AST attributes shorter Eternal Call monologue to earlier authorial version

Publisher AST told RBC that its 2025 reissue of Anatoly Ivanov's Eternal Call uses an earlier authorial version. It said this explains the shorter monologue by the character Arnold Lakhnovsky.

AST said it had reproduced a version predating 1981 rather than cutting the text for the reissue. The expanded monologue appeared in a volume of Ivanov's collected works published in 1981.

The response followed a comparison by blogger Yana Karachina. She said a speech occupying half a page in earlier editions had become nine lines in the 2025 book.

The later monologue is associated with the origins of the so-called Dulles Plan. In 1993, writer Boris Oleynik combined the fictional character's remarks in his pamphlet Prince of Darkness and attributed them to CIA director Allen Dulles, RBC reported.

The text is an apocryphal work, rather than a published US policy document. An English-language original of the supposed plan has never been presented.

Ivanov wrote Eternal Call between 1963 and 1975. The novel follows the Savelyev brothers through Russian history in the early twentieth century.