Wiki

American minister (1803–1890) who preached non-resistance for fifty years; the preface Tolstoy began to his Catechism of Non-Resistance grew into The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1890–93).

Poet and neighbour, one of the correspondents of the years in which A Confession (1879–82) was written.

Physician who was present on 20 April 1905 when a peasant reproached Tolstoy for buying land, as The Great Sin was begun.

Tolstoy's cousin, a lady-in-waiting at the court and an Orthodox believer, to whom he wrote about his new faith in the years of A Confession (1879–82); not his daughter Alexandra.

German philosopher (1788–1860), named thirteen times in A Confession (1879–82).

The founder of Buddhism, called Sakya Muni in A Confession (1879–82), where his story is told and his answer to the question of life quoted.

Resident physician and diarist at Yasnaya Polyana, whose Yasnaya Polyana Notes date the writing of The Great Sin (1905).

Italian revolutionary and writer, quoted at the opening of chapter VIII of The Great Sin (1905).

American political economist, author of Progress and Poverty (1879), quoted at length in The Great Sin (1905).

German philosopher (1724–1804), named in A Confession (1879–82) as having shown that God's existence cannot be proved.

Co-translator, with Vladimir Chertkov, of the 1905 English edition of The Great Sin, published as A Great Iniquity.

Church Father and Archbishop of Constantinople (c. 347–407), whose sermons Tolstoy read in the Prologue in the years of A Confession (1879–82).

Daughter who copied the final text of The Great Sin (1905) for Russkaya Mysl.

Russian émigré publisher in Geneva who brought out the first separate edition of A Confession in 1884.

A young correspondent to whom a long letter of the winter of 1882–83 set out the new teaching of non-violence and the five commandments.

Moscow librarian and philosopher whom Tolstoy came to know in the autumn of 1881, an early reader of his gospel work.

Philosopher and critic; Tolstoy's chief correspondent on religion and on his work in progress while A Confession (1879–82) took shape.

French philosopher and mathematician (1596–1650), named in A Confession (1879–82) for knowledge that begins with complete doubt.

Russian translator of Henry George, whose 1904 edition supplied the George quotations in The Great Sin (1905).

Ancient Greek philosopher of Athens (469–399 BC), quoted in A Confession (1879–82) from Plato's Phaedo.

King of Israel in the Bible, to whom church tradition ascribes the Book of Ecclesiastes; quoted and named eighteen times in A Confession (1879–82).

Tutor to the Tolstoy children and an early sharer of the new faith; recipient of a November 1881 letter about the first hard months in Moscow.

A peasant of Torzhok whom Tolstoy visited in 1881, while A Confession was being written, and named as a Christian in deed.

Editor and publisher who proposed the 1905 cuts to The Great Sin and co-translated it into English.

American abolitionist (1805–1879) whose 1838 Declaration of Sentiments opens chapter I of The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1890–93).

The monastery Tolstoy visited in the summer of 1881, as A Confession neared its finished form, and where an aunt of his childhood died.

The steppe province of A Confession (1879–82): the 1862 kumys stay with the Bashkirs, the estate behind the question “six thousand desyatinas in Samara province, three hundred head of horses — and then?” («6000 десятин в Самарской губернии, 300 голов лошадей, а потом?..»), and the Molokans of a draft.

The guillotine execution Tolstoy watched in Paris on 6 April 1857 (25 March OS); in A Confession (ch. III) it is the moment that showed him the shakiness of his “superstition of progress” («шаткость моего суеверия прогресса»).

A senior title among the monastic clergy of the Orthodox Church, usually held by the head of a large monastery. In A Confession (1879–82), among the clergy Tolstoy went to with his questions.

The Orthodox collection of saints' lives arranged for reading through the year; with the Prologue, Tolstoy's favourite reading in the years of A Confession (1879–82).

In A Confession (1879–82), the second of the four ways out: knowing life is hopeless, to enjoy what good things one has. The word recurs five times in the book.

The two rows of knowledge in A Confession (1879–82), ch. V–VI: experimental knowledge («знаний опытных»), with mathematics at the extreme, and speculative knowledge («знаний умозрительных»), with metaphysics at the extreme, and the half-sciences («полунауки») beside them; none answers the question of life.

Private ownership of land, which The Great Sin (1905) names a great sin: the surviving form of slavery, and a religious question rather than an economic one.

The governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose spiritual censorship kept A Confession out of print in Russia in 1882 and 1886.

The Moscow monthly journal that set A Confession in type for its May 1882 issue; the spiritual censorship stopped it and the printed sheets were cut out and sent for destruction.

The Christian society whose letters and books were among the first answers to What I Believe, and which opens chapter I of The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1890–93).