Direct translations of classic works from the original language have become a major factor used by the publishing industry to attract the reading public. Thus, literary works that had originally reached the Brazilian reading public via indirect translations, primarily from an English or French source text, are now being rendered into Portuguese directly from Russian originals. Considering the impact that Russian literature had in the Western world when it started to circulate in translation in the late 19th century, this thesis focuses on direct and indirect translations into Portuguese of the work of two great Russian authors, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoievsky. The study is informed by polysystem theory (Even-Zohar 1990) and Descriptive Translation Studies (Toury, 1995; Lefevere, 1992) and aims, through the analysis of comments produced by literary theoreticians, scholars, critics, and translators, both to determine the image of these authors and their respective works - and of Russian Literature as a whole - that was constructed by these translations and to verify to what extent the image resulting from recent direct translations from the original Russian texts differs from that which was produced by indirect renderings.