Russkaya Mysl

Русская мысль (Russian Thought) was the journal that first tried to print A Confession. Its editor, S. A. Yuryev, accepted the work in April 1882, and it was set in type for the May issue. The spiritual censorship would not pass it, and the printed pages were cut from the issue and sent for destruction. The first separate edition came out abroad in 1884, from Mikhail Elpidin in Geneva.¹

The editor and the typesetting

Sergei Andreevich Yuryev was an old acquaintance of Tolstoy’s. Tolstoy read the new work aloud to him, probably in the first days of April 1882 (old style). The next day Yuryev wrote that what he had heard “left an indelible, strong impression in my soul and a wish to try whether it can be printed in my journal”.² Tolstoy agreed, and early in April the work went to the typesetter.

Tolstoy read the proofs in Moscow. Sophia Tolstaya wrote on 2 May that he was staying there with the boys because he was printing his article in the journal and reading proofs.³ Three of his galley proofs survive; he reworked the text heavily in them and wrote a new ending. The reading of proofs was finished by 16 May.⁴

Censorship

The editors added a three-page introduction and five footnotes “in the spirit of church teaching” to passages in chapters XIII–XV.⁵ The article still had to go to the spiritual censorship, which marked passages to be softened. On 24 May Tolstoy wrote to his wife: “I saw Yuryev. He asked me to soften some passages marked by the spiritual censorship.” He would try, “where the meaning does not suffer from it”, and then it was up to them to stop the issue or let it through.⁶

The May issue was held for a long time without an answer, and the journal had to bring out its June issue first. In July the spiritual censorship forbade the article. According to N. N. Bakhmetev, then the journal’s secretary, the pages were cut out under the eye of the inspector of printing houses, sealed, and sent to the Main Press Administration for destruction. Proof copies stayed in the editorial office and with Bakhmetev, and hand-made copies taken from them spread across Russia. He gave the journal’s print run then as three thousand copies.⁷ In September 1883 Nikolai Strakhov described the work as one “which was being printed in Russkaya Mysl and burned”.⁸

The text the journal set carried the censor’s softenings, made with Tolstoy’s consent. The Jubilee edition prints A Confession from the journal’s text, with the softenings removed by comparison with Elpidin’s edition.⁹

Later

In 1884 the journal printed substantial excerpts from A Confession inside M. S. Gromeka’s article on Tolstoy’s latest works, without the most anti-church passages.¹⁰

Open questions

• A letter sweep of PSS 63 links Yuryev to the journal until early 1885 and mentions a ban on a later Russkaya Mysl issue (1884–85). The dossier judges those letters most likely about What I Believe, not A Confession; they are left out here until read in full.¹¹
• Yuryev’s undated letter of acceptance is known only through the PSS commentary.

Dive provenance

• 1879-1882-a-confession — the publication and censorship history, 2026-10-02; PSS 23 commentary (Savodnik), which quotes Yuryev, Tolstoy’s letters and Bakhmetev’s account.