Source: https://tolstoy-lit.ru/tolstoy/bio/biryukov/biografiya-biryukov-3-14.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 (2026-05-26), from the continuous Russian capture in ../ru/chapter-14.md.
On 30 December L. N. came to Moscow to rest from the hard life of famine relief and to be with his family, from whom he had been separated for an unusually long time. He spent the whole month of January in Moscow. But already from 15 January he was drawn back to his former work.
At this time he wrote to Chertkov:
“I am still in Moscow, and I greatly repent of it, and find the life here a burden. Here the donations keep coming in; there is still money for the dining-rooms enough for thirty more, and it keeps increasing; whereas when I left there, there were seventy dining-rooms, and there were requests from twenty villages in great need, which, I thought, could not be satisfied. And now they can be — and here I sit. And it is thirty degrees of frost, and there, in many of the nearby places, there is neither food nor fuel. My wife promises to go there with me for a week; she for a week, but I shall stay on after the 20th — but for the present it is hard. The young Raevskys were here, and now Ilya; but, quite apart from the fact that I am nevertheless needed there, my life here is a needless one. The one thing by which I can console myself a little is that I have written here and, it seems, have finished the 8th chapter (of The Kingdom of God). It all came out not as I had thought. The appeal which I had planned, and which you advised placing at the end, did not fit. But, it seems, it came out as it ought to be. Tomorrow, if I am alive, I shall correct it from the fair copy, and I hope that I shall set it right — strike out, add, transpose, but not alter. It must be so — it must. Perhaps I am mistaken, but it seems to me that, in writing this, I am doing what God bids.”
L. N. had to stay in Moscow until the beginning of February. Sofya Andreyevna saw him off to Begichevka, stayed there a day, and returned to Moscow.
At this time a storm gathered over L. N. which did not dare to break, and went back whence it had come, but which nevertheless caused him no little trouble and agitation, and S. A. especially. The thunder broke from the editorial office of Moskovskie Vedomosti (The Moscow Gazette).
The occasion for this attack was the following. In the January 1892 number of the Knizhka Nedeli (The Weekly Booklet) there appeared an article by L. N. under the title “Aid to the Hungry.” It represented a greatly shortened version, cut down by the censorship, of his larger article, which L. N. had written back in the autumn of 1891, on the basis of impressions from his journey through the crop-failure districts. L. N. had then given this article the title “Letters on the Famine” and had wished to place it in N. Ya. Grot’s journal Voprosy Psikhologii i Filosofii (Questions of Psychology and Philosophy). But, in spite of all Grot’s efforts, the censorship would not permit it to be printed in full, and Grot, out of respect for the author, did not wish to print it in cut-down form. L. N. then directed that, in the proof-sheets, without any cuts, this article be handed over to the disposal of the French, Danish, and English translators — the last of these being Dillon. The first two translations passed unnoticed, but the English one attracted attention in Moscow.
On 21 January, in a leading article, the editors of Moskovskie Vedomosti reprinted a large piece of this article, combining several phrases that carried a sharper condemnation of the contemporary order of things, and with commentaries of this kind:
“This letter is so characteristic that we cite it in full, in order to open everyone’s eyes to the true meaning of that propaganda which Count Tolstoy is conducting, and which many among us (we hope, out of ignorance) consider entirely innocent and even beneficent. Read and judge.”
The reviewer concludes thus:
“In another letter Count Tolstoy poses ‘the all-important question’: whether the peasants themselves understand the seriousness of their position and the necessity of waking up in time and themselves undertaking something, in view of the fact that no one else can help them; for if they themselves undertake nothing, ‘they will die off by spring, like bees without honey.’
Count Tolstoy’s letters have no need of any commentaries: they are open propaganda for the overthrow of the whole existing social and economic order throughout the world, which, with a very understandable aim, is ascribed by the Count to Russia alone. The Count’s propaganda is the propaganda of the most unbridled socialism, beside which even our own underground propaganda pales.
The other day there was sent to us by post one of the vile underground printed leaflets, in which it is said, just as with Count Tolstoy, that ‘the salvation of the Russian land is in itself, and not in the ministers, governors-general, and governors, who have brought Russia to the very brink of the abyss.’ In this leaflet the same absurd idea is expressed — as with Count Tolstoy — that ‘the government has brought Russia to famine’; while the Count, although he has nothing in common with the underground agitators, nevertheless likewise keeps repeating that ‘the government is a parasite upon the people,’ sucking out its juices for its own pleasure!
But the underground agitators are striving for rebellion, holding up as a lure a ‘constitution’ as the means to that chaos of which they dream; whereas the Count openly preaches the programme of a social revolution, repeating after the Western socialists the hackneyed, absurd, but ever-effective phrases — phrases which always work upon the ignorant masses — about how ‘the rich drink the sweat of the people, devouring all that the people have and produce.’
Can we remain indifferent in the face of such propaganda — propaganda which, perhaps, only people who are altogether blind, or unwilling to see, could fail to notice?”
The voice of Moskovskie Vedomosti, still authoritative at that time, having flung its reproach of criminal indifference at those in power, had its effect.
The “spheres” were thrown into agitation.
How this escapade of Moskovskie Vedomosti was reflected in the highest spheres is well recounted by L. N.’s kinswoman, Countess Alexandra Andreyevna, in her reminiscences:
“When the sun shines too brightly, the storm-clouds are not far off” — so Alexandra Andreyevna begins her account; and this not-universally-known proverb was borne out precisely over our hero. In his history too there now set in troubled times. On the one hand, the worship and the burning of incense went on as before, while on the other there appeared enmity and envy.
“In my opinion,” wrote the Countess, “there is nothing more loathsome and more melancholy than a war in the press. In Moscow there suddenly stirred into motion a whole horde of those underground rats, who strove at all costs to blacken Lev Nikolaevich not only in the present but also in the past, dragging out into the light from their rat-hole his long-forgotten literary sins, once gnawed over by themselves — that is, those things which every author and poet allows himself in secret, in his youth, en guise d’airs de bravoure (). Then the very worst broke out, from a pure piece of carelessness on Lev Nikolaevich’s part: he, disregarding general opinion, and chiefly that of the censorship, allowed an English journalist to carry off with him — not for the press, of course — an anti-government article; and this same son de la perfide Albion* at once printed it in a newspaper with a declaration that Lev Nikolaevich had given him permission to do so.”
( In the spirit of bravado. )
Countess Alexandra Andreyevna’s indignation at the perfidy of the son of Albion was here quite uncalled-for, since L. N. had personally directed that his article be handed to the translators for printing, although the translation had not been made with the requisite correctness.
“One may imagine,” continues Countess Alexandra Andreyevna, “with what demoniac joy the Moscow rats seized upon this article, citing it in their Vedomosti with their own commentaries, of course, and giving the author’s thoughts an altogether different and, naturally, still worse meaning… I do not undertake to describe what an uproar followed throughout all Europe on account of this article, and how many punishments the Moscow journalists devised for poor Lev Nikolaevich: they prophesied Siberia for him, the fortress, banishment from Russia, all but the gallows even…
The foreign newspapers, as usual, were filled with the details of this incident, and for two or three months I incessantly received letters from everywhere, not excepting America, with requests to inform them to what exactly the well-known writer, my kinsman, had been sentenced… At this time there began to reach me reports from Petersburg that the Minister of the Interior, Count Dmitry Andreyevich Tolstoy, at the instigation of the Moscow publicists, was planning for Lev Nikolaevich confinement in the Suzdal monastery without the right to write — that is, paper would be issued to him in a restricted amount, on the indispensable condition that he should receive a new quantity only upon returning (written-over) what had been issued to him before.”
Astonished and shaken by such ominous rumours and talk, Countess Alexandra Andreyevna resolved to go to the minister herself, in order to learn everything from him in person.
“I found him at home,” the Countess relates, “and in great perplexity, it seemed. So, at least, did he appear to me — perplexed.
‘I really do not know what to decide upon,’ Count D. A. Tolstoy said to Alexandra Andreyevna. ‘Read all these denunciations of Lev Tolstoy here… The first ones, which I received, I laid aside; but I cannot keep this whole affair concealed from the Sovereign…’
‘Of course not,’ answered the Countess, ‘but you ought to know that the Sovereign is very fond of Lev, et probablement que cela adoucira ses impressions…’ (*)
( And, probably, this will soften his impressions. )
And so,” says the Countess, “when I learned and saw to what danger Lev Nikolaevich might be exposed by Dmitry Andreyevich’s report to the Sovereign, and that this report would be made within the next few days, I resolved to use all my influence to save him. I wrote to the Sovereign that I very much needed to see him, and asked him to appoint a time for this. Imagine my joy when I suddenly received the answer that that very day the Sovereign would call upon me himself.
I was greatly agitated, awaiting his visit, and inwardly prayed God to help me. At last the Sovereign came in. I noticed that his face was tired and that he was upset by something. But this did not alter my intention, and only gave me the greater resolve. To the Sovereign’s question as to what I had to say to him, I answered straight out:
‘Within the next few days a report will be made to you concerning the confinement in a monastery of the most brilliant man in Russia.’
The Sovereign’s face instantly changed: it became stern and deeply grieved.
‘Tolstoy?’ he asked shortly.
‘You have guessed it, Sire,’ I answered.
‘Does that mean he is plotting against my life?’ the Sovereign asked.
I was amazed, but inwardly gladdened: I thought that this one thing alone (such a crime) could incline the Sovereign to confirm Dmitry Andreyevich’s report…
And indeed, as it turned out, having heard out Dmitry Andreyevich’s report about what had happened and about the supposedly strong agitation of the public, the Sovereign, declining the report, answered literally as follows:
‘I beg you not to touch Tolstoy. I have not the slightest intention of making a martyr of him and of drawing upon myself universal indignation. If he is guilty, so much the worse for him.’
I learned at that same time that Dmitry Andreyevich had returned from Gatchina, presenting himself, by his own account, as ‘a perfectly happy man,’ since, in the event of the confirmation of his report, no small share of censure would, of course, have fallen upon him as well. This he well understood, and he entered rather skilfully into the role of a ‘happy’ man…”
In this account, winning by its sincerity and its goodwill toward L. N., there is one major contradiction. The mention of the machinations of Moskovskie Vedomosti undoubtedly indicates that the case described relates to January 1892. The same is indicated by A. A.’s mention of the perfidy of the English translator, since the “exposures” of Moskovskie Vedomosti had been drawn precisely from the version of the English translator Dillon. But by that time the minister Tolstoy was no longer living. He, as is well known, died in 1889. And consequently Countess Alexandra Andreyevna could not have gone to him, and the report to the Sovereign was made not by him. It is very probable that the Countess, her memory grown weak with old age (her notes are dated 1899 — that is, she wrote them at eighty-two, four years before her death), merged two events into one, since back in 1886 L. N. had been threatened with some sort of reprisals for the dissemination of his article Nikolai Palkin. But then it had not been so serious, and her meeting and conversation with the Sovereign ought to be referred precisely to 1892.
There were related in society and in the Tolstoy family other versions, too, of the conversation between the Sovereign Alexander III and Countess Al. Andr. Tolstaya. It was told that the Sovereign, meeting A. A., showed her a number of Moskovskie Vedomosti with the words: “Look how our protégé writes!” and, having heard out Countess A. A.’s reassuring remark, nevertheless added with chagrin: “He has betrayed me to my enemies.”
L. N.’s family was agitated too, especially Sofya Andreyevna. And under the influence of her fear L. N. resolved to write a refutation of the absurd rumours. He did so in the following form:
In the middle of February Countess S. A. sent out to many editorial offices the following letter:
“Dear Sir!
Having received from Begichevka, Dankov district, the following letter from my husband, intended for publication, I most humbly beg you to place it in your publication. Countess Sofya Tolstaya.”
L. N.’s letter:
“Dear Sir, Mr. Editor!
In reply to the letters I receive from various persons, asking whether the letters from which extracts have been made in number 22 of Moskovskie Vedomosti were indeed written and sent by me to the English newspapers, I humbly beg you to place the following statement of mine.
I wrote no letters whatever to the English newspapers. The extract printed in small type and ascribed to me is a much-altered passage (in consequence of a twice-over — first into English, then into Russian — overly free translation) from my article, given back in October to a Moscow journal and not printed, and after that given over, according to my custom, into the full disposal of foreign translators.
But the passage in the Moskovskie Vedomosti article, printed in large type immediately after the extract from the translation of my article, and put forward as the thought I had supposedly expressed in a second letter about how the people ought to act in order to deliver themselves from famine, is an outright fabrication.
In this passage the composer of the article makes use of my words, employed in an altogether different sense, to express a thought wholly alien and contrary to my convictions. With perfect respect, Lev Tolstoy.”
12 February 1892, Begichevka.
This refutation was occasioned in part by S. A.’s journey to the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, then governor-general of Moscow, with a request for protection. S. A. came away from him, of course, reassured, and the Grand Duke told her that it would be well if the Count were to place his refutation in the Pravitelstvenny Vestnik (The Government Herald).
The Pravitelstvenny Vestnik refused to print this letter, on the grounds that polemics are not permitted on the pages of an official organ.
At this time, abroad, there were already being printed in the newspapers articles under the title “The Confinement of Lev Tolstoy,” in which various rumours were given of the danger threatening L. N., and the notices of Moskovskie Vedomosti and of the Grazhdanin (The Citizen) were reprinted, while the liberal press was indignant at the encroachment “upon the most glorious literary career of the nineteenth century.”
All this greatly troubled Sofya Andreyevna, and she addressed the foreign newspapers with the following letter:
“Dear Sir, Mr. Editor!
Daily I receive letters and clippings from the foreign newspapers, where there is talk of the arrest of my husband, Count Tolstoy. I consider it my duty to communicate the whole truth about my husband to those who take an interest in his fate. The government not only does not trouble Count Tolstoy, but, on the contrary, the administration actively helps him in his work for the benefit of those who have suffered from the crop failure. Elements hostile to him — a small handful, however, with Moskovskie Vedomosti at their head — had attempted to distort his article, written for a Russian journal and far from faithfully rendered in translation, in such a sense that the article contradicted all the Count’s views. This case is what gave rise to all the talk and rumours. It is especially hard for me to read in the foreign newspapers that the confinement of my husband came about by order of the supreme power. The supreme power has always been particularly gracious toward our family.”
This letter to the foreign press was written and sent off already without Lev Nikolaevich’s knowledge.
L. N. began to notice that the refutation he had written was now beginning to be exploited in the sense that he was justifying himself against the accusations brought against him; and this prompted him to write Sofya Andreyevna the following letter:
“From dear Alexandra Andreyevna’s letter I see that the tone among them is such that I am guilty of something, and that I must justify myself before someone. This tone must not be allowed. I have been writing what I think — and what can please neither governments nor the rich classes — for twelve years now, and I write not by accident but consciously, and I not only do not intend to justify myself in this, but I hope that those who wish me to justify myself will try at least not to justify, but to purge, themselves of that of which not I, but their whole life, accuses them. In this particular case, however, the following is taking place: the government sets up a censorship, absurd and lawless, which prevents people’s thoughts from manifesting themselves in their true light. Involuntarily it comes about that these things appear abroad in a distorted form. The government is thrown into agitation, and instead of openly, honestly examining the matter, it again hides behind the censorship, and at the same time takes offense at something, allowing itself to accuse still others, and not itself. As for what I wrote in the article on the famine, it is a part of what I have for twelve years been writing and saying in every manner, and shall go on saying to my very death, and what everything enlightened and honest in all the world says to me, what the heart of every uncorrupted man says, and what Christianity says — the Christianity professed by those who are horrified.
Please, do not take the tone of one accused. This is a complete reversal of roles. One may keep silent. But if one does not keep silent, then one can only accuse — not Moskovskie Vedomosti, which is not interesting at all, and not people, but those conditions of life under which what is possible among us is possible. I have long wished to write you this. And this morning early, with a fresh head, I am setting forth what I have thought about it. Note, moreover, that there exist my writings, in tens of thousands of copies in various languages, in which my views are set forth. And suddenly, on the strength of some mysterious letters that have appeared in the English newspapers, everyone has all at once understood what kind of a bird I am. Why, it is ridiculous. Only those ignorant persons — of whom the most ignorant are those who make up the court — can fail to know what I have written, and can think that views such as mine could in a single day suddenly change and become revolutionary. All this is simply ridiculous, and to reason with such people is for me both humiliating and offensive.
I am afraid that you will scold me for these speeches, dear friend, and accuse me of pride. But that would be unjust. It is not pride, but those foundations of Christianity by which I live, that cannot bend under the demands of unchristian people; and I am defending not myself, and am offended not for myself, but for those foundations by which I live. As for writing the statements and signing them, I did so because, as dear Grot justly writes, the truth must always be re-established, if it is needful. But those who tear up portraits had no business possessing them at all.”
This last phrase was occasioned by the fact that there had reached L. N. rumours that the coarse, reactionary part of Russian society, indignant at L. N.’s revolutionary escapades, had begun to destroy the portraits of Tolstoy as a brilliant writer which they had had.
Lev N. considered the incident closed, but in society this event was long a cause of agitation, which, like a stone thrown into water, seized in its spreading circles an ever greater and greater expanse.
Especially affected by this affair was the translator Dillon. Lev N.’s refutation cast a shadow on the conscientiousness of his work; probably his competitors took advantage of this to trip him up, and he, distressed, came to Begichevka, begging to be saved, since he was threatened with dismissal from his post as correspondent if he did not furnish fresh certification of the correctness of the translation. Lev N., taking pity on him, gave him such a certification; but into this matter there intervened S. A., who was then at Begichevka, and she destroyed the certification.
Affected by this occurrence too was the writer N. S. Leskov, who always followed with particular interest everything that surrounded L. N., and who at the same time was patronizing the correspondent Dillon.
Here is his letter to me, full of indignation and complaint, but, as always, seasoned with wit, irony, and jest:
“Dear friend Pavel Ivanovich!
Your letter, written before your departure from Begichevka, I received, and I thank you for it and for the copy you enclosed of the letter about Karma. That is excellent; but what has happened since then over the ‘incident of the distortions’ is all far from excellent, and this was the reason I could not answer you for so long. I was deeply shaken and agitated by this ‘incident,’ for which there was no need whatever. They kept harping that there are supposedly ‘distortions,’ and once they had taken their stand on this, they pushed on, in spite of all the arguments of friends that there are no ‘distortions,’ and that to stop the talk of it would in every respect be more worthy than to continue it, given the obvious impossibility of proving what does not exist… They say that even you were for continuing this unhappy polemic, which has cast a confusing shadow on the truthfulness and straightforwardness of L. N.’s character, and has thereby filled with tormenting sensations the souls of the excellent people who love him, and who now go about shamed and silent, feeling an oppressive sorrow… I might, following the example of the well-known American, pronounce a ‘curse upon the goose that gave the quill with which the Countess was able to write her protest.’ Where was there any calculation at all, when she took this up and pursued it with a persistence worthy of an altogether different cause?… And what torments have been created for poor Dillon, who would himself have borne it all in silence, but who had no right to refuse to comply with the demand of the Daily Telegraph — a joint-stock newspaper that risked losing at one stroke its whole reputation in the eyes of all the world, and ruining its business, swallowing up the funds of all its capitalists… What was poor Dillon to do, when it was demanded of him that ‘the Countess’s protest’ be refuted here, in Russia? The unhappy man was compelled to write against the very one whom he loves and respects, and to seek the means of exposing him through the agency of such organs into which he would not have wished even to glance… What torture has been created for this man, who always displayed the most noble and useful devotion to L. N.!… And yet we see that in the incomprehensible resolve to stand for the existence of ‘distortions’ L. N. himself takes part!… What is this, then? How is one to understand it? Where, after all, are the distortions?… Where did L. N., the Countess, Ch—kov, and you see them? Pray, show them! From all sides we are mocked and questioned, and we ought to know what to answer — where are the distortions, when there are none! You do not know, and cannot know, how hard and how painful this is, because you stand among your own, whereas we turn among strangers and see the confusion of excellent souls and their falling away through doubt of the sincerity of that man who is dearer to us than all who live beneath the sun!… Ch—v has ruined our centre for us, and now he himself is helping to strike the ‘dispersion’ as well… You say that ‘he is following his own line’… I know this, but I think that for him it would have been quite enough ‘only to follow his own line.’ Living in the villages, people lose the scale of measurement by which structures are reared in the cities. This has long been known, and on our men of affairs it has once more been proved with such devilish persuasiveness that I should once again like to send a ‘curse upon the goose that gave the quill’ with which the Countess writes her ‘articles.’ What will there be next? Can it be that there will be new articles from her yet?! Can it be that you all do not see to what this leads, and into whose hand you are playing! It were better for him to be a little slandered than to confound the people who love him. I kiss you. N. Leskov.”
As Leskov writes, nothing remained for Dillon to do but to prove that there had been no distortions. Since Moskovskie Vedomosti was interested in the very same thing, he turned to them with a request to print a proof that there had been no distortions whatever.
In one of the journals of the time it is said of this new sally of Moskovskie Vedomosti:
“With L. N.’s statement, the incident might have been considered closed, were it not for those same Moskovskie Vedomosti, who, wishing to prolong the sensation, fell upon Tolstoy with a new torrent of abuse and accusations. As proof of the correctness of their translation they refer to Mr. Dillon’s translation and print the Count’s own opinions of this latter translation, although the correctness of a translation made from Russian into English does not yet guarantee the correctness of a translation made back again, in the office of a Moscow newspaper, from English into Russian.”
A light, superficial comparison of what was printed in Moskovskie Vedomosti with what was written by L. N. is sufficient to see that, even if there are no great distortions, there is a very inexact translation, transpositions, a selection and juxtaposition of the sharper phrases — whoever this may have proceeded from, whether from Moskovskie Vedomosti or from Dillon, or from both together — sufficient to agree fully with L. N. that he could not acknowledge himself the author of the cited passages.
This wearisome business finally wore out L. N. as well, and he expresses his complete indifference to what was happening, and utters his reconciling opinion, in a letter to Chertkov of 21 March 1892.
“The articles of Moskovskie Vedomosti and of the Grazhdanin and Dillon’s letters were disagreeable to me — Dillon’s especially, in that one can in no way guess by what one has called forth a hostile feeling in people. Dillon especially. His motives I do not understand at all. And, without pretending, I can say that he is simply pitiable to me, for the heavy feelings he is experiencing, and which prompt him to write what he writes. Here all is half-truth, half-falsehood, and there is no possibility whatever of making sense of it when there is no goodwill of people toward one another; and therefore the best thing is to say nothing at all. However, do as you think best. I know that, since I really had no need of anything in all this, or, still less, any fear — for I neither could nor wished to display or to conceal anything — and to answer everything that people who do not love you may ascribe to you is utterly impossible.”
And yet the article over which this whole flare-up had burst into flame represented a remarkable literary phenomenon.
We shall here convey, in brief, the content of this article and give certain extracts, citing them from the complete copy.
In this article L. N. strove to make clear to people their moral and social obligations in the face of the calamity that had encompassed Russia.
At the beginning of this article, which was called “Letters on the Famine,” L. N. says that at that time it had, as it were, become the custom in the newspapers to censure the administration and the zemstvo for their inactivity; but this is untrue — before his eyes there was taking place an intense activity both of the administration and of the zemstvo, yet both the one and the other were unsuccessful and did not attain their aim. The cause of this failure L. N. saw in the remoteness from the people of those workers to whom the saving of the people from the calamities of famine had been entrusted.
The failure of the aid and the mutual criticism sharpened the relations between the administration and the zemstvo, and from this the cause itself suffered. The zemstvo and the administration were not even in agreement in determining the extent of the calamity: the administration was inclined to diminish its significance, the zemstvo to exaggerate it. The two departments agreed only in this, that the calamity was approaching. L. N. expressed their attitude to the people’s distress in the following image:
“In order to lay on a patch, to cut it out and prepare it, one must know the size of the hole. Some say that the hole is not large, and that the patch had better not tear it wider; others say that there will not even be enough cloth for a patch.”
In order to determine the actual extent of the calamity, L. N. personally surveyed several districts of Tula and Ryazan provinces, and the farther he moved to the east, the more the calamity intensified. Thus, in Krapivna district, Tula province, the examination of peasant households showed 50 of middling means and 20 very poor; in Bogoroditsk district there proved to be only 25 middling, and 50 poor; in Yefremov district the figures proved still more unfavourable; while in the neighbouring Dankov district, Ryazan province, the impending calamity was already assuming threatening dimensions. Thus L. N. personally convinced himself of the existence of a calamity not only of that year, but of a calamity already continuing for many years — the gradual impoverishment of the peasantry in the very richest, central, black-earth part of Russia.
The insufficiency, the untimeliness, and the unsatisfactoriness of the aid rendered by the administration and the zemstvo arose, in L. N.’s opinion, from the fact that both the one and the other department looked too materially upon the question of aid. They saw the deficit that had set in in the peasant household and, having determined its extent, resolved to make it up by a loan or by a free distribution. But such an attitude, in L. N.’s opinion, would do for famishing animals, which are easily satisfied with a definite quantity of food; it is otherwise with the satisfaction of the peasants’ need, if one takes into account all the complexity of their mutual relations, all the intensity of their toil, all the diversity of their requirements, of the income and expenditure in their peasant budget. L. N. explains his thought thus:
“To feed the muzhik is just the same as, in springtime, when the grass has pushed up that the cattle can gather, to keep the cattle in the stall and oneself pluck this grass for them — that is, to deprive the herd of that enormous power of gathering which is in it, and thereby to ruin it.
Something similar would be wrought with the muzhik too, were one to set about feeding him in just this way, and were he to believe in it.
The muzhik’s budget does not balance — a deficit — he has nothing to feed himself with — he must be fed.
But just reckon up any average muzhik, not in a crop-failure year, when, as with us, time and again the grain lasts only until Christmas, and you will see that in ordinary years too, by the harvest lists, he has nothing to feed himself with, and the deficit is such that he absolutely must do away with his cattle and himself eat once a day.
Such is the budget of the average muzhik — of the poor one there is nothing even to say — and yet you look, and he has not only not done away with his cattle, but has married off a son or given away a daughter, kept a holiday, and smoked away five roubles’ worth of tobacco. Who has not seen fires that cleared away everything? It would seem the burnt-out folk must perish. You look, and one has been helped by his wife’s relative, his uncle; one has dug up his nest-egg; one has bound himself out as a labourer; while one has gone off to beg. The energy was strained, and you look — within two years they had set themselves up no worse than before.”
On the one hand, one cannot leave them without aid, since the peasantry is ruined and is perishing; on the other hand, free aid weakens the energy of resistance to the calamity, and in the end leads to the same ruin. And L. N. concludes thus:
“In this cercle vicieux both the government officials and the zemstvo flounder. And it is from this that there comes all that muddle of measures which are undertaken against that famine of which we do not know whether it exists or not — a muddle that comes from our having taken up a matter which it is not for us to do. For the matter we have taken up consists in nothing more nor less than feeding the people — that is, we have taken upon ourselves to feed the breadwinner, the very one who has fed and feeds us.
We have so tangled ourselves up and talked ourselves into a corner that we have quite forgotten who we are! We, the gentry, wish to feed the people!”
And L. N. sets the question of aid to the hungry not on an economic but on a moral footing:
“The people are hungry because we are too well fed.
Can the people but be hungry, when, under the conditions in which they live — that is, with the taxes they bear, with the scarcity of land, with the neglect and savagery in which they are kept — they must produce all that fearful labour whose results are devoured by the capitals, the cities, and the rural centres of the rich?
Such is their position always.
Only this year, in consequence of the crop failure, has it become apparent that the string is stretched too tight.”
And L. N. addresses a reproach to contemporary society for its indifference to the people’s calamity, expressed in the fact that the life of this society had not changed when there was a calamity among the people; this indifference arises from our removal from the people, our disunion from them. And he recalls the words of Voltaire:
“Voltaire says that if it were possible, by pressing a little knob in Paris, to kill by that pressure a mandarin in China, then a rare Parisian would deny himself that pleasure.
And this dreadful pressing of the knob is constantly being performed before our eyes.
All the wealthy Russian people ceaselessly press the knob — and not even for the pleasure of an interesting experiment, but for the most trifling of aims. Not to speak of the factory generations perishing at the absurd, tormenting, corrupting work of the factories for the pleasure of the rich, the whole agricultural population, or an enormous part of it, having no land to feed itself, is forced to a fearful straining of labour that destroys their physical and spiritual powers, only in order that the gentry may increase their luxury. The whole population is plied with drink, is exploited by the traders for this same purpose. The populace degenerates, the children die before their time, all in order that the rich — the gentry and the merchants — may live their own separate city life, with their palaces, their dinners, their concerts, their horses, their carriages, their lectures, and the like.
Now, when people are, as they say, dying of hunger, are not the landowners, the merchants, the rich in general, sitting on their stores of grain, awaiting still greater rises in price? Are they not beating down the price of labour? Do the officials cease to receive the salaries collected from the hungry? Do not all the intelligent people continue to live in the cities for their own — to hear them tell it — lofty aims, devouring there, in the cities, those means of life carted thither for them, from the lack of which the people are dying?
All the instincts of each of the gentry — the scholarly, the official, the artistic, the family ones — are such as have nothing in common with the life of the people. The people do not understand the gentry; and the gentry, though they think they understand the people, do not understand them, because the people’s interests are not only not identical with those of the gentry, but are always directly opposed to them.
The people are needed by us only as an instrument, and this instrument the gentry make use of not out of any hardness of heart, but because their life is so arranged that they cannot but make use of it; and their advantages (however much, consoling themselves, they may say to the contrary) are always diametrically opposed to the advantages of the people.
The more salary and pension they give me — that is, the more they take from the people — the better for me, says the official.
The dearer the grain and all the necessary articles are sold to the people, and the harder it is for them, the better it will be for me, says the merchant too, and the landowner.
The cheaper labour is — that is, the poorer the people are — the better for us, say all the people of the rich classes.
What sympathy, then, can we have for the people?
Aid to a people in a calamitous condition can only be personal.
It is that activity which compels, in the present hungry year, in one locality (this I have seen more than once), the mistress of a house, at the words ‘For Christ’s sake!’ heard beneath the window, to shrink, to wince, and then nevertheless to take down from the shelf the last loaf already begun, and to cut from it a tiny morsel, half a palm’s breadth, and, crossing herself, to hand it over — and it is this that removes all the obstacles which hindered the activity of the government with its external aim.
And if the privileged class truly and sincerely wishes to render aid to the suffering people, it must first of all destroy that wall which has been raised between them, must enter into the midst of the people with a consciousness of its guilt before them, and then only can it find the true means of aid.
The foundation of all activity having for its aim to help one’s neighbour must be self-renunciation and love. As to the question of what kind of sacrifice a man is capable of, here too all degrees are possible; they are full of variety — up to the giving of one’s life for one’s friends. And there will be many Zacchaeuses, giving up a part of what they have. But to be even a Zacchaeus, one must strive toward self-sacrificing love, must clearly recognize the high moral ideal.
Only with self-renunciation and love can there be wrought the miracle of feeding five thousand with five loaves, so that whole baskets of bread will yet remain over.
All will be satisfied, and there will yet remain over,” says Lev Nikolaevich in conclusion.
“But in order to do this, in order that love may appear, it is necessary that the activity should flow not from the desire — while remaining in the former relations to the people — to maintain in them the needed working forces, but from the consciousness of one’s guilt before the people, of one’s oppression of them and one’s separation of oneself from them, from repentance and humility.
Not on a proud consciousness of one’s necessity to the people, but on humility alone, can there grow up an activity that can save the people.”
So L. N. concludes his article.
The whole episode described, with Moskovskie Vedomosti, was only one of the manifestations of that dull hatred which was nourished toward L. N. by the milieu of darkness and violence, exposed by the light of the truth he proclaimed. Not content with such, more or less open, denunciations, this milieu resorted to every possible means, even to the rousing of the fanaticism of the peasant masses. But here it collided with the common sense of the man of little culture — that is, of little corruption — and met with no success; some of the manifestations of this agitation, however, took on an interesting, comic character.
Tatyana Lvovna records in her diary the following story:
“Chistyakov told amusingly of a conversation he had overheard at Gorki. They began to talk of Papa, and one muzhik says to another that he had heard that ‘this Count ought to be done away with.’ And the other says: ‘You’re a fool, talking of doing away with such a man. He is a most clever man. Why, the Tsar himself, dropping his affairs, was able to take instruction from his lady wife for eighteen minutes… and you go talking of “doing away” with him.’”
The local administration kept a keen watch over the activity of L. N. and his friends and — one must do it justice — did not interfere. Of course, this benevolent attitude had been prompted from above, in the form of a Supreme decree: “not to hamper private philanthropy.” Here is an interesting document, preserved in one of the local archives; it is a report, in the form of a private letter, from the police captain to the head of the chancellery of the Ryazan governor.
“Much-respected Vasily Ivanovich. I am sending you five more of the booklets distributed by Count Tolstoy. It has been ascertained: Tolstoy comes with a clerk, and to the village of Rudenka, Gornovo rural district, there came his agent, a resident of the village of Klekotki, Strakhov, about 30 years old, of tall stature, with a red beard, and the hair on his head white. Both Tolstoy and his clerk and Strakhov do not eat meat, and when they sit down to table they do not pray to God. This last circumstance has bred in the peasants a suspicion that Tolstoy does this not from God but from Antichrist. But not all are of this opinion; the majority, without subtlety, make use of the dining-room and give thanks behind his back. The most thorough surveillance has been established, and every step will be known to me. With true respect I have the honour to be ready to serve. D. G.”
In other places these rumours agitated the population more strongly, although it would be calmed by a reasonable refutation of these rumours.
Vera Mikhailovna Velichkina, who worked much alongside L. N., relates the following in her notes:
“Once I come to the neighbouring village of Krugloye and, before even reaching the dining-room, I stepped into a familiar cottage to rest. Around me, as always, little by little there gathered the people, and we were conversing peacefully. Suddenly, through the gathered crowd, there makes his way toward me a muzhik in a very agitated state of mind; he greets me, sits down beside me, and says:
‘Tell me everything truthfully, Vera Mikhailovna: who is feeding us, from whom are these dining-rooms and bread, and who sent you to us? Tell it all frankly yourself.’
I very gladly fulfilled his wish, because we always sought an occasion to acquaint the population with the true state of affairs, to tell them that the workers of other countries — Germans, and Englishmen, and Americans — are gathering means for their hungry Russian brothers; while in Russia itself the means come not from any government treasury, but the population itself helps: the cabmen collect, the children send, sacrificing their toys and presents, the workers collect from their hard-earned coppers, and so on.
I told them about us, too — how and why we had thought of coming to their aid. I was very glad that an occasion presented itself to tell everything as it truly is, and to dispel the various absurd rumours that had been going about concerning us. Among other things, it was said of us also that we were foundlings of the orphanage, to whom the Tsar had given money and sent out to feed his people.
The crowd around me grew ever thicker; all listened attentively. When I had finished, the man who had questioned me stood up and said:
‘Well, now I have heard everything from your own lips — who you are and with what money you feed us — and now let anyone who likes say what he will about you; I will defend you everywhere and will tell everyone what you have told me. Walk now among us in peace, do not fear; no one will dare offend you.’
I was astonished.
‘But I have always walked about peacefully, alone, through all the settlements, and have never been afraid of any of you.’
‘Yes, that is true; we marveled at you for that too, that you walk alone. The danger to you was no small one…’
It turned out that in the village of Krugloye, two versts from Rozhnya, the local priest had delivered from the pulpit a sermon in which he told the people that we were children of Antichrist, that we had appeared here to seduce the people, and that we ought to be beaten. This was said in a place where, over a stretch of fifteen to twenty versts, only two young girls were working.
Al. Al. too had an analogous case. She was treating a well-to-do old man and, it seems, helped him. And he then somehow declared to the visitors who came to him: ‘What children of Antichrist are these? These are angels of God, whom the Lord has sent to us!’
When, on my arrival at Begichevka, I told L. N. of what had happened to me at Krugloye, he fell positively into horror and kept repeating in agitation: ‘What a horror, what a horror — to what lengths will they go at last!’”
Since these and similar rumours began to find their way into print, this called forth a printed rejoinder from local public figures who regarded L. N.’s activity with deep respect and were indignant at the agitation of benighted people. And so in Moskovskie Vedomosti there appeared the following protest:
“Letter to the Publisher.
Dear Sir. We hope that, wishing to re-establish the truth, you will not refuse to place these few words from us in the next number of your newspaper.
In the number of your newspaper of 10 January there is placed an article, signed by G. Shatokhin, entitled ‘Rumour and Parable Concerning Count L. N. Tolstoy.’ Truth requires it, and we consider it our duty, for the re-establishment of the truth, to attest that the Count’s activity in rendering aid to the needy population — an activity not confined to Dankov district alone, but now extended into Yepifan district, Tula province, where he has opened more than 30 dining-rooms — far from prompting any false rumours, calls forth in the population only feelings of deep gratitude and acknowledgment, and on the part of ourselves and all who stand close to the matter, besides this, feelings of deep respect as well.
Marshal of the nobility of Yepifan district, N. Protopopov.
Chairman of the Yepifan committee of the Red Cross, R. Pisarev.”
16 January 1892, the town of Yepifan.
All these episodes could not disturb the systematically developing activity of L. N. and his collaborators, who were taking in an ever larger district. A few extracts from L. N.’s letters of that time give an idea of the general character of his activity at this period — that is, at the end of winter or the beginning of spring 1892. On 20 February he writes, among other things, to Sofya Andreyevna:
“Yesterday we were very busy: all of us in the evening wrote letters, so that there were 32 letters ready for dispatch, of which 20 were mine, and besides, the greater part of them foreign.”
A few days later L. N., concerning himself with the drawing-up of a report, writes to S. A.:
“Again it is necessary to write a report on the donations and on what has been done. And not a little has been done, as you look back over the time since I wrote the last report. Of dining-rooms: more than 120 of various kinds; children’s ones are being set up; from tomorrow horses go onto our feed; and much has been done by various means in the matter of aid with firewood. Often one experiences a strange feeling: the people round about are not in distress, and one asks oneself: why, then, am I here, if they are not in distress? But they are not in distress precisely because we are here, and there has passed through us — as fast as we managed to pass it on — some 50 thousand.”
A few days later still, already at the beginning of March, when L. N. was preparing to go for a time to Moscow to rest, he writes to Sofya Andreyevna:
“We are living out the last of the time, and the work goes on more and more; but along with this one sees, though not the end of it, yet that it will come into greater regularity. Today, by way of experiment, I undertook to record all who come with requests, and there turned out, on an ordinary, non-distribution day, to be 125 persons, not counting the small petitioners for bast shoes, clothing, and the like.”
At the end of April, having returned again to Begichevka, L. N. wrote to his friend N. N. Strakhov:
“We are now here alone, Masha and I. A great deal of work. But of late it has become morally easier for me. One feels that something is being done, and that one’s own participation, if only a little, is needed. There are good moments, but for the most part I am digging about in these innards, in the very womb of the people; it is tormenting to see the degradation and corruption to which they have been brought. And they all want to keep him in tutelage and to instruct him. To take a man, make him drunk, rob him, and then bind him as well and throw him into a cesspit, and afterwards, pointing to his condition, to say that he can do nothing himself, and that this is what he will come to if left to himself, and, taking advantage of this, to go on keeping him in slavery. But just stop, if only for a single year, plying him with drink, stupefying him, robbing and binding him, and see what he will do and how he will attain that welfare of which you dare not even dream. Abolish the redemption payments, abolish the land captains and the rods, abolish the state religion — that is, give full freedom of faith — abolish compulsory military service, but recruit volunteers if you need them; abolish — if you are the government and care for the people — vodka; forbid it, and see what will become of the Russian people in ten years.”
This activity of L. N.’s, of course, drew many people to him. By this time, just then, little by little, one after another, the agricultural communes had ceased to exist. And so a whole group of young forces, seeking application, presented themselves to L. N.’s disposal. The brothers Alyokhin, Novoselov, Skorokhodov, Gastev, Leontyev, Rakhmanov occupied themselves with the distribution of donations under L. N.’s direction. Others helped by collecting grain in the places where they lived and sending it on to the centre of aid.
The first months of this aid I was abroad, occupied with the publication of certain of L. N.’s writings forbidden in Russia. In January 1892 I returned to Russia, and, having settled my personal affairs, attached myself, as it was then jestingly called, to the “ministry” of L. N. Tolstoy. Since there were already many people around L. N., I, having worked at Begichevka a couple of weeks, at L. N.’s proposal set off on 4 March with his son Lev and the Swedish correspondent Stadling for Samara province, where the calamity was perhaps the most severe of all, and where there was almost no aid whatever. We worked there, Lev Lvovich and I, with several helpers, the whole spring and summer, until the new harvest. L. N. sent us a part of the donations he received, and we succeeded in spreading our activity fairly widely over two districts of Samara province — Buzuluk and Nikolaevsk.
Together with this spreading of the work wider and farther, there spread the rumour of L. N., and this rumour, already clothed in legend, drew to him the most varied people, who saw a bright point amid the thick twilight and went toward the little flame, often without giving themselves an account of where this ray of light would lead them, and of what they would say when they met face to face with its bearer.
Of such distant visitors, the most typical is a Swede, of whom several reminiscences have been preserved.
Here is how L. N. himself characterizes him in a letter to Chertkov:
“Yesterday there came to us an old man of 70, a Swede, who has lived in India and America, speaks English and German, a practical philosopher, as he himself calls himself, who lives, and wishes to teach people to live, by the law of nature; ragged, dirty, barefoot, and in want of nothing. One must work oneself, in order to feed oneself from the land without working cattle, have no money, sell nothing, have nothing superfluous, share everything. He is, of course, a strict vegetarian, speaks well, and, what is the main thing, is more than sincere, a fanatic of his idea; he says that he is not religious, but by religion he understands superstition, and he is wholly imbued with the spirit of Christianity. He wishes to have a plot of land and to show how one can and ought to feed oneself without working cattle. Shall I not direct him to you? I am not shifting him off myself, but think that he may be of use to you, and to us, and to people through you. Write an answer quickly. I would not let him go, but here, with our occupations, he is superfluous, and I cannot even talk with him as I should wish; and the main thing is — he has nothing to do.”
In almost the same words L. N. described this Swede in a letter to S. A. as well, adding: “a little like me.”
I shall give yet further testimonies about this remarkable man from two of L. N.’s collaborators of that time.
Here is what V. I. Skorokhodov writes in his reminiscences:
“Soon after Lev Nikolaevich’s return there came to him a Swede, an old man of about 70. He wore a kind of grey cloak, a straw hat, worn-out shoes on his bare feet, a long shirt and underdrawers; his long grey hair lay over his shoulders, and his face was framed by a great grey beard; from beneath his overhanging brows there looked clear, inspired eyes. With him he had a jute sack that served him for a bed, and an empty bottle in place of a pillow and for water. So he had come from the station, some 30 versts, in the frost, on foot. He told us that he had long ago dedicated his life to the search for truth, and with this aim had traveled all over the world. Having become acquainted, through books, with Tolstoy’s world-view, he had felt his spiritual kinship with him, and had now come in order to live out the remainder of his days in brotherly labour with Lev Nikolaevich and to realize his cherished dream of winning his own bread with his own hands, doing violence to no one, not even to animals, by means of spade culture. This Swede, when he spoke, called to mind an inspired prophet. He produced an enormous impression upon Lev Nikolaevich, who felt, as it were, a reproach of conscience for not fully carrying out in life what had become clear to him. With youthful enthusiasm Lev Nikolaevich began to take pains that, with the coming of spring, he should begin to put into practice what his brother in spirit was proposing to him. This Swede proved to be a strict vegetarian; he ate only fruits, vegetables, and flat-cakes made of pounded — not ground — grain, and drank only water. When at breakfast a large samovar was brought in, the Swede rose and, like a prophet, with reproach pronounced, pointing at the samovar: ‘And you too worship this idol! I have a mission from the Chinese, who suffer because their best lands have been taken away by the tea plantations and they have nowhere to sow their daily bread. This comes from the demand for tea. You must renounce the use of tea, if you know that, by using tea, you are thereby taking part in the taking away of the daily bread of our brothers the Chinese.’ Lev Nikolaevich, in confusion, translated this to us from the English and proposed that we follow this summons.
He himself ceased to drink tea, it was replaced by barley coffee, and the samovar was put away. When Lev Nikolaevich offered him a cup of coffee, explaining that it was a local product, the Swede, having first let it cool, tasted it and said: ‘It is a sin to spoil bread so!’ and would not drink it.
Lev Nikolaevich was utterly disconcerted and gradually brought his own modest vegetarian fare almost to the same point as the Swede’s. His organism could not endure such coarse food. At that time Lev Nikolaevich was suffering from gallstones; the illness intensified, and after tormenting attacks he was, with great grief, obliged to return again to a less strict vegetarianism, allowing milk and eggs. In the spring they did indeed lay out a grain-garden, but this Swede was expelled from Russia, since he did not acknowledge a passport.”
From another side this personality is illumined by V. M. Velichkina.
“Once, returning from somewhere, I saw on the table in the dining-room a torn felt hat.
‘We have an interesting guest, Vera Mikhailovna,’ Lev Nikolaevich said to me, smiling.
‘Who is it?’
‘You will see presently.’
And, entering the room where various journals and papers lay about, I did indeed see in the corner, on the floor, somebody’s bare feet sticking out. These feet belonged to the ‘interesting guest.’ The guest proved to be an old man of about 70, small, emaciated, dressed in a kind of quite threadbare jacket, barefoot, disheveled, but with a lively and somehow abnormal glitter in his eyes. The expression of his face did not draw one to him, and, to tell the truth, in spite of all his originality, from first to last he was not interesting to me.
As for Lev Nikol. and the greater part of the rest of the company, almost all of them were interested in the highest degree in this philosopher-naturalist. His very appearance among us was extraordinary. When he was asked whence he had come, he answered: ‘From space.’ To the question, whither he was bound, there followed the answer: ‘Into space.’ And his actual place of residence? ‘Here.’ We had to be content with this for the present. Afterwards he gave some information about himself.
He even turned out to have some sort of residence permit, which was required by our police, who did not recognize an indefinite ‘space.’
By nationality our guest proved to be a Swede. He told us that he had once been a wealthy merchant, but had afterwards understood all the injustice of his wealth, had given it away to the poor down to the last kopeck, and now for thirty years had been wandering all over the world; he had been to India, and to China, and now had arrived among us from somewhere in the East.
He resolved to plant potatoes on some scrap of land that had been put at his disposal for this occupation. The weak, exhausted old man worked, of course, very poorly.
Once he somehow saw how quickly and deftly M. Al. was spading up the field, and he was lost in admiration of him.
‘He could feed three wives and ten children,’ he declared.
And it in no way contradicted his natural philosophy to have these three wives and ten children, once he could feed them. This side of his philosophy, as it seemed to me, began a little to repel Lev Nik. But his witty and merciless criticism of the rich and of the unjust economic order of life could indeed very seriously interest his interlocutors.
Our philosopher not only did not acknowledge furniture, but scarcely acknowledged a costume either, and his own beggarly costume was, to a certain degree, only a concession to the police. But it happened that he sat wrapped only in a single blanket, though, fortunately, he did not go out into the hall in such a guise. Footwear he never wore, and on cold days we were very sorry for the old man. Instead of a pillow, he slept on a bottle, finding that a pillow spoils the hearing.
Once he took it into his head to prepare bread by his own method.
‘Best of all, of course, is to eat the grains raw,’ he said; but, as a concession to human weakness, he permitted the baking of bread too. The flour he pounded himself from the grains. They brought him grain and a mortar, and he set to work. But the poor old man was so weak that here too he had to be helped. Having mixed the flour he had prepared with water — milk the old man likewise did not use, saying that his own mother had already died — he prepared a kind of flat-cake and baked it. The flat-cake was served at dinner, and Lev Nik., to whom even good black bread was harmful, was carried away and ate of this famous, under-baked, ill-kneaded flat-cake.
The next day, from morning on, he became very ill. Pains arose in the liver, the stones began to pass. Marya Lvovna was dreadfully alarmed, and when I wished to go off somewhere on business, she would not let me go.
‘Do not leave me alone today, please,’ she begged.
I stayed.
A dreadful day we passed. Lev Nikolaevich’s pains kept increasing and became utterly unbearable. He began to groan terribly; Marya Lvovna laid on poultices of linseed; I prepared them; but evidently they helped little. The groans kept sounding, and these dreadful groans simply tore at the soul, and we were, of course, powerless.
So it continued for several hours. Only toward evening did the pains little by little begin to lessen, the groans subsided, and, worn out with suffering, Lev Nik. at last fell asleep.
Marya Lvovna sent a telegram to Sofya Andreyevna, and when I asked her why, she told me that during such an attack Lev Nik. might die suddenly. When the next morning Lev Nikolaevich came out into the dining-room, one could simply not recognize him — so terribly had he changed in those twenty-four hours. It was hard to look at his face, all at once grown thin and deathly pale, and we involuntarily walked and spoke softly. But toward evening he grew a little more cheerful, and there arose among us again one of those most heartfelt conversations.
Suddenly at the porch there was heard the ringing of a little bell, then some movement, and from the balcony into the hall there came Sofya Andreyevna. All at once everyone fell silent and were somehow disconcerted.
Sofya Andreyevna arrived agitated, angry, and began to ask what had happened. The philosopher at this time was peacefully asleep on the floor, having somehow stuck out his feet. Sofya Andreyevna soon noticed him.
‘And what are these bare feet here?’
We had to tell her the whole story and to acquaint her with the owner of the bare feet. She simply came to detest the ‘dirty old man.’ Sofya Andreyevna stayed with us several days, and with her housewifely skill began to put into order our rather disorderly life. On the table there appeared again clean tablecloths, the dinner became more abundant.”
There were visitors, men and women, of quite another kind too. Once there came to him two American women, one of whom traveled by way of Europe, the other by way of Asia. They had taken different roads and had resolved to come together at L. N.’s. This was the sole aim of their journey. To L. N.’s question why they had undertaken such a complicated journey, they both laughed joyfully and said: “We thought that Leo Tolstoy would say just this.” Lev Nik. tried to lead the conversation onto more serious themes, but he clearly saw that they were not at all interested in the content of what he said; they would hear him out and nod their heads. L. N. could not endure this conversation and rode off on horseback to inspect a distant section. But the American women had nevertheless attained their aim.
At last there appeared official visitors as well.
On 4 May there came to Lev N. at Begichevka, with his suite, General Annenkov, who was in charge of the government relief. This visit made much noise, but bore little fruit.
L. N. reports of it to S. A. thus:
“Just now we have seen off from us Annenkov, who had called on us with his suite — about 20 persons: Glebov, Kristi, Trubetskoy, and Kostychev (a friend of Ge), and various professors, engineers… I do not wish to condemn, but one cannot but say that it is strange.”
There came to L. N. the English Quakers Bellows and Brooks as well, who rendered great aid to the suffering population in Russia. Besides the material aid to the hungry, their mission consisted in supporting those persecuted for their faith. They were traveling round the places of exile of the Russian sectarians and were directing their course, among other places, to the Caucasus. L. N. gave them the commission to visit the recently exiled Prince Dm. Alek. Khilkov, which they gladly carried out.
This abundance of visitors from the most distant lands prompts L. N. to record in his diary this remarkable thought:
“When you see new people, such as you have never seen, somewhere or other in Africa, in Japan — one man, another, a third, and yet more and more, and there is no end, all new, new, such as I may never see and never will see; and they live the same egoistic, separate life of their own as I do — then you fall into horror, into bewilderment.
What does this mean? Why so many? What is my relation to them? Can it be that I have not seen them, and that they are strangers to me? It cannot be.
And there is one answer: they and I are one. One are both those who live, and have lived, and will live — one with me, and I live by them, and they live by me.”
At last there appeared the spring report of Lev Nikolaevich on his winter’s activity.
In it, besides the figures, there was a literary supplement which gave a vivid picture of Lev Nikolaevich’s activity over the first six months.
We borrow from this report several characteristic features. L. N. enumerates several kinds of aid rendered by them to the hungry peasants. He counts up eight such kinds:
“The first, the most extensive kind of aid, was the dining-rooms. Their arrangement has already been described on the preceding pages. At the time of the report (March) there were 187 of them, and in them about 10,000 people were being fed. Another of our undertakings,” L. N. says in his report, “in the last winter months consisted in the supply of firewood to the needy population. Our third undertaking was the feeding of the peasants’ horses. In the course of the last two months 276 horses were fed. Our fourth undertaking was the distribution of flax and bast for work, and free of charge to those in need of footwear and linen. Of flax there were distributed about 300 poods. Of bast, about 200 poods.
Our fifth undertaking, which began in February, consisted in the arranging of dining-rooms for the very smallest children, from a few months old — sucklings — up to three years. The sixth undertaking, which is now beginning, and which will probably, in one way or another, be completed by the time this report appears in print, consists in the issuing to needy peasants of seed for sowing — oats, potatoes, hemp, millet.
The purchase of horses and their distribution constitutes the seventh undertaking. Our eighth undertaking was the sale of rye, flour, and baked bread at cheap prices.
Besides these definite departments, on which the donated money was and is expended, small sums have been used by us in direct payments to the needy for urgent needs: burials, the payment of debts, the maintenance of little schools, the purchase of books, building, and the like; of such expenditures there were very few, as may be seen from the money report.
Such, in general outline, were our undertakings over the past six months. Our chief undertaking during this time was the feeding of the needy by means of the dining-rooms. In the course of the winter months this form of aid, in spite of the abuses that occur in it, in the most important respect — in this, that it secured the entire poorest and weakest population — children, the old, the sick, the convalescent — against starvation and bad food, fully attained its aim.”
The money accounting, in round figures, came out as follows: 141 thousand had been received, 108 thousand spent. There remained, by the month of April, 33 thousand.
L. N.’s mood was not always cheerful and joyful. Not infrequently, wearied more morally than physically, he visibly suffered, and patient as he was, yet at times this feeling of pain found vivid expression in his letters to friends. Thus, he wrote at the end of February to N. N. Ge the younger:
“I have worn myself out, my dear fellow, with this activity — not physically, but morally. If there had been a doubt as to the possibility of doing good with money, now there is none — it is impossible.
It is impossible, too, not to do what I am doing — that is, for me it is impossible. I do not know how not to do it. I console myself that it is I who am paying for the sins of myself and of my brothers and fathers. The hard thing is that one does not believe in the good of material aid, and that the chief labour is not a good attitude toward people, but, on the contrary, a malicious, an unkind one, at least: one restrains them in their demands, their begging, one convicts them of untruth and calls forth in them unkind feelings — not only in them, but time and again in oneself as well.”
Lev Nikolaevich, besides this outward activity, which wearied him with its bustle, was full also of an inner content. This side of his life was vividly reflected in the entries of his diary and his notebook of that time. We shall give here several of the most vivid and clear expressions of his inner experience:
Here are thoughts from the diary, recorded in the spring of 1892:
“I have begun to hurry to pray, I have made such a habit of it that I have begun to say to myself: I must pray as quickly as possible, in order then to drink coffee and talk with NN…
To get done quickly with God, in order to occupy myself with Ivan Ivanych.
If prayer is not the most important matter in the world — such that after it there is nothing — then it is not prayer, but a repetition of words.
From sleep one awakes into what we call life, into that which preceded and follows sleep. But is not this life too a sleep? And from it, by death, does one not awake into what we call the future life, into that which preceded and follows the dreaming of this life?
In a dream, in sleep, we live by those impressions, those feelings, which were given us by the preceding life — the very one into which we return on waking. Just so, too, in what we call the present life, we live by those data and that ‘karma’ which we have brought in from the preceding life — the very one into which we return.
As present sleep is a period during which we gather new forces for moving forward in that life into which we return by waking, so too this life is a period in which we gather new forces for moving forward in that life out of which we came and into which we return.
There occurs in sleep a nightmare, from which we awake by a special effort of will. Is not despair, too, of this kind — that despair from which men save themselves by suicide?
But the whole life preceding this life, and the life following, into which we pass by death, with its middle dreaming of what we now call life — is not this, in its turn, only one dreaming, just so preceded by another, still more real life, into which we also return? And so on, to the last degree of the infinite reality of life — God.”
“There will always be enemies. To live so as to have no enemies is impossible. On the contrary, the better one lives, the more enemies.
There will be enemies; but one must so contrive that one does not suffer from them. And it can be done. To contrive so that enemies will not only not be a suffering, but will be a joy.
One must love them, and that is easy.
I am one, and people are so dreadfully, infinitely many, so various are all these people, so impossible is it for me to come to know all of them — all these Indians, Malays, Japanese, even those people who are always with me — my children, my wife… Among all these people I am one, quite alone and solitary. And the consciousness of this solitude and of the need of communion with all people and of the impossibility of this communion is sufficient to drive one mad.
There is one salvation — the consciousness of an inner, through-God communion with all of them. When you find this communion, the need of outward communion ceases.”
“When you have lived a long time, as I have, 45 years of conscious life, then you understand how false, how impossible, are all adaptations of oneself to life. There is nothing ‘stable’ in life. It is just the same as adapting oneself to running water.
All things — personalities, families, societies — all change, melt, and are re-formed, like clouds. And before you have had time to grow used to one state of society, it is already gone and has passed over into another.
As religion, which considers itself the absolute, infallible truth, is a falsehood, so too is science.
They speak of the union of science and religion. If only both the one and the other would not cling to external authority, there would be no division; and religion would be science, and science would be religion.”
And here are entries from his pocket notebook:
“The state form has outlived itself — all three functions — there remains the last, and it holds out, as it can only hold out, by violence. And violence seems insuperable by violence, but there is another thing — there is inner growth.
I often think — salvation will come about through horrors, through revolution; gradually — no. And there would be no salvation, if the governments could halt the growth of consciousness — of a new understanding of life. Governments can rob everyone, kill everyone, subject all the weak to hypnosis, but they cannot halt the growth. The more they hypnotize, the more energetic the growth — by contrast; the more firewood you lay on, the brighter it burns and the harder it is to put out. Salvation is not from without, but from within. The Kingdom of God is within you. And salvation has come.
When you see that the branches of the fig-tree have grown soft, it means it is near, at the doors. And summer is near. The government exists, like an atavism — has outlived itself — like the husk of a seed, holding in the petals. Violence is not needed. Only growth is needed, and life will change. For there is no violence. It is a dream. One must wake up.
Do not make as though you were judging me. You are robbers. I have judged and condemned you. I live for the spreading (of the truth). Everything you do to me is a benefit to this cause, and consequently to me as well.”
“Often they say: a matter of the reasoning faculty. Yes — the disagreement of one’s surroundings with the demands of conscience is a matter of the reasoning faculty. The disagreement of one’s own life with the demands of reason is a matter of love.
I long did not myself believe that the official religion is an anti-religion. But I had to believe it. The same now with regard to education.
Prisons, armies, police are needed to maintain the existing order. But this order is bad — we ourselves recognize it.
Religion is not that in which people believe, and science not that which people study; rather, religion is that which gives meaning to life, and science that which it is needful to know.
Beauty flowed out of the pagan world-conception. Christ did not say: I am the life, be thou also beauty.
Least of all do we understand one another’s acts — those that flow from vanity: you cannot guess by what, and before whom, a man is being vain.
If anyone doubts the indivisibility of wisdom and self-renunciation, let him look at how, from the other end, stupidity and egoism come together.
There are two smiles. One — of joy, the other of mockery: a) at others, b) at oneself, almost of shame.
It happens that a man defends with irritation a truth that seems unimportant. To you it seems only a brick, but for him it is the keystone of the arch on which his house is built.”
In the summer, in July, one important act of L. N.’s family life was brought to completion. The division of property was concluded. Like all questions connected with property and money, this question of the division too plainly weighed upon L. N. We have already mentioned how he regarded it. The new formalities — though now the final ones — again stirred up in him these heavy feelings, and he complains to his friends in letters that this time was hard and tormenting for him. But, since this was now the general conclusion of the matter, it gave him at the same time a certain satisfaction.
In July, too, L. N. completed and sent to press the report on the conduct of the whole undertaking. In this report L. N. gives now a general survey of the activity of the whole year, from which we see that, under L. N.’s direction, there had operated, in four districts (Yepifan, Yefremov, Dankov, and Skopin), 246 dining-rooms for adults and 124 for children; in them 13,000 adults and up to 3,000 children were fed. In this autumn report, too, L. N. defines the condition of the people thus:
“To the question of the economic condition of the people in the present year I could not answer with precision. I could not answer, in the first place, because all of us who occupied ourselves last year with feeding the people are in the position of a doctor who, having been called to a man who had dislocated his foot, should see that this man is sick all over. What will the doctor answer when he is asked about the condition of the patient? About what do you wish to know? — the doctor will ask in turn. — Do you ask about the foot, or about the whole condition of the patient? The foot is nothing, the foot is a simple dislocation — an accident; but the general condition is not good.
But, besides this, I could not answer the question of what the condition of the people is — hard, very hard, or tolerable? — because all of us who lived close to the people have grown too used to its little-by-little ever-worsening and worsening condition.
If one of the town-dwellers were to come, in the hard frosts, into a cottage that had been heated only a little the day before, and were to see the inhabitants of the cottage climbing out not from off the stove, but out of the stove, in which they, taking turns, spend their days, since this is the only means of getting warm; or that people are burning the roofs of their houses and the entry-ways for fuel, are living on bread alone, baked from equal parts of flour and bran of the lowest grade, and that grown people quarrel and squabble over the fact that a cut piece of bread falls short of a definite weight by an eighth of a pound; or that people do not come out of the cottage because they have nothing to put on and nothing to shoe themselves with — then they would be struck by what they had seen. But we look upon such phenomena as upon the most ordinary ones. And therefore, to the question of in what condition the people of our locality are, an answer will more readily be given by one who comes to our parts for the first time, and not by us. We have grown inured, and already see nothing.”
And, finally, L. N. makes to the whole report this conclusion:
“Well, what then? Can it really be the hungry again? The hungry! Dining-rooms! Dining-rooms! The hungry! Why, this is already old and so dreadfully tiresome.
It has become tiresome to you in Moscow, in Petersburg; but here, when from morning to evening they stand beneath the windows or in the doorways, and one cannot pass along the street without hearing one and the same phrases: ‘We have not eaten for two days, we have eaten up the last sheep. What are you to do? The last end has come. To die, then?’ and so on — here, ashamed as one is to confess it, this has already grown so wearisome that one looks upon them as upon one’s enemies.
I get up very early; a clear, frosty morning with a red sunrise; the snow creaks on the steps; I go out into the yard, hoping that there is no one there yet, that I shall manage to take a walk. But no; I have only opened the door, and already two are standing there: one a tall, broad muzhik in a short, ragged sheepskin coat, in broken bast shoes, with an emaciated face, with a bag over his shoulder (they all have emaciated faces, so that these faces have become specifically muzhik faces). With him is a boy of about 14, without a coat, in a ragged little homespun, also in bast shoes and also with a bag and a staff. I want to pass by; the bowings and the usual speeches begin. There is nothing to be done, I go back into the entry. They come in after me.
‘What is it?’
‘To your worship.’
‘What?’
‘To your worship.’
‘What do you want?’
‘About relief.’
‘What relief?’
‘Why, about our life!’
‘But what do you want?’
‘We are dying of hunger. Help us with something.’
‘Where from?’
‘From Zatvornoye.’
I know that this is a Skopin beggar-village, in which we have not yet managed to open a dining-room. From there beggars come by the dozens, and I at once, in my own mind, number this man among the professional beggars, and I am vexed that they bring their children with them too and corrupt them.
‘What, then, are you asking for?’
‘Why, take some thought for us somehow.’
‘But how am I to take thought? We can do nothing here. When we come…’
But he does not listen to me. And there begin again the same speeches, heard hundreds of times already, that seem to me feigned: ‘Nothing was born, a family of 8 souls, I am the only worker, the old woman died, last summer we ate up the cow, at Christmas the last horse fell dead; I’m at my wit’s end, the children ask for food, there is nowhere to turn, we have not eaten for three days!’ All this is the usual thing, one and the same. I wait to see how soon he will finish. But he keeps on talking: ‘I thought I’d somehow pull through, but I am quite worn out. Never in my life have I begged, but here God has brought me to it.’
‘Well, very well, we shall come, then we shall see,’ I say, and I want to pass on, and I glance by chance at the boy.
The boy looks at me with pitiful, lovely brown eyes full of tears and of hope, and one bright drop of a tear already hangs on his nose, and at that very instant it breaks off and falls onto the snow-trodden plank floor. And the dear, tormented face of the boy, with his light-brown hair curling in a crown round his head, twitches all over with restrained sobs. To me the father’s words are old, hackneyed stuff. But to him this is the repetition of that dreadful time which he was living through together with his father, and the repetition of all this at the solemn moment when they have at last made their way to me, to aid, moves him, shakes his nerves, slackened with hunger. But to me all this has grown tiresome, tiresome; I think only of how to get past more quickly and out for my walk!
To me it is old, but to him it is dreadfully new.
Yes, we are tired of it. But they just as much want to eat, just as much want to live, just as much want happiness, want love — as I saw by his lovely eyes, fixed upon me, full of tears — this good, pitiable boy, tormented by want and full of a naive pity for himself.”
And this time, of course, L. N. could not bring this work to an end. Having visited L. N. in the summer, I noticed that this work had greatly wearied L. N., both physically and morally. Since that winter it was proposed to conduct the work on a considerably smaller scale, I offered L. N. my services in the conduct of the work, under his direction, of course. L. N. gladly accepted this offer of mine, and I went off to my own farmstead to await this “appointment.”
On 27 July L. N. wrote me a letter, inviting me to come and take into my charge the continuation of the relief work. I did not delay in coming, and I lived at Begichevka the whole winter of 1892–1893, with small interruptions. L. N., with his daughters, not infrequently visited me, giving advice, correcting and directing my work and that of my helpers. How this time and this work were reflected in L. N., I shall tell in the following chapter.