---
layer: reference
lastUpdated: 2026-05-27
tags: [research, biryukov, doukhobors]
lang: en
source: tolstoy-lit.ru
volume: 3
chapter: 2
---

# Volume III, Chapter 2. *What Then Must We Do?*

**Source:** https://tolstoy-lit.ru/tolstoy/bio/biryukov/biografiya-biryukov-3-2.htm

**Text:** P. I. Biryukov (1860–1931), *Biography of L. N. Tolstoy*, Volume III. Public domain.
**Translation:** English translation for the tolstoy.life research platform (2026-05-27), from the continuous Russian capture in [`../ru/chapter-02.md`](../ru/chapter-02.md).

---

We shall return more than once to the activity of *Posrednik* ("The Intermediary"), since L. N.'s life often took it up and directed it onto the true path. Besides popular literature, at the end of 1884 and the beginning of 1885 L. N. was occupied with the printing of his article, which afterwards came out as a separate book under the title *What Then Must We Do?*

We have already mentioned this remarkable book in connection with Lev Nikolaevich's participation in the Moscow census. The first chapters of this book are indeed devoted to recollections of the census, but the remaining, greater part of the book contains vivid, powerful critical depictions of contemporary economic inequality, an analysis of the causes of this phenomenon, indications of the possibility of deliverance from it, and a portrayal of L. N.'s own personal experience in this regard. He began it as far back as April 1884. In a letter to Chertkov of that time he says:

> "I have begun to print in *Russkaya Mysl* (Russian Thought) my article on what came out of my article and the census (I spoke to you of it), but I do not know whether I shall finish. Other thoughts are developing. I am beginning to feel more vigorous than of late, and I should like to use the period of this vigour for the work of God."

In Sofya Andreyevna's correspondence with her sister T. A. Kuzminskaya we find references to this work.

On 23 December 1884 S. A. writes:

> "Lyovochka is in a very good frame of mind; he is writing his article on the poverty of town and country and is hurrying to finish it for the January number. They have already begun to print it."

On 9 January 1885 she writes:

> "…Lyovochka is printing his article in *Russkaya Mysl* in January and is wholly absorbed in his work; but he still heats all the stoves himself and tidies the room and does everything himself."

And later, about the same time, S. A. writes:

> "Lyovochka is finishing his printing, which they will burn; but all the same I very much hope that he will calm down and will no longer write in this vein."

Happily for all mankind, L. N. did not calm down, and went on, to the end of his life, writing always in one and the same vein.

But S. A.'s supposition was borne out in another respect. Lev Nikolaevich's article was indeed cut out by the censor and destroyed. Of course, it survived in the proof-sheets, from which a multitude of every kind of copy was made, which spread through Russia and abroad.

Vladimir Grigoryevich Chertkov, even then a devoted disseminator of L. N.'s works of the new tendency, was especially zealous about the accuracy not only of the content but also of the outward form of the work. The article, entitled *What Then Must We Do?*, was evidently bound to give an answer to the question posed in the title. But the first 17 chapters, which had been printed in *Russkaya Mysl* and had begun to circulate separately, did not yet contain within them an answer to this question, and so, for this part, the title did not correspond to the content. Therefore, when Vladimir Grigoryevich was offered the chance to print this work abroad, he placed a copy at the publisher's disposal, asking, moreover, that the former title be replaced by a new one, worked out by him with L. N.'s consent: *What Is My Life?* Under this title the work was first printed in Russian by Elpidin in Geneva. But since the work was also circulating apart from V. G. Chertkov, it came into many people's hands under the former title; and there even appeared two different translations into French of one and the same work under different names. A like fate befell certain other works of L. N.'s that were circulating by the underground path.

After the beginning of the article had been forbidden in *Russkaya Mysl*, L. N. went on working on it. The last of the printed chapters — namely the 17th, which touches on the question of money — L. N. developed into 5 independent chapters, analysing in them the question of money from various sides. These 5 chapters "on money" also circulated separately, in numerous copies, in the guise of a separate work of L. N.'s, *Money*, and were thus translated into many languages.

Finally, the third part of this book, when L. N. had finished writing it, again began to circulate under the former title, *What Then Must We Do?*

Besides this, the publisher of *Russkoye Bogatstvo* (Russian Wealth), the late L. E. Obolensky, wishing to include L. N.'s name among the number of his contributors, obtained L. N.'s permission to print in his journal those extracts from his book that the censorship would allow; in this way there appeared in *Russkoye Bogatstvo* for 1885 a series of sketches by L. N.: "Life in the City," "From Recollections of the Census," "Country and Town," and then, in 1886, "The Labour of Men and of Women." By many readers all these sketches were taken to be independent works of L. N.'s. They were translated into foreign languages, and in one of the translations, for the French journal *Illustration*, they were talentedly illustrated by Ilya Efimovich Repin.

Only very recently was this book published in its complete form by Chertkov, at Christchurch, and then there appeared a French translation in Stock's edition in Paris. At the present time this article is included in L. N.'s complete collected works and has been published in Russia in a corrected and supplemented form (*).

(* Published by the Sytin partnership, under the editorship of P. I. Biryukov. *)

Such is the outward history of this book. Let us now pass to its inner content. We shall not here set forth its content in detail and step by step. This book has now become accessible to all. What is important for us is to grasp in it the fundamental idea, those guiding thoughts in which the spiritual life of L. N. at that time was reflected. We are interested, so to speak, in the biographical side of this book — not in the narrow sense of underlining autobiographical facts, but precisely as a reflection of the inner, spiritual essence of its author.

As has already been said, the outward occasion of the writing of this book was the Moscow census of 1882. And therefore the first 12 chapters of the book are indeed devoted to recollections of the census. Their content has already been conveyed by us in Volume II of the biography.

Chapter XII was evidently written in 1885, since in it the census is spoken of as an event that had taken place three years before.

L. N. ends the chapter with an account of how he saw a butcher whetting his knife on the pavement, while it had seemed to him that the man was doing something with a stone. Taking this image of a sharpened knife as a symbol of the keenness of the consciousness of truth, L. N. concludes the chapter thus:

> "This happened to me when I began to write the article. It had seemed to me that I knew everything, understood everything regarding the questions that had been called forth in me by the impression of the Lyapin house and of the census; but when I tried to make them conscious and to set them forth, it turned out that the knife would not cut, that it had to be whetted. And only now, after three years, did I feel that my knife was whetted enough for me to cut what I wished. I learned very little that was new. All my thoughts are the same, but they had all been blunter, had all flown apart and would not come together to one point; there was no sting in them, it had not all reduced to one thing, to the very simplest and clearest solution, as it has reduced now."

Further on, in Chapter XIII, he portrays his inner process of the true cognition of the causes of economic inequality.

> "I remember that during my unsuccessful attempt to help the unfortunate town-dwellers I pictured myself as a man who would wish to drag another out of a bog, while himself standing on the same quagmire. Every effort of mine made me feel the unsteadiness of the ground on which I stood. I felt that I myself was in the bog, but this consciousness did not then make me look more closely beneath myself, to learn what I was standing on; I kept seeking some external means, something outside myself.
>
> I lived in the city and wished to mend the life of the people living in the city, but I soon became convinced that I could not do this; and I fell to pondering on the properties of city life and of city poverty."

What is a city? Of whom are its inhabitants composed, and what draws them thither? To this natural question, which arises in a man who ponders the causes of city destitution, L. N. answers thus:

> "Everywhere throughout all Russia — yes, and, I think, not in Russia alone, but in the whole world — one and the same thing takes place. The wealth of the rural producers passes into the hands of traders, landowners, officials, manufacturers, and the people who have received this wealth wish to make use of it. But they can make full use of this wealth only in the city. In the country, in the first place, it is hard, owing to the scattered nature of the inhabitants, to find satisfaction for all the needs of rich people; there are no workshops of every kind, no shops, banks, taverns, theatres, or public amusements of every sort. In the second place, one of the chief pleasures afforded by wealth — vanity, the desire to astonish and to outshine others — can again, owing to the scattered nature of the population, be satisfied only with difficulty in the country. In the country there are no appraisers of luxury, no one to astonish. Whatever adornments of his dwelling, pictures, bronzes the country-dweller may provide himself, whatever carriages and toilettes he may furnish — there is no one to look and to envy; the peasants know nothing of the worth of all this. And, in the third place, luxury is even unpleasant and dangerous in the country for a man who has a conscience and fear. It is awkward and uncanny in the country to make baths of milk or to feed puppies on it, when next door the children have no milk; it is awkward and uncanny to build pavilions and gardens among people living in dung-bestrewn hovels which they have nothing to heat. In the country there is no one to keep in order the foolish peasants, who, in their ignorance, may upset all this.
>
> And therefore rich people huddle together and attach themselves to other rich people just like themselves, with the same needs, in the cities, where the satisfaction of every kind of luxurious taste is solicitously guarded by a numerous police.
>
> The rich gather into the cities and there, under the protection of authority, calmly consume all that has been brought hither from the country. The country-dweller, for his part, is partly compelled to go thither, where this unceasing festival of the rich takes place and where what has been taken from him is consumed, in order to feed himself on the crumbs that fall from the table of the rich; and partly, looking upon the carefree, luxurious life of the rich — a life approved and guarded by all — he too desires to order his own life so as to work less and to make more use of the labours of others."

And the chief lever of this corruption, of this ruin, is money.

On money L. N. dwells especially long, regarding the very institution of money as a new, refined form of slavery.

> "Every enslavement of one man by another," says L. N., "is founded only upon this: that one man can deprive another of life, and, without abandoning this threatening posture, can compel the other to carry out his will."

And here he observes that in the history of mankind three kinds of slavery have succeeded one another:

1) Personal, physical slavery.

2) Slavery of the land, the violence of property.

3) Money slavery — slavery of the state — the violence of taxes, credit, and hire.

The first kind of slavery, consisting in this — that the man physically stronger compelled another, under threat of beating and death, to work for him — was widely practised in antiquity, is met with even now, here and there, among our so-called civilised society, and is still fairly often applied by the European civilisers to other races in the European colonies.

The second kind of slavery, that of the land, consists in this — that people received a certain outward freedom, but without the right to the land, and for the use of the land paid by corvée, in kind, or in some other way.

This kind of slavery is still widespread, and it is already being supplanted by a third, still more refined slavery — money slavery, consisting in the laying upon the people of monetary taxes, for the obtaining of which the people must either give up a part of their products, or directly their own labour, to those who have money — that is, to officials and rich people.

This kind of slavery, especially widely spreading now, gradually displacing the first two, is possible only with a perfected state violence, with its banks, prisons, administration, and army.

Money represents an easy means of security — that is, of release from labour. The money-token, by L. N.'s definition, is a perpetual bill of exchange, presented for recovery and redeemed by the labour of the poor man.

> "All three modes of enslaving people have never ceased to exist and exist now too; but people are inclined not to notice them, as soon as new justifications are given to these modes. And what is strange is that precisely this very mode, on which at the given time everything rests — this screw which holds everything together — is the very one that goes unnoticed."

Besides this, all this dreadful state of violence, malice, and depravity is maintained and justified by false, egoistic theories, serving the privileged minority that is upheld by the violence of power. And however much slavery may be abolished in word, it cannot be abolished in deed until violence is abolished.

> "So long as there shall be one armed man, with the right recognised in him to kill any other man whatsoever, so long will there be an unjust distribution of wealth — that is, slavery."

Then L. N. once more goes over all the failures of his philanthropy and sums up these failures in three points:

> "The first cause was the gathering of the wealth of the country into the cities and its absorption in them. A man need only not wish to make use of the labour of others by means of service to the government, the ownership of land and of money, and therefore, as far as may be, to satisfy his own needs himself — in order that it should never even enter his head to go from the country into the city, where everything is the product of another's labour, where everything must be bought; and then, in the country, a man will be in a condition to help the needy, and will not experience that feeling of helplessness which I experienced in the city, wishing to help people not by my own labour, but by another's.
>
> The second cause was the division of the rich from the poor. A man need only not wish to make use of another's labour by means of service, the ownership of land and of money, and the man will be placed under the necessity of satisfying his own needs himself, and at once there will involuntarily be broken down that wall which divides him from the working people, and he will merge with them, and will stand shoulder to shoulder with them, and will receive the possibility of helping them.
>
> The third cause was the shame founded on the consciousness of the immorality of my possession of that money with which I wished to help people. A man need only not wish to make use of another's labour by means of service, the ownership of land and of money — and we shall never have that superfluous, foolish money, the presence of which in me called forth in people who have no money demands which I could not satisfy, and in me the feeling of the consciousness of my own wrongness."

L. N. gives a vivid picture of the consequences of this violence, of this slavery of one man over another, in the city and in the country, where the gentry have taken pains to set up a semblance of the city.

How has it come to pass with people that many of them — kind, intelligent, sincere, religious — can live in this temptation, in this hell of hatred and malice?

The cause of this L. N. sees in the fact that weak people justify the injustice of their life by the dominant doctrines.

> "In former times people who made use of the labour of others maintained, in the first place, that they were people of a special breed, and, in the second place, that they had a special appointment from God to care for the welfare of separate people — that is, to govern them and to teach them — and therefore they assured others, and often believed themselves, that the work which they performed was more needful and more important for the people than the labours of which they made use.
>
> But with Christianity, and the consciousness, flowing from it, of the equality and unity of all people, this justification could no longer be put forward in its former shape."

And so, one after another, theories for the justification of human injustice make their appearance. There appear Hegel's doctrine of the rationality of what exists, the various juridical sciences, Malthus's doctrine of overpopulation, Comte's doctrine of mankind as an organism, the philosophy of Spencer, and so forth.

The pointing-out of the guilt of science in the justification of violence called forth, in intelligent society, the accusation against L. N. of denying science and art. Intelligent people did not wish to see and to read the following significant words of his:

> "I not only do not deny science — that is, rational human activity — and art, the expression of this rational activity; but it is only in the name of this rational activity and of its expressions that I say what I say, only in order that it should be possible for mankind to come out of that savage condition into which it is rapidly falling, thanks to the false doctrine of our time — only for that do I say what I say.
>
> The sciences and art are as necessary for people as food, and drink, and clothing — even more necessary."

And then L. N. defines what he understands by true science and art.

> "From the time that people have existed, they have always had science in its very simplest and broadest sense. Science, in the sense of all the knowledge of mankind, always has been and is, and without it life is unthinkable: there is no need either to attack it or to defend it. But the matter is this — that the domain of this knowledge is so various, so much knowledge of every kind enters into it, from the knowledge of how to obtain iron to the knowledge of the movement of the heavenly bodies, that a man is lost in this knowledge if he has no guiding thread by which he might decide which of all knowledge is the most important for him and which is less important.
>
> And therefore the highest wisdom of people has always consisted in finding that guiding thread by which the knowledge of people ought to be arranged: which of it is of the first, which of lesser importance.
>
> Those branches of knowledge and of art which furthered, and came nearer to, the fundamental science of the appointment and the welfare of all people, became higher in general opinion.
>
> Such was the science of Confucius, of Buddha, of Moses, of Socrates, of Christ, of Mohammed — science such as all people understand it, with the exception of our circle of so-called educated people.
>
> True science and true art have two unquestionable signs: the first — inward — that the servant of science and of art will fulfil his calling not for profit, but with self-renunciation; and the second — outward — that his works are intelligible to all the people whose welfare he has in view."

And again L. N. exclaims: "What then must we do? What then must we do?" — and answers thus:

> "First: not to lie before oneself; however far my path of life may be from that true path which reason opens to me — not to fear the truth.
>
> Second: to renounce the consciousness of one's own rightness, of one's advantages, of one's peculiarities over other people, and to acknowledge oneself guilty.
>
> Third: to fulfil that eternal, unquestionable law of man — with the labour of one's whole being to struggle with nature for the support of one's own life and the lives of other people."

In the concluding chapter L. N. turns to women as to that half of the human race in whose hands lies the upbringing of the rising generation. In their hands, in their power, it lies to give the children this or that direction; and since public opinion is established by the privileged class, he turns chiefly to the mothers of the rich class and speaks thus:

> "Women-mothers of the rich classes, the salvation of the people of our world from the evils from which it suffers is in your hands."

To understand well the content of this chapter and the form of its exposition, one must recall that in 1885 — precisely at the time when L. N. was writing this book — he received a composition, and afterwards entered into correspondence with the author of this composition, the peasant Timofei Mikhailovich Bondarev. This composition, by Lev Nikolaevich's own admission, opened up much to him and undoubtedly influenced the development of his views.

Here is what he himself says of this in his book *What Then Must We Do?*:

> "In the Bible it is said, as the law of man: 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, and in pangs shalt thou bring forth children.'
>
> The peasant Bondarev, who wrote an article about this, illumined for me the wisdom of this saying."

The essence of Bondarev's views consisted in this — that he held the most important thing for man to be the fulfilment of God's primordial commandment: for the man, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread," and for the woman, "In pains shalt thou bring forth thy children." Without fulfilling these first commandments, says Bondarev, one cannot fulfil the rest either. We shall return again to a description of L. N.'s relation to this remarkable man; but for now we have mentioned him only in order to make clear to ourselves L. N.'s concluding chapter, "On Women." "Just as one cannot buy a child and consider it one's own, so too bread that is bought will always be another's. A mother can call her own child only the one whom she has borne in suffering. And a man can call his own bread only that bread which he has earned in the sweat of his face." It was this fundamental thought that lay at the basis of L. N.'s reasonings about women in the concluding chapter of his book. And in ardent words he expresses his reverence before woman as mother.

> "You, women and mothers, consciously submitting yourselves to the law of God — you alone, in our unhappy, disfigured circle, which has lost the human image, you alone know the whole true meaning of life according to the law of God. And you alone, by your example, can show people that happiness of life in submission to the will of God of which they deprive themselves. You alone know those raptures and joys that seize all your being, and that bliss which is destined for the man who does not depart from the law of God. You know the happiness of love for a husband — a happiness not ending, not breaking off like all the others, but constituting the beginning of a new happiness, of love for a child. You alone, when you are simple and submissive to the will of God, know not that mock, parade labour in uniforms and lighted halls which the men of your circle call labour, but know that true labour laid by God upon people, and know the true rewards for it, know that bliss which it gives."

And L. N.'s book concludes with these words:

> "Such women, then — women who have fulfilled their calling — hold sway over the men who hold sway, and serve as a guiding star to people; such women establish public opinion and prepare the new generations of people; and therefore in the hands of these women lies the highest power, the power of saving people from the existing and threatening evils of our time.
>
> Yes, women-mothers, in your hands, more than in anyone else's, lies the salvation of the world."

Such is the content of the book written by L. N. at this time and called into being by his unsuccessful experiment in philanthropic activity.

In a note printed by L. N. in one of the philanthropic journals of that day, he sums up his experience of philanthropy thus:

> "The conclusions at which I have arrived regarding philanthropy are the following:
>
> I have become convinced that one cannot be a benefactor without leading a wholly good life; and still less can one, while leading a bad life, making use of the conditions of that bad life for the adornment of one's own bad life, make excursions into the domain of philanthropy. I have become convinced that philanthropy can satisfy both oneself and the demands of others only when it is the inevitable consequence of a good life; that the demands of this good life are very far from those conditions in which I live. I have become convinced that the possibility of doing good to people is the crown and the highest reward of a good life, and that for the attainment of this aim there is a long ladder, on the first rung of which I had not even thought of stepping. One can do good to people only in such a way that not only others, but oneself too, should not know that one is doing good — so that the right hand should not know what the left is doing; only as it is said in the teaching of the twelve apostles, that thine alms should pass out of thy hands in such a way that thou shouldst not even know to whom thou givest. One can do good only when one's whole life is a service to welfare."

The writing of this book did not come easily to L. N.; thus, at the beginning of 1885 he wrote to one of his friends:

> "My family were grieved that I had written, in the article, of my own life and therefore of them, and this was painful to me, and I kept thinking about it and was not at peace in spirit."

Nevertheless, Lev Nikolaevich wrote this book with great enthusiasm. In October 1885 he writes to Chertkov:

> "I have been living, I think, a fourth day (I do not see how the days go by) alone in the country, alone with Alexander Petrovich. The work goes so well as it has not for a long time. Only the trouble is — I keep writing reasonings into the article *What Then Must We Do?* And I know, and I agree with you, that something else may be more needful to people, but I cannot — I must cough up what has stuck in my throat. And it seems I shall soon be free of it."

In the next letter he is already justifying himself before Chertkov for his enthusiasm for this article, in these words:

> "Since then I have received two letters — one of yesterday, expressing disapproval of my devoting all my time to the article, and today's — about *The Two Old Men*. I agree with you that I might be writing something else, and that it seems, as it were, more effective; but I cannot tear myself away without first making clear to myself (and to others, perhaps) so strange, so unaccustomed a thought — that the occupation reckoned so noble, with our sciences and arts, is a bad, immoral occupation. And it seems to me that I am attaining this, and that this is very important. Today I talked with Alexander Petrovich. He says that it will not be soon that people will live well, while it always seems to me that it will be soon. One need only destroy the temptation — the false, deceptive reasoning on which they lean. People are rational beings and cannot live with the consciousness that they live against reason, and so, when they do this, the intellect comes to their aid, building temptations. One need only destroy the temptation, and they will submit. They will build new ones, but it is the duty of each, if he sees the deceit of the temptation, to point it out to people. This is just what I shall try to do. But your remarks are very dear and useful to me, and please make them, and the sharper the better…"

Yet another month later, already from Moscow, he answers Chertkov's question thus:

> "You ask what I am working at. I am finishing (I have finished, I may say) the article *What Then Must We Do?* And I work much with my hands and my back in Moscow. I carry water, I split and saw wood. I lie down and rise early, and I am lonely, but it is well."

In this book there was much that was autobiographical. In March 1885 Lev Nikolaevich wrote to Chertkov:

> "Of myself I will write this: I should like to say that I am cheerful and happy, and I cannot. Unhappy I am not — far from it. But it is hard for me. I have no work that would absorb the whole of me, making me work to the point of stupefaction and with the consciousness that this is my task; and therefore I am sensitive to the life surrounding me, and to my own life, and this life is repulsive.
>
> Last night I went out for a walk. I was returning, and I see, on the Devichye Field, something floundering, and I hear a policeman shouting: 'Uncle Kasim, lead her along, then!' I asked: 'What is it?' — 'They have rounded up the wenches from Protochny Lane; three have been led off, and one, drunk, has lagged behind.' I waited. The yard-keeper drew level with her, with a lantern: a girl in build like my thirteen-year-old Masha, in a single dirty and torn dress, her voice hoarse and drunken; she would not go on and was lighting a cigarette. 'I'll have you by the scruff, you bitch's daughter!' the policeman shouted. I looked into her face — a snub-nosed, grey, old, wild face. I asked: 'How old is she?' — she said: 'Going on sixteen.' And she was led away. (Yes, I asked whether she had a father and mother; she said she had a mother.) She was led away, and I did not take her to my own house, did not seat her at my own table, did not take her in altogether — and yet I had come to love her. She was led off to the police-station to sit till morning, in the lock-up, and then to be examined by the doctor. I went off to a clean, comfortable bed to sleep and to read little books (and to wash down my water with a dried fig). What, then, is this? In the morning I resolved that I would go to her. I came to the police-station; she had already been led away. The policeman answered my questions with distrust and explained how they deal with such people. It is their ordinary business. When I said that I had been struck by her youth, he said: 'There are many younger, too.'
>
> This same morning, today, there came the man who copies for me, a certain lieutenant, Ivanov. He is a lost and a splendid man. He passes his nights in a doss-house. He came to me agitated. 'Something dreadful has happened with us: in our room there lived a laundress. She is twenty-two. She could not work — she had nothing to pay for her lodging. The landlady drove her out. She was ill and had not eaten her fill for a long time. She would not go. They called a policeman. He led her out. "Where, then," she says, "am I to go?" He says: "Croak where you like, but without money one cannot live." And he set her down on the church porch. Towards evening she had nowhere to go; she went back to the landlady, but did not reach the lodging — she fell down in the gateway and died.'
>
> From the private house I went thither. In a cellar a coffin; in the coffin an almost stripped woman, with a leg stiffened and bent at the knee. Wax candles are burning. A sexton is reading something like a requiem. I had come out of curiosity. I am ashamed to write this, ashamed to be alive. At home a dish of sturgeon — the fifth course — was found to be not fresh. My talk before people close to me about this is met with bewilderment: why speak, if it cannot be set right. This is when I pray: My God, teach me how to live, that my life should not be loathsome to me. I wait for Him to teach me."

It is not hard to recognise in this description the content of Chapter XXIV, where these two facts are conveyed almost word for word, only with still greater tragic, artistically worked-up particulars. And this vividness of the facts, this presence of living documents, lends still greater significance to this remarkable book.