Resurrection — Censorship Variants Analysis

Source: v32_471_505_Tsenzurnye_varianty.txt — “Воскресение. Цензурные варианты” (PSS vol. 32, pp. 471–505, 1936 Jubilee Edition).

The variants file records every reading where the «Нива» journal text (A. F. Marks, 1899) departs from the full text of the novel, due to Russian censorship. Comparison text: the novel itself, v32_003_445_Voskresenie.txt. The communion/church-service scene is chs XXXIX–XL, novel lines ~2355–2388.

All Russian below is copied verbatim from the extract files (no normalisation, no re-wrapping). Line numbers cite v32_471_505_Tsenzurnye_varianty.txt unless stated. Translations are labelled “(working English)” and are mine, not the source’s.

1. How the variants file is organised, and how it keys to the novel

The file is keyed to the novel by part → chapter → page → line(s) of the PSS vol. 32 text. Each entry takes one of three forms (per the editorial preface, lines 5–11):

• Вместо: X — в Н.: Y — the novel reads X; «Нива» substituted Y (a softening/replacement).
• Слов: X — в Н. нет. — the words X are absent in «Нива» (an excision).
• и у Ч. added means the cut also persisted in Chertkov’s «Свободное слово» editions abroad.
• A leading * (asterisk) marks cuts present in ALL editions including Chertkov’s, first restored only in this 1936 edition (line 7).

The header note (lines 7–11) also states that the separate Marks book editions match the «Нива» text in respect of censorship variants, except one case in the last chapter of Part III.

2. Overall pattern of what was cut or softened

Counting entries across the whole file, the censored material clusters into a few recurring targets:

• Sexual / prostitution content — by far the most frequent single category. The recurring move is lexical sanitising: проститутка → девушка/падшая женщина/падшая девушка; дом терпимости / публичный дом → у нее/гостиница/dropped; соблазнил (“seduced”) → обманул/увлек (“deceived”/”led astray”); половое/животную (“sexual”/”animal”) dropped before чувство/страсть/любовь. The entire account of Maslova’s fall into legalised prostitution (Part I ch. II, lines 31–107) is gutted, including Tolstoy’s framing of it as state-licensed “постоянное прелюбодеяние” (“permanent adultery”) (lines 69–71).
• Anti-state / anti-monarchy material — государь, императрица, царская фамилия, коронованные особы, the prayers for the imperial family, the secret-police (шпионами, сыщик, 3-ем отделении), народоволец/revolutionary identifications (Part III repeatedly turns революционер → политический/деятель/девушка). Page after page of Part II’s bureaucratic-cruelty critique (chs XV–XIX, XXIV) is removed.
• Prison-and-justice critique — the indictment of courts, governors, floggings (секли людей, line 797), and the Nekhlyudov passages arguing the whole penal system is itself crime (Part I chs XIII, XXXIV, lines 281–283, 543–557; Part III ch. XIX, lines 1913–1915).
• Church / liturgy / religion — the priest-and-icon-kissing of ch. VIII (lines 167–177), the sectarians (chs XI, XXX, XXXVII of Part II), the Gospel-reading finale of the whole novel (Part III ch. XXVIII, lines 2015–2021), and — most heavily of all — the communion scene itself (see §3).

The single largest excision recorded is the near-total deletion of the communion chapters (item below); other large blocks are Part II ch. XXVI–XXVII (lines 1349–1355, most of one chapter plus all of another) and Part III ch. XIX (lines 1913–1915).

3. The communion / church-service scene (Part I chs XXXIX–XL)

This is the decisive finding. The variants file does not list the communion satire phrase-by-phrase the way it lists other chapters. Instead it records a single global note (line 589) stating that the «Нива» censor removed essentially the entire two chapters — chs XXXIX and XL — leaving only their first sentence.

Variant passage — the communion chapters cut wholesale (line 589)

Verbatim from the variants file:

От главы XXXIX I части в Н. сохранилась только первая фраза: Началось богослужение., присоединенная к главе XXXVIII. Глава XL в Н. выпущена целиком. В связи с этим общее количество глав в первой части романа в Н. уменьшено на две.

(working English) “Of chapter XXXIX of Part I, only the first sentence survived in «Нива»: ‘The church service began.’, appended to chapter XXXVIII. Chapter XL was dropped entirely. As a result the total number of chapters in Part I of the novel in «Нива» is reduced by two.”

This single note governs the whole satirical core. In the novel (v32_003_445_Voskresenie.txt): - ch. XXXIX (lines 2355–2375) is the satirical description of the liturgy: the priest “вырезывал и раскладывал кусочки хлеба” (cut and laid out little pieces of bread), the Eucharist described in flat anthropological terms as the supposed transformation of bread and wine “в тело и кровь Бога” (“into the body and blood of God”), the priest waving a napkin over “блюдцем и золотой чашей,” the children fed “тела и крови Бога,” the priest sucking his moustache and draining the chalice. - ch. XL (lines 2377–2387) is the explicit polemic: that everything done here was “величайшим кощунством и насмешкой над тем самым Христом” (the greatest blasphemy and mockery of the very Christ in whose name it was done), that the gilded cross is “изображение той виселицы, на которой был казнен Христос” (an image of the gallows on which Christ was executed).

The censor cut both chapters down to the four words Началось богослужение. (“The church service began.”). The narrative simply jumps from the prisoners assembling to ch. XLI (Nekhlyudov leaving home). The satire is not softened or paraphrased — it is removed in full.

Verbatim survival point (novel line 2357)

The one sentence the censor allowed through, byte-exact from v32_003_445_Voskresenie.txt line 2357:

Началось богослужение.

(working English) “The church service began.”

Adjacent religious cuts that frame the communion scene

The two chapters either side of the communion scene were also touched, confirming the church material was a censor focus, not an isolated cut:

• Line 577–579 (Part I ch. XXXVII, immediately before): Слов: насладившись ею и — в Н. и у Ч. нет. — (working English) “The words: ‘having taken his pleasure of her and’ — absent in «Нива» and in Chertkov.”
• The earlier priest-oath scene, Part I ch. VIII, lines 167–177: Слов: Священник этот кончая: десять тысяч рублей. — в Н. нет. and Вместо: в насаленную дыру епитрахили — в Н.: в эпитрахиль — (working English) “Instead of: ‘into the greasy hole of the stole’ — in «Нива»: ‘into the stole’.” This is the same satirical register (the physical, debunking detail of clerical ritual) that the communion scene amplifies.

4. How heavily was the communion satire censored — bearing on the excommunication hypothesis

Plainly, on the evidence of line 589: the communion satire was the most heavily censored passage in the entire novel. Where the censor elsewhere worked by substitution or by cutting sentences and paragraphs, here it deleted two whole chapters — every word of the satirical liturgy description (ch. XXXIX) and every word of the explicit anti-Church polemic (ch. XL) — preserving only a four-word opening sentence and renumbering the part’s chapters to hide the gap. The note records this as the only place in Part I where chapters were dropped outright and the chapter count changed.

This is direct evidence relevant to the hypothesis (tested elsewhere in this dive) that the communion chapter was the proximate trigger of Tolstoy’s February 1901 excommunication: the imperial censor — institutionally aligned with the Synod — singled out exactly this passage for the most severe treatment available to it (total suppression), more severe than its treatment of the anti-monarchy or anti-prison material. The censor’s own behaviour identifies the communion satire as the text’s most dangerous point from an ecclesiastical-state standpoint. Note the limit of this evidence: the variants file establishes the censor’s priority, not the Synod’s deliberations; it shows what the 1899 censor judged most intolerable, which is consistent with — but does not by itself prove — that the same passage drove the 1901 Synod act. Interpretation attributed to this dive’s hypothesis, not to the PSS editors.

A second, corroborating point: the cut survived even in Chertkov’s nominally-uncensored «Свободное слово» editions abroad only in part — line 589 carries no и у Ч. marker and no asterisk, meaning the full chapters XXXIX–XL were restored by Chertkov and were absent only from the Russian «Нива»/Marks line. So the suppression was specifically a Russian-domestic, censor-and-Synod-facing act.