Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov (Николай Фёдорович Фёдоров), also written Fedorov, was the librarian of the Rumyantsev Library in Moscow. In the sources of the A Confession dive he appears in the autumn of 1881, after the family’s move to Moscow, as one of the people Tolstoy found there, and as a reader of his gospel work, the Краткое изложение Евангелия (Short Exposition of the Gospel).
In the diary and letters of 1881
On 5 October 1881 (OS) the diary, resumed after the move, gives him a few words: “Nikolai Fyodorovich is a saint. A little room. To fulfil! That goes without saying. He wants no salary. No linen, no bed.”1
In a letter to Vasily Alekseev of 15–30 November 1881 (OS) Tolstoy writes that in Moscow God had let him come close to two people, the teacher Orlov and, “the main one”, Fyodorov, “the librarian of the Rumyantsev Library”.2 He describes Fyodorov’s plan of “the common task of all mankind”, aimed at the resurrection of all people in the flesh, and adds that he does not share these views and never has.3 What he stresses is the life: “thanks to this belief he is, in his life, the purest Christian”; he is sixty, poor, gives everything away, and is “always cheerful and meek”.4 The same letter reports that Orlov and Fyodorov had read the Short Exposition, “and we are of one mind”.5 It also names the peasant Vasily Sutaev, visited in the same weeks.
The PSS commentary on A Confession dates the finished text to early July 1881 and connects it with the preface Tolstoy then wrote for the Short Exposition; that preface describes a larger work in four parts, the first an account of “the course of my personal life and thoughts” that led to Christianity.6 The sources do not say whether Fyodorov read A Confession itself.
The Rumyantsev Library
The Rumyantsev Museum, with its public library, was in Moscow; Tolstoy’s letter calls it the Румянцовская библиотека.2 The dive’s picture notes place the museum and library in the Pashkov House on Mokhovaya Street from 1862 to 1924, and say Tolstoy used its reading room and met Fyodorov there; these notes give no primary source.7
Open questions
- When and where Tolstoy first met him. The letter’s “remember, I told you” points to an earlier conversation with Alekseev; the dive’s picture notes say “the late 1870s”, without a source.
- The letter gives his age as sixty; the 1829 birth year in the image notes would make him about fifty-two in 1881. Check against a biographical source.
- Whether he read A Confession, or only the Short Exposition.
Dive provenance
- 1879-1882-a-confession — the diary entry of 5 October 1881 (PSS 49:58), the letter to V. I. Alekseev (PSS 63:80–83), the PSS 23 commentary and the visuals sweep’s notes on the Rumyantsev Museum; 2026-10-02.
-
«Николай Федорыч — святой. Каморка. Исполнять! — Это само собой разумеется. — Не хочет жалованья. Нет белья, нет постели.» (PSS 49:58, diary, 5 October 1881). English: ours. ↩
-
«Есть и здесь люди. И мне дал Бог сойтись с двумя. Орлов … один, другой и главный Николай Федорович Федоров … Это библиотекарь Румянцовской библиотеки. Помните я вам рассказывал.» (PSS 63:80–83, letter to V. I. Alekseev, 15–30 November 1881). English: ours. ↩↩
-
«Он составил план общего дела всего человечества, имеющего целью воскрешение всех людей во плоти.»; «я не разделяю и не разделял никогда его взглядов» (PSS 63:80–83, letter to V. I. Alekseev, 15–30 November 1881). English: ours. ↩
-
«благодаря этому верованию он по жизни самый чистый христианин»; «Ему 60 лет, он нищий и все отдает, всегда весел и кроток.» (PSS 63:80–83, letter to V. I. Alekseev, 15–30 November 1881). English: ours. ↩
-
«Книгу мою — Краткое изложение … читали и Орлов, и Федоров и мы единомышленны.» (PSS 63:80–83, letter to V. I. Alekseev, 15–30 November 1881). English: ours. ↩
-
«изложение того хода моей личной жизни и моих мыслей, который привел меня к убеждению в том, что в христианском учении находится истина» (PSS 23, commentary, quoting the preface to the Short Exposition). English: ours. ↩
-
Secondary: the dive’s visuals notes (
extracts/_visuals_consolidated.html, image entries for the Pashkov House and the 1881 interior of the museum). Not from the PSS. ↩