---
layer: reference
lastUpdated: 2026-05-27
tags: [research, biryukov, doukhobors]
lang: en
source: tolstoy-lit.ru
volume: 3
chapter: 8
---

# Volume III, Chapter 8. At Work in Yasnaya Polyana. In Moscow. New Friends

**Source:** https://tolstoy-lit.ru/tolstoy/bio/biryukov/biografiya-biryukov-3-8.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-08.md`](../ru/chapter-08.md).

---

L. N. spent the winter of 1887–1888 in Moscow; with great enthusiasm he reads Herzen, and writes of this to N. N. Strakhov:

> "All this latter time I have been reading, and still am reading, Herzen. What an astonishing writer he is. And our Russian life over these last twenty years would not have been what it is, had this writer not been hidden from the younger generation. As it is, a very important organ has been forcibly removed from the body of Russian society."

The same thought L. N. develops at greater length in a letter to Chertkov:

> "I am reading Herzen and am greatly delighted, and I grieve that his works are forbidden: in the first place, this is a writer — as an artistic writer — who is, if not above, then certainly the equal of our foremost writers; and in the second place, had he entered into the spiritual flesh of the younger generations from the 1850s onward, we should have had no revolutionary nihilists.
>
> To prove the unsoundness of revolutionary theories — one need only read Herzen, to see how every act of violence is punished precisely by the very cause for which it is done. Had there been no banning of Herzen, there would have been no dynamite and no murders, and no gallows, and none of the outlays, the efforts of the secret police, and all that horror, and all that evil of the government and the conservatives…
>
> It is very instructive to read him now. And a good, sincere man. A man outstanding in force, in intellect, in sincerity, could by chance, without hindrance, go along a false path all the way to the swamp, and sink, and cry out: do not come this way! And what then! Because this man speaks the truth about the government, says that what is, is not what ought to be — the experience and the words of this man are carefully hidden from those who follow after him.
>
> Strange and pitiful. But, it must be, so it has to be, and this is only for the better."

I spent that winter in Petersburg, managing *Posrednik* ("The Intermediary"). In the modest premises that *Posrednik* then occupied on Grechesky Prospekt, there gathered many friends who grouped themselves about this centre of the new movement in Petersburg. That time has left in me a bright memory. There were many young energies, striving to find expression in new forms of practical life.

It occurred to us to organize ourselves into a handicraft cooperative, entirely free, satisfying, in the first place, the need for physical labour, and, in the second place, working for the market, so as to support our whole organization with the sum thus earned. And we set up artel workshops in three trades: joinery, shoemaking, and bookbinding. We gathered of an evening, for the most part students, worked, read, drank tea, and conversed, and over all this there lay the stamp of a naïve, pure, youthful dream. Of course L. N. was abreast of this enterprise, and here is one of his letters of that time, as cheerful and full of the joy of life as our young undertaking was.

He wrote to me in February 1888:

> "Guilty… guilt… gui… gu… g… g… g… (*) But the main thing is that all the time I have been wanting to write to you, dear friend P. I. I received all your letters, but I was, and still continue to be, in such a quiet dull-wittedness that I have no wish to write not only articles but even letters. The workshops that are being set up — that is very, very good. The reading about drunkenness, too; and that you are coming in March is best of all. I wanted to print Bondarev in *Russkoye Delo*, but now I have grown timid. *On Life* is still with the spiritual censorship, and since there is no answer, it is not yet being sent abroad for printing. Then I shall send Bondarev along with it. Miss Hapgood sent me yesterday her articles and those of two American women; both the one and the other are uninteresting. In general, if you can, tell her: 1) that her articles are of no interest to me, I know all about this; and 2) that I am afraid, judging by the corrections to the French translation of *On Life*, which I am making, that there may be inaccuracies in her translation. The fault here is mine, the obscurity of my language, and therefore it would be well to check her translation. Strakhov, surely, would not refuse to do this.
>
> Now I will put some questions. What of Polushin's articles? Why are they not being printed? What of Gogol? What of *Semyon the Orphan* and much else?
>
> Plyusha was married yesterday, and the wedding was the very stupidest sort, that is, the real sort. No one wished it, and it came about of itself."

(* In the Russian, Tolstoy's opening *vinovat* ("I am at fault…") disintegrates through *vino* ("wine") down to the bare letter *v* — a play on words that English cannot reproduce. *)

Soon after this I happened to be in Moscow. As often happened, I stayed with L. N. and was a witness to one of the most important events of his family life, the birth of his last son, Vanechka.

I remember that evening, when I was sitting downstairs with the other children, while upstairs in the drawing-room a great and mysterious phenomenon was being accomplished — the coming into the world of a new human being. We all, without being conscious of it, talked together somehow in whispers, fearing to disturb the majesty of the mystery.

And suddenly L. N. came to us, with an agitated, tear-stained, but already joyful face, and announced that all had ended happily. "But it was very frightening!" he added to us, as though explaining and justifying his agitation. And he invited me in to the mother: he wished somehow to boast before me of the courage of the mother, who had borne her sufferings without the least cry or even moan. Sofya Andreyevna was lying on the divan in the drawing-room, covered up to the head with a warm quilt, and I was struck by her face, made spiritual by the consciousness of duty fulfilled, shining with some peculiar, unrepeatable beauty.

Beside her there stirred a swaddled, reddish little creature. Soon from this little lump, scarcely recalling a human being, there grew a beautiful child with heavenly aspirations. His frail body could not endure these aspirations, and seven years later it fell to me, by a strange coincidence, to be present also at his funeral, of which I shall speak in its proper place.

These events of family life did not hinder L. N. from thinking of our common literary and publishing affairs connected with *Posrednik*. This work was seething; it was the time of the flowering of *Posrednik*'s activity, and in L. N. there was already maturing the thought of expanding it and carrying its activity beyond the bounds of Russia. At the end of March L. N. wrote to Chertkov:

> "It has come into my head to publish an international *Posrednik* in Leipzig, without censorship, in three or four languages. The programme: everything that the human spirit has worked out in all fields — such as is accessible to the understanding of the working, labouring masses, and is not contrary to the moral teaching of Christ: wisdom, history, poetry, the arts… No setting up of any institution is needed: *Posrednik* with an expanded programme. Everything that we have which is not passed by the censorship — Ozmidov's articles, Garrison's *Declaration* and the sketches of his life, the legend of Kostomarov, of Dostoevsky, of Leskov — everything there is, to be printed in Leipzig in four languages, Russian, French, German, English, and on the covers to print a brief programme."

More than a quarter of a century has now passed since that time, and this grandiose project has still not been realized. I remember how once, in conversation with L. N., I fell to dreaming about this matter and began to unfold to him a plan for such an organization on the means of one of our common friends. I asked L. N.'s advice as to whether it was worth my going abroad for this, in order to take part in the undertaking. An enemy of all contrived organizations, L. N. said to me: "There is no need to go anywhere, no need to set anything up. Chertkov will be exiled abroad, and then *Posrednik* will become international." L. N. believed in the organizing abilities of his friend. Nine years after the thought expressed in the letter, Chertkov was indeed exiled abroad. And he did indeed found a large publishing enterprise, under the firm of *Svobodnoye Slovo* ("The Free Word"), in which it fell to me too to take part. But this was only a partial realization of L. N.'s design. Chertkov published in Russian and some of the pamphlets in English. Besides, this activity was devoted almost exclusively to the dissemination of L. N.'s writings. Universal human wisdom was barely touched upon (Parker, the Unitarians, Garrison, and others). Thus this great project still awaits its executor.

The next letter of L. N.'s to me, received in April, is full of inner spiritual interest; in answer to my questions, with which I often turned to my old, good friend, he wrote the following:

> "Dear P. I., the first matter, about what you write: it seems to me that the highest good of life accessible to man is this — when his personal striving draws him to loving activity, that is, to such activity whose aim is not myself but others, when there is neither struggle, nor reminders on the part of reason, nor the least remnant of the force of life unabsorbed by activity for others. And this state occurs (so far as I know) only in two cases: in beloved work that is needful and reasonable, and in love for chosen persons, in activity for them that is needful and reasonable. I understand you, and I myself experienced the same thing, fearing the activity of a writer, lest it be egoistic; but I know that in it, when it is true, lies my highest good, and therefore also my work. The same with love for those near to one, for one's family, for children. Leskov's legend I read the very day it came out. This one is even better than the other. Both are beautiful. But the other is too florid, while this one is simple and charming. May God help him.
>
> I keep receiving letters about a collection in memory of Garshin. Help me, dear friend, not to offend people. To say nothing of the fact that there is no occasion or reason whatever to compile a collection and to gather money for something on the occasion of G.'s death, I can in no way be a participant in this, notwithstanding my great love for G., which I should wish to express. And if it should come to writing what I think about him, then, of course, I should give it to the most fitting place for that — a collection. If you see Kuzminsky or Koni, ask him (Koni) whether he has begun to write the story he promised for P., and if not, whether he will give me the theme of that story. It is very good and needful. I want very much to write with my head, and I know that I ought to, but I cannot — my heart does not draw me to it. Kolechka did not go to Ch., but is still with us. With us all is well; all, except Iv., are healthy, and the young people came for two days. Bronevsky's letter I did not find. All the rest I shall carry out. Popov was here and has gone off to Ozmidov with Zalyubovsky."

The legends of Leskov of which L. N. here makes mention were: the first, *The Conscientious Danila*; the second, *The Beautiful Aza*, written by Leskov for *Posrednik*.

The theme which L. N. asks to be given over to him is the plot of his novel *Resurrection*, finished by him twelve years later.

On 18 April L. N. set out for Yasnaya Polyana and went on foot with his then young friend Nik. Nik. Ge (the son), a good walker. These journeys were for L. N., on the one hand, a means of studying the people, and, on the other hand, he himself, passing through towns and villages, scattered here and there the sparks of his love. Several stories have been preserved from this and another journey. We shall give some of them, borrowing them from P. A. Sergeenko's book *How Tolstoy Lives and Works*.

> "On one of his journeys he turned in for the night at a village inn. The keeper of the inn, a harsh, headstrong old man, grew angry about something with his son, a youth, and began to beat him, then seized him by the hair and dragged him out of the room. L. N. began to remonstrate with the peasant. But the man had got into a fury and paid no heed to anything. Then Lev Nikolaevich said to him reproachfully:
>
> — Shame on you! Why, even a beast would not do this to another beast. And you call yourself a Christian. How is it you do not fear God?
>
> This stung the peasant, and he shouted out maliciously:
>
> — So according to your wise reason, then, one ought not even to teach one's children?
>
> — One must teach, but not beat, — said Lev Nikolaevich.
>
> — And do you know what Count Arakcheev said? — asked the peasant in a spiteful, challenging tone.
>
> — What?
>
> — Kill nine men, but teach the tenth…
>
> The peasant had not had time to finish the whole sentence when Lev Nikolaevich sprang up to him with blazing eyes and cried:
>
> — Do not dare to speak so! There is no God in you, and know this: a beast too is he who said this…
>
> And in his face and in his voice there was at that moment something before which the fury of the cruel peasant was at once extinguished.
>
> On this same journey, or another, from Moscow to Tula, there was the following incident. On the road, beside a heap of road-metal, they saw a peasant who was angrily knocking off the heel of his boot with a stone and swearing hard. He had chafed his foot with the boot, and this angered him greatly. The travellers came up to him, fell into talk, and then went on together. The workman had a discontented air, and all the while complained of human injustice. He had worked at a factory, and the master had not paid him 'for the casting' as much as was due. Lev Nikolaevich listened to the workman all the while, then said gravely:
>
> — There is something not right here, Ivan Semyonov!
>
> — May God strike me, it was all just as I say! — Ivan Semyonov retorted hotly, and in confirmation of his words showed Lev Nikolaevich the receipts from the factory.
>
> So they went on together about three days, stopping at the inns to rest and conversing now like old friends.
>
> Finding himself face to face with Lev Nikolaevich's companion, Ivan Semyonov asked with curiosity:
>
> — Tell me, please, who is this Lev Nikolaevich?
>
> — Oh, just an old man. Why?
>
> — A divine old man!
>
> At the last halt the travellers had their fill of tea, and Lev Nikolaevich takes leave of Ivan Semyonov and says:
>
> — How well God has brought us together to get acquainted and to spend the time as one. Only it keeps seeming to me, Ivan Semyonov, that you have not told the whole truth about yourself.
>
> Tears came into Ivan Semyonov's eyes.
>
> — Forgive me, Lev Nikolaevich, I lied to you: I received the money all in full from the master and drank it away, wretch that I am.
>
> Another time Lev Nikolaevich and his companion overtook on the road a sick boy, who was very weak, and took him along with them. The mistress of the inn, when she saw that the boy was very bad, grew angry and shouted:
>
> — Be off, be off! What is this you have brought here, quite a dead thing. He will go and die here.
>
> Lev Nikolaevich was silent a little, and said gently:
>
> — This is not our boy, but a stranger. We took him because he was helpless. Think how hard it would be for you, if you were in a helpless condition and no one wished to help you.
>
> The mistress softened, took the travellers in, tended the boy like a mother, and afterwards kept repeating to him:
>
> 'There, you see, good people picked you up and brought you here. But for the good people… but for the good people in the world, what would have become of it?'"

This sick boy gave L. N. no little trouble; but for all that, he kept the very best memory of his journey. He writes to S. A.:

> "The journey came off very well. Old as I am, and well as I know our life, every time one learns something in every respect: both moral and intellectual."

From Yasnaya L. N. wrote to me:

> "I received your letter, dear Posha, at Yasnaya, whither Kolechka and I came safely, cheerfully, and instructively. Thank you for carrying out my requests. Smiryagin pleased me very much. Just now Dunaev is with us; he caught up with us at Serpukhov, and Sytin, S. D., also walked with us. If only he would hold firm to the temperance pledge, which he has joined."

Smiryagin, of whom L. N. writes, was a young theologian who had just finished the Petersburg Academy, sincerely drawing near in his moral views to Lev Nikolaevich, but remaining Orthodox. He was writing a doctoral dissertation on Tolstoy.

Sergei Dmitrievich Sytin, now dead, who suffered from a passion for spirituous liquors, often, as it were, came back to life and forswore them under the influence of L. N., and in these periods was a bright man, pure of soul. But the flesh again got the better of him, and he sank to the very bottom of life, whence his elder brother, Ivan Dmitrievich, had to rescue him…

About this journey there hastens to inform me also a new devoted friend of L. N.'s, Marya Alexandrovna Schmidt, as always in a rapturous tone:

> "Dear Pavel Ivanovich, Lev Nikolaevich set off on foot for Tula with Kolechka Ge and Dunaev on 17 April, and arrived at Yasnaya on the 22nd, healthy and cheerful, tidied his study and sat down to work; I am terribly glad for him; Sofya Andreyevna is hurrying with all the family to join him at Yasnaya, so that L. N. will not come to Moscow any more; little Vanya sneezes as loudly as his father, and Sofya Andreyevna assures everyone that he resembles L. N.; they are all healthy and cheerful; at the end of Easter week I shall hurry off to them again."

This period in the life of Lev Nikolaevich should be noted as one devoted by him to the struggle with the habit of smoking. L. N. had not yet given up smoking.

In his consciousness the necessity of parting with this harmful habit had long since been decided, but the force of habit was so great that Lev Nikolaevich had to expend considerable energy in the struggle with it. More than once he gave it up and began again to smoke; at last, precisely in the spring of this year, 1888, he parted with the cigarette finally.

I recall episodes of this struggle. One of the arguments against smoking was the discourtesy toward those present who, for one reason or another, cannot endure the smell of smoking.

And so L. N. tried not to smoke in the presence of guests, and if he very much wanted to smoke, he would go out into the entrance-hall, sit down on the chest, and light a cigarette. But the guests, who valued conversation with L. N., would also migrate into the front hall, and there a kind of club would form.

This time, in the spring of 1888, L. N. gave up smoking for good.

L. N. at this time worked much in the field and in the village. Here is how Marya Alex. Schmidt, with naïve enthusiasm, describes this period in a letter to me:

> "On Wednesday evening, by the nine-o'clock train, O. A. and I left Moscow, and at about eight in the morning, on Thursday, we came running into Yasnaya. Masha was up, we drank our tea, and rushed off to the village to L. N. He was building an earthen hut there, and at once Masha took off her shoes and set to work. N. N. carried water, while we dug earth and bore it on a hand-barrow, and so we worked until their lunch. L. N. inquired about NN; I said that I simply marvel at him, and that, the main thing, I am no longer drawn to him — that is, to NN — nor to S.; I feel that these two people are quite strangers to me. To this L. N. said the following: 'For an undertaking to come off, a man must take off his shoes; without this nothing will come of it.' How true that is, and how clearly L. N., in two words, expressed all the tangle of worldly life."

Besides the ordinary fieldwork, one of the chief tasks at the beginning of summer was, for L. N., the building of a hut for the widow Anisya Kopylova. In this building there took part the peasant neighbour Prokofy and the painter Nikolai Nikolaevich Ge, who laid the stove for Anisya, Marya Lvovna, Marya Alexandrovna, and myself.

When I arrived at the beginning of June to stay at Yasnaya, I found the hut almost finished, that is, the walls had been raised. Ge was laying the stove, Prokofy was setting right the rafters and purlins laid by L. N., while L. N., M. L., and M. A. were occupied with the roof, and I joined them. L. N. wished to make this roof fireproof, and he resolved to cover it with straw mats soaked in clay, by the Krasnoufimsk method. There was much trouble with this. It was necessary, on a special large frame, to weave straw mats a sazhen in length. Then, in a special tub, to mix up clay, pour it into a long pit dug out to the size of the mat, and lower the mat into it, trying to make it become wholly saturated with the clay solution. The clay had to be stirred with a special oar, and sometimes the lumps kneaded with bare feet. All this was very merry. L. N. enlivened everyone with his witty jests. Stirring the clay in the tub, he would say: "It is just as though we were boiling chrism." About this time, in Lent, the boiling of chrism was indeed taking place in the Chudov Monastery. L. N. had read a description of this strange custom in the newspapers, and the stirring of the clay reminded him of this boiling.

The soaked mat, saturated with clay, we hauled up onto the roof, nailing it to the purlin in scales, row upon row.

Unfortunately, this hut burned down a few years later.

A spectator of this work, on one of the days, chanced to be a young man, Standel, a correspondent of *Russky Kuryer*, who had come to Yasnaya Polyana in order to make L. N.'s acquaintance. A few days later there appeared in his newspaper an extensive feuilleton with an account of what he had seen and heard, and in it fantasy was given wide play.

Vividly do I remember the cheerful, life-loving mood with which L. N. infected us all. Working all day without rest, with a short break for dinner, he would return in the evening sweaty, tired, dishevelled, smeared with clay, with a spade on his shoulder, and his eyes burned with the joy of duty fulfilled, and he, admiring the wondrous spring evening, would walk along, exclaiming: "How good it is to live in the world!"

Having stayed at Yasnaya Polyana about a week, I then went off to my own farmstead in Kostroma Province, where I already had an independent farm beginning.

L. N. wrote to me there:

> "What are you about, dear friend? There has been no letter from you yet from the village. I am living very well for myself and, I think, for God. I work much with my hands and less with my pen and my tongue, and therefore my conscience is cleaner. I write nothing, but I will not say that there is no working going on of itself within. One of these days Ge the elder means to come."

In a letter to Chertkov L. N. as it were justifies himself for writing little:

> "Do not reproach me, dear friend, that I now write nothing. For one cannot reap without having sown. And it seems to me that I am sowing, that is, living a very full, joyful life, and — I will not say much, but — sometimes thinking well. The greater part of my time and energy I spend on fieldwork. And I cannot tell you how and why, but I firmly know that I am doing what I ought."

So the summer passed, and toward autumn I was again drawn to Yasnaya Polyana.

Especially after receiving from L. N. such a letter as this:

> "I rejoice for you that you are in the country. For long? Surely you will call again, in passing. We are here, they say, until November. Despite the fact, or rather thanks to the fact, that I lead the same working life, I do not notice how the time goes. The roof I have only just covered with the Mute one — one more section, in the Ufa way — and the rest I have simply covered over until next year. Now, little by little, I am helping Prokofy and Semyon with the building in the forest. The peasants' orchards too I have begun to occupy myself with. There is always much to do. I want to write, too, at times, but I think that this is a temptation, because the wish is with the head, that is, I say to myself: how pleasant it would be, after the manner of former years, to have a work into which I might plunge up to the ears — the wish is with the head, not with my whole being. And therefore I think that it is a temptation. In general, from this year I have stepped onto a new rung — perhaps it will seem downward to others, because I have no wish to write, and no wish to talk, and I often fall asleep — the weakening of old age; but for me it is upward, because there is less ill-will toward people, and it is more joyful to live and to die."

An interesting event that autumn was the visit to Yasnaya Polyana of Fet, the poet and friend of L. N.

Fet at this time was writing his reminiscences of L. N., of Turgenev, of Botkin, and of his other literary contemporaries. For this he was re-reading the carefully preserved letters of L. N. Before his coming to Yasnaya he wrote thus of these letters to Sofya Andreyevna:

> "My God, how young, how mighty, how full of genius and how truthful this is. It is exactly like a thoroughbred yearling that has broken loose, that both squints at you with its agate eye, and gallops like lightning, kicking and rearing, and is ready, like a bird, to dart over a two-arshin fence."

And of one of the letters he remarks particularly:

> "The dullest man will see in this letter not the passing of an examination on a foreign text, but truly a wellspring of all the original thoughts on which our Russian intellectual life feeds to this day in all its manifestations."

Having come to Yasnaya in the autumn, Fet read his interesting notes in L. N.'s presence.

I, for my part, arrived at Yasnaya in September with a large amount of luggage. I brought with me a large magic lantern with pictures and showed it on a dark, warm autumn evening in the garden, casting the pictures upon the white wall of the Yasnaya Polyana house, in the place where the terrace is now built. The pictures came out large, the human figures life-size, and they produced a great impression upon the gathered crowd of Yasnaya Polyana peasants, grown-ups and children. The selection of pictures I had made was deliberate. A series of pictures from the New Testament, with which I explained these events as they are interpreted by L. N. in his translation of the Gospel. Then came a series of natural-science pictures, several comic ones, and light effects.

All were pleased, including L. N. Before my departure from Yasnaya there arrived the well-known English journalist Stead, with whom I had become acquainted back in Petersburg. He stayed on at Yasnaya Polyana a few days after me, but this time he did not leave behind him a good impression.

And Lev Nikolaevich at that time was diligently sewing boots, and his daughters were already wearing their father's work.

The number of L. N.'s friends and like-minded people, in various degrees, kept growing, and along with this grew also L. N.'s correspondence with these friends and like-minded people, who turned to him for the resolution of all manner of questions, from the purely personal or familial — the most intimate — to questions of a general philosophical character.

L. N. was always a very punctual correspondent. If only he felt that the tone of a letter was serious and sincere, and thought that his answer might help that person, he unfailingly answered him, striving to enter into the smallest circumstances of his life known to him.

Here is an example of such a letter, written to E. I. Popov, his new friend:

> "Much, much, and lovingly, have I thought of you and of your position, both spiritual and material, which is nothing other than the consequence of the spiritual. One thing seems to me not good: this, that you are dissatisfied not with yourself, but with your position. Who are you, and what are you? You are the young husband of a rich, and dear, and good, loving wife. In this position you are overtaken by the consciousness that there are chief demands of the true life, and that these demands are incompatible with the broad — that is, the luxurious, rich, and egoistic — life, which devours the life of others. What is such a man to do? Briefly and crudely, but in essence truly, in practical application one may say: to reduce as far as possible the demand for the labour of others upon oneself — that is, one's own needs — and to increase, or, if one has not begun, to begin, one's own labour for other people. And to do all this with purity — that is, avoiding the vices that defile body and soul (drunkenness, debauchery) — and lovingly, that is, in doing this, not to give pain to people bound up with me or standing in the road of my work.
>
> Now, so far as I know, you have not done all this, but you have done what you could in this direction. If you have sinned in anything, then repent and amend. And to repent and to amend is easy, because what you did, you did not for yourself. If you had, as you once wrote, done it for the glory of men, then that still would not be for yourself, but that is the temptation which threatens at every good deed.
>
> Here is the thing, dear friend. Test yourself on the basis of this programme: what you have not done, what you have done amiss, in what you have erred — and you have erred, as it seems to me, in that wherein all are inclined to err, of which two days ago I was discoursing with N. and many other young people who wish to live by God's way. Yes, one must free oneself from slave-owning — that is, from money, chiefly from the need of money, from many wants — and one must increase one's labour, the simplest, the most despised labour, such labour as black work. All this is true, and all this is good. But the matter does not consist in ploughing, in cleaning out privies, and in never changing one's shirt, at all costs, unless one has washed it oneself.
>
> All this is the very thing toward which he cannot but strive who recognizes men as brothers not in words only; but, striving toward this, one must not depart from the other two demands of conscience — purity and lovingness. One can and must advance without violating these demands.
>
> The worldly man considers that it is good to be rich, but by worldly laws one cannot suddenly become rich by stealing — that is, by violating that security of wealth without which wealth is of no avail. The same with spiritual wealth: to attain to not living by the labour of others, but to serving oneself, is good, but one cannot attain this as Alexis the Man of God did, by going away and making both wife and parents suffer and grieve.
>
> If one admits impurity and cruelty, or unlovingness, in attaining a just position among men, then that position is already unjust; and here I am afraid that you have erred in this. You so wished (we all suffer from this) to attain a position in which you might say: 'Look, I am pure before men,' that, in attaining it, you violated love, gave pain. May God help you to set right what has been violated. Above all, do not think about your position — whether it resembles what people consider just for you, with your convictions — but think of one thing only: not to depart, in attaining the goal, never ceasing to attain it, from purity and love. And as for people, one must make one's peace with the thought that, however one may live according to Christ, people who do not follow Christ will condemn you."

Interesting are the letters of that time in which L. N. gives counsels of worldly wisdom, deducing them, of course, from his own spiritual experience.

Thus, he wrote to one friend:

> "You know how the little blocks with pictures are put together?
>
> One man will make out the picture from one pair of blocks, another from a different pair. But only let him succeed in putting together the first pair, and he will get to the whole of it. I know by experience, and am now able to distinguish, the people who shift the blocks at random from those who have meaningfully put two together, and therefore will certainly make out the whole picture — will make it out, if not today, then tomorrow, and always the same single, eternal picture.
>
> And therefore, in reading your disagreements with me, I am not even troubled, but know beforehand that we have one inevitable and eternal picture.
>
> And therefore I am in everything in agreement with you, not because I deliberately wish to agree, but because our disagreements arise only from the fact that you are bringing the blocks together from one side, and I from another, but the blocks are the same.
>
> With those who have not yet begun to bring them together, and who assure us that they see this and that, I am beforehand not in agreement. But with those who say beforehand that nothing will come of it and nothing can come of it — with those it is painful to me; with those I am inclined to be angry, and I restrain myself."

This same autumn L. N. writes to Chertkov a letter full of deep meaning on the question of good and suffering:

> "The question whether Christ's teaching gives good, and therefore whoever follows it cannot suffer torment — while struggle is torment — this question does indeed lead many into error. Justification by faith in the redemption, communion, and confession — all these are attempts to do away with struggle. The Christian teaching demands a perfection like the perfection of the Father, and we are all full of sins, and therefore the approach to perfection is a struggle, and struggle always appears as suffering, as torment, and therefore the Christian teaching leads to sufferings, to torments. So many understand it. On the other hand, the Christian teaching is also grace, the revelation of good, and Christ delivered men from sufferings and torments; how is this to be reconciled? All the Christian confessions are attempts to resolve this contradiction.
>
> But only one resolution is possible — that very one which is in the passage of Pascal you cite (a pity I have it not, and do not remember exactly), one resolution: good lies in struggle, that is, in movement forward toward perfection like the perfection of the Father. Here something happens akin to what happens in regard to work — bodily, coarse work. Man's good lies in feeding himself, and one cannot feed oneself without struggle, without efforts which appear as sufferings, as torments. And so people devise means of feeding themselves without labour, as in paradise, of shifting the labour from themselves onto others, of inventing machines that they may work for us. And, of course, nothing comes of it and nothing will, until people perceive that bodily good consists precisely in this — in feeding oneself by labouring — that the chief good lies in labour. The same with our sins and our need of blessedness. However much one may devise such states in which there were not or will not be sins, however much one may assure oneself that Christ, or the sacraments through Christ, have cleansed us — sins are still sins, and we know them in ourselves, and with them we cannot be blessed. And, of course, nothing will come of it, until we understand that our blessedness lies precisely in liberation from sins and in movement toward perfection. And in this is the Christian teaching; it frees one from sin and gives the possibility of approaching perfection.
>
> With me, at least, so it was and is. Formerly the discord of my sinfulness with the perfection of the Father seemed to me so tormenting that I wished, at all costs, to attain this perfection at once, and, of course, did not attain it, and grew faint. Just as in work. Formerly I would throw myself at work, wishing to finish as quickly as possible, and would grow faint and give up, and only of late, as in work I have learned that the matter lies not in finishing, but, on the contrary, in having the happiness of working (often I am sorry now when the work comes to an end). So too in the Christian life I begin to feel joy in the very work upon my sins and upon the approach to the Father. Do not think, in reading this rigmarole, that I am writing whatever comes to hand. No, I know very well what I wish to say, only perhaps I cannot. I am describing a very definite difference that has come about in my life: formerly, to struggle even with the chief sin of mine — the malice of ill-will toward people — was a torment, while now this very thing (this struggle) is the best joy of my life. As soon as malice rises against someone, I say to myself: 'It is not true, I love him for this, for that,' and the malice subsides and it becomes joyful again — just as with the work of mowing, ploughing: until you are able to do it, it is a torment, but afterwards a joy."

About this same time L. N. writes to old Ge of his spiritual state:

> "I do not write, and at first it was dull, but now I am glad. I had formed the habit of withdrawing from life into the shell of my writing — of neglecting life (relations with people) for the sake of writing, and this is not good. Now, when one is not writing, there is nowhere to hide, and one takes a more serious attitude to life, tries to live every minute of it to the full — better, and this way it is better."

Soon I received from him a letter testifying to a whole series of relations with people, the care for whom filled his life. Here is what, among other things, he writes to me on 6 November:

> "Thank you for writing, dear friend. We are still in the country. The cold weather has detained my wife, but now there is a thaw, and the day after tomorrow she wants to set off, while we shall remain a few days more. I am still in the same state as when you were here: I want to write by way of reasoning, and ought to, but it will not write itself. The letter to the Frenchman I have set about twice more, but it does not go. Let him print it as it is. Only today I have come to write, and have written Chertkov a long letter, but a muddled one, all about the same subject — about conjugal relations. I should like to contribute my mite to the clearing up of this terribly tangled matter, lagging behind in the general progress, which seems unimportant but is, in essence, the most fundamental.
>
> …I have received from Khilkov a good letter and a note, a kind of confession of faith; I am sending it to you. I have not yet answered him. And, besides, two striking English books, *Modern Pharisaism*, by an Englishman, Albert Blake, whose letter, you remember, we read together: a Christianity that denies (with too great malice) all that is of the Church, and demands not only non-resistance to evil but also poverty. Only it is not sufficiently clear, too contentious, and on certain points — as, for instance, on marriage, for which he allows the dissolubility of the bond — ill-considered. I must write to him. Evidently he is downtrodden in England, and irritated, and more a fighter for his party than a Christian. I shall try to write, but it is significant and joyful. Yes, yes, one cannot stand still on the path on which we have set out: it moves one forward. Write about Bulygin, about Bronevsky. He has written a very excited letter; I shall answer him too, but do you go and see him. I kiss Iv. Iv. You have arranged things well; may God help you. All ours send you their greetings. Today Marya Alex. came on foot from Tula, and is now sitting with the Mashas, checking *On Life*, while I am next door, in the Frenchman's room, where I have moved."

In his diary, under 23 November, he records a thought pointing to the unceasing inner struggle:

> "Still I do not write — there is no such need as would press me to the table, and on purpose I cannot. The state of tranquillity — of not acting against conscience — gives a quiet joy and a readiness for death, that is, for life."

A little time later, already in December, he has recorded such a thought as this:

> "No one gets on with anyone…
>
> One cause is that all the barriers of propriety, of the laws that eased living together, have been removed; but this is not enough — one may comfort oneself with this, but it is not true.
>
> This is a terrible proof that these people, who consider themselves better than others (of whom I am the first), turn out, when it comes to the test, to the examination, not a hair's breadth better.
>
> …everything: poverty of life, abstinence, labour, even humility, all this is needful only in order to be able to live with people, that is, to love them; and if there is no love, then all this too is worth nothing."

And, as though enjoining caution upon himself in dealings with people, he further records thus:

> "A little help to me is the rule: to wish, in coming together with people, that they should humiliate me, offend me, put me in an awkward position, while I should be kind to them…"

At the beginning of December he again writes to old Ge, now from Moscow, and again the chief thought of his letter is his attitude to his writing. One can see what an unceasing struggle was going on in him between high moral demands and old habits. He writes, among other things:

> "It is about a week since I moved to Moscow. As in the country, so here, I continue not to work with the pen, and this abstinence, imagine, satisfies me, gladdens me. The wish comes from habit, from self-love, from the desire to fog oneself over, to withdraw from life — for these reasons the wish comes; but there is not that irresistible force which would draw me to writing, there is not that indulgent judgment of myself which, as before, approved of everything; and one does not write, and one feels a kind of purity, like that which comes from not smoking. Do you still smoke? I cannot rejoice enough that I have rid myself of this. So estranged have we become from the natural understanding of life."

In Moscow L. N. tries to create for himself a working environment: he carts water, chops wood, sews leather galoshes, and, finally, conceives the idea of occupying himself with pedagogical activity, toward which he had always felt an inclination.

And so he visits the municipal Khamovniki school, becomes acquainted with the teacher, and, so as not to embarrass him with his unlawful presence, submits a petition for permission to teach in the municipal school. To this petition a categorical refusal was soon received.

So difficult was it for him, with his radical views, to take part in public activity.

The town was still as oppressive to him as ever, and in his diary of that time there occurs such an entry as this: "The shops of the Passage — worse than a syphilitic hospital."

In Moscow, as always, L. N. became the centre of a large circle of persons seriously striving toward the resolution of the fundamental questions of life.

Among these, for the most part young people, there were people boundlessly devoted to the views expressed by their teacher; there were sceptics, who smiled at these unrealizable illusions; and there were also people directly hostile in their disposition toward them. These people caused L. N. much grief and served as a touchstone of his patience. Of one such circle the physician V. V. Rakhmanov tells in his reminiscences; we borrow from them several pages.

> "That winter it somehow became the custom to gather on Tuesdays at Tolstoy's. The whole of our circle came too, with the exception only of L. N. M. and I. A. K., who did not share Tolstoy's views and did not wish to make his acquaintance.
>
> On these days there took place heated disputes between Tolstoy and us. The skirmishers were usually M. and A. V. A.
>
> As though it were now, I remember L. N., drawn up to his full height, with flashing eyes, stubbornly defending his point of view against our attacks. How striking he was in these moments, and what a pity that there was no painter there to portray him at this time.
>
> In Tolstoy there are combined together, on the one hand, the populist and political thinker with a tinge of anarchism, and, on the other hand, the philosopher-moralist, seeking out the paths to a new religion, purified of all superstitions. Tolstoy himself valued most of all his religious-philosophical ideas. His populist and political views merely flowed for him out of his religious world-view and were not in the foreground. For us, however, at that time, more important than anything were precisely these populist and anarchical ideas. To his religious views we did not attach especially great significance. This very difference was the cause of all our disputes. We, from our point of view, could not allow that a follower of Tolstoy, having become such, should go on living his former gentleman's life. Lev Nikolaevich defended the point of view that more important than anything is to preserve a good relation with the people round about you at the given moment, and that, if for this it is required to remain in the conditions of one's former rich life, then it is better to sacrifice one's spiritual peace than to cause evil and grief to the close people round about you. A. V. objected to Tolstoy with particular sharpness. 'A man's foes are they of his own household,' he quoted the text of the Gospel. 'And if, for the peace of these close people, it should be required that I take part in robbery, am I really to take part in it?' he posed his indignant question. In vain did Tolstoy object that everything is determined by the degree of religious consciousness. We remained with our former view, and at each new meeting the dispute flared up with fresh force.
>
> Thus, ever more clearly there were taking shape two currents in Tolstoyism. The one, on the side of which stood our circle that gathered at L. N.'s, might be called populist. The other was rather religious.
>
> The adherents of this latter current were spiritually nearer to Tolstoy: he considered that they understood him better than the adherents of the first current. The representatives of the religious current, in their turn, regarded Tolstoy with great respect, reaching to reverence. For them almost every thought expressed by L. N. was indisputable, true.
>
> While the populist-Tolstoyans, regardless of any difficulties, did all that lay in their power to embody Tolstoy's teaching in life, the representatives of the other tendency for the most part did not alter their former outward conditions of life, with the sole exception that those who had been in military service retired from it. On the other hand, they did very much for the spread of Tolstoy's ideas. I shall not, in the further account, speak of the Tolstoyans of this tendency: their life, on its outward side, differed little from the life of ordinary townsfolk, while in their writings the thoughts already expressed by Tolstoy were varied in every possible way.
>
> Before passing to the further account, I will remark that the followers of Tolstoy close to him in his religious-philosophical views have remained, to this day, faithful to their views; not so is it with the populist-Tolstoyans: only a few of them still even now stand on the same path along which they set out twenty years ago, while the majority have changed their views and gone by other paths.
>
> At this same time," Rakhmanov continues, "one of L. N.'s visitors, M. N., was arrested for issuing on the hectograph L. N.'s article *Nikolai Palkin*. His mother was terribly shaken by this. With tears in her eyes she begged me to go to Tolstoy and ask him to declare, if he should be asked, that the pamphlet had been issued with his consent. I knew that this had not been so: M. N. had applied to L. N. in writing for permission to issue the pamphlet, but, not having waited for an answer to his letter, had issued the pamphlet without obtaining Tolstoy's consent. The errand was a hard one. But I nevertheless went to Tolstoy and conveyed to him the request of M. N.'s mother. With remarkable gentleness and tact L. N. hastened to dispel my embarrassment. 'Of course, with my consent,' he declared; 'I am always glad when my works are spread. Tell P.'s mother that I shall say just so, if anyone asks me.' A few days later Tolstoy received an invitation to present himself to some high dignitary (I do not remember to which one exactly); L. N. answered that he had no business of any kind with this gentleman, and that, if the man wished to see him, he could come to him himself. The dignified personage did not go himself, but sent his official, a young man. The latter was received courteously, like any visitor, while Tolstoy talked to him all the while about the immorality of his service.
>
> Soon M. N. was set free, but he was forbidden entry into Moscow, and he went off to Tver Province to seek an estate suitable for a community."

In conclusion of this chapter we shall give two letters of L. N.'s, belonging to the year 1888 and pointing to that influence, by means of letters, which went forth in rays from L. N. upon those near and far around him and shone upon all the world. Here is the first letter:

> "I cannot, and will not, answer you in two words: the subject of which you write is too important. A person — man or woman, a woman especially — who will go into the country, settle among the people, in the people's conditions of life, and set himself, if not as an exclusive, then as his chief aim, to watch over the upbringing, the care, the feeding of infants and children, and will help the right upbringing by word and deed, by reasonable counsel and oversight, by the washing and combing of the neglected — such a person will be doing such work as there is not, and cannot be, any better, more needful, more important, and will feel this. This work is very hard from the egoistic and gentleman's point of view, and the easiest (because it excludes all possibility of doubt as to the importance and usefulness of the work, and carries its reward with it), and joyful, from the point of view of a man who has moral demands, and there is nothing easier than to set about it. One has only to come from the town to the first village one happens upon, and, if one has no means, to choose some handicraft by which to feed oneself (sewing, bookbinding, copying, translating, teaching), and to devote one's free time to this work. With a certain boldness and small wants one may even venture upon this: that the parents whose children the person will serve will provide the feeding. But this would already be an exception. With some handicraft it is very easy and natural. I am happy in that I have known, and know, such women. For this, you see, before none of those to whom you think to devote yourself to this work does there stand any obstacle whatever; for all that is needed is only the wish and literacy, in order to read through a little book on the hygiene of children. So what holds the matter up: let them go. By going now, they will show that they are guided by a sincere wish to serve people, and not by a salary (however modest it may be, the receiving of a fixed, secured salary is a great temptation), not by position, not by fashion. You will say that people do not know how to set about it, have never heard of the possibility of such an activity, and I shall agree with you. This good thought has come to you, and one must spread it, make it clear, develop the details of its execution. And let us do this. I, at least personally, am very grateful to you for communicating to me your thought, which has made clear to me one of the forms of service to people, and I am ready to serve, as I am able, in its spreading; but I not only do not desire that the zemstvo should institute anything, but I fear this; as soon as the zemstvo takes it up, prints the first circular, this germ of good will be killed. So there you have my opinion; please receive it with the same feeling of goodwill with which I received yours, and believe that I have said, with my whole soul, all that I know and could say."

The second letter:

> "I have read the printed stories you sent me, and I read in places (the end, the beginning) and ran through the whole manuscript you sent me, and however unpleasant it is for me to say this, I must say that in both the one and the other I noticed not even a sign of what is incorrectly called talent, and what I call originality. All this is unnecessary. I must tell you that I do not recognize the division of people into those with talent and those without it: all people equally can, both physically and spiritually, serve people, when they are called to it. The thing is that physically we know that people serve others in countless various ways; but in spiritual service there has become established among us the opinion that we can serve others only by science, by art (literature). This is just as if people were to imagine that physically one can serve people only by making carts and trunks. Obviously they would make so many of them that they would not be used and would therefore become bad, and, the main thing, would be needed by no one. The same thing happens generally with the productions of the so-called sciences and arts in general, and with literature and tales, novels, in particular. If you knew, as I do, how much of this useless and diversely-monotonous trifling is being written. Give up this occupation. Strive to be a good man, living in accordance with that light which is in you — that is, with conscience — and then you will inevitably act spiritually upon other people, by your life, by speeches, or even by writing, I do not know, but you will act. Such is the law of human life, that a man, like a sponge, only when he has himself been fully sated with good, can pour it out upon others, and not only can, but inevitably will. Otherwise, what then? Why not call things by their name? For I have passed through this; not to speak of those writers who write directly for reputation and money, and do not even deceive themselves — the most sincere writers, if they write and print, then, besides the need to speak out, sometimes a wish for good, they still desire glory and money. And these two desires are so vile, especially in conjunction with a spiritual work, that they poison everything with their venom. The writer becomes vain, greedy, unable to bear censure; he grows embittered not only against the one who reviles him, but against the one who does not praise him; he becomes indifferent to the most important phenomena of the inner life in relations with people; pride, malice, envy — all the devils rise up. A vile state, I have experienced it, and why enter into it! So there you have my opinion, spoken in love."

In the autumn L. N. wrote, among other things, to Popov, expressing his spiritual state in the following words:

> "I am living now very well; never have I worked so much as this summer, and so lightly and joyfully. There is someone to love, and there is something to work upon — upon my own sins — and the people who love me are more and more, so that it is very good to live and one has no wish to die."