Note 38 — THE JOURNAL OF LEO TOLSTOI October–December 1895

E. N. Drozhin, a district school teacher, in 1891, refused military service at the recruiting in the city of Sudzha in the Province of Kursk. He was sentenced to be sent to a disciplinary battalion and stayed fifteen months in the Voronezh disciplinary battalion. Here he fell ill of consumption and the doctors pronounced him unfit to continue military service, upon which he was transferred to the state’s prison to finish his sentence. He died in the Voronezh prison on January 27, 1894, from inflammation of the lungs which he contracted at the time of his transfer ... from the disciplinary regiment to the prison. The story of his refusal from military service is described in detail in the book by E. I. Popov: Life and Death of E. N. Drozhin, 1866–1894, published by The Free Press, England, 1899. Tolstoi wrote an appendix to this book in which he expressed the opinion that such people like Drozhin “by their activity help....” In reference to this article the well-known German writer, Frederick Spielhagen, printed an open letter to Count Leo Tolstoi in the newspapers, in which he considered Tolstoi guilty of Drozhin’s death, a useless one, according to Spielhagen, for the abolition of war and the establishment of universal peace. This letter was translated into Russian in 1896 and appeared as a separate pamphlet.