---
layer: reference
lastUpdated: 2026-05-26
tags: [research, biryukov, doukhobors]
lang: en
source: tolstoy-lit.ru
volume: 3
chapter: 21
---

# Volume III, Chapter 21. The Doukhobors. Famine Again. *The Christian Teaching*

**Source:** https://tolstoy-lit.ru/tolstoy/bio/biryukov/biografiya-biryukov-3-21.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-21.md`](../ru/chapter-21.md).

---

In the year 1898 L. N. had occasion to work for the relief of the Doukhobors, whose situation was growing day by day more unbearable. And since it fell to me also to take part in this affair, I consider it necessary to mention certain facts of my own life.

In February of this year a great change took place in my personal life. I was permitted to leave my place of exile and go abroad, an opportunity of which I did not fail to avail myself.

Having crossed the frontier, I stopped for several days with my friend, Dr. Dušan Petrovich Makovický, in Hungary, in a little town which in the Slavic tongue is called Žilina, in German Sillein, and in Hungarian Zsolna. There I received from L. N. a letter of farewell and counsel. He wrote to me, among other things:

> "I am glad for you that you are leaving. I have many times observed in people subjected to violence that such people begin to ascribe significance to the organization of that violence, to acknowledge its existence, to acknowledge its laws as laws. And this is terrible. I saw it in the revolutionaries, and it seemed to me — or rather, I was afraid — that I should observe it in you. Our joy, or rather, our consolation, lies in this: that whereas in economic conditions we are more or less often very far from the demands of our conscience, of our consciousness (economic conditions are so interwoven, and we are so entangled in them, that it is terribly difficult — impossible — to be pure within them; these are the conditions last to be realized), yet in the political, the state respect we may be wholly pure: we may refuse to serve, to go to law, to defend ourselves, to divide men by nationalities and estates, to acknowledge any authorities whatsoever. And then suddenly they catch you and place you, and those near to you, in such tormenting conditions that you begin to reckon with their laws and to demand the fulfilment of them in regard to yourself. The day before yesterday I received the American publication *Social Gospel*. This is the organ of a body of people — there are about a hundred of them — who have joined together in a colony in Georgia in order to realize the Christian life in the economic sense as well. This is very difficult, but one cannot but sympathize with such attempts. Their address is: Ralph Albertson, Commonwealth, Ga. (that is, Georgia). Herron, Loyu and Crosby are participants in it, if not leaders. This will give you a notion of their views. Subscribe to this journal, and advise your friends to subscribe; it costs 50 cents a year. And the first number is very good. This I recalled while speaking of the realization by Christians of the economic conditions.
>
> "Yesterday I received news that St. John has been expelled from Russia. He is going to Schmitt at Budapest (*), so that you will see him. Yesterday I received a letter from Schmitt and was very glad, for I see that with the same energy he preaches, on the very border of violence, the abolition of violence. One cannot but sympathize with his activity, and therefore I was glad to learn that he continues to struggle. I shall ask that there be copied out for you, from Zhirkevich's letter, the passage about Egorov (**). Here are humble fighters, unseen by men, but seen by God, and therefore the most powerful. Let us strive to be such."

(* A German scholar of anarchistic views close to those of L. N. *)

(** A sectarian who had refused military service. **)

At last, in March, L. N. comes forward actively in the defence and relief of the Doukhobors. He writes, among other things, to Chertkov:

> "Dear friend, I have not written to you for a long while, because there is too much to write. The chief and most important matter is the Doukhobors. They have now written me a third letter, telling me that they have been permitted to emigrate abroad, and asking me to help them. Private persons too are writing: Sherstobitov, Potapov, Androsov, and some others; but they are to hold a council as to what is to be done, and this decision of the council is important, because from it one will learn whither they wish to go, and will determine what is needed and in what.
>
> But, without even awaiting this, I am composing and composing one appeal to the English and American newspapers, asking the help of all true Christians — help both by guidance, by the indication of places and of means of conveyance, and by money. This appeal I shall send you, probably, tomorrow. If you find it not good — as always, I give you *carte blanche* to correct it — send it, with a letter that you will draw up on the enclosed blank bearing my signature, to the editorial office of one of the large newspapers: if not the *Times*, then the *Daily News* or the *Daily Chronicle*. Another appeal, a very moderate one, I shall take tomorrow to the *Russkiye Vedomosti*, and if they do not print it, I shall send it to the *Peterburgskiye Vedomosti*. Besides this, I have written a letter to America, to the editor of the *Social Gospel* (you probably know it), of which I am sending you a copy, and at the end of which I mentioned the affair of the Doukhobors. This one matter is the most important of all, absorbing my whole attention."

The content of the appeal with which L. N. addressed Russian society and that abroad was as follows:

> "A population of twelve thousand persons," says L. N., "Christians of the universal brotherhood — for so the Doukhobors who live in the Caucasus call themselves — find themselves at the present time in a frightful situation."

L. N. depicts this situation further in these words:

> "To say nothing of the floggings, the cells, and every kind of torture to which the Doukhobors who had refused were subjected in the disciplinary battalions — of which many died — and of their banishment to the worst places of Siberia; to say nothing of the 200 reservists who for two years languished in the prisons and are now parted from their families and exiled in pairs to the wildest places of the Caucasus, where, having no earnings, they are literally dying of hunger; to say nothing of these punishments of the very men guilty of refusing service — the families of the Doukhobors are being systematically ruined and destroyed. They are all deprived of the right to absent themselves from their places of residence, and are heavily fined and locked up in prisons for the non-fulfilment of the strangest demands of the authorities: for calling themselves by a name other than that by which they have been ordered to call themselves, for going to the mill, for a mother's visiting her son, for going out of the village into the forest to gather firewood — so that the last means of these once-wealthy inhabitants are rapidly exhausted. As for the four hundred families turned out of their dwellings and settled among the Tatar and Georgian villages, where they must hire lodgings for themselves and feed themselves for money, having neither land nor earnings, they find themselves in so grievous a condition that in the course of the three years of their resettlement a fourth part of them — old people and children especially — have already perished from want and disease."

All the petitions of the Doukhobors and of their friends for the alleviation of their lot remained without result. But one of the petitions came into the hands of the Dowager Empress, who had come to the Caucasus to visit her son, and to this petition a hearing was given, and the request of the Doukhobors was granted: they were permitted to go abroad, on condition that they should not return again. But to carry this out was not easy; obstacles were many — both administrative and others. L. N. concludes his address to society thus:

> "These people are permitted to depart, but beforehand they have been ruined, so that they have nothing with which to depart; and the conditions in which they find themselves are such that they have no possibility of learning the places to which they are to emigrate, nor how and under what conditions this may be done, nor even of availing themselves of help from without, since those who wish to help them are at once expelled, while the Doukhobors themselves are clapped into prison for every absence.
>
> So that, if no help be rendered to these people from without, they will be ruined and will all die out, notwithstanding the permission they have received to emigrate.
>
> I happen to know the particulars of the persecutions and sufferings of these people; I am in communication with them, and they ask me to help them; and therefore I consider it my duty to turn to all good people both of Russian and of European society, asking them to help the Doukhobors out of the tormenting situation in which they find themselves. I have appealed in one of the Russian newspapers to Russian society — I do not yet know whether my declaration will or will not be printed — and I now turn, further, to all the good people of the English and American nations as well, asking their help: first, with money, of which much is needed for the mere conveyance, over a great distance, of 10,000 persons; and, secondly, with direct, immediate guidance in the difficulties of the impending resettlement of people who know no languages and have never travelled out of Russia.
>
> I take it that the higher Russian government will not hinder such help, and will moderate the excessive zeal of the Caucasian administration, which now permits no intercourse whatever with the Doukhobors.
>
> Until then I offer my mediation between people who wish to help the Doukhobors and to enter into communication with them, since up to now my own communications with them have not been broken off."

From this time on, L. N.'s cares concerning the Doukhobors do not cease.

In April L. N. wrote to Chertkov:

> "Dear friend V. G. After I had written to you, this is what happened: in the morning I am told that two men have arrived from the Caucasus. These were the Doukhobors Planidin — Pavel Vasilyevich, your acquaintance — and Chernov. They had come, of course, without passports, in order to convey information and to learn all that concerned their affair. Having talked with these dear friends and learned everything, I resolved to send them to Petersburg to Ukhtomsky, from whom I still had received no answer. They went, spent a day there, and returned; they saw Ukhtomsky and the Dieterichs — the grandfather and Joseph Konstantinovich. Ukhtomsky, as I see, can do nothing. He has not even printed my letter, and that would be very necessary, and to this day he has answered me nothing definite. His plans, too, have ceased to please me. He now speaks no longer of Manchuria, but of Chinese Turkestan, near Kuldja. The chief thing is that, as Planidin and Chernov say, to emigrate to a place where the Russian government may again lay hold of them is undesirable to them. Besides, they hold firmly to what is written in their petition, drawn up on Verigin's initiative — that they wish to emigrate to America or to England. But the chief thing, which I understood from my conversation with them, is this: that they cannot leave, abandoning their children in Yakutsk Province and their old people in banishment. And then I think they ought to petition for their release. In this sense I have written a petition, of which I am sending a copy. They will think this petition over at home and will then submit it. The further particulars about everything will be conveyed to you by Shanks and Jenken, who will be with you, probably, soon after this letter. So that up to now Cyprus presents itself as the most convenient place. The only fear is its unhealthy and fever-ridden climate.
>
> Donations to the amount of about 1,500 rubles have come in, but I have not yet set about the collecting. The good thing is that, by the accounts of Planidin and Chernov, besides the 50 thousand among the resettled and the Kars people, if they sell everything there will be gathered some hundred and fifty thousand. They are touchingly edifying. Planidin, one can see, recalls with a peculiar love all of you at Lizinovka."

A few days later he writes again — this time by a chance hand, and not by post — communicating fresh facts, and at the same time asking Chertkov to observe great caution, even in England, giving his reason for this as follows:

> "This caution must be observed even at your end. Here the government is so ill-disposed toward the Doukhobors that the day before yesterday a donation from Maude, Sergeyenko, and an unknown person was printed in the *Russkiye Vedomosti*, and that same day there came to the editorial office a paper from (alas) Trepov, demanding the names of the donors and the delivery of the money to the Treasury.
>
> "The *Russkiye Vedomosti* answered that the money had already been handed over to me, and presented a receipt to that effect."

But the administration was not satisfied with this answer. In the archive of the *Russkiye Vedomosti* there has been preserved the following trace of this demand:

> "On 21 April 1898 the Minister of Internal Affairs declared a third warning to the *Russkiye Vedomosti* and suspended the newspaper for two months, as was set forth in the official communication concerning this (*Russkiye Vedomosti*, No. 112, of 25 June 1898), 'for the collection of donations in favour of the Doukhobors, with the publication thereof in No. 93 of the *Russkiye Vedomosti* of this year, and for evading the execution of the order of the Moscow Governor-General.'" — having recalled that, not long before this, on 19 March 1898, Tolstoy had written his well-known "letter to society" about material aid to the Doukhobors, who had received permission to emigrate abroad. But the notice on account of which the administrative penalty followed read, literally, only the following: "There has been received at the office of the *Russkiye Vedomosti*, to be placed at the disposal of Count L. N. Tolstoy for the rendering of aid to the sick and needy Doukhobors: from an out-of-town subscriber, 300 rubles; from Mr. M., 400 rubles; from an unknown person, 300 rubles." As for the unexecuted order of the Governor-General (or, more precisely, the demand of the Chief of Police, with whom alone the editorial office had had any dealing in this case), it had indeed not been executed: they demanded the transfer, to the disposal of the administration, of money donated to be placed at Tolstoy's disposal, to whom of course it had been duly handed over in due time.

On 3 February L. N. notes in his diary, among other things:

> "If there is in you the force of activity, then let it be loving; if you have no force and are weak, then let your weakness be loving."

At this same time L. N. is troubled by his relations to property, and, recalling how he had disposed of it, he remarks in his diary on 19 February:

> "I acted ill in giving the estate to the children. It would have been better for them. Only one had to know how to do it, without violating love. And I did not know how."

Whether it was this activity of L. N.'s on behalf of the Doukhobors, or his increased fame, or simply envy of the bright image of the great elder — be that as it may, L. N. at this time, at the beginning of April, came near to being the object of a criminal attempt on the part of a clutch of dark people who, though they did not yet bear the name of the "Black Hundred," were unquestionably already at work.

Here is what Sofya Andreyevna writes about this to her sister, some days before the fateful one:

> "Of L. N.: he is well and in good spirits, but we are all awaiting the 3rd of April with anxiety; they threaten to kill him. We have received an anonymous letter from one of the 'second crusaders,' as he called himself, and they threaten to kill him because L. N. has 'insulted the Lord Jesus Christ, and is supposedly an enemy of the Tsar and of the fatherland.'"

These letters had begun to be received as far back as December of the past year, 1897. In his diary, under the date of 21 December, Lev Nikolaevich records: "Yesterday I received an anonymous letter with the threat of murder, if I do not mend my ways by the year 1898; a term is given, only up to 1898. It is both eerie and good."

On 29 December, again an entry: "Letters threatening murder have been received. It is a pity that there are people who hate me, but it interests me little and does not trouble me at all."

The rumour of these letters reached even England, to Chertkov. His inquiry about it gave L. N. occasion to express the following thoughts:

> "Letters with threats, of course, have an unpleasant effect only in this sense, that there are sometimes people who hate one without cause. But one is always preparing oneself to die, and that is the proper business. I lately thought — and I recommend this also to Galya — that when one is well, one strives to live better outwardly, and when one is unwell, one learns to die better. However, these letters do not possess even this merit: they are so stupidly written that they are evidently designed only for frightening."

But however L. N. himself might regard this, his family and friends were uneasy. And on 3 April, from early morning, there came to L. N. his devoted friend A. N. Dunayev, and declared that he would not leave him until late at night. Forgetting all theories, he clenched his fists and pondered how he would deal with the insolent assailant. But no one came, and the day passed off quietly.

However warmly L. N. sympathized with the lot of the Doukhobors, a nearer calamity of the people was to divert his powers to yet another work. By the spring of 1898 it had become clear that in certain central and eastern provinces the famine had grown more acute, and that immediate help was needed.

At the end of April L. N. went off to the Chernsky district of Tula Province, which had suffered most from the crop failure, and settled on the estate of his son Ilya, in order from there to investigate the surrounding want and to direct the relief. Ever sincere with himself, L. N. searches whether there be not in his journey some personal motives, and records in his diary this thought:

> "I began to consider about the feeding-kitchens and the buying of flour, about money, and so impurely, so sadly did it become in my soul. The sphere of money — that is, every kind of use of money — is sin. I took money and undertook to use it only in order to have a pretext for getting away from Moscow, and I acted ill."

Here is how Ilya Lvovich describes, in his reminiscences of his father, his activity at this time:

> "On the day after his arrival we saddled a pair of horses and set off. We rode — as once, some twenty years before, we had ridden out coursing with borzois — straight across, over the fields.
>
> To me it was wholly a matter of indifference whither we rode, since I held that all the surrounding villages were in equal distress; but my father, in old memory, wished to look upon Spasskoye-Lutovinovo, which was ten versts from me, and where he had not been since Turgenev's day. On the road, I remember, he told me about Ivan Sergeyevich's mother, who was famed throughout the whole neighbourhood for an extraordinarily lively mind, for energy, and for extravagance. I do not know whether he had seen her himself or was repeating traditions he had heard.
>
> As we drove through the Turgenev park, he recalled in passing how, in old days, there had run between him and Ivan Sergeyevich a dispute as to whose park was the better — the Spasskoye or the Yasnaya Polyana one. I asked him:
>
> '— And now, what do you think?'
>
> '— Still the Yasnaya Polyana one is the better, though this one too is fine, very fine.'
>
> In the village we called upon the village elder and went into two or three huts. There was no famine.
>
> The peasants, endowed with a full allotment of good land and assured of earnings, were almost in no want.
>
> True, some homesteads were the weaker, but that acute condition which strikes the eye at once — that was not there.
>
> I even remember that my father reproached me a little for having sounded the alarm when there was not sufficient ground for it, and for a time I felt somehow ashamed and ill at ease before him.
>
> Of course, in his conversations with each of the peasants, my father asked them whether they remembered Ivan Sergeyevich, and eagerly caught at every recollection of him. Some of the old men remembered him and spoke of him with great love.
>
> From Spasskoye we drove on farther.
>
> Two versts from there we came upon, abandoned amid the fields, the little hamlet of Pogibelka.
>
> We drove in.
>
> It turned out that the peasants live on a 'beggar's' allotment, the land inconvenient, somewhere off to one side, and that by spring the folk had come to such a pass that among eight homesteads there was, in all, but one cow and two horses. The rest of the cattle had all been sold. Great and small alike go begging.
>
> The next village, Bolshaya Gubarevka — the same thing. Farther on — worse still.
>
> We resolved, without putting it off, to open feeding-kitchens at once. The work began to boil.
>
> The most difficult work — the determining of the number of eaters from each peasant family — my father performed almost everywhere himself, and therefore for whole days, often until deep night, he drove about the villages. The distribution of provisions and the laying in of supplies lay upon my wife's charge. Helpers came forward too. Within a week we already had about 12 feeding-kitchens in operation in the Mtsensk district, and as many in the Chernsky.
>
> Since to feed the whole people without distinction was beyond our means, we admitted to the feeding-kitchens chiefly the children, the old, and the sick; and I remember how my father loved to come upon a village at dinner-time, and how he was moved by that reverent, almost prayerful attitude toward food which he noted in those at table.
>
> Unhappily, the affair did not pass off without administrative unpleasantness.
>
> It began with two young ladies, who had come from Moscow and had charge of one of the larger feeding-kitchens, being simply driven away under threat of the closing of the kitchens. Then there came to me the district police officer, with a demand that I produce the permission of the head of the province for the opening of the feeding-kitchens.
>
> I began to assure him that there could be no law forbidding charity.
>
> Of course, without success.
>
> At this moment my father came into the room, and between him and the police officer there struck up a friendly conversation, in which the one argued that one cannot forbid people to eat, and the other begged him to enter into the position of a man not his own master, who is so ordered by his superiors.
>
> '— What would you have me do, your Excellency?'
>
> '— It is very simple: do not serve in a place where you may be compelled to act against your conscience.'
>
> After this I had nevertheless, for the sake of preserving the cause, to drive to the Oryol and Tula governors, and in conclusion to send the Minister of Internal Affairs a telegram with the request to 'remove the obstacles which the local authorities are placing in the way of the work of private charity, not forbidden by law.'
>
> In this way it proved possible to save the feeding-kitchens we already had, but to open new ones was no longer permitted."

The cheerful, even poetic mood of L. N. during his stay at Grinyovka, his son's estate, is clearly expressed in his letter to his wife of 6 May, where he writes, among other things, thus:

> "Today, only after the rain, I drove to the village of Kamenka, where the community is not a friendly one and the feeding-kitchen does not get on, so that I refused it altogether and shall transfer it to another village. But yesterday, after I had written you my letter at the station, I drove farther, to the two distant poor villages, the Gubarevkas, and there all goes excellently. I came back through Turgenev's wood, past Spasskoye, by the light of the evening glow: the fresh greenery in the wood underfoot, the stars in the sky, the scents of the flowering osier and of the withering birch-leaf, the sounds of the nightingale, the hum of the beetles, the cuckoos — the cuckoo and the solitude, and the pleasant, vigorous motion of the horse beneath me, and bodily and spiritual health. And I thought, as I think incessantly, of death. And it became so clear to me that just so well, though in another way, it will be on that side of death; and I understood why the Jews pictured paradise as a garden. The purest joy is the joy of nature. It was clear to me that there it will be just as good — no, better. I tried to call up in myself doubt of that life, as I used to before — and I could not, as I used to; but I could call up in myself assurance."

Having received several new donations, L. N. resolved to enlarge his activity, extending the help to certain districts of Tula Province. For this purpose, at the end of May, he drove by horse to his acquaintances the Levitskys, landowners near the station of Karasi, on the Syzran–Vyazma railway. And there, to the horror of his domestic friends, he fell ill with a severe dysentery; he lay ill there ten days, and, having recovered, returned to Yasnaya Polyana.

While living at his son's, he wrote the article "Famine or No Famine," in which he described the condition of the population, gave an account of the money expended, and answered certain general questions.

L. N. describes the beginning of his activity thus:

> "The first village to which I came was the Spasskoye known to me, belonging to I. S. Turgenev. Having questioned the elder and the old men about the condition of this village, I became convinced that it was far from being so bad as had been bad the condition of those peasants among whom we had set up feeding-kitchens in 1891. All the homesteads had horses, cows, sheep; there were potatoes, and there were no ruined houses; so that, judging by the condition of the Spasskoye peasants, I thought: are not the rumours of this year's want exaggerated? But the visiting of Malaya Gubarevka, which follows after Spasskoye, and of other villages that had been pointed out to me as very poor, convinced me that Spasskoye is in exceptionally fortunate conditions — both by reason of its good allotment, and by reason of the accidentally good harvest of the past year. Thus, in the first village to which I came, Malaya Gubarevka, among 10 homesteads there were 4 cows and 2 horses; 2 families were begging; and the poverty of all the inhabitants was frightful. Such almost — though somewhat better — is the condition of the other neighbouring villages... In all these villages, although there is no admixture in the bread, as there was in 1891, yet bread, even though pure, is not given in plenty. Of seasoning to the broth — millet, cabbage, potatoes — most have, indeed, none at all. The food consists of cabbage-soup made of grass, whitened if there be a cow and unwhitened if there be none, and of bread alone. In all these villages most people have sold and pawned everything that can be sold and pawned. So that of extreme want, in the locality surrounding us — a district of 7 or 8 versts — there is so much that, having set up 14 feeding-kitchens, we receive every day requests for help from new villages, which are in the same condition.
>
> Where the feeding-kitchens have been set up, they go on well; they come to about 1 ruble 50 kopeks per person a month, and seem to satisfy the aim we have set ourselves: to preserve the life and health of the weak members of the poorest families.
>
> On the evening of 25 May I drove into the village of Gushchino, consisting of 49 homesteads, of which 24 are without horses. It was supper-time. In the yard, under two swept sheds, there sat at five tables 80 persons at their meal: old men, intermingled with old women, at the large tables on benches; the children at little tables on small blocks of wood with planks laid across them. Those at supper had just finished the first dish (potatoes with kvass), and the second was being served — cabbage-soup. The women ladled out with dippers, into the wooden bowls, the steaming, well-seasoned soup; the server, with a round loaf of bread and a knife, went round the tables and, pressing the loaf to his breast, cut off and handed slices of the splendid, fresh, fragrant bread to those who had eaten theirs up. The mistress of the house and a woman from among those at table wait upon the grown people; the master's daughter, a little girl, waits upon the children. Everything went on decorously, with gravity, exactly as though this order had existed for many ages.
>
> Those at supper were for the most part emaciated, exhausted, in threadbare clothes — thin-bearded, grey-haired and bald old men, and wrinkled old women. On every face there was an expression of calm and contentment. All these people were evidently in that peaceful and joyful mood, and even in a certain excitement, which is produced by the partaking of sufficient food after a long privation of it. The sounds of eating could be heard, grave conversation, and now and again laughter at the children's tables. There were here also two passing beggars, for whom the server apologized, that he had admitted them to the supper.
>
> From Gushchino I drove to the village of Gnedyshevo, from which, two days before, the peasants had come asking for help. This village consists, like Gubarevka, of 10 homesteads. To 10 homesteads here there are 4 horses and 4 cows; of sheep there are almost none; all the houses are so old and bad that they scarcely stand. All are poor, and all implore one to help them. 'If only the children might rest a little,' says a peasant woman, 'but they ask for papka (bread), and there is nothing to give, so they fall asleep without supper.'
>
> I know there is here a measure of exaggeration; but what a peasant says here and now, in a caftan with a torn shoulder, is surely no exaggeration, but the very truth: 'If only I could push two or three of the children off my bread,' he says. 'But there — I carried off to town my last under-coat (the fur coat has long been there), and brought back 3 little poods for 8 persons. How long will it last them? And after that I do not even know what I am to carry off.'
>
> I asked them to change me 3 rubles. In the whole village there was not even a ruble of money to be found.
>
> Evidently it is necessary to set up a feeding-kitchen here too. So too, probably, it is needed in the other villages, from which they have come to ask."

There follows further a financial account, and finally L. N. sets himself the following questions:

1) Is there a famine this year, or is there not?

2) From what, after all, comes the so often recurring want of the people?

3) How is it to be brought about that this want should not recur, and should not require special measures for its covering?

L. N. analyses each of these questions in detail, and comes to the following conclusion:

> "To the three questions put — is there a famine or is there not? from what comes the want of the people? and what must be done to help this want? — my answers are the following:
>
> There is no famine, but there is a chronic undernourishment of the whole population, which has now been going on for 20 years and is continually growing worse; which is especially perceptible this year, after the bad harvest of last year; and which will be worse still in the year to come, since the harvest of rye this year is worse than last year's. There is no famine, but there is a condition far worse. It is just as if a physician, asked whether a patient has typhus, should answer: there is no typhus, but there is a rapidly increasing consumption.
>
> As for the second question, my answer consists in this: that the cause of the disastrousness of the people's condition is not material, but spiritual; that the chief cause is the decline of the people's spirit; so that, until the people rise in spirit, until then no external measures will help them — neither a ministry of agriculture, nor exhibitions, nor agricultural schools, nor a change of tariffs, nor release from the redemption payments (which it would long since have been time to make, since the peasants have long overpaid what they borrowed, if one reckon by the rate of interest now in use), nor the taking off of the duties on iron and machinery — nothing will help the people if their state of spirit remain the same. I do not say that all these measures would not be useful; but they will become useful only when the people rise in spirit and consciously, freely wish to make use of them.
>
> My answer to the third question — how is it to be brought about that this want should not recur? — consists in this: that for this it is needful — I will not say to respect the people, but to cease to despise them, to cease to outrage them by treating them like an animal; it is needful to subject them to the common laws, and not to exceptional ones; to give them freedom of teaching, freedom of movement, and, chiefly, to take off the brand of savage torment — the flogging of grown men, only because they are reckoned in the estate of peasants.
>
> If the peasants be freed from all those fetters and humiliations with which they are bound, then in 20 years they will acquire all those riches with which we should wish to endow them, and much more besides.
>
> I think that this will be so, in the first place, because I have always found more reason, and more of the real knowledge needful to men, among the peasants than among the officials; and therefore I think that the peasants will themselves the sooner and the better consider what is more needful for them. In the second place, because it is more probable to suppose that the peasants — those very persons for whose welfare the care is taken — know better wherein it consists than the officials do. The farther the peasants live from the officials — as, for example, in the provinces of Samara, Orenburg, Vyatka, Vologda, Olonets, in Siberia — the more, without exception, do they flourish.
>
> These are the thoughts and feelings which my new drawing-near to the peasant want has called forth in me, and I have considered it my duty to express them, in order that sincere people, who truly wish to repay the people for all that we have received and are receiving from them, should not waste their powers in vain upon an activity secondary and often false, but should employ all their powers upon that without which no help will be effective: upon the destruction of all that crushes the spirit of the people, and upon the restoration of all that can raise it."

It is difficult to imagine what reprehensible thing could be found in that activity which L. N. once more displayed among the hungry peasants, with his voluntary helpers.

But the Russian administration descried sedition in it, and took pains, at the first opportunity, to put a stop to it. Here is how L. N. speaks of this:

> "In the Chernsky district, during this time of my absence, there occurred — by the account of my son, who had come from there — the following: the police authorities, having come to the villages where there were feeding-kitchens, forbade the peasants to go to them to dine and to sup; and, for the surer execution of the order, they broke up the very tables at which the meals had been taken, and quietly drove away, having replaced for the hungry the morsel of bread taken from them with nothing whatever, save the demand of uncomplaining obedience. It is difficult to imagine what goes on in the heads and hearts of the people subjected to this prohibition, and of all those people who learn of it.
>
> Still more difficult is it — for me, at least — to imagine what goes on in the heads and hearts of the others, those people who consider it needful to prescribe and to execute such measures: that is, in very truth, not knowing what they do, to take the bread of charity from the mouths of hungry old men and children."

He that soweth the wind reapeth the whirlwind, and many of these absurd measures found their echo afterwards, several years later, in a wave of popular wrath.

This article could not then appear in Russia, and was published abroad by Chertkov.

Our life abroad was at this time marked by the beginning of a new periodical organ under the title *Svobodnoye Slovo* (The Free Word). In the creating of it L. N. took the most ardent part.

The journal founded by us, of which it was proposed that I should be the editor, was at first to be called *Zhizn* (Life), then *Sovest* (Conscience), and finally, upon L. N.'s suggestion, it was named *Svobodnoye Slovo* (The Free Word). Of course, at the first step of my preparation for the editorship, I turned for help and counsel to L. N. And he answered me with a letter containing detailed indications as to the desirable content of the new journal. Here is this remarkable letter, which may be of use to many, both present and future, editors of a free organ of the press:

> "Dear friend P. As to the matter, this is what I have to say: I keep thinking about your publication *Zhizn*. It is needful that the first number should be excellent, and all the rest the same. And in order that this should be so, the following is needful, in my opinion (probably you yourself think the very same, but I write all the same). It is needful that:
>
> 1) That all the information communicated should be so exact that one could not give it the *démenti*. For this it is necessary to have trustworthy and cautious correspondents.
>
> 2) That — especially in the first numbers — an exclusively religious tendency should not be apparent (let everything be pervaded by a religious spirit, in this — that there should be no ill-will, but, on the contrary, love toward men, and condemnation and indignation only toward acts and, chiefly, toward un-Christian institutions); but that the religious foundations should not be set forth, especially at the beginning.
>
> 3) That there should be as much variety as possible: that there should be exposed both bribes, and Phariseeism, and cruelty, and debauchery, and despotism, and ignorance. I know just now, for example, (a) how the merchants, in order to suppress strikes, proposed to set up a barracks for 100 Cossacks, and gave 50,000 rubles for this, so as always to keep the workers in fear; (b) I know of the bribing of an important official; (c) the imposture of a miracle; (d) the session of the commission for the revision of the judicial statutes, where they are destroying all the last remnants of the safeguarding of citizens; (e) the censorship horrors; (f) the attitude in Petersburg toward the famine; (g) the persecutions for faith. All this must be grouped in such a way as to embrace as many varied sides of life as possible.
>
> 4) That in the choice of subjects and in the lighting of them there should predominate (if possible, should be exclusive) the point of view of the welfare or the harm of the people, of the mass.
>
> 5) That everything should be set forth in a serious and severe — without little jokes and without abuse — language, and as simple a one as possible, without foreign and scientific expressions.
>
> 6) The sections of the journal I picture to myself thus:
>
> (a) elaborated articles upon some question or other — such as yours on the historical significance of the Holy Scriptures, or on the communities of Christians, or on revolution, or on soldiery, and the like. Such an article I propose, on the refusals of military service;
>
> (b) news from Russia, glad and not glad;
>
> (c) a political survey from the Christian point of view;
>
> (d) bibliography.
>
> All this I write, of course, without having thought it out, without having discussed it, but I write all the same, because something of it will be useful to you and will call forth thoughts. The chief thing is, one must beware of inaccuracies and of exaggeration, not only in facts, but also in feelings, in sentimentality. These are two sunken rocks."

Having taken L. N.'s counsels into consideration, I sketched out a more detailed programme and sent it to him, upon which I received from him a letter with new counsels and indications of the following purport:

> "The journal ought to have two sections. The one contemporary, the other general — philosophical, religious, scientific, even artistic, in the nature of feuilletons; that is, in this section there will be placed now scientific, now philosophical, now religious, now artistic articles. Whatever there may be. The first section ought to contain within itself:
>
> 1) Leading articles: the discussion, from the Christian point of view, of the most important event of the given time — the Doukhobors, China, the Spanish-American war.
>
> 2) A political survey: all the contemporary political events reckoned important, from the Christian point of view.
>
> 3) State, ecclesiastical, and economic crimes — open and concealed — in all states, especially in Russia.
>
> 4) Militarism.
>
> 5) The deceptions of faith.
>
> 6) The life of the working class and of the privileged class.
>
> 7) Artistic criticism from the Christian point of view.
>
> 8) Bibliography — the indication of good and of harmful books.
>
> Such ought the first section to be; and into the second section will enter all those points: belles-lettres, if it be worth it — that is, of the first order, otherwise it is no good; freedom of conscience, and all the other sections I have omitted, if there be articles upon them. The most important and most desirable:
>
> 1) Religious science.
>
> 2) State and church, and their true significance.
>
> 3) Moral hygiene.
>
> 4) Physical labour.
>
> The address to the readers I am sending, with the remarks and corrections that I have made. Maybe I am poor and weak, but I have worked over the one and the other, and in my remarks and corrections I have expressed my opinion, as it took shape within me. As for the facts about which you ask me, it is best to turn to Dunayev. The title *Sovest* (Conscience) is better than *Zhizn* (Life), but one would wish for something better still. The chief danger in all this is not that it will be grey — that is not so dangerous — but that it should not be sentimental: that is, that there should not be the expression of a feeling not experienced. Do not be angry with me for this. You are a most truthful man, yet in your writings these false notes occur, and you do not see them in others. Beware of them. The matter is so important that I am not afraid to say this to you. Do not be afraid to stop short in an article without a beautiful ending. If only it be truthful, businesslike, and *sobre*. The information about Vetrova and the Molokan children, and about the suspension of the *Russkiye Vedomosti*, I could find, but this is much labour, of which I am not capable. Tanya, Masha, and especially her husband, who is very capable, can do it — write to them."

In this way the new organ *Svobodnoye Slovo* (The Free Word) was founded. Unhappily, it proved possible to issue only 2 numbers of this publication. I had to move with my family to Switzerland, where I undertook a publication of my own under the title *Svobodnaya Mysl* (Free Thought), while *Svobodnoye Slovo* was resumed in England, several years later, on a somewhat altered programme.

The help to the hungry diverted Lev Nikolaevich only for a time from the great undertaking he had taken up earlier — the relief of the persecuted Doukhobors.

L. N. again enters into correspondence with a multitude of persons who might, in one way or another, further the emigration of the Doukhobors abroad.

He commissions his son Sergei to England, in order to enter into communication as close as possible with the committee there for the relief of the Doukhobors.

To the Caucasus, at his request, goes the energetic and experienced Leopold Antonovich Sulerzhitsky, who busies himself actively with the dispatch of the Doukhobors on ocean steamers. One of these steamers is accompanied by his son Sergei.

L. N. writes to the administrators of the Caucasus and of Siberia, begging now of one, now of another, some necessary concession; to him in turn there flows a mass of people who have come into contact with this affair of the resettlement of the Doukhobors, of enormous importance.

There comes to him an agent from the Hawaiian Islands; he receives Caucasian Doukhobors, then people from among the sympathizers and those wishing to serve them, certain adventurers, the Chuchkovs; and all of them he knows how to unite in the service of one common cause.

An important place in this great affair was occupied by monetary help. There was not money enough for the resettlement, and so L. N., for the sake of saving the Doukhobors, resolves to depart from his rule — not to take a fee — and sells his future work.

Here is how he communicates this to Chertkov:

> "Since it has now become clear how much money is still lacking for the resettlement of the Doukhobors, I am thinking of doing the following:
>
> I have unfinished tales — *Resurrection* and others. Of late I have been occupied with them. So I should like to sell them on the most advantageous terms to the English or American newspapers, and to use the proceeds for the resettlement of the Doukhobors. These tales are written in my old manner, which I now do not approve. If I am to correct them until I remain satisfied, I shall never finish. But having bound myself to give them to a publisher, I shall be obliged to bring them out *tels quels*. So it happened to me with the tale *The Cossacks*: I kept not finishing it; but then I lost money at cards, and to pay it handed it over to the editorial office of a journal. Now, however, the occasion is far more lawful. And the tales themselves, even if they do not satisfy my present demands of art — not being generally accessible in form — are yet, in their content, not harmful, and may even be of use to people. And therefore I think it would be well, having sold them as dearly as possible, to print them now, without waiting for my death, and to hand over the money to the committee for the resettlement of the Doukhobors."

Not hoping to raise enough by this, he turned in writing to a whole series of persons, asking them to render monetary help for the resettlement of the Doukhobors. Of such letters he wrote about 20. Here, by way of example, is one of them:

> "Dear Sir, Alexander Nikolaevich! I turn to you with a request for monetary help for the Caucasian Doukhobors. These people, as you probably know, strove to fulfil in their very life the teaching of Christ, which they follow; they could not perform the military service required of them by the government, and for this were subjected to a persecution which, owing to the coarseness of the Caucasian administration, reached a frightful cruelty. Those who refused were tortured, locked up in prisons, exiled to the worst places of Siberia, where even now hundreds of the best people are suffering; their settlements were ruined, whole families were sent out from their dwellings into Tatar villages. Worn out by all this, the Doukhobors asked for permission to go abroad; they were permitted; but in recent years they have been so ruined that they have no means for the journey to Canada, where lands are being offered them. Of all those emigrating there are about 7,000 persons. For the journey by sea and by railway they need at least 100 rubles a head, and they, having sold all their property (the greater part is already sold), will gather not more than 300 thousand. It is true there are good people in England and in Russia who have donated and are donating, but still very much is lacking.
>
> A public subscription for this purpose is not permitted, and therefore we have resolved to ask rich and good people to help in this affair. And so I turn to you, asking you to give as much as you shall find possible for this unquestionably good cause.
>
> Please, answer me at Tula, and by registered letter.
> Respectfully yours, Lev Tolstoy."

And a considerable quantity of donations accumulated, which made it possible to convey successfully to Canada all who wished to emigrate.

Having once resolved to finish the new novel *Resurrection* — having found a justification for his artistic work, to which the desire that seemed to him sinful had so often drawn him — L. N. gives himself up to this work with all passion.

In autumn he writes to Chertkov:

> "I do not know whether it is good or bad — I am very intently occupied with *Resurrection*. I hope to express much that is important. That is why I am so carried away. It seems to me sometimes that in *Resurrection* there will be much that is good, that is needed, and sometimes — that I am giving myself over to my passion.
>
> I am now decidedly unable to occupy myself with anything else but *Resurrection*. As a cannon-ball approaches the earth ever faster and faster, so it is now with me, when the end is almost reached: I can think of nothing — no, I can — I can, and even do think — but I do not wish to think of anything else but this."

By autumn L. N.'s work had advanced so far that in September he read *Resurrection* aloud to the guests gathered at his house.

Marya Lvovna wrote to me on 18 September:

> "...Stakhovich was staying with us. While he was here, Papa read *Resurrection* aloud, and this was for us a great event."

At last, in October, L. N. found it possible already to conclude an agreement with the publisher of *Niva*, A. Marx, for the printing of *Resurrection* in his journal.

We give here the text of this agreement:

> "To Adolf Fyodorovich Marx.
>
> I grant the editorial office of *Niva* the right of first printing of my tale *Resurrection*. The editorial office of *Niva* pays me one thousand rubles for each printed sheet of 35,000 letters.
>
> Twelve thousand rubles the editorial office issues to me now. If the tale shall be longer than twelve sheets, then the editorial office pays what shall be due over and above the 12,000; if, however, the tale shall be less than twelve printed sheets, then I shall either return the money, or give another artistic work.
> Lev Tolstoy."

12 October 1898.

The printing of the novel itself was to begin from March of the following year, simultaneously in all the chief European languages. This was carried out, and gave L. N. no little trouble.

We must turn back a little, in order to mention an event of this year worthy of attention.

On 28 August of this year, 1898, L. N. completed his 70th year.

To the wise Russian administration it seemed exceedingly dangerous not only to celebrate, but even to talk and to discourse about this "terrible" event; and so there appears a secret circular to all the organs of the press, with a prohibition against saying or printing anything about the impending seventieth-anniversary jubilee of Leo Tolstoy.

This comical circular, of course, laid "a guard upon the lips" of the press, and about the jubilee nothing was printed. Only considerably later did there appear several small articles.

The whole autumn L. N. was occupied with the resettlement of the Doukhobors and with the writing of *Resurrection*. At this same time there came out, in Chertkov's edition, a new work of L. N.'s, *The Christian Teaching*, the content of which has already been conveyed by us in one of the preceding chapters.

A few extracts from L. N.'s letters to Sofya Andreyevna give a notion of the character of L. N.'s life at this time. His family had, as usual, moved to Moscow, while he remained at Yasnaya Polyana with his eldest daughter. How much he prized this solitary life at Yasnaya Polyana, and how hard it was for him to move to the city, may be seen from the following conclusion of his letter to Sofya Andreyevna:

> "You ascribe, probably, a wrong significance to my answer to Andryusha, to the question: do I wish to go to Moscow? How can one wish to go to a place where it is worse? If I go, it is because you are there, and I wish to be with you. But the place is worse — both by its unquietness, and by the absence of nature, and by all that in which the country is better than the town. Farewell, till we meet. I kiss you."

At this time S. A. was disturbed by an event which, of course, having passed through the telephone of gossip, had grown into something huge and frightful: in Petersburg it was said that L. N., having met a religious procession, had spoken of it disapprovingly, and that the peasants had done something unpleasant to L. N. S. A. writes to L. N. about this, asking what had happened, and he answers her thus:

> "The event consists in this: that I, having come upon an icon, drove round it by the fields, but at the station again met the superintendent, who was going to meet it. I told him that I do not advise giving oneself up to idolatry and deception. To the peasants, unfortunately, I had this time no occasion to say anything. The peasants, too, except for kindly greetings, said nothing to me. I am astonished that you can take an interest in such trifles. For 20 years, by word and by print and by every means, I have conveyed my attitude toward deception and my love of the truth, and I even wrote to the Minister that, considering this my duty, I shall do it as long as I live. How can you, then, be interested by so insignificant an occurrence? What fool frightened you? And what concern is it of ours, what they say in Petersburg or in Kazan? I kiss you."

And here is a specimen of L. N.'s reading at that time. He writes, among other things, to S. A.:

> "I am reading Crosby's excellent book *On Buddhism*.
>
> Life and death are one and the same. Life is a constant change; death is also only a change.
>
> Luxury, effeminacy hinder the soul from understanding itself. So too does asceticism hinder it, the tormenting of one's own body. In both cases the man thinks about the body. But one must forget about it. An excellent book."

To illustrate *Resurrection*, as is well known, was entrusted to the artist L. O. Pasternak; he was therefore often at Yasnaya Polyana, consulting with L. N. about his drawings. L. N. writes of this to S. A.:

> "I am writing today to Marx, to put off the printing until March. This is needful both to me, and to Pasternak, and to the publishers abroad. Yesterday I received the rest of the proofs, up to and including the 40th chapter. Pasternak's sketches are excellent."

At last, at the beginning of December, Lev Nikolaevich moved to Moscow. But on 20 December the whole family went for the holidays to Yasnaya Polyana, where they lived until 10 January, and then, again as a whole family, returned to Moscow.

In the affair of the Doukhobor resettlement there were occurring at this time certain complications, which L. N. endeavoured to soften and to clear up by his gentle participation and influence. This may be observed from the following letter to Maude, the translator of his works into English, who took a large part in the fate of the Doukhobors. Here is what he wrote to him on 12 December.

The first half of the letter treats of a certain American journal and of the circle of people who grouped themselves about this organ and shared L. N.'s views on life. The second half of the letter is devoted precisely to this question of the Doukhobors. Here is this letter:

> "I have just received your second letter from the steamer, in which you write to me about Howells and others. Howells is particularly congenial to me, by all that I know of him. What do you know and think about the *Christian Commonwealth*? This society interests me very much. The longer I live, the more I am convinced that our excessive intellectual development hinders us greatly in the business of life. My son once asked a peasant why he had not gone to live with a neighbouring landowner. The peasant answered: one cannot live with him. Why? Too clever. And I think that the majority of our failures come from our being too clever. How simply and easily the Doukhobors attain what to us, with our intellect and learning, seems unattainable. I fear that in this will consist, in the Commonwealth too, an obstacle to the attainment of their goal. In the last number I read a discussion to the effect that patriotism may be good. This is sad. Ch. writes that he does not wish and cannot any longer occupy himself with the affairs of the Doukhobors — a part of which consists in the publication and sale of the translations of my tale — and, as far as I understand, he is leaving for Canada, and therefore involuntarily we all rest our hope upon you. Ashamed as we are to ask you, after you have only just completed your labour for the common cause, to take upon yourself a new labour, we cannot but do so. If you consent, then I shall try to spare you, so far as I can, any superfluous labour, in the measure that this is possible for me here. It seems that now the most difficult part has been passed, and the road will go downhill.
>
> So then, dear friend, please do not refuse to help us, and answer the more quickly, in order to set us at rest."

Apparently Maude did not agree to take this affair into his own hands, for a month later L. N. writes to him again:

> "I have received three letters from you. I very much regret your refusal to take part in the affair of the printing of the translation of *Resurrection*, though I understand the motives of your refusal. In this whole affair there is something indefinite, unclear, and, as it were, inconsistent with the principles we profess. Sometimes — in bad moments — it affects me too in the same way, and I wish as quickly as possible to *get rid of it*; but when I am in a good, serious frame of mind, I even rejoice in all the unpleasantness that is bound up with this affair. I know that my motives were, if not good, then the most innocent, and therefore, if in the eyes of men I shall appear on this account inconsistent, or something even worse, this is only useful to me, accustoming me to act independently of human judgments, only in accordance with the demands of conscience. Such an occasion must be valued. They are rare and very useful."

Happily for the cause, these misunderstandings were smoothed over, and both Maude and Chertkov continued to take an active part in the common cause of the resettlement of the Doukhobors, and brought it to a happy conclusion.

The whole year 1899 the printing of the novel *Resurrection* went on. We deem it not superfluous to recount briefly its history, to which the following chapter will be devoted.