---
id: vladimir-chertkov
recordStatus: draft
liveStatus: enriches-live
type: person
title: Vladimir Chertkov
titleEn: Vladimir Chertkov
description: "Editor and publisher who proposed the 1905 cuts to The Great Sin and co-translated it into English."
---

<!-- ENRICHES-LIVE: additions only, to be merged into the live page website/src/wiki/Vladimir Chertkov.md — not a duplicate; the live page's biography and frontmatter stand. Frontmatter deltas at merge: add `the-great-sin` to relatedWorks (role: editor) and to worksTranslated; add `isabella-fyvie-mayo` to relatedArticles. -->

## The Great Sin (1905)

The <abbr title="Полное собрание сочинений — the 90-volume Jubilee edition of the complete works">PSS</abbr> apparatus records his part in [[The Great Sin]]: the cuts, a separately printed introduction, the Free Word (<span lang="ru">Свободное слово</span>) edition, and the English translation.

### The cuts

He came to Yasnaya Polyana from England on 24 May 1905 and proposed a series of cuts in the essay.[^1] They were accepted; two whole chapters came out.[^2] The diary, 6 June: "I shortened The Great Sin, threw out much. I regret it."[^3] The cut material is printed in the PSS as variants.

### A Necessary Revolution

The first version of the introduction, set in proof for the Free Word press and then replaced, was printed in the paper *Svobodnoe slovo*, No. 17–18, under the title *A Necessary Revolution*.[^4] One paragraph of it was moved out of the introduction and printed after it with an editorial note.[^5] The paragraph says that the life of a people is formed "not as a result of external forms which may be imposed on it by external influences, but by the inner activity of individual persons".[^6]

His reason, given in a letter of 8 July 1905 (new style) and reported in the PSS commentary: the paragraph stands in contradiction with everything before it, where the need for an outward change in the forms of land use is asserted.[^7] In the same printing he changed "all these phenomena arise from the fundamental, chief evil" to "are connected with" it, because the evil of landed property itself arises from a still more basic evil, human egoism.[^8]

### Publication

The Free Word press printed the essay abroad as No. 98, as *The Great Sin* with the subtitle *On Landed Property*.[^9] The other 1905 printings were the July issue of [[Russkaya Mysl]] and a Posrednik brochure.[^10]

### The English translation

With [[Isabella Fyvie Mayo]] he made the 1905 English translation, *A Great Iniquity*, printed in *The Times* (London) and as a Free Age Press pamphlet.[^11] The title, with "a" for "the" and "iniquity" for "sin", and a translator's footnote on the conditional endorsement in chapter IX belong to that edition. Who chose the English title is open (see [[Isabella Fyvie Mayo]]).

## Open questions

- Who chose the English title *A Great Iniquity*.
- *The Times* date: the dive's work record gives 1 August 1905; the PSS commentary says July.
- His own words on the cuts: the dive has his 8 July letter only as the PSS commentary reports it (archive АТБ), not the letter itself.

## Dive provenance

- [1905-the-great-sin](../works/non-fiction/essays-and-criticism/1905-the-great-sin/index.md) (2026-06-30) — the cuts and the diary's regret (E19, E26); the separated paragraph and the recorded reason (E15, E28); the Free Word publication (E20); the *A Great Iniquity* co-translation. Written as an enriches-live addition in the entity steer, 2026-08-12; converted to the footnote style 2026-10-02, and the *A Necessary Revolution* account corrected to the PSS commentary (the title belongs to the whole first introduction, not the one paragraph).

[^1]: <span lang="ru">«приехал из Англии Чертков, который предложил Толстому сделать в статье ряд сокращений»</span> (PSS 36:656). English: ours.

[^2]: <span lang="ru">«После исключения двух глав статья оказалась поделенной на девять глав»</span> (PSS 36, commentary). English: ours.

[^3]: <span lang="ru">«Сократил Великий Грех, выбросил многое. Мне жалко»</span> (PSS 55:144–146, diary, 6 June 1905). English: ours.

[^4]: <span lang="ru">«Необходимый переворот. Из неизданных писаний Л. Н. Толстого»</span> (PSS 36:665). The PSS prints this introduction among the variants as No. 15 (PSS 36, variants).

[^5]: <span lang="ru">«он выделен из вступления и напечатан после него с редакторским пояснением»</span> (PSS 36:665). English: ours.

[^6]: <span lang="ru">«жизнь народа слагается не вследствие внешних форм, которые могут быть наложены на него внешними влияниями, а внутренней деятельностью отдельных личностей»</span> (PSS 36:474). English: ours.

[^7]: <span lang="ru">«абзац этот, утверждающий независимость жизни народа от внешних форм, стоит в противоречии со всем предыдущим, где утверждается необходимость внешнего изменения форм пользования землей»</span> (PSS 36:665). English: ours.

[^8]: <span lang="ru">«все эти явления происходят от основного, главного зла»</span> → <span lang="ru">«все эти явления связаны с основным, главным злом»</span> (PSS 36:473, 665); his reason: <span lang="ru">«в этом случае слишком сильно сказано, так как само зло земельной собственности происходит от еще гораздо более основного зла: человеческого эгоизма»</span> (PSS 36:665). English: ours.

[^9]: No. 98; title <span lang="ru">«Великий грех»</span>, subtitle <span lang="ru">«О земельной собственности»</span> (PSS 36:664).

[^10]: PSS 36:664.

[^11]: *A Great Iniquity*, tr. V. Chertkov and I. F. Mayo (1905).