Two centuries of the Russian classics Two centuries of the Russian classics 2686-7494 IWL RAS https://doi.org/10.22455/2686-7494-2025-7-2-240-257 Research Article Articles Russian Classics and the Russian Fate in the Works by the American Writer Maurice Hindus Khristenko Dmitrii N. red@rusklassika.ru 25 06 2025 7 2 240 257 Russian classics Leo Tolstoy M. Hindus American writer Russia history people Copyright © 2026, IWL RAS 2026 This article examines the hitherto undiscovered American writer M. Hindus (1891–1969), who for half a century studied Soviet Russia and its “interpretation” of the West. The research notes that Hindus paid close attention to Russian classics, whose work was based on their citing and comprehension. The books of Hindus reveal three main issues: the theme of the village and peasant life, the Russian national character, and love and human relationships. In his early works of the 1920s and 1930s, he tried to confirm his conclusions and observations about the positive changes in the socio-public life of the USSR with examples from Russian classical literature. In the later period of his work, he turned to Russian classics in search of answers to profound questions about the national character, Russian mentality, values, and life orientation by which ordinary people and the entire Soviet society live. Hindus was one of the most prominent foreign writers who studied our Fatherland, a kind of mirror in which we see the change in the attitude of foreign intellectuals to the historical fate of Russia and its classical literary heritage. 1. Andreeva, V. G. “Chelovek i problema antropotsentrizma v russkom romane vtoroi poloviny XIX veka” [“The Person and Problem of Anthropocentrism in the Russian Novel of the Second Half of the 19th Century”]. Verkhnevolzhskii filologicheskii vestnik, no. 4 (15), 2018, pp. 13–21.  https://doi.org/10.24411/2499-9679-2018-10191 (In Russ.) 2. Tivel’, A. “Novye inostrannye knigi o Sovetskom Soiuze” [“New Foreign Books About the Soviet Union”]. Mirovoe khoziaistvo i mirovaia politika, no. 10, 1933, pp. 110–129. (In Russ.) 3. Kabanova, I. V. “Mesto Morisa Khindusa v amerikanskikh reportazhakh iz Sovetskoi Rossii 1920–1930-kh gg.” [“The Place of Maurice Hindus in American Reports from Soviet Russia in the 1920s–1930s”]. Literatura dvukh Amerik, no. 3, 2017, pp. 44–54.  https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2017-3-44-54 (In Russ.) 4. Tikhii, K. T. Amerikantsy o strane Sovetov 1921–1933 gg. [Americans About the Country of Soviets, 1921–1933]. Vladivostok, Dal’nauka Publ., 2000. 255 p. (In Russ.) 5. Khristenko, D. N., A. B. Orishev, and A. A. Mamedov. “Sotsial’naia politika Rossiiskoi imperii vo vtoroi polovine XIX – nachale XX veka (na primere funktsionirovaniia sistemy zdravookhraneniia)” [“Social Policy in the Russian Empire in the Second Half of the 19th – Beginning of the 20th Centuries: On the Example of Healthcare System”]. Bylye gody, no. 19 (2), 2024, pp. 792–802.  https://doi.org/10.13187/bg.2024.2.792 (In Russ.) 6. Mangione, Jerre. “He Believed in the Qualities of the Common Man.” New York Times, September 26, 1971. (In English)