Source: https://tolstoy-lit.ru/tolstoy/bio/biryukov/biografiya-biryukov-3-19.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-19.md.
The beginning of 1896 finds L. N. in Moscow, amid the usual festive bustle of the town. At the beginning of January he wrote to Chertkov:
“Our life goes on as before: there are just as many guests, and when I am in a bad, proud state of spirit, I am burdened by it; but when I come to myself, I take no offence. How good it is, how peaceful, when one succeeds in not calculating about what lies ahead, or about what one wishes to do, and in ascribing no significance to what I can or wish to do, but only in thinking how not to err and not to do what He who sent me does not wish, and how not to hinder, not my own, but His work. Please do not raise objections to this. I am so convinced that, in order to do well any human work whatever, one must strain all one’s powers toward not hindering the work of God — and then it will come of itself. On the bicycle, in order to ride without steering, the chief thing is to look not at the wheel, but ahead, and then the wheel will go straight. The comparison is not quite apt, but you understand me.”
At this same time, in the middle of January, L. N. wrote a long letter to his new American friend, Ernest Crosby. He had received from him a letter in which Crosby joyfully informs him that his preaching in America of a new understanding of Christianity is meeting with sympathy, and that in any case he is received with full seriousness, it being recognized that the meaning of Christianity is indeed such, and that the chief substance of the objections consists only in the assertion that the following of this teaching is difficult and unattainable in worldly life. In his letter Crosby cited a whole series of the opinions of American writers — Higginson, Newton, Herron, Marpison, Livermore and others — and L. N. saw with joy what progress the preaching of true Christianity had made since the times of Garrison and Ballou, when all the intellectual forces passed it over in silence and, at best, honoured it with a condescending smile.
In this letter L. N. briefly sets forth his teaching of life as a mission for the fulfilment of the will of the Father of life. He briefly repeats his definition of the spiritual, conscious life as the sole saving issue from the contradictions in which a man is placed who lives by an egoistic, animal personality while his rational consciousness has awakened.
Finally, passing to questions of practical life, L. N. rejects any possibility of guiding a moral act by the external expediency of that act, since its consequences are hidden from us. The sole criterion of a moral act must be its accord with the law of God of which we are conscious, with our enlightened conscience. This relation is well expressed by the French saying “Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra” (do what you must, and come what may), which L. N. regards as the expression of a profound wisdom.
Finally, he adduces the well-known argument of the defenders of expedient violence concerning the robber who is murdering a child. This characteristic reasoning of L. N.’s we transcribe here in full, since it is often cited in disputes and is often interpreted wrongly:
“How is a man to act — the example always adduced — when before his eyes a robber is murdering, is outraging a child, and the child cannot be saved otherwise than by killing the robber?
It is usually supposed that, such an example being put, the answer can be no other than that one must kill the robber in order to save the child. But this answer is given so decisively and so quickly only because we are all accustomed to act thus in the case of an enlargement of the boundaries of a neighbouring state to the detriment of our own, or in the case of the smuggling of lace across a frontier, or even in the case of defending the fruit of our garden from being carried off by a passer-by.
It is supposed that it is necessary to kill the robber in order to save the child; but one need only consider on what grounds a man, be he a Christian or not a Christian, ought to act thus, in order to be convinced that such an act can have no rational grounds whatever, and is held to be necessary only because two thousand years ago such a manner of action was held to be just, and men have grown accustomed to act thus. Wherefore should a non-Christian, who does not acknowledge God, in defending the child, kill the robber? To say nothing of the fact that, in killing the robber, he kills for certain, whereas he does not yet know, up to the last moment, whether the robber would have killed the child or not — to say nothing of this incorrectness — who has decided that the life of the child is more needful, is better, than the life of the robber? For if a man is not a Christian and does not acknowledge God and the meaning of life in the fulfilment of His will, then his choice of acts can be guided only by calculation — that is, by considerations of what is more advantageous, for himself and for all men: the continuation of the life of the robber, or of the child? But in order to decide this, he must know what will become of the child whom he saves, and what would have become of the robber whom he kills, had he not killed him. And this he cannot know. And therefore, if a man is not a Christian, he has no rational ground whatever for saving the child by the death of the robber. But if a man is a Christian and therefore acknowledges God and the meaning of life in the fulfilment of His will, then, however terrible the robber who attacks however innocent and beautiful a child, he has still less ground, departing from the law given him by God, to do unto the robber that which the robber wishes to do unto the child; he may implore the robber, he may interpose his own body between the robber and his victim, but one thing he cannot do: consciously depart from the law of God given unto him, the fulfilment of which constitutes the meaning of his life. It may very well be that, by reason of his bad upbringing, by reason of his animality, a man, whether a heathen or a Christian, will kill the robber, not only in defence of the child, but even in defence of himself, or even of his purse; but this will in no way mean that one ought to do so, that one ought to accustom oneself and others to think that this ought to be done.
This will mean only that, notwithstanding outward education and Christianity, the habits of the stone age are still so strong in man that he can commit acts long since denied by his consciousness.
A robber is murdering a child before my eyes, and I can save the child by killing the robber; consequently, in certain cases, one must resist evil by violence.
A man is in danger of his life and can be saved only by my lie; consequently, in certain cases, one must lie. A man is dying of hunger, and I cannot save him otherwise than by stealing; consequently, in certain cases, one must steal. Lately I read a story by Coppée in which an orderly kills his officer, who has insured his life, and thereby saves the honour and the life of his family. Consequently, in certain cases, one must kill.
Such invented cases, and the reasonings deduced from them, prove only this: that there are men who know that it is not good to steal, to lie, to kill, but who are so unwilling to cease doing it that they employ all the powers of their intellect to justify these acts. There is no moral rule against which one could not devise such a situation that it would be hard to decide which were the more moral — to depart from the rule or to fulfil it. So too with the question of non-resistance to evil by violence: men know that it is wrong; but they so wish to continue to live by violence that they employ all the powers of their intellect, not upon making clear all that evil which the acknowledgment in man of the right of violence over another has produced and still produces, but upon defending this right. But such invented cases in no way prove that the rules — that one must not lie, steal, kill — would be unjust.”
This letter received a wide circulation in Russia and abroad, and for the first time appeared in print in full in Russia only in the posthumous edition of L. N.’s works, made by Sofya Andreyevna Tolstaya; in the subsequent editions it was already suppressed by the Russian censorship.
At this same time — that is, in January of that year — L. N. once more strongly felt the breath of death, which had carried off several of his friends. Almost on one and the same day there died N. N. Strakhov, a kinsman of L. N.’s, N. M. Nagornov, and the old woman Agafya Mikhailovna, formerly his grandmother’s chambermaid, who had long been living out her days in retirement at Yasnaya Polyana.
In his diary, on 26 January, L. N. records:
“Strakhov. Today I learned of his death. Today they buried Nagornov, and this news.
I lay down to sleep, but could not fall asleep, and there presented itself to me so clearly, so vividly, such an understanding of life that we should feel ourselves wayfarers. Before us is one stage, under familiar, one and the same conditions. How then can one pass this stage otherwise than briskly, cheerfully, amicably, in fellowship, actively, not grieving that one departs oneself, or that others depart before one, thither where again we shall all be still more together?”
Sofya Andreyevna was at this time in Tver, with her son, who was serving there. L. N. wrote to her:
“We have a great sorrow: Nik. Mikh. Nagornov is dead. Masha, who was present at his death, will probably describe everything to you in detail. Doctor Ostroumov determined that a stone had perforated the intestine, and hence — peritonitis. I am very sorry both for Varenka and for the children: for Varya in particular. With us all is well, though it is sad. Tanya stayed to spend the night with Varya, and we — Masha, Misha and Kolya — having just now sent Sasha off to bed, sat over our tea and talked intimately and sadly…
…As always, death disposes one to seriousness and to good, and one regrets that one is not always in this disposition, though it be in a feeble degree.”
That same day he writes to A. K. Chertkova:
“…We have had a death today. Nagornov is dead, the husband of my niece. She loved him passionately. And they lived an exemplary good life together. He, for some reason, by reason of his exterior, was little loved by all, but no one knows anything of him save what is good. Masha has only just come from there; he died in her presence, while I was not there.”
Of N. N. Strakhov I have already had occasion to speak more than once, and I suppose that the character of his close relations with L. N. has been sufficiently explained. I should like to say a few words about the third departed friend of L. N.’s — Agafya Mikhailovna.
In Anna Karenina there are many precious biographical touches concerning this remarkable person, drawn from the life. To this let us add a few lines from the reminiscences of her by L. N.’s son, Ilya Lvovich. Here is what he says of her:
“At first in ‘this house,’ in the kitchen, and afterwards in the servants’ quarters, there lived an old woman, Agafya Mikhailovna. Tall, gaunt, with large, well-bred eyes and straight, witch-like, greying hair, she was a little frightening, but most of all strange.
Long, long ago she had been chambermaid to my great-grandmother, Countess Pelageya Nikolaevna Tolstaya, my father’s grandmother, born Princess Gorchakova. She loved to tell about her youth.
‘I was a beauty. The gentlefolk would gather at the big house. The Countess would call me: Gachette, femme de chambre, apportez-moi un mouchoir. And I: Tout de suite, madame la comtesse. And they look at me and cannot take their eyes off me. I go to the wing, and they lie in wait for me on the path, they waylay me. How many times I deceived them! I would up and run round, across the ditch. I did not like that even then. So I remained a maid.’
Agafya Mikhailovna greatly loved animals, especially dogs, and lived out the last years of her life with them — twenty years, if not more.”
Ilya Lvovich adduces interesting tales about her told by L. N. himself.
“He told, for instance, how Agafya Mikhailovna once complained of sleeplessness. Ever since I can remember her, she suffered from this, that ‘a birch tree is growing within me, from the belly upwards, and propping up my chest, and one cannot breathe for this birch.’
She complains of sleeplessness, of the birch: ‘I lie alone, quiet, quiet, only the clock on the wall ticking: who are you, what are you, who are you, what are you — and I fell to thinking: who am I, what am I? And so I pondered upon this the whole night through.’
‘Just think — why, that is gnothi seauton, “know thyself” — why, that is Socrates,’ Lev Nikolaevich would say, telling of this and delighting in it.
In summer there used to come to us Mama’s brother, Styopa, who was studying at that time at the School of Jurisprudence. In the autumn he went with Father and with us to hunt with borzois, and for this Agafya Mikhailovna loved him.
In the spring Styopa had his examinations.
Agafya Mikhailovna knew this and awaited with agitation the news of whether he would pass or not.
Once she lit a candle before the icon and began to pray about Styopa’s examinations.
At that moment she remembered that her borzois had broken loose, and that they were still not home. ‘Saints alive, they’ll run off somewhere, they’ll fall upon the cattle, they’ll do mischief. Holy Father, Nikolai the Wonder-worker, let my candle burn so that the dogs may come back the sooner, and for Stepan Andreyevich I’ll buy another.’ No sooner had I thought this than I hear the dogs rattling their collars in the entry; they had come, thank God. That is what prayer means.’
Another favourite of Agafya Mikhailovna’s was our frequent guest, the young man Misha Stakhovich.
‘See, little Countess, what you have done to me,’ she would reproach my sister Tanya, ‘you have made me acquainted with M. A., and I have fallen in love with him in my old age — there’s a sin for you.’
On the 5th of February, on her name-day, Agafya Mikhailovna received a telegram of congratulation from Stakhovich.
A special messenger brought it from Kozlovka.
When Papa learned of this, he said jestingly to Agafya Mikhailovna: ‘And are you not ashamed that, because of your telegram, a man trudged three versts at night through the frost?’
‘Trudged, trudged! The angels bore him on their little wings — he did not trudge… There were three telegrams about the Jewess who came to visit, and telegrams every day about Golokhvastik — that was not trudging? But a congratulation to me — that was trudging,’ she grumbled; and indeed one could not but feel that she was right.
Agafya Mikhailovna loved not dogs alone. She had a mouse that came to her when she drank her tea and gathered up the breadcrumbs from the table.
Once we children gathered wild strawberries ourselves, clubbed together sixteen kopecks for a pound of sugar, and cooked Agafya Mikhailovna a little jar of jam. She was very pleased and thanked us.
‘Suddenly,’ she relates, ‘I am about to drink my tea, I reach for the jam, and there is a mouse in the jar. I took it out, washed it in warm water, scarcely got it clean, and let it go again upon the table.’
‘And the jam?’
‘I threw the jam out — why, a mouse is unclean; after it I will not eat.’
This is one of the types now passed away, which will return no more.”
Among L. N.’s letters of this time let us mention also his letter to the Japanese Yokai, the editor of the journal Didai-choo-lyu. With Japan L. N.’s connections were growing ever wider, and his influence was spreading ever more widely and deeply over the Japanese intelligentsia, which was seeking new paths of life.
Here is this letter:
“I thank you for having sent me your article. I learned with joy that you are deeply convinced of the possibility of spreading the teaching of Christ, and that you intend to preach to your countrymen the Christianity that found its expression in the Sermon on the Mount. This is a great aim, and I know of no aim higher than this, for the sake of which a man might sacrifice his life. But let us speak sincerely. Both in your article and in your letter, you have not yet decided whom to serve: God or mammon. Do you wish to acquire welfare — personal, family, or state — or only to fulfil the will of God, independently of the advantage of the individual, the family, or the state?
You say that you are striving to destroy the wall of division between peoples, arising from difference of religions, from the extreme development of patriotism.
You analyse patriotism and say that there exist two patriotisms: one moderate, good, and another — too strong, bad.
…We Christians, who believe in the teaching of Christ that found its expression in the Sermon on the Mount, must employ all our powers to attain this aim and to fulfil His will disinterestedly.
I wish that you and your fellows who share your view should act thus. I should be very glad if I might be of any use to you.”
It is evident that in the lines suppressed by the censorship L. N. was saying that patriotism, as an exclusive love of one’s own people and of one’s own state, can never be good.
Yokai, having printed this letter in his journal, furnished it with notes, in which he says that, when he wrote to Tolstoy, he was a student at an English university, and that he had written an article, “The Ethical Thoughts of the Japanese People,” which he had sent to L. N. L. N.’s reply did not satisfy him. Here is how he expresses this dissatisfaction:
“The great Tolstoy criticizes my article, denies the foundations of my ardent patriotism, and convinces me that, until ‘the patriotism of the Eastern world’ shall in general disappear, it is impossible to expect any good for mankind as a whole.”
If to Japan the influence of L. N. penetrated only in the form of a slight stir in the realm of moral ideas, then in Russia it was already striking deep roots, and the pure teaching of Christ was already set, clearly and openly, against the teaching of the world, upheld by those in power by every means possible to them.
At this time — that is, in the levy of 1895 — there refused military service the peasant Olkhovik, of the Kharkov Province, of the village of Rechki. In the winter he was tried and sentenced to the Yakutsk region for eighteen years. This was a wonderfully pure and firm confessor of the law of Christ. Sent by sea from Odessa to Siberia, he succeeded by his meek preaching in converting to his faith the convoy soldier Sereda, who, upon their arrival at the place, was likewise exiled together with him.
L. N., in many letters of that time, makes mention of these remarkable men.
Continuing to study the wisdom of the world, L. N. read with delight at this time the recently published English-language work of the Hindu sage Swami Vivekananda, entitled The Philosophy of Yoga, now already published in Russian in various translations and editions.
The first half of February L. N. continued to live in Moscow. On 5 February he listened to a lecture by Preobrazhensky on X-rays, which were then a scientific novelty.
On this same day L. N. writes a letter to V. G. Chertkov, in which he expresses several remarkable thoughts. We have already mentioned the increasing frequency of cases of refusal of military service. These refusals did not always end in the triumph of truth. There were cases in which men who had refused, under the influence of torments, consented to serve; and their act, of course, caused both them and those near to them in spirit great suffering. So it happened with one young artist. Of course, an act of weakness called forth in many equally weak people a condemnation. V. G. Chertkov did not belong to their number; on the contrary, in a letter to L. N. he expressed the thought that we have no right to condemn the one who has weakened, since by our whole lives we renounce that which we hold to be the truth. L. N. answers Chertkov precisely upon this thought, and in passing speaks of death. Here are his words:
“How right you are that what happened to S. in a condensed, in a noticeable form, happens to us all in a rarefied and — what is worst of all — an imperceptible form. I painfully feel this in myself: sometimes one wakes up and there rises an indignation at oneself and at the surrounding life; but to this indignation there is bound up the desire to free oneself, and to the desire to free oneself there are bound up dreadful, bad thoughts, and one quenches in oneself the indignation and is reconciled; and, being reconciled, one does not know what one does for others and what for oneself, and before one can look round one is already oneself doing the very thing at which one was indignant — that is, for oneself, for one’s own pleasure, one swallows up the labours of others. The one salvation in this is humility, the acknowledgment of one’s own worthlessness and weakness, and the widening of one’s horizon of life: to see one’s life beyond death. And for this the most effectual thing is: the remembrance of death, the death of those near to one, and a readiness for one’s own death. And this God gives me. Of late, on every side, men more or less near to me are departing thither. Nagornov, my niece’s husband; Strakhov; Storozhenko (the professor’s wife); at Yasnaya Polyana the old woman Agafya Mikhailovna and the coachman Rodivonych.
At one time I vividly imagined, understood, my own — our — life as an unceasing rolling down a hill, in the middle of which is a curtain. And not in the middle, but we are rolling down between two curtains, one behind, the other in front below, and one rolls out from behind the rear one, another rolls down below behind the curtain, and we all, overtaking one another, clutching at one another, drawing apart, fly downward. And can one really do anything in this rolling-down, save lovingly to help, to serve, to gladden one another? All the horror of death comes only from this: that we imagine we stand upon the level, and are not rolling down an incline. From this alone do we take fright, because it seems to us that he has broken off and flown into an abyss unknown to us. I imagined this to myself so vividly that life acquired for me a new charm. I wish to keep this feeling.”
About 20 February L. N. went off to the estate of the Olsufyevs, Nikolskoye, to rest from the Moscow bustle. At the Olsufyevs’ he really did rest, both physically and morally, thanks to the friendly cares of his hosts. Having arrived there, he wrote to Sofya Andreyevna:
“I feel very well, quite healthy, but I do not know from what cause — whether the reaction from the Moscow nervous excitement, or simply old age — I am weak, sluggish, unwilling to work, to move either mentally or physically. True, today, the 22nd, I spent the morning, if not in writing, then in thinking over and noting down with interest… I am unwilling to admit that I have grown old and am finished, but it must be that I have. I try to accustom myself to this, and not to overstrain myself and not to spoil things. — Well, enough about myself. With me it is all the same very well. I delight in the quiet and the kindness of my hosts.”
This feeling of old age L. N. expresses that same day in a diary entry:
“For more than a week now I have felt a depression of spirit. There is no life, I can do no work. Father of my life and of all life! If my work here is finished, as I am beginning to think, and if the cessation of spiritual life that I am experiencing signifies the accomplishing transition to that other life — that I am already beginning to live there, while here this remnant is being gradually cleared away — then show me this more plainly, that I may not seek, may not strain; for it seems to me that I have many good plans conceived, and there is no possibility for me, not only to fulfil them all — that I know I must not think of — but even to do anything good, pleasing to Thee, while I live here. Or give me the strength to work with the consciousness of serving Thee. But still, Thy will be done. If only I always felt that life is only in the fulfilment of Thy will, I should not doubt. But the doubt comes from this, that I take the bit between my teeth and do not feel the reins.”
At the Olsufyevs’ he reads Corneille and Racine, and this reading calls forth in him interesting thoughts.
There too, in his diary, L. N. sketches several thoughts about art, which afterwards lay at the foundation of his great treatise What Is Art? According to his custom, L. N. made notes first in his notebook, and then in the evenings entered into his large diary that which seemed to him more important, often at the same time developing and correcting what he had noted down earlier. So it was in this case too, and this rough work upon quite raw material is particularly interesting. Here is what he recorded on 27 February:
“I noted down that there are two arts. Now I think it over and do not find a clear expression of my thought.
Then I thought that art, as it is correctly defined, arose out of play, out of the need of every being to play. The play of a calf is its leaps; the play of man is the symphony, the picture, the poem, the novel. It is one and the same to play and to devise new games — to perform the old and to compose the new. This is a good thing, useful and valuable, because it develops, increases, the joys of man.
But it is understandable that one can occupy oneself with play only when one is fed. So too can society occupy itself with art only when all its members are fed. And so long as not all its members are fed, there can be no real art. But there will be a glutted art, monstrous, and an art of the hungry, coarse, pitiful, as indeed it is. And therefore in this first kind of art — play — the only valuable art is that which is accessible to all, which increases the joys of all. If it is such, then it is no bad thing, especially if it does not require an increase of the labour of the oppressed, as is the case now.
(One could, and ought to, express this better.)
But there is yet another art, which calls forth in men their best and highest feelings.
I have just written this — that which I have said more than once — and I think it is untrue.
Art is only one, and consists in this: in increasing the joys that are sinless, common, accessible to all — the good of man. A good building, a cheerful picture, a song, a tale, gives a small good. The arousing of the religious feeling of love for goodness, produced by a drama, a picture, singing, gives a great good.”
In March L. N. moved once more to Moscow, and lived there until the beginning of May.
In Moscow L. N. again became the object of general attention. At this time the staging of The Power of Darkness upon the stage of the imperial theatres had at last been permitted, and L. N.’s drama was given in Moscow.
“After the first performance of The Power of Darkness in the winter of 1896 upon the stage of the Maly Theatre in Moscow,” relates P. A. Sergeenko, “a crowd of students set off straight from the theatre to the Khamovniki Lane, to L. N. Tolstoy, in order to express to him their feelings of gratitude and love.
“The students gathered at the gates of the house where L. N. lives, and began to take counsel as to how they should set about the execution of their plan. Was it seemly, at such an hour, to appear, even with the expression of kindly feelings? Why, L. N. might already be asleep at that moment. But Lev Nikolaevich was at this time out visiting, and was returning home with one of his friends just at the minute when the consultation was going on among the students. He was much astonished at the unusual gathering in the Khamovniki Lane, and, slipping in among the students, went into the courtyard. They at once guessed who the old man was who had gone into the house, and cautiously rang the bell.
“‘We have come to express to Lev Nikolaevich our deep gratitude for The Power of Darkness,’ said the deputed ones.
“When the students’ request was reported to him, he fell into the utmost confusion.
“‘Why do they do this? What shall I say to them?’
“And when, a few minutes later, the crowd of students entered the hall, and one of them, mounting on a chair, addressed Lev Nikolaevich with a greeting in an agitated voice, while the others rushed to kiss his hands, he was overcome and for some time could not speak.”
More serious anxieties were caused to L. N. by the news of the persecutions which some of his friends and acquaintances were suffering for the spreading of his views. It is quite understandable that to draw the line where the confession of these views for oneself ends and their propaganda begins is impossible, and therefore the efforts of the administration to draw this line always met with complete failure. Besides, an interest in L. N.’s writings, even the study of them and the passing of them from hand to hand, could not in itself prove the belonging of this or that person to this “pernicious” teaching, or convict that person of propaganda.
And since the administration did not even try to enter into the substance of the matter, but confined itself to drawing its information from formal, for the most part barely literate denunciations, there resulted in this the most astonishing consequences, and, of course, a great many innocent persons suffered.
One of such cases was the arrest in Tula of the woman-physician Khalevinskaya, a friend of L. N.’s daughters, upon some denunciation, for the spreading of Tolstoy’s forbidden writings.
L. N. was doubly indignant at this act of the administration; he was sorry for the weak, ailing woman Khalevinskaya, who had never shared his views and had not spread them, and offended for himself, the chief culprit of these “pernicious” writings, whom the administration obstinately refused to know. These feelings prompted L. N. to write, in April of that year, a letter to the ministers, which he addressed in identical copies, one to the Minister of Internal Affairs, the other to the Minister of Justice. In this letter, indignant at the acts of the administration in arresting and exiling innocent people and ignoring the chief culprit, known to them, of the criminal — in their opinion — propaganda, L. N. points to himself and says:
“Such a person, in the given case, is I: I write those books and, by written and spoken communication, spread those thoughts which the government considers an evil, and therefore, if the government wishes to counteract the spreading of this evil, it ought to direct against me all the measures it now employs against the persons who accidentally fall under its action — guilty only of this, that they possess forbidden books which interest them and give them to their acquaintances to read. The government ought to act thus all the more because I not only do not conceal this activity of mine, but, on the contrary, by this very letter directly declare that I have written and spread those books which are considered harmful by the government, and that I now continue to write and to spread, both in books, and in letters, and in conversations, such thoughts as those which are expressed in the books. The substance of these thoughts is this: that to men there has been revealed the indubitable law of God, standing above all human laws, according to which we all must not be at enmity, must not do violence to one another, but, on the contrary, must love and help one another, must act toward others as we should wish that others should act toward us.
These very thoughts, together with the practical conclusions that flow from them, I have expressed, as I could, in my books, and I now strive to express still more clearly and accessibly in the book which I am writing. These same thoughts I utter in conversations and in the letters which I write to acquaintances and to people unknown to me. These very thoughts I now express to you also, pointing to those cruelties and acts of violence, contrary to the law of God, which are committed by the officials of your ministry.”
At the end of the letter, justly supposing that, notwithstanding his audacious letter, the ministers would all the same be afraid to take him, he tries, with the naïveté characteristic of him, to set their minds at rest that nothing will come to them for this; he says thus:
“And please do not think that I, in asking that there be directed against me the measures of violence employed against certain of my acquaintances, supposed that the employment of such measures against me presents any difficulty whatever for the government, that my popularity and my social position shield me from searches, interrogations, deportations, imprisonment and other worse acts of violence. Not only do I not think this, but I am convinced that, if the government acts resolutely against me, exiles me, puts me in prison, if it applies still stronger measures, this will present no special difficulties whatever, and public opinion will not only not be outraged by it, but the majority of people will fully approve such a course of action and will say that it was high time this was done.”
But even this did not convince the ministers; L. N. was all the same left in peace, and they continued to trouble his friends, following the system of Pobedonostsev, who precisely by this very means had wished to create for L. N. a torture. But his friends knew this, and when there really befell them some chastisement, they hastened to greet L. N. with a still greater love, asking him not to be troubled about their fate; and the machinations of his enemies scattered like smoke.
In the middle of May L. N. moves for the summer to Yasnaya Polyana.
At Yasnaya Polyana he takes his usual rides on horseback, and on one of these rides, past Hill’s iron-foundry, there come into his head interesting thoughts about capitalism and socialism. And he records them in his diary on 5 May in this form:
“Today I rode past Hill’s, and thought: with a small capital no enterprise is profitable. The greater the capital, the more profitable, the smaller the expenses. But from this it in no way follows that, according to Marx, capitalism will lead to socialism. Perhaps it will lead to it, but only to a violent socialism. The workers will be compelled to work together, and they will work less, and the pay will be greater, but it will be the same slavery. What is needed is that people should work together freely, should learn to work for one another; but capitalism does not teach them this — on the contrary, it teaches them envy, greed, egoism. And therefore, out of a compulsory association through capitalism, the material condition of the workers may improve, but their contentment can in no way be established. Contentment can be established only through the free association of the workers; and for this it is needful to learn to associate, to perfect oneself morally, willingly to serve others, not taking offence that one meets with no requital.”
To L. N., living at Yasnaya Polyana, of course the rumours of the horrors of the coronation, which was taking place at that time in Moscow, in May of that year, reached comparatively late. Still knowing nothing of “Khodynka,” L. N. wrote to Chertkov on 10 May:
“S. A., with Misha and Sasha, set off two days ago to the coronation. They meant to return tonight. I was told from trustworthy sources that a week or two ago there were discovered in Moscow preparations for an explosion, and fifteen men were arrested. How sorry one is for both sides, and how evident it is that on this path — that is, with the existing cast of thought, which is not Christian — there can be no improvement, no reconciliation, that every lull is only temporary, external, while within there seethes and grows the malice. Again executions, suffering, repentance, the stifling of repentance, and all the rest. Hearing of this, one is only the more strongly convinced of the necessity of an unceasing vigilance over oneself, in order not somehow, by one’s own irritation, to assist this evil, but to counteract it in everything, and, chiefly, in oneself. Yesterday Misha’s dog made a mess in the night, and I stepped in it and had to clean it up, and then in anger I drove the dog out with a whip and beat it. I served revolution, explosions, executions. And then I came to myself and tried to make my peace with the dog. And I served the work of union, the good of the world.”
“Khodynka” itself could not, of course, but call forth horror and indignation in L. N.; but, faithful to his conviction that embitterment is the worst of guides, he did not give way to it, and in the truthful artistic picture by which he stamped this event, he was able to underscore the feeling of humanity, the simple, heartfelt pity of a workman for an aristocratic young lady whose life he saved. The workman rewarded her, moreover, with an inestimable recollection. The story ends thus:
“He smiled with such a white-toothed, joyful smile that Rina remembered it as a consolation in the heaviest moments of her life.”
Probably, in consequence of L. N.’s increased popularity, there was established over him and over his visitors a secret police surveillance. An agent of the detective police took up residence somewhere near Yasnaya Polyana. But he could not sustain his role, and came to make confession to L. N., who recorded in his diary:
“The day before yesterday there was a gendarme, a spy, who confessed that he had been sent to me. It was both pleasant and disgusting.”
The summer months of that year L. N. was intensely occupied with several significant literary works. He had advanced considerably with The Christian Teaching, and with strain and interest was working out his particular new attitude toward the questions of art. His diaries are full of records of new, interesting thoughts. We have already adduced some of them; let us adduce a few more, relating to the summer period. At the end of May he records thoughts called forth by the reading of foreign classics:
“A poem by Mallarmé and others. We, not understanding them, boldly say that this is nonsense, that this is poetry that has wandered into a blind corner; why is it, then, that, listening to music that is incomprehensible and equally meaningless, we do not boldly say the same, but say timidly: yes, perhaps one must understand this, prepare oneself, and so on? This is nonsense. Every work of art is a work of art only when it is comprehensible — I do not say to all, but to people standing at a certain level of education, the very level at which the man stands who reads the poems and judges of them. This reasoning has brought me to a quite definite conclusion, that music, earlier than the other arts (decadence in poetry, and symbolism and the like in painting), strayed from the road and wandered into a blind alley. And the one who turned it from the road was the man of genius, the musician Beethoven. The chief thing is the authorities and the people devoid of aesthetic feeling who judge of art.
Goethe? Shakespeare? Everything that is under their name, everything must be good, and on se bat les flancs to find in the stupid, the unsuccessful, the beautiful, and they pervert the taste altogether. But all these great talents — Goethes, Shakespeares, Beethovens, Michelangelos — produced, side by side with beautiful things, not merely mediocre, but abominable ones. The middling artists produce things middling in worth, and never anything very vile. But the acknowledged geniuses produce either truly great works, or sheer trash. Shakespeare, Goethe, Beethoven, Bach.”
In June he again records thoughts about art in his diary:
“I thought something very important about art: what is beauty? Beauty is that which we love. Not pleasing because good, but good because pleasing. Here is the very question: why is it pleasing? why do we love it? But to say that we love because it is beautiful is the same as to say that we breathe because the air is agreeable. We find the air agreeable because we need to breathe; and just so we find beauty because we need to love. And he who cannot see spiritual beauty sees at least the bodily, and loves.”
In July we meet with such thoughts in the diary:
“Yesterday I looked over Fet’s novels, tales and verses. I recalled our music, never ceasing on four pianos at Yasnaya Polyana, and it became so clear that all this — both novels, and verses, and music — is not art, as something needful and important to people in general, but a self-indulgence… novels, tales about how vile it is to fall in love, verses about the same, or about how people pine from boredom. About the same is the music too. But life, all life, seethes with its own questions of food, of housing, of labour, of faith, of the relations of people… It is shameful, disgusting. Help me, Father, by the clearing-up of this falsehood, to serve Thee.”
And further on:
“Aesthetic enjoyment is an enjoyment of a lower order. And therefore the highest aesthetic enjoyment leaves an unsatisfaction. One keeps wanting something more and more. And without end. Full satisfaction is given only by the moral good. Here is full satisfaction; beyond it one wants and needs nothing.”
All these thoughts, in a worked-out form, lay at the foundation of his treatise on art. In the extracts adduced one sees how they were taking their rise.
Another large work with which L. N. was occupied was The Christian Teaching. It had been conceived long before. At first L. N. conceived the idea of setting forth his understanding of the teaching of Christ in the very simplest form, accessible to the working people and even to children, and for this he chose the catechetical form. But the matter would not go right. Several times, in letters to his friends, he complained of the unexpected difficulties of the work he had undertaken, but always added that nevertheless this work greatly attracted him by its importance, and that precisely this difficulty indicated to him how useful for him this work was, compelling him to ponder over many points of his world-outlook still insufficiently cleared up, because they did not lend themselves to simple exposition. At last he saw that the catechetical form of questions and answers cramped him by its artificiality, and he abandoned it, passing over to a simple exposition by chapters, or paragraphs, or points. Working the whole summer, by the autumn he had brought this work to that form which at last satisfied him so far that he gave it to be copied and permitted the manuscript to be circulated. But full satisfaction this work did not give him, and he abandoned it.
In the form to which he brought it in the autumn of 1896, the work presents a coherent system of exposition of the Christian teaching.
Part I presents to us thoughts of a general character: about the ancient teachings, about spiritual birth, about God, about the true life, and so on.
Part II is the teaching about the sins that hinder a man from living the true life. Of the chief sins L. N. reckons six: lust, idleness, cupidity, love of power, fornication, and intoxication.
Part III is the teaching about the snares that serve as justifications of the sins. Of these snares there are five: the personal, the family, that of one’s work, that of fellowship, and the state snare.
Part IV. The existence of these snares, which darken the truth, is conditioned by the deception of faith. This is the chief evil. In this same chapter is explained the means of liberation from the deception of faith.
Part V. In this chapter is set forth the possibility, for a man who has freed himself from the deceptions of faith, of avoiding the snares that justify the sins.
Part VI. The chapter is devoted to the struggle with, and the liberation from, the sins, which becomes possible after the destruction of the snares.
Part VII. The chapter sets forth the teaching about prayer, which gives us the strength for the struggle with the sins.
Part VIII. The chapter examines the question of the future life, L. N. pointing to the insufficiency of all the explanations hitherto known of what awaits a man after his death, and concludes thus:
“One thing is certain and indubitable — that which Christ said as he was dying: ‘Into Thy hands I commit my spirit.’
Precisely this: that, in dying, I go thither whence I came. And if I believe that that from which I came is reasonable love (these two properties I know), I return joyfully to Him, knowing that it will be well with me. And not only do I not grieve, but I rejoice at the transition which lies before me.”
In this form this work was published a year later by the firm Svobodnoye Slovo (The Free Word) under the editorship of V. G. Chertkov, and at the present time it is freely published and sold in Russia.
Let us here mention one incidental work belonging to this year — the article “How to Read the Gospel?”
This article was called forth by L. N.’s wish to give a guide to the reading of the canonical, Synodal edition of the Gospel, as the more familiar and widespread, and to give the possibility of extracting from this book all that is precious in it, and of relegating to the second plane that which is less important. L. N. himself marked off all four Gospels, and we, guided by his markings, cut out from the Synodal edition the passages he had marked and pasted them up consecutively in special notebooks, so that there resulted a connected and powerful exposition of the very essence of the Gospel in the usual form familiar to all.
Having received news from Holland of a refusal there of military service in the name of the teaching of Christ, L. N. writes on this occasion an article entitled “The Approach of the End,” in which he once more makes clear the enormous significance of such refusals. This article appeared that same autumn in foreign translations.
Finally, that summer there was begun by L. N. a new large artistic work as well.
In July L. N. went to stay with his brother Sergei Nikolaevich at his estate, Pirogovo.
In his diary of that time L. N. recorded:
“Yesterday I am walking through the double-ploughed black-earth fallow. As far as the eye can reach, nothing but black earth — not one green blade of grass; and there, at the edge of the dusty, grey road, a clump of thistle (burdock). Three shoots: one is broken, and the white, soiled flower hangs; another is broken and bespattered with black mud, the stalk snapped and dirtied; the third shoot juts out to the side, also black with dust, but still alive and reddening in the centre. It put me in mind of Hadji Murad. I want to write it. It defends its life to the last, and, alone amid the whole field, has somehow, in some fashion, defended it.”
Thus was conceived a large artistic work. In August L. N. went with Sofya Andreyevna to stay with his sister, the nun, at the Shamordino convent, near the Optina Hermitage. And there he made the first sketch of the tale Hadji Murad.
On 14 September he records in his diary:
“During this time there was a journey with Sonya to the convent. It was very good. I wrote about Hadji Murad very badly, in rough. I still continue my work, the exposition of the faith.”
But with these works the intense literary activity of L. N. at this time is not yet exhausted. He writes, besides, a whole series of letters of a more or less public significance, which afterwards, with his permission, received a wide circulation.
Such was the letter known in print under the title “Letter to the Liberals.” It was written on the following occasion. In Petersburg, attached to the Imperial Free Economic Society, there existed a Committee of Literacy, which had arisen, it seems, in the sixties. Attached to it was a publishing commission, which published good, cheap little books for the people, but in very limited quantity and at a price that could not compete with the chap-books, and so they were circulated comparatively poorly.
With the rise of Posrednik (The Intermediary), the activity of the Committee of Literacy in the matter of publishing entirely fell away. But at this time there arose among the Petersburg intelligentsia a particular interest in popular literature, and there was formed a circle of young people who took up the study of popular literature and the search for means to set it in order and improve it. The collaborators of Posrednik took an active part in this circle. Wishing to give their activity a more public character, the members of this circle entered into the composition of the Committee of Literacy, which had until that time been in the hands of very well-intentioned, but very moderate, elderly people. The inflow of fresh forces completely turned about the character of the committee’s activity. The old men withdrew, and at the head of the committee there stood prominent public figures, who wished to take advantage of the rights of the Imperial Free Economic Society for the development of an extensive enlightening activity throughout all Russia, by means of literature and of public organizations. For several years they were able to work productively, but then the administration took fright at their broad plans, and in 1896 the Committee of Literacy was closed. A public protest was being prepared. And now the leaders of this movement, Alexandra Mikhailovna Kalmykova, who had given Posrednik her valuable labour, the little book about “Socrates,” edited by L. N., and Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin, who knew him well, addressed him with a letter, trying to call him forth to an active protest against the action of the administration. To this L. N. answered with a letter, which at first had a private character, but afterwards grew into a whole article, published by V. G. Chertkov under the title “Letter to the Liberals,” and which afterwards, with certain abridgements, went under the same title into the complete collection of works.
In this letter L. N., while giving its due to the excellent enlightening activity of the Committee of Literacy, nevertheless refuses to take part in the protest, since such a kind of activity is not proper to him, and he does not consider it productive to expend his powers upon such a kind of struggle. In L. N.’s opinion, it is quite natural for every enlightened man to struggle with the state violence that holds back the enlightenment of the people. This struggle is of two kinds: the struggle of revolutionary violence and the struggle of liberal reforms. The one and the other do not attain their goal. Revolutionary violence is either suppressed by the stronger adversary, or, in case of the success of terrorist activity, calls forth in society a reaction that destroys all the fruits of the efforts and the sacrifices. The struggle of liberalism — that is, the carrying-out of gradual reforms under the flag of that same government with which the struggle is being waged — has this disadvantage: that the strugglers themselves must make so many compromises that the result of the reform attained never repays that evil which these strugglers commit, remaining in the ranks of the government officials who carry out often the most revolting reactionary measures.
There remains one direct struggle: the “upholding of one’s rights as a reasonable and free man, without any concessions or compromises, since otherwise moral and human dignity cannot be upheld.”
This upholding of human dignity and freedom must express itself in such a protest:
“It pleases you, instead of justices of the peace, to establish land-captains with the rod — that is your affair; but we shall neither go to be judged by your land-captains nor enter ourselves into that office; it pleases you to make the trial by jury a mere formality — that is your affair, but we shall not go to be judges, or advocates, or jurymen; it pleases you, under the guise of protection, to establish a state of lawlessness — that is your affair, but we shall not take part in it, and we shall directly call protection lawlessness, and capital punishment without trial — murder; it pleases you to set up classical gymnasiums with military exercises and the law of God, or cadet corps — that is your affair, but we shall not be teachers in them, we shall not send our children into them, but shall bring them up as we consider good; it pleases you to reduce the zemstvo to naught — we shall not take part in it; you forbid the printing of what you do not like — you may seize, burn, punish the printers, but you cannot prevent our speaking and writing, and we shall do it… you order us to serve in the military service — we shall not do it, because we consider mass murder just as repugnant to conscience an act as solitary murder, and, above all, the promise to kill whomsoever the commander shall order — the basest act a man can commit; you profess a religion that has lagged a thousand years behind the age… that is your affair, but idolatry and bigotry we not only do not acknowledge as a religion, but call bigotry and idolatry, and strive to deliver people from it.”
This clear and simple protest, this following of the dictates of one’s own conscience, is given only to people who have established in their souls “a clear and firm religious world-outlook — that is, a consciousness of the meaning of their life and of their destiny.”
To this should be directed all the powers of the soul and the reason of people who wish to serve others.
On approximately the same theme — that is, on “non-service to the government” — L. N. writes a letter to the editor of a German journal who had expressed sympathy with his views.
Finally, he writes letters of another kind also to the commanders of the disciplinary battalions, the Irkutsk and the Ekaterinodar. At Irkutsk were imprisoned Olkhovik and Sereda, whom we have already mentioned, and at Ekaterinodar — Doukhobors, for the same crime, that is, for refusing in the name of Christ to kill men and to prepare and train themselves for this art. In both these letters L. N. besought the tormentors to take pity on the tormented and, for the sake of their own souls, to ease their sufferings. These letters remained unanswered, but who knows where the scattered seeds will sprout.
Among L. N.’s occupations in reading should be mentioned his study of Indian philosophy, which more and more was seizing him with its interest, and also the philosophy of Spir.
Of this remarkable philosopher L. N. makes mention several times, both in his letters and in his diary. Thus, on 2 May, he records the following:
“Yet another important event — the work of African Spir. I have just read what is written at the beginning of this notebook. In essence, it is nothing other than a brief exposition of the whole philosophy of Spir, which I not only had not read at that time, but of which I had not the slightest notion. This work strikingly illuminated, and from certain sides reinforced, my thoughts about the meaning of life. The essence of his teaching is that things do not exist; there are only our impressions, which in our representation present themselves to us as objects. Representation (Vorstellung) has the property of believing in the existence of objects. This comes about because the property of thought consists in ascribing to impressions objectivity, substantiality, projecting them in space.”
At that same time, in May, he wrote to Dr. Škarvan: “Lately I received from Stuttgart the work of African Spir, Denken und Wirklichkeit, and others. It is one of the best philosophical books that I know.” In October of the same year he writes to his wife in Moscow from Yasnaya Polyana:
“I am reading the newly discovered philosopher Spir, and rejoicing. I read him in Russian, in a translation which a lady sent me and which I should very much like to print, but which the censorship will probably not pass, precisely because this is genuine philosophy and in consequence touches upon questions of religion and of life. I would print it at Grot’s and would write a preface, if he could manage to get it through the censorship. A very useful book, destroying many superstitions, and especially the superstition of materialism.”
In his diary he even attempts to sketch a preface, in which L. N. tries to express in a condensed form the fundamental principles of the idealistic philosophy. Unfortunately, this preface was not finished by him.
Of course, literary activity and the reading of books did not fill the whole of L. N.’s life; there remained the world of living people, striving toward L. N. and toward whom he himself strove, as he himself said, when going out for a walk on the highroad, where he conversed with the people: I am going into my grand monde (great world). And in this society of simple people the name and the personality of L. N. had a great influence.
A characteristic scene from this sphere is related by P. A. Sergeenko in his book about L. N. The occurrence belongs precisely to this year. Here is his account:
“In August 1896, at Yasnaya Polyana, a tragic event took place: a coachman found in the pond the dead body of a child. The whole Tolstoy family was greatly shaken by this event. Especially distressed was one of Lev Nikolaevich’s daughters, being almost convinced that the dead child belonged to a squint-eyed widow who had been concealing her pregnancy.
But the widow stubbornly denied the accusation brought against her, and swore that she was innocent.
Suspicions began to fall upon others.
Before dinner Lev Nikolaevich set off into the park, to take a little walk, and did not return for a good while, his appearance being weary and agitated. He had been in the village, at the squint-eyed widow’s. Without convincing her of anything, he only listened attentively to her and said:
‘— If this murder is not the work of your hands, then it will bring you no suffering. But if it was you who did it, then it must be very hard for you now… so hard that nothing harder for you can ever be in your life.’
‘— Oh, how hard it is for me now, as though someone had pressed a stone upon my heart!’ the widow cried out, bursting into sobs, and confessed candidly to Lev Nikolaevich how she had strangled her child and how she had thrown it into the water.”
Communion with him was sought also by people of an entirely different world, who, in order to reach him, had performed almost a journey round the world. At the end of September of that year L. N. was visited by two Japanese literary men: Tokutomi and Fukai. The first was the editor of the progressive national organ Kokumin Shimbun. The second was his closest collaborator. I happened to be at Yasnaya Polyana at this time, and even succeeded in photographing these visitors. They produced upon L. N., as upon all the household, the most favourable impression. Here is what L. N. writes about them to his wife, who was then living in Moscow:
“From the morning the Japanese have arrived. Very interesting, fully educated, original and clever and free-thinking. The one is the editor of a journal, evidently very rich and an aristocrat of those parts, no longer young; the other small, young, his assistant, also a literary man. We talked much, and today they are leaving. A pity you did not see them.”
The conversation with them took place in English. They told of various everyday conditions of life in their native land, of the extraordinary development of gardening in Japan, and did not conceal their proud national feeling, while rendering the tribute of respect to L. N.’s universal-human views. L. N. made with them, and with the other guests then present, a long walk about the environs of Yasnaya Polyana. In the evening, at the tea-table, the lively conversation continued. Since L. N. was then working upon his article “On Art,” the conversation passed to this theme, and, at last, to music. L. N. asked the Japanese about their popular music, usually expressing itself in song. The Japanese said that they had folk songs, and offered to sing. We prepared to listen, and what was our astonishment when we suddenly heard one high note, which the elderly Japanese drew out for a long while, then his companion took it up almost in unison, and so they drew out for a long while, through the nose, with slight modulations, some strange, monotonous song, unlike anything we had heard before. Our astonishment quickly gave way to laughter, and all present rolled about, and L. N. himself laughed heartily, to the point of tears. The Japanese guests were not in the least disconcerted; ascribing, probably, our laughter and our lack of understanding to our barbarism, they said that in Japanese this song is very artistic and full of content.
L. N. was, it appears, interested by this unexpectedness of impression, and he wrote in his diary after the departure of the Japanese:
“The Japanese began to sing; we could not refrain from laughing. If we had begun to sing among the Japanese, they would have laughed. The more so if Beethoven were played to them. The Indian and Greek temples are comprehensible to all. Comprehensible to all are the Greek statues too. Comprehensible is our painting also, the best of it. So that architecture, sculpture, painting, having reached their perfection, have reached also cosmopolitanism, universal accessibility. To the same point the art of the word too has come, in some of its manifestations… In the dramatic art Sophocles, Aristophanes have not reached it. The moderns reach it. But in music they have lagged entirely behind. The ideal of every art, toward which it ought to strive, is universal accessibility; but it — especially now, music — pushes its way into refinement.”
Against the background of such communion with foreigners there occurred also strange curiosities.
In a letter to S. A. in November L. N. reports the following:
“I told you, I think, about some costly inkwell which they wished to send me as a gift from some club in Barcelona. I wrote to them, through Tanya, that I should prefer the money intended for this to be used for some good deed. And now they reply that, having received my letter, they opened a subscription in their club and collected 22,500 francs, which they propose that I use at my discretion. I write to them that I am very grateful, and that I have precisely the occasion to use it for aid to the Doukhobors. What will come of this — I do not know. It is all very strange. And the inkwell, they say, has been ordered, and we shall send it all the same; you can sell it and use the money as you wish.”
In a letter to Chertkov L. N. writes that there had come yet another letter from Barcelona, saying that the subscription had already reached 31,500 francs. But in the end neither the inkwell nor the money was ever received.
Amid all these varied phenomena of life there was ripening a new event of great importance — the persecution of the Doukhobors. It gradually drew to itself the attention of L. N.’s friends and of himself, and at last he himself becomes an active participant in this movement.
The situation of the Doukhobors was becoming ever heavier and heavier, and the information about this reached L. N.
On 6 November he writes to Chertkov:
“What you write about the tortured Doukhobor is terrible. Can it really be true? How did it happen? What do you know about it?
Amid what horrors we live. One feels oneself called to do something, to struggle, and from the very abundance of the task one’s hands fall to one’s sides. Here is where prayer is needed — for me, at least. One longs to die one way or another: either to play tennis, or to die for the truth, to go away. But one must live. And here, without prayer, without the sense of a Master who has set me to my task, one cannot live.”
To S. A. he reports of this same matter as follows:
“Yesterday I received from Chertkov and Tregubov letters with a description of the calamities endured by the Doukhobors. One of them, they write, was flogged to death in a disciplinary battalion, and their families, ruined, are dying, as they write, from homelessness, cold and hunger. They have written an appeal for help to society, and I have decided to send them, from our charitable funds, 1,000 rubles. These people will find no better use for the money, and they will thank you for having, against my wishes, obtained these funds.”
As I have already mentioned above, ever since the burning of the weapons by the Doukhobors and my journey to them, our connection with them had not ceased. We followed everything that was happening among them, and all the information received was concentrated in the hands of V. G. Chertkov, who was then living with his family on his farmstead, Rzhevsk, in Voronezh Province. Both in him and in me there arose the thought of addressing to the Russian authorities and to Russian society an appeal, to the effect that it is cruel and senseless to subject to suffering several thousand Doukhobors with their wives and children, to wear them down in exile in the poor Georgian villages, with a prohibition against leaving and therefore with the loss of their earnings — that is, to condemn to death by starvation excellent, healthy, moral people, always distinguished by their industry and sobriety, for this, that their conscience does not permit them to take part in deeds of violence. In all our decisions we turned, of course, for advice to L. N. He approved in principle the idea of an appeal; the first appeal composed proved unsatisfactory, and V. G. Chertkov summoned me to Rzhevsk for help in this matter. At that time there came to Rzhevsk two Doukhobors, Planidin and Ivin, as delegates from the exiles, with a request for help, since the sickness and mortality among them were increasing and had already reached 10 percent. Of the 4,000 exiled, 400 had died by the end of 1896. These 400 lives, perished without any cause whatever, lie wholly upon the soul of the maddened Caucasian administration. To delay was impossible. Having arrived at Rzhevsk, I set about composing a new appeal, which by our joint efforts was completed. It was given the title “Help!” and we resolved to go to the capital, in order, by spreading this appeal and by personal influence, to set the work of relief in motion. This appeal was signed by its three composers: Chertkov, Tregubov and myself. L. N. approved it and joined himself to it, writing an afterword. This was in December 1896. L. N. was by then already in Moscow. Foreseeing the catastrophe, I went to take leave of my relatives and set off for Petersburg to catch up with Chertkov, who was already there, that we might act together.
“Help!”, with the afterword, was typed out in a multitude of copies and sent, according to a list drawn up beforehand, to the persons standing at the head of the government, to all prominent public figures, and generally to everyone from whom any participation whatever might be expected. A copy was also delivered to the Sovereign. The consequences of this were not slow to manifest themselves. In Chertkov’s apartment a search was carried out, all the documents relating to the Doukhobor affair were taken away, and a few days later the signatories of the appeal were declared subject to administrative exile for 5 years under police surveillance. For V. G. Chertkov, moreover, exile was commuted to deportation abroad; I, on the other hand, was sent straight into exile in Courland Province, to the town of Bauska, near Mitau. This took place on 2 February 1897, and the deportation itself a few days later. L. N. was living at that time with his friend Count Olsufyev at Nikolskoye, near Moscow. Having received the telegram about our deportation, he came to see us off in Petersburg and spent several days with us; these days will long remain in my memory. We gathered every evening in Chertkov’s apartment, surrounded L. N. in a close ring, and our heartfelt conversation raised our spirits high, and no diabolical machinations were then terrible to us.
L. N. had, besides ourselves, relatives, friends and acquaintances in Petersburg whom it was pleasant for him to visit. He had not been in Petersburg since 1882. He was interested to look at the city, which had grown since then. He walked the streets of Petersburg in his old sheepskin coat, and, of course, it did not pass off without curiosities on the part of the public and the doormen, who would now suddenly recognize him and greet him respectfully or with rapture, or, on the contrary, would fail to recognize him and show toward him the attitude that “clean people” are wont to have toward a grey peasant.
His friend A. F. Koni, whom he also visited, gives an interesting account in his reminiscences of these Petersburg adventures of L. N.’s:
“We saw one another again,” says Koni, “in 1897, in Petersburg, whither Tolstoy had come to take leave of Chertkov, who at that time, on account of a shameful religious intolerance, was being deported abroad. At about eleven o’clock in the evening, having returned home from some meeting, I sat down to work, diverted by the sounds reaching me from the neighbouring apartment — where there lived a family engaged in trade under the firm ‘Ross Perfumery’ — the sounds of music, the words of command of the dances, and the stamping of feet. They were there celebrating something like our old-fashioned bridal eve, called by the Germans a ‘Polterabend.’ My old servant told me that some peasant was asking for me. To my question who he was and what he wanted so late, she returned with the information that his name was Lev Nikolaevich. With tender respect I led the ‘peasant’ into my study, and we talked together for a whole hour, in the course of which he astonished me by his lofty and all-forgiving attitude toward what had been done to Chertkov. Not a word of reproach, not the slightest expression of indignation, escaped his lips. He produced upon me the impression of one of those first Christians who knew how to look without trembling into the eyes of a torturous death, and by their meekness overcame the world. I had not noticed that the music at the neighbours’ had fallen silent, but when Tolstoy began to take his leave, and I went out to see him to the stairs, we saw that there, in expectation, had crowded the guests of the ‘Ross Perfumery’ — décolletée young ladies and young men in tailcoats. Tolstoy frowned, pulled his cap down over his very eyes, and almost ran down the stairs. It turned out that my servant, having seen the joyful respect with which I had received the unknown peasant, had begun to doubt his authenticity, had started peering at his figure from behind the door, and had suddenly been struck by the resemblance of the visitor to the photographic portrait of Tolstoy that Repin had given me. She guessed what was afoot, triumphantly proclaimed it in the kitchen, and — ‘the whole province set to writing’…
During this same visit of his to Petersburg, a young lady of my acquaintance was riding from a lesson she had given to her place of work on the horse-tram. There entered the car an old man dressed in peasant fashion, to whom she paid no attention, and who sat down opposite her. On the way she was reading a little book she had bought about Doctor Haas.
‘— And do you know the author of this book?’ the old man suddenly asked her, having examined the cover.
And upon her affirmative reply he asked her to convey his greetings to me. Only then, having looked closely at him, did she understand with whom she was dealing.
‘— I felt like throwing myself down before him there in the very car, on my knees,’ she told me, ‘and I involuntarily exclaimed: “You — you are Lev Nikolaevich?” — so that everyone turned their attention to us.’
“Tolstoy inclined his head affirmatively, gave her his hand, and hastily went out of the car.”
Of course, L. N. visited also his old friend, Countess Alexandra Andreyevna Tolstaya. This was their last meeting in this life, and it did not pass off altogether happily. Let us leave it to Alexandra Andreyevna herself to tell of this meeting. We borrow this account from her reminiscences:
“My second, and for the present my last, meeting with him took place here in Petersburg, whither he had come in 1897 to take leave of his friends the Chertkovs.
Lev and his wife stayed here in Petersburg for two or three days. I saw them constantly, and all went beautifully, except for the last evening, spent at the home of Ek. N. Shostak, where Lev Nikolaevich, without any occasion for it, began to argue that every reasonable man can save himself by himself, and that for this he, properly speaking, ‘needs no one.’ It was not hard to understand whom he meant by the word no one — and my heart shuddered and ached, as it used to.
In the leisure of a sleepless night I again pondered much; knowing that Lev would come to me the next morning to take his leave, I asked myself: should I, or should I not, raise this question? It may easily turn out, I thought, that this will be our last meeting, and in that case shall I not reproach myself if I am afraid to speak my opinion once more? But as soon as Lev came to me and I hinted at the previous day’s conversation, he sprang up from his place, his face was contorted with anger, and all his assumed meekness vanished.
‘— Allow me to tell you that I know all this a million times better than you; I have studied all these questions not lightly, and to my beliefs I have sacrificed life, happiness, and everything in general (sic), and you think that you can teach me something’ — and so on, and so forth.
His speech was far longer and breathed throughout with proud self-assurance, but I give here only that which forever cut itself with pain into my heart and into my memory.
It is dreadful to utter: he has no need of Him who alone saves! And how is one to comprehend all the duality, all the contradiction of this extraordinary, enigmatic nature?!.
On the one hand — love of truth, love of men, love of God, and even of that Teacher whose whole greatness he will not, or cannot, acknowledge. On the other hand — pride, darkness, unbelief, an abyss…
Was it not the evil spirit himself — the ancient serpent — that laid in his heart this denial, in order to destroy, so far as possible, the rich gifts of the Lord?
Denial showed itself in L. N. very early; this is already evident from his earliest writings; one may even suppose that it developed in him in parallel with his best gifts, and so, step by step, d’étape en étape, he came at last to the greatest and most terrible denial in the world — to the denial of the divinity of Christ.
I do not know what impression he carried away from our last meeting, or whether his conscience was at ease.
And I do not even remember how we parted, and since then we have not seen one another again. God grant that we may come some day, here or there, to a full agreement.”
This naïve solicitude of his kind friend for his salvation always grieved L. N. by its importunity, and in his letters he often besought her to regard his views with at least a measure of that respect with which he regarded her beliefs; this importunity and intolerance probably also called forth the note of irritation in his voice.
Lev Nikolaevich left Petersburg on the eve of our deportation, sending us on our way with the most cordial good wishes. We embraced him and parted from him for almost 8 years. The further exposition of the events of his life I shall now have to make once more from the documents in my possession, excluding from them my personal testimony and reminiscences.