The Decembrists : Drafts of an Attempt to Write a Sequel to War and Peace

Author : Leo Tolstoy

(1828 - 1910)

Father of Christian Anarchism

: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "...the dissemination of the truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one and the same manner, namely, those in power, feeling that the recognition of this truth would undermine their position, consciously or sometimes unconsciously perverted it by explanations and additions quite foreign to it, and also opposed it by open violence." (From: "A Letter to a Hindu: The Subjection of India- Its....)
• "It is necessary that men should understand things as they are, should call them by their right names, and should know that an army is an instrument for killing, and that the enrollment and management of an army -- the very things which Kings, Emperors, and Presidents occupy themselves with so self-confidently -- is a preparation for murder." (From: "'Thou Shalt Not Kill'," by Leo Tolstoy, August 8,....)
• "It usually happens that when an idea which has been useful and even necessary in the past becomes superfluous, that idea, after a more or less prolonged struggle, yields its place to a new idea which was till then an ideal, but which thus becomes a present idea." (From: "Patriotism and Government," by Leo Tolstoy, May 1....)

activist (21)

philosopher (24)

christian anarchist (1)

Translator : Nathan Haskell Dole

(2000 - 1935)

Nathan Haskell Dole (August 31, 1852 – May 9, 1935) was an American editor, translator, and author. He attended Phillips Academy, Andover, and graduated from Harvard University in 1874. He was a writer and journalist in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. He translated many works of Leo Tolstoy, and books of other Russians; novels of the Spaniard Armando Palacio Valdés (1886–90); a variety of works from the French and Italian. Nathan Haskell Dole was born August 31, 1852, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He was the second son of his father Reverend Nathan Dole (1811–1855) and mother Caroline (Fletcher) Dole. Dole grew up in the Fletcher homestead, a strict Puritan home, in Norridgewock, Maine, where his grandmother lived and where his mother moved with her two boys after his father died of tuberculosis. Sophie May wrote her Prudy Books in Norridgewock, which probably showed the sort of life Nathan and his older brother Charles Fletcher Dole (1845... (From: Wikipedia.org.)

Publisher's Note

The three chapters of the romance here printed under the name of the “Dekabristui” were written even before the author had begun “War and Peace.” At this time he was planning a story, the principal characters of which were to be the conspirators who planned the December Insurrection; but he did nit go on with it because, in his efforts at bringing to life the time of the Dekabrists, he involuntarily went back in thought to the preceding time period, to the past of his heroes. Gradually before the author opened ever deeper and deeper the sources of those phenomena which he was designing to describe: the families, the education, the social conditions, etc., of his chosen characters. At last he paused at the time of the... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Fragment 1, Part 1

It happened not long ago, in the reign of the Emperor Alexander II.,—in our epoch of civilization, of progress, of questions, of the regeneration of Russia, etc.,—the time when the victorious Russian army had returned from Sevastopol, which had just been surrendered to the enemy, when all Russia was celebrating its triumph in the destruction of the Black Sea fleet, and White-walled Moscow had gone forth to meet and congratulate the remains of the crews of that fleet, and reach them a good Russian glass of vodka, and in accordance with the good Russian custom offer them the bread and salt of hospitality,[1] and bow their heads to the ground; at the time when Russia in the person of perspicacious virgin-politicians bewailed the de... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Fragment 1, Part 2

When Mr. Chevalier returned to his own room, after he had been up-stairs to arrange for his guests, he communicated his observations concerning the newcomers to the partner of his life, who, dressed in laces and silk, had her place in the Paris fashion behind the desk; in the same room sat several of the habitués of the establishment. Serozha, while he was down-stairs, had noticed that room and its occupants. You, probably, have also noticed it if ever you have been in Moscow. If you, a modest man, not acquainted with Moscow, have arrived too late for a dinner invitation, have been mistaken in your supposition that the hospitable Muscovites will invite you to dinner and they have not invited you, or if you simply desire to din... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Fragment 1, Part 3

“Moscow, oh, Mother Moscow, white-walled city!” [5] exclaimed Piotr Ivanovitch, rubbing his eyes the next morning and listening to the sound of bells that floated above the Gazetnui Pereulok. Nothing so vividly recalls the past as sounds; and these peals of the Moscow bells, together with the sight of the white wall seen from the window and the rattle of wheels, so vividly recalled to him not only that Moscow which he had known thirty-five years before, but also that Moscow with its Kreml, its roofs, its Ivans, and the rest which he had borne in his heart, that he felt a childish delight in the fact that he was a Russian and that he was in Moscow. There appeared a Bukhara khalat, flung open over a broad chest in a ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Fragment 2

(Variant of the First Chapter) The lawsuit brought by the proprietor, Ivan Apuikhtin, retired lieutenant of the guard, for the possession of four thousand desyatins of land occupied by his neighbors, the crown-peasants of the village of Izlegoshchi, in the district of Krasnoslobodsky, government of Penza, had been decided at the first trial, by the District Court, in favor of the peasants, through the clever pleading of Ivan Mironof their advocate, and an enormous datcha, or parcel, of land, part forest, and part cultivated, cleared by Apuikhtin’s serfs, fell into the hands of the peasants in 1815; and in 1816 the peasants sowed this land and harvested the crops. The profit of this irregular action of the peasants surprised all... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Fragment 3

(Variant of the First Chapter) On the 14th of August, 1817, the sixth department of the Controlling Senate rendered a decision in the lawsuit between the “ekonom”[11] peasants of the village of Izlegoshchi and Prince Chernuishef, granting the land that was in dispute to the peasants. This decision was unexpected and serious, and unfortunate for Chernuishef. The suit had been dragging along already for five years. Having been brought originally by the advocate of the rich and populous village of Izlegoshchi, it had been gained by the peasants in the District Court; but when Prince Chernuishef, by the advice of Ilya Mitrofanof, a solicitor, a domestic serf belonging to Prince Saltuikof, hired by him, appealed the cas... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

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The Decembrists : Drafts of an Attempt to Write a Sequel to War and Peace

By Leo Tolstoy (1868)

Entry 10195

Public

Author : Leo Tolstoy

Translator : Nathan Haskell Dole

Chapters

Publisher's Note

Fragment 1, Part 1

Fragment 1, Part 2

Fragment 1, Part 3

Fragment 2

Fragment 3

Chronology

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