What relationship do the time of action in the work and the historical time of its creation have with each other in the novel “Anna Karenina”? How do specific events and incidents intrude into the fictional reality of the novel? How do they change the author's intention? In search of answers to these questions, historian M. Dolbilov in his book examines the genesis of the text of Tolstoy’s masterpiece, reconstructing the evolution of a number of themes, character characteristics, motives, allusions, scenes, plot elements and even individual significant phrases. This approach allows us to see in Anna Karenina not so much an encyclopedia as a commentary on life in Russia in the post-reform era - a commentary whose very inaccuracies and exaggerations raise new questions about historical reality. Mikhail Dolbilov is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland at College Park, USA.