NOTES TO THE TEXT By V. G. Chertkov

“October 8, 1895, Y. P.

“(I am beginning an entry to-day with just what I finished two days ago.)

“I have only a short time left to live and I feel terribly like saying so much: I feel like saying what we can and must and cannot help believing—about the cruelty of deception which people impose upon themselves; the economic, political and religious deception, and about the seduction of stupefying oneself—wine, and tobacco considered so innocent; and about marriage and about education and about the horrors.... Everything has ripened and I want to speak about it. So that there is no time for performing those artistic stupidities which I was prepared to do in Resurrection.

“But just now I asked myself: but can I write, knowing that no one will read? And I experienced something of disappointment; but only for a time; that means that there was some love of fame in it. But there was also the principal thing in it—the need before God.

“Father, help me to follow the same path of love. And I thank Thee. From Thee flows everything.”

“Once a man has understood and is permeated with the consciousness that his true happiness, the happiness of his eternal life, that which is not limited by this world, consists in the fulfilment of the will of God and that against this will ... then no consideration can force this man to act against his true happiness. And if there is an inner struggle and if, as in that case about which you spoke, family considerations come out on top, it only serves as a proof that the true teaching of Christ was not understood and was accepted by him who could not follow it; this only proves that he wanted to appear as a Christian, but he was not so in reality.”

Several of his other articles were issued abroad. For Tolstoi’s review of the books of F. A. Strakhov see in Journal, August 15, 1910.

Shakespeare (1564–1616). See Tolstoi’s article about him “On Shakespeare” and “On The Drama” and the opinion in his journal March 15, 1897.

Tolstoi sympathised very much with George’s scheme and wrote much about it (The Great Sin, The Only Possible Solution of the Land Question, A Letter to a Peasant and some chapters in Resurrection and others). Of the works of George, Tolstoi recognised as the best his Social Problems, to the Russian translation of which he wrote a preface. In the last years of George’s life, Tolstoi was in correspondence with him; in his letter to him of 1894 Tolstoi among other things wrote: “The reading of each one of your books clarifies for me much which formerly was not clear to me and convinces me more and more of the truth and practicality of your system” [translated from the Russian from a translation from the English.—Translator’s note]. On the occasion of George’s death, Tolstoi wrote to Countess S. A. Tolstoi on October 24, 1897: “Serezha told me yesterday that Henry George was dead. Strange to say, his death struck me as the death of a very close friend. The death of Alexandre Dumas produced the same impression upon me. One feels as if it were the loss of a real comrade and friend.” Many works of George’s are translated into the Russian; there is a splendid biography of him written by S. D. Nicholaev, and published by Posrednik: The Great Fighter for Land Liberation, Henry George, Moscow, 1906.

About the Japanese who visited him, Tolstoi wrote to Countess S. A. Tolstoi, September 26th: “This morning the Japanese arrived. Very interesting, fully educated, original and intelligent and free-thinking. One an editor of a paper, evidently a very rich man and an aristocrat there, no longer young; the other one, a little man, young, his assistant, also a literary man” (Letters of Tolstoi to his Wife, Moscow, 1913, page 507).

Second, even in those instances where Tolstoi consciously expressed himself adversely about women in general, he had in mind the most commonplace modern woman with her adverse qualities.

But in his mind he absolutely discriminated in favour of the intelligent, religious woman whom seldom he happened to meet in life and who always attracted his attention. So, for instance, he valued very highly the distant relative who brought him up, T. A. Ergolsky, for her self-sacrificing life; Mmes. M. A. Schmidt and L. F. Annenkov he respected for their true religious lives, and among the women writers he especially valued an American, Lucy Mallory, for her exceptional writings, from which he selected many thoughts for The Reading Circle. For women of this type he always had the greatest respect, recognising fully their merits and their great significance to humanity. In his literary works, Tolstoi, as is known, frequently reproduced the highest type of woman (for instance, Pashenka in Father Sergius, or the old woman, Maria Semenovna in The Forged Coupon). Also in his other writings, Tolstoi did not always express himself adversely about women, as can be seen, for instance, from the following extracts:

“Oh, how I would like to show to woman the whole significance of chaste women. The chaste woman (not in vain is the legend of Mary) will save the world.” (Journal, August 3, 1898.)

“One of the most necessary tasks of humanity consists in the bringing up of chaste women.” (Journal, August 24, 1898.)

“The virtues of men and women are the same; temperance, truthfulness, kindness; but in the woman, these same virtues attain a special charm.” (The Reading Circle, June 2.)

“Men cannot do that highest, best work, which brings men more than anything else nearer to God—the work of love, the work of complete self-surrender to him whom you love, which good women have done so well and so naturally, are doing, and will do. What would happen to the world, what would happen to us men, if women had not that quality and if they did not exercise it ... Without mothers, helpers, friends, comforters, who love in a man all that is best in him, and who with a suggestion hardly to be noticed, call forth and support all the best in him—without such women it would be bad to live in this world. Christ would not have had Mary and Magdalene; Francis of Assisi would not have had Clara; the Decembrists would not have had their wives with them in exile; the Dukhobors would not have had their wives who did not hold their husbands back, but supported them in their martyrdom for truth, there would not have been those thousands and thousands of unknown women, the very best, as everything that is unknown, the comforters of the drunken, the weak, the debauched, those for whom the consolations of love are more necessary than for any one else. In this love, whether it is directed to Kukin or to Christ, is the principal, great and irreplaceable strength of women.” (Appendix to Chekhov’s story, Dushechka.)

In the letter to V. G. Chertkov, Tolstoi wrote:

“In Petersburg on February 12th the following occurred: Vietrova, Maria Fedosievna, whom you know and whom I knew, a student confined in the House of Detention before Trial in the strike case, little connected with it, was transferred to the fortress of Peter and Paul. There, as they say and surmise, after inquiry and violation (that is still unestablished) she poured kerosene on herself, set fire to it and on the third day died. Her comrades who visited her, kept on bringing her things, which were accepted, and only after two weeks, were they told that she had burnt herself. The youth, all the students, up to three thousand persons (there were some also from the Theological Seminary) gathered in the Kazan Cathedral for the service of the dead. They were not permitted, but they themselves began to sing “Eternal Memory” and with wreaths, intended to march on the Nevsky Prospect, but were not permitted, and they went along Kazan Street. Their names were taken and they were let free. Every one is indignant. I receive letters and people come and tell me about it. I feel great pity for all who take part in these affairs, and I have a greater and greater desire to explain to people how they ruin themselves simply because they neglect that law (or they do not know it) which was given by Christ and which frees from such deeds and from the participation in them.”

Tolstoi approached A. F. Koni for advice, whether it were possible to publish what was authentically known about this terrible case, and secondly about “what to do in order to resist” this kind of event?

In reference to the mood during the month mentioned by him as “bad and unproductive” Tolstoi wrote to Chertkov (April 30, 1897): “I will not say that I have been depressed, because when I ask myself, ‘Who am I? For what am I?’ I answer myself satisfactorily, but I have no energy, and I feel as if Lilliputian hairs were laid over me and I have less and less initiative and activity.”

Mikhail Nicholaievich Sobolev, instructor in the Moscow University, living at this time with the Tolstois as a teacher to Count M. L. Tolstoi.

N. A. Kasatkin, a well-known Russian painter.

“You ask me a question which I now for twenty years have been trying to solve.

“It always seems to us—when the simple truth is that we ought to lead a Christian life, and when it is disclosed to us how terribly far from that life is the life we lead—it always seems to us that we for the moment find ourselves in an exceptionally disadvantageous condition for beginning that new life, which opens itself to us: To one, it is a mother, to another a wife, to a third, children, to a fourth, business; this one bought a bull, or the other has a wedding which interferes from his going to the feast. And we usually say to ourselves, ‘Oh, if it were not so,’—looking at it as on an accidental hindrance and not as on the unavoidable conditions of Christian life, as on the law of gravitation in problems of activity.

“Beauty which discloses to us the kingdom of God blinds us so, that we immediately want to enter it and we forget that this is not the programme of life, but the ideal; and that the programme of life consists in struggle and in effort to attain the kingdom of God, to approach it.

“And when you understand this, then the attitude towards activity is changed....”

“Wouldn’t such a preface be suitable?

“The book which is about to appear cannot be published in its entirety in Russia on account of the censor, and therefore it is being published in England in translation, the correctness of which I have not the least doubt of. The five chapters printed in Russia in the magazine Problems of Philosophy and Psychology have already suffered several deletions and changes; the following chapters, especially those which explain the essence of my point of view on art, will surely not be permitted in Russia and therefore I ask all those who are interested in this book to judge it only by this present edition.”

Alexander Kapitonovich Malikov, who lived in the seventies in Orel, preached the doctrine of “God-humanity,” consisting in this, that each man ought to be re-born morally and exalt the divine principle which was in him. Malikov was absolutely opposed to all violent methods of fighting evil. In 1875 Malikov with a small circle of persons who shared his opinions (fifteen in all) emigrated to America; where in the State of Kansas he established an agricultural community on the basis of the doctrine professed by him. When two years later the community fell apart, Malikov returned to Russia. He died in 1904 at the age of sixty-two. See about him the article of A. S. Prugavin, “Leo Tolstoi and the Man-Gods,” and the book on Leo Tolstoi and the Tolstoians, Moscow, 1911.

A few years prior to his death he became a strict vegetarian. Before his death he refused the viaticon of the priest and the rites of confession and the sacrament.

In his letter to A. C. Chertkov of March 30, 1898, Tolstoi wrote him about his last visit to Brashnin:

“You know there is an old man, a rich merchant, Brashnin, who is near to us in spirit. I have already known him for about fifteen years. He has cancer of the liver, so the doctors have found out. I visited him once in the winter. He was very weak, thin, yellow, but on his feet. One morning about a week ago A. N. Dunaiev came to me with the news that Brashnin is dying and that he had sent a boy to ask that I take leave of him. We went and found him dying. My first words were: ‘Is he calm?’ Absolutely. He was in full possession of his memory, had a clear mind, thanked me, and took leave of me and I of him, as people do before going on a journey. With sadness we spoke about the ... I said that we will see each other again. He calmly answered, ‘No more.’ He took leave and thanked us for our visit. Everything was so simple, peaceful and earnest.”

Originally, Tolstoi suggested selling the copyright of three of his novels, The Devil, Resurrection, and Father Sergius, to English and American papers on advantageous terms. Then he decided not to publish The Devil. At first he thought that he would not make a final revision of Resurrection and of Father Sergius, but would give them over to be printed straight away, just as they were written. But later he re-read Resurrection and little by little began to work on it with such absorption “as he had not experienced in a long time.” Later Tolstoi decided to give only Resurrection for the benefit of the Dukhobors and did not begin to work on Father Sergius.

Tolstoi’s letter to Järnefelt, mentioned in the Journal, is as follows:

“Although we have never seen each other, we know and love each other, and therefore I boldly turn to you with a request to do me a great service.

“The matter which I bring before you ought to remain unknown to any one except to us, and therefore speak to no one about this letter, but answer me (Station Kozlovka on the Moscow-Kursk Railway), where you are now, and whether you are ready to help me. I am writing thus briefly, because I have little hope that with the insufficient address, my letter will reach you.

“Leo Tolstoi.”

In explanation of this letter Järnefelt communicated the following to the editors: “I quickly answered Tolstoi’s question. I was convinced that he wanted to leave Yasnaya and to plan an escape. But when we met later in Moscow in 1899, Tolstoi immediately said: ‘Yes, yes, you understood me, but the temptation passed by me in time.’ And then glancing about him with a deep sigh of pain he said, ‘You will excuse me, Järnefelt, that I live as I do, but probably it is as it ought to be.’ And we did not speak any more about this matter.”

And so, in his letter to Järnefelt of December 16, 1898, i.e., still before this meeting with him, Tolstoi wrote: “If I should ever meet you, which I want to very much, I will then tell you what kind of help I expected from you. Now the temptation which forced me to seek help from you has passed.”

In his letter to V. G. Chertkov of July 21st of that year, i.e., three days after the above mentioned note in the Journal, Tolstoi wrote: “Read this to no one. I teach others, but do not know how to live myself. For how many years have I given myself the question, Is it fitting that I continue to live as I am living, or shall I go away?—and I cannot decide. I know that everything is decided by renouncing oneself and when I attain that then everything is clear. But they are rare moments.”

The first group of Dukhobors, to the number of 1,126 persons, who had suffered the most from exile, hunger and illness, left on the 6th of August, 1898, for the Island of Cyprus while other lands be found and sufficient money collected for the transportation of those remaining to a more suitable place.

At the request of Tolstoi, L. A. Sullerzhitsky later accompanied a group of Dukhobors to Canada. He wrote a book about this journey, In America With the Dukhobors, issued by Posrednik, Moscow, 1905.

APPENDIX