Genesis & Composition — PSS editorial commentary on *Resurrection*

Source: N. V. Gorbachev (Н. В. Горбачев), «История писания и печатания “Воскресения”» (History of the writing and printing of Resurrection), in Л. Н. Толстой, Полное собрание сочинений (Jubilee / Юбилейное издание), vol. 33, Moscow: Гослитиздат, 1935, pp. 329–422.

Status: SECONDARY / SCHOLARLY. This is editorial commentary by the Jubilee Edition editors, not Tolstoy’s own words. It is authoritative on dates and manuscript facts; attribute it (“the PSS editors note…”) and do not put its phrasing into Tolstoy’s mouth. Tolstoy’s own diary/letter words are quoted inside the commentary and are tagged below as such. The extract file tags PSS page numbers only sporadically (the # bibl line gives “С.” with no page run), so most locations below are given by line number in the extract v33_329_422_Istorija_pisanija.txt; treat these as “PSS Tom 33, pp. 329–422, § at extract line N.”

1. THE SEED — the «Коневская повесть» (the Koni story)

• The story came from A. F. Koni (Анатолий Фёдорович Кони), jurist, who was a guest at Yasnaya Polyana in June 1887 (extract line 5). The PSS editors call the resulting work the «Коневский рассказ» / «Коневская повесть» (the “Koni story / Koni tale”), Tolstoy’s working title for years.
• The story (the real “Rozalia Oni” case): When Koni was prosecutor of the St Petersburg district court, a young aristocrat came to him over a refused letter to a prisoner, Rozalia Oni (Розалия Они). Rozalia was the daughter of a widowed Finnish (chukhonets) estate-tenant; on his deathbed he asked the wealthy estate-owner (a St Petersburg lady) to care for the girl. Taken in, then demoted to the servants’ quarters, at sixteen she was seduced by a relative of the mistress (a young man just out of a privileged college — the same man who later came to Koni). Pregnant and thrown out, she gave the child to a foundling home and sank “little by little into a prostitute of the lowest order.” Tried by jury for stealing 100 roubles from a drunken client near the Sennaya, she got four months; her seducer was by chance one of the jurors. Recognising her, his conscience stirred, he resolved to marry her and asked Koni to hasten the wedding. Rozalia caught typhus (сыпной тиф) and died at the end of Lent (line 5).
• Koni was meant to write it himself first. Tolstoy, hearing it “with great attention,” next morning said the events should be told in chronological order and advised Koni to work the story up for «Посредник» (Posrednik / The Intermediary), in whose publishing Tolstoy was then active (line 7).
• Tolstoy to P. I. Biryukov (Бирюков), end of December 1887 (Tolstoy’s words): «Он очень любезный человек и обещал рассказ в “Посредник”, от которого я жду много, потому что сюжет прекрасный, и он очень даровит» (line 7).
  • (working English) “He is a very obliging man and has promised a story for Posrednik, from which I expect much, because the subject is splendid, and he is very talented.”
• May 1888: still unsettled who would write it. Koni to Tolstoy, 14 May 1888, apologising he has “not yet fulfilled my promise to write the history of poor Rozalia Oni and her seducer” (line 9).
• Tolstoy to Biryukov, 12 April 1888 (Tolstoy’s words): asks whether Koni has begun “and if not, will he give me the theme of this story. Very good and needed” (line 9).
• Tolstoy to his wife, 9 May 1888: «Прелестный сюжет… хочется написать» (“A charming subject… I want to write it”), line 9.
• Koni ceded the subject (his letter of 1 June 1888): he answers Tolstoy’s (lost) request, urging him not to abandon the idea — “From under your pen this story will pour out in such a form that it will touch the most hardened heart” (line 11).

2. THE GESTATION TIMELINE & the six редакции (redactions)

The PSS editors stress an exceptionally long, broken gestation: ~12 years, December 1889 → December 1899, with the bulk of the work compressed into July 1898 – December 1899.

Early drafts (1889–1891)

• After Koni ceded the subject (June 1888), Tolstoy did not touch it for a year and a half (line 13). Autumn 1889 he offered the subject to V. V. Rakhmanov (Рахманов), who urged him to write it himself (line 13).
• First diary mention Dec 1889 (while finishing the Kreutzer Sonata): “Thoughts of the Koni story come ever more vividly to my head…” (17 Dec) (line 15).
• Work began 26 December 1889 (Tolstoy’s diary): «Неожиданно стал писать Коневскую повесть и, кажется, недурно» — “Unexpectedly began writing the Koni tale, and not badly, it seems.” This date is on the earliest manuscript (ms. No. 1, still untitled) (line 17).
• Worked in fits ~1.5 months; a key plan was sketched in the diary 11 February 1890 (8 numbered points — the church-going, the kiss, Katyusha’s pregnancy, etc.) (line 17). The hero is first Valeryan Yushkin (autobiographical, echoing Tolstoy’s brother Sergei and aunt Yushkova), set in the Crimean (Sevastopol) war, 1854 (lines 19, 23, 29).
• 15 December 1890: “second beginning” — the title «Воскресение» (Resurrection) is fixed here and kept thereafter; the hero is now Nekhlyudov (first-named Arkady, then Dmitri), a prince (line 33).
• Brief resumption 9–10 June 1891 (the “burning-game” / горелки kiss episode dated by diary), then stalled (lines 39, 41).

The long interruption (1891–1895) and the Nikolskoye spurt

• No work 1891 → 1895. Tolstoy occupied with The Kingdom of God Is Within You, famine work, Master and Man, etc. (line 57).
• May 1895 at Nikolskoye-Obolyaninovo (Olsufyev estate) the work moved again; the editors date the light-violet-ink portion of ms. No. 3 to this visit (lines 45, 47). “подмалёвка” (under-painting) of the first draft finished 1 July 1895 (ms. No. 5) (lines 71–73).
• 6–7 August 1895: Tolstoy read the draft aloud at Yasnaya Polyana to Olsufyev, Taneyev (Танеев), Chekhov, and N. N. Strakhov (Страхов) — “and in vain,” he wrote; very dissatisfied, wanted to drop or rework it (lines 83–87). The “happy ending — life in England” was to be destroyed (Taneyev’s diary, line 85).

Numbered redactions (the editors’ six-redaction scheme)

The PSS editors organise the manuscripts into six redactions (редакции): 1. First redaction — finished in draft 1 July 1895 (ms. No. 5); the “под­малёвка” (line 73). 2. Second redaction — the polishing of late 1895 / early 1896, mss. Nos. 6–13; the new opening (now beginning with Maslova, not Nekhlyudov, per diary 5 Nov 1895) (lines 93, 105). Last touched 13 February 1896, then dropped (lines 101, 119). 3. Third redaction — dated by Tolstoy 27–28 August 1898, mss. Nos. 14–18 etc. (line 149). First detailed description of the church service (богослужение) appears here (line 155, see §6). The prison-church liturgy, the godmother episode, the Ragozhinsky brother-in-law all enter here. 4. Fourth redaction — late Aug 1898 → mid-Jan 1899, mss. Nos. 21–26 etc. (line 203). Political prisoners enter for the first time (Marya Pavlovna, Simonson [first “Vilhelmson”], etc.); the Petersburg petitioning chapters and Toporov (= Pobedonostsev) added (lines 203–209). 5. Fifth redaction — formed during proof-correction; corrected proof No. 27 (first 28 chapters fully fixed). Maslova’s acquaintance with the politicals moved to the Siberian road (after Tolstoy’s Jan-1899 talks with Butyrka warder I. M. Vinogradov) (lines 257–259). The execution of Lozinsky and Rozovsky enters here (line 275). 6. Sixth redaction — all subsequent manuscript and proof material; this became the final text. Novel split into three parts; chapter count grew to 129; the third part almost wholly rewritten (six chapters → twenty-eight) (lines 251, 291).

Intensive completion 1898–1899 and the precise finish date

• Work resumed July 1898 (line 119, 129) for the Doukhobor reason (§3).
• Through autumn 1898 Tolstoy worked “не по дням, а по часам” (line 187). By 11 Dec 1898 there were 87 chapters; the epilogue begun 12 Dec (line 195).
• Correction of proofs took a full year and was finished only in December 1899 (PSS editors, line 251): «Работа над корректурами романа заняла у Толстого целый год и была закончена лишь в декабре 1899 г.» — the material was “radically reworked, increased about one-and-a-half times” (line 251).
• Completion date — 18 December 1899 (Tolstoy’s diary): «Кончил “Воскресение”. Нехорошо, не поправлено, поспешно; но отвалилось и не интересует больше» (line 255).
• (working English) “Finished Resurrection. Not good, unpolished, hasty; but it has fallen away and no longer interests me.”
• The last chapters were sent off ~15–17 December 1899 (line 255). (Note: the last five chapters were reworked 16 Dec and did not make the Niva text — see §4.)

3. THE DOUKHOBOR-FUNDING MOTIVE

This is the explicit engine of the 1898 completion, per the PSS editors.

• “The reason for this was Tolstoy’s wish to come to the aid of the Doukhobors,” who, under intensified government repression, were forced to seek refuge outside Russia (line 129): «Поводом для этого было желание Толстого прийти на помощь духоборам…»
• The Doukhobors (Доухоборы) were persecuted for refusing military service, the oath, and taxes; when they were permitted to emigrate (Canada was finally chosen, line 131) Tolstoy threw himself into raising money — appeals to foreign papers and Петербургские ведомости (the latter blocked by censorship), collections, letters to rich men (lines 129–131).
• The decision to sell his fiction. Realising private donations would not cover the emigration, Tolstoy reversed his long-standing refusal of literary fees and decided to sell — as profitably as possible — works lying in draft, the proceeds to fund the resettlement (line 131).
• S. A. Tolstaya’s diary, 9 April 1898: Rakhmanov’s interest in the tale led Tolstoy to think that “if printed everywhere, one could raise 100,000 roubles for the Doukhobors and their emigration” (line 133).
• Tolstoy to Chertkov, 14 July 1898 (Tolstoy’s words): he has three tales — «Иртенев» (The Devil), «Воскресение» and «Отец Сергий» (Father Sergius) — to sell to English/American papers for the emigration; he would print them tels quels (as they are) rather than never finish (line 135). He soon dropped Иртенев (too autobiographical, would wound S. A.) and kept Resurrection and Father Sergius (lines 135–137).
• Effect on the work (per the editors): Tolstoy intended at first only to print the (short) second redaction with light retouching, but once he reopened it he could not stop — he radically reworked it and greatly increased its volume (lines 143–145). So the funding deadline both forced completion and triggered the massive expansion into the socially/politically sharp final novel (the church-service, the politicals, the sectarians, Toporov, etc. were all absent from the pre-1898 redaction, line 143).
• A domestic obstacle: friction with S. A. Tolstaya (resentful that sectarians, not the family, would profit) briefly halted work in July 1898, but Tolstoy overcame it (lines 137–141). Tolstoy repeatedly called the whole money-business tormenting (“сколько греха от этого издания”; “пуповина отрезана”).

4. PUBLICATION & CENSORSHIP

The contract with A. F. Marks / «Нива»

• End Aug 1898 A. F. Marks (Адольф Фёдорович Маркс), publisher of «Нива» (Niva), telegraphed asking for the novel (line 161). Parallel talks with Suvorin («Новое время») and «Живописное обозрение» came to nothing (lines 161, 169–173).
• Contract signed 12 October 1898 (text quoted, line 181): Marks gets right of first printing only; pays 1,000 roubles per printer’s sheet of 35,000 letters, 12,000 roubles down (lines 177–181). S. A. Tolstaya’s diary (1 Sep 1898) records the earlier haggling — Marks first offered 1,600 r./sheet for exclusive rights, then 500 r./sheet without exclusivity (line 163).

Serialisation in «Нива», 1899 — dates and issue numbers

• Serialisation began in «Нива» No. 11, dated 13 March 1899, “with illustrations by L. O. Pasternak” (PSS editors, line 311): «”Воскресение” — с иллюстрациями Л. О. Пастернака — стало печататься с № 11 “Нивы” от 13 марта 1899 г.»
• Issue map (line 311): Parts I–II in Nos. 11–25, 27–29, 31; Part III in Nos. 49, 50, 52.
• Gaps in Nos. 26 & 30: the censored (shortened) Niva text was outrunning the uncut foreign editions, so Tolstoy asked Marks to pause (lines 311).
• Gap across Nos. 39–48 (and 51): Tolstoy was still heavily rewriting/expanding Part III (line 313).
• Part II finished printing in No. 37, 11 September 1899; an editorial notice said printing would pause ~6 weeks because the ending had grown into a whole new (third) part of ~20 chapters (line 319).
• Part III printing resumed from No. 49, dated 4 December (line 325). The final five chapters (Part III, XXIV–XXVIII) in Tolstoy’s last 16-Dec revision did not make the Niva text — by the time his telegram arrived No. 52 was already printing (tens of thousands of sheets done on one side); Marks promised to put them in the second separate edition (line 325).
• Anti-piracy / the Korolenko ruse: to stop typesetters leaking Tolstoy’s text, the first sheet of the manuscript was recopied in the office and headed «Ожидание. Повесть В. Короленко» (“Expectation. A tale by V. Korolenko”) — the Korolenko name, unlike Tolstoy’s, would not tempt resale; the false title was cut off after printing (line 191). Marks also got Tolstoy’s public 27 March 1899 letter asking Russian papers not to reprint Resurrection from Niva until it finished (line 327).

Separate Marks editions

• 1900: two separate, textually identical Marks editions — a “Second edition, corrected from the author’s new proofs,” and one “With drawings by L. O. Pasternak”; both differ from the Niva text only in a few chapters printed from the latest proofs (line 331). (A “first” separate edition identical to the Niva text was printed but never released, lines 325, 333.)

The censorship

• «Воскресение» was printed in «Нива» with a great many censorship distortions, which passed mechanically into the Marks separate editions (PSS editors, line 345).
• Chapters cut entirely from Niva (line 347): Part I chs XXXIX and XL (the church-service / богослужение) — wholly removed except the single phrase «Началось богослужение» tacked onto ch. XXXVIII (see §6); Part II ch. XXVII (Nekhlyudov’s visit to Toporov). Heavily cut (¾ or more): Part II ch. XXVI (Shustova’s aunt on solitary confinement); Part III chs VI (Kryltsov on the execution of Lozinsky & Rozovsky), XIX (prison-system horrors), XXI (the raft conversation with the old sectarian), XXVIII (the closing Gospel chapter). Large cuts in Part I ch. XIII (army), Part II ch. XXIII (Selenin & Orthodoxy), Part III chs V, XVIII, XXVII (line 347).
• Censorship struck anything touching the prestige of state or church, plus, because Niva was a “family” journal, words like “испражнения,” “проститутка,” “дома терпимости,” “прелюбодеяние”; even “соблазнил” (seduced) was everywhere replaced by “увлёк” / “обманул” (lines 349).
• “Domestic” censorship. Tolstoy himself asked Marks (letter 7 Nov 1898) to have a literator strike the uncensorable passages first; this fell to «Нива» editor R. I. Sementkovsky (Сементковский), who cut zealously with a blue pencil — Tolstoy later judged the novel “so disfigured by censorship that some places have quite lost their meaning” (M. L. Tolstaya’s letter, line 353). Two of Pasternak’s Part-III illustrations were also banned (line 359).
• By the numbers: V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, comparing the Marks and Svobodnoe Slovo texts, counted 497 censorship distortions/omissions/paraphrases affecting 10,240 words across the three parts; the PSS editors raise these from the proofs by +53 and +918 respectively. Only 25 of the 123 chapters were printed with no distortions (line 473). For Part III, Marks reported (20 Nov 1899) that beyond the execution scene only ~80 lines were cut, but that no further changes could be submitted to censorship (line 355).

The complete text abroad via Chertkov / «Свободное слово»

• Simultaneously with Niva, Resurrection was printed in Russian by V. G. Chertkov’s «Свободное слово» publishing house, from the Niva galleys (line 335). First edition: «Л. Н. Толстой. Воскресение. Роман. Изд. Владимира Черткова». Purleigh, Maldon, Essex, England, 1899 — issued in thirteen separate fascicles (line 335). Over 1899–1900 Svobodnoe Slovo issued five editions; the fourth (in two volumes) carried thirty-three illustrations by L. O. Pasternak (line 335).
• Caveat the editors flag: the Svobodnoe Slovo / abroad text was long assumed uncensored, but study of the author’s proofs shows it actually contains 51 censorship distortions that crept in through the parallel-printing mechanics (Niva sometimes sent Tolstoy a re-set proof with the cuts already invisibly made; he didn’t notice and the duplicate went to Chertkov) (lines 361–365).
• Foreign first-printings were arranged by Chertkov: France — Echo de Paris (12,000 fr.; trans. de Wyzewa, the church-service scene absent because the paper was clerical, line 505); also the fuller Halperine-Kaminsky translation with Pasternak illustrations (Flammarion, 1900). Germany — Deutsche Verlagsanstalt (Fontane). England — Brotherhood Publishing Co., trans. Louise Maude, sold in penny parts “in aid of the Doukhobors… settling now in Canada” (line 517). America — first to Cosmopolitan (10,000 r.), which bowdlerised the seduction scene, so Chertkov broke the contract; later The Clarion and Dodd, Mead & Co. (lines 519–533).

5. THE PEOPLE around the work

• A. F. Koni (Анатолий Кони) — jurist; source of the plot (the Rozalia Oni case), June 1887; originally meant to write it himself (§1).
• V. G. Chertkov (Владимир Чертков) — ran the foreign/Russian uncut edition («Свободное слово») and managed all foreign rights for the Doukhobor fund; Tolstoy’s chief correspondent through 1898–99. Also flagged by Strakhov (letter 22 Aug 1895) and by the editors as a partial prototype for Nekhlyudov (spiritual, not biographical, resemblance) — confirmed by a deleted draft detail tying Nekhlyudov to Voronezh/Chertkov’s family (lines 87–89).
• A. F. Marks (Адольф Маркс) — publisher of Niva; bought first-printing rights (12 Oct 1898 contract, 1,000 r./sheet); pushed Tolstoy hard to finish; involved in the German-rights dispute with Fontane.
• R. I. Sementkovsky (Сементковский) — Niva editor; ran the “domestic” censorship and made 1,000+ further grammatical/stylistic changes without Tolstoy’s knowledge (lines 353, 483).
• L. O. Pasternak (Леонид Пастернак) — confirmed illustrator of the Niva serialisation and of several separate editions (Marks, Svobodnoe Slovo 4th ed. with 33 illustrations, Halperine-Kaminsky, Maude). Two of his Part-III drawings were censored; two others ended up at odds with the censored text (lines 189, 311, 335, 359, 485, 517).
• Copyists / переписчики: daughter Maria Lvovna Tolstaya and her husband (N. L. Obolensky) copied; also “Alexander Petrovich” (A. P. Ivanov, переписчик), and A. P. Ivanov + A. A. Rusanova entered G. A. Rusanov’s ~119 grammatical corrections; the whole family “copies and toils whole days” (S. A. Tolstaya to Stasov, 14 Dec 1898) (lines 149, 175, 187, 475).
• Named draft-readers / hearers (6–7 Aug 1895 reading): A. V. Olsufyev, S. I. Taneyev, A. P. Chekhov, N. N. Strakhov (and Tatyana Lvovna, who read aloud when the manuscript was hard to decipher) (lines 83–87).
• Fact-suppliers (jurists/warders): N. V. Davydov (Tula/Moscow court president — wrote the indictment, autopsy and jury-question texts, and took Tolstoy into the Tula court, line 249); V. A. Maklakov (legal queries — his letters were intercepted, alarming the Police Department, lines 241–247); Butyrka warder I. M. Vinogradov (Jan 1899 — caused the plot change moving the politicals to the Siberian road; likely prototype of the prison superintendent) (line 259).
• Real-life PROTOTYPES the editors identify:
• Nekhlyudov — heavily autobiographical (Tolstoy’s own seduction of the maid Gasha/Masha in his aunt’s/sister’s house, named by Tolstoy to Biryukov as a real sin; cf. The Devil), plus traits of V. G. Chertkov (Strakhov’s conjecture, endorsed) (lines 25–27, 87–89).
• Maslova / Katyusha — rooted in the Rozalia Oni case (§1); the seduction scene reflects Tolstoy’s own affair with the maid Gasha at Pirogovo (S. A. Tolstaya’s diary, 13 Sep 1898, line 27).
• Missi Korchagina — first modelled on pianist Maria L. Urusova (line 45).
• Kolosov (ex-professor liberal) — B. N. Chicherin (line 73). Bréve (товарищ прокурора) — possibly V. K. Plehve (line 73). Mariette’s cousin / the dandy — M. A. Stakhovich (line 107).
• Ragozhinsky (brother-in-law) — A. M. Kuzminsky (line 155). Toporov — K. P. Pobedonostsev, ober-procurator of the Synod (lines 209–211). Bogatyrev (flügel-adjutant) — A. V. Olsufyev (line 211). Maslennikov (vice-governor) — the Orel governor (Stakhovich’s later confirmation, line 239). Countess Charskaya — Countess E. I. Shuvalova (Chertkov’s aunt); Count Charsky — P. A. Shuvalov (lines 217). Kriegsmuth (Peter-and-Paul commandant) — Baron E. I. von Maydel (line 223). Kizevetter (preacher) — Dr. Baedeker and/or V. A. Ditman (lines 221). Nabatov — E. E. Lazarev (line 233). Marya Pavlovna — N. A. Armfeldt (and L. A. Dmokhovsky for the Krylsov figure, lines 205–207). Simonson — religious-philosophical echo of N. F. Fyodorov (prototypes N. P. Peterson, L. P. Nikiforov) (line 297). The executed Lozinsky & Rozovsky are real 1880 historical persons (line 275).

6. THE COMMUNION / CHURCH-SERVICE CHAPTER (Part I, chs XXXIX–XL)

What the commentary says specifically:

• Drafting — entered late in the third redaction (Aug–Sep 1898). The PSS editors: «В конечной стадии работы над третьей редакцией впервые дано подробное описание богослужения в тюремной церкви» (line 155) — “In the final stage of work on the third redaction the detailed description of the divine service in the prison church is given for the first time” (variants Nos. 57–58). It was therefore absent from the whole pre-1898 (second-redaction) text Tolstoy first intended to publish (line 143).
• Repeatedly re-set during proof correction. The editors list the богослужение chapters among the passages that had to be re-typeset many times because Tolstoy reworked them so radically: «…таковы, напр. главы, в которых идёт речь о богослужении, о посещении Нехлюдовым Шустовой, первые главы третьей части…» (line 251).
• Cut wholesale by the censorship. In Niva (and hence the Marks separate editions) chapters XXXIX and XL of Part I — “the description of the divine service in the prison church” — were removed in their entirety, leaving only the single phrase «Началось богослужение» (“The service began”), which was attached to the end of ch. XXXVIII (PSS editors, line 347). The full text survived only in the abroad («Свободное слово») edition.
• Lost abroad too in one case: in the French Echo de Paris translation (de Wyzewa) the prison-church service scene is also absent, the editors note, “evidently because Echo de Paris was a conservative and clerical paper” (line 505).

Uncertainties flagged

• Page-level citation: the extract preserves PSS footnote numbers (e.g. ⁵³², ⁶⁵⁴) but not running page heads, and the # bibl line omits the page span; line-number anchors above are reliable, exact PSS page numbers within 329–422 are not recoverable from this extract alone — verify against the PDF before quoting a page.
• “Six redactions” is the editors’ organising scheme for the manuscript layers, not a label Tolstoy used; the boundaries (esp. 4th↔5th↔6th) are defined by proof-stage, not clean dates.
• The completion “late 1899” is well-anchored: corrections finished December 1899 (line 251); Tolstoy’s diary “Кончил” = 18 December 1899 (line 255). The separate Marks editions and most foreign book-form editions are 1900.
• A handful of dates in Tolstoy’s own quoted letters are editorially queried in the source (e.g. “12–15 (?) February 1899,” “10? May 1899”) — preserved as such above where relevant.