerikaptenen Erik Gustaf Nordenströms högst diskutabla översättning från 1910 och inhämtat en del vändningar därifrån.”

Working English: “Despite good Russian skills, he also glanced at the artillery captain Erik Gustaf Nordenström’s highly questionable translation from 1910 and adopted some turns of phrase from it.”

Two facts transfer to §2.1: - Erik Nordenström’s profession: artillery captain. Filling in the Swedish translator’s social position. - The “1910 highly questionable” reference does NOT apply to the Birukoff translation — the Rydström article’s context is Gogol’s Döda själar, not Tolstoy’s biography. §2.1 should record the biographical fact without inheriting the quality judgement.

§1.1 Swedish year-range confirmation

Erik Oskarsson Antikvariat (Lund), via a Google snippet: “Leo Tolstoj. Hans lif och hans verk. Själfbiografiska bref och anteckningar samt biografiska uppgifter. I-II · Stockholm, P A Norstedt & Söner. 1906-1909.” — confirms the Swedish Norstedt edition publication-year range as 1906–1909, three häften across two Russian-volume scopes (Första delen 1 + 2 covers Russian Vol I, Andra delen covers Russian Vol II).

What this session does NOT settle

• Whether 1911 Vol II or 1911 Vol III also exist. imwerden only has 1911 Vol I; vtoraya-literatura has only 1921 Berlin. Whether Кушнерёв also reprinted Vol II in 1911+ is open.
• The 1923 Госиздат scope question. Whether the 243 pp is a partial Vol I, a condensed edition, or part of a multi-physical-volume Soviet project. Needs the actual title page surface.
• The 1922–24 four-volume Berlin set (§1.8). Still unverified; today’s probe found no evidence for or against.
• The Eugen Diederichs German edition. Not on today’s path.
• The Cassell 1911 vs. Heinemann 1906 English-edition disentangling. Today’s probe surfaced the Heinemann 1906 on archive.org (leotolstoyhislif00biriiala, 462 pp); §2.3 currently conflates Cassell 1911 with a separate Wikisource “Leo Tolstoy: His Life and Work” entry. Heinemann 1906 may be a third distinct English-edition, not the same as Cassell 1911 or the Wikisource version. Parking-lot for §2.3.

Next-session executable (powered by this probe’s finds)

A focused 1-session §1.6 / Aldanov-reconciliation diff probe: 1. Pull Glava-10 / Roman from 1921 Berlin Vol I PDF (publ-5548) — read chapter heading, opening paragraph, name redaction status, length, footnote / letter handling. 2. Pull the corresponding chapter from 1911 Кушнерёв Vol I PDF (publ-18037). 3. Compare both against az.lib.ru’s existing capture (text_1905_tolstoy02.shtml, Глава 10. Роман, 99 kB, Arsenyeva named in full). 4. Settle reconciliation (1), (2), or (3); commit findings to a new extract file and a §1.6 update.

Estimated cost: 1 short session (PDF download + chapter location + text comparison), no translation work required.

Cross-reference

• The 1921 Berlin reissue lot photographed by Egorov: https://egorovs.art/auction112/lot192.
• The az.lib.ru / 2000 Алгоритм chapter this probe sets up the diff against: az-lib-vol1-roman-chapter-probe.md.
• Aldanov 1921’s claim under test: aldanov-1921-review-berlin-ladyzhnikov.md.
• The Swedish witness whose digital surrogate this probe hunted for: swedish-andra-delen-titlepage.md, swedish-andra-delen-slutord-p453.md.
• Session log entry that opens this probe: ../session-log.md (2026-05-29 second entry).