Note 300 — 1898

In his letter to V. G. Chertkov, Tolstoi wrote: “... This happened: In the morning they told me that two men came from the Caucasus. They were the Dukhobors, P. V. Planidin, an acquaintance of yours, and Chernov. They came, naturally, without passports to give me information and to find out everything pertaining to their affair. After talking with these dear friends and finding out everything, I decided to send them to Petersburg.... They went, spent the day there, and returned.... They are touchingly instructive.” “The principal reason for Planidin’s and Chernov’s coming,” Tolstoi wrote April 6th, “was to ask some one of our friends to go to visit Verigin in Obdorsk.”