Notes

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NOTES TO THE TEXT
By V. G. Chertkov

1. With the words, “I continue,” Tolstoy begins a new note-book of the Journal; this note-book presupposes another which the editors have only in separate fragments. The previous note-book ended with the following note:

“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.

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

2. In the original, merely the initials of the phrase are used. Thus Tolstoy would often finish what he had written during the day with I. I L. (If I live), marking ahead in this fashion the date of the following day.

3. Countess Sophia Andreevna Tolstoy, born Behrs, 1844, wife of Tolstoy. In the Journal, Tolstoy calls her S., S. A., or Sonya.

4. “Catechism” Tolstoy called that systematic exposition of his philosophy in the form of questions and answers which he had begun about this time. In the text, he calls this work, The Declaration of Faith, or simply, The Declaration. (See entries December 23, ’95, and further.) In the following year, 1896, Tolstoy abandoning the catechism form, continued and finished the work, which, in 1898, was published under the title Christian Doctrine by The Free Press (Swobodnoe Slovo) issued by A. and V. Chertkov, England, and later in 1905, it appeared also in Russia.

5. Tolstoy never returned to the continuation and revision of the plot of the story Who is Right? which had been begun by him about this time, and so it has remained unfinished. The beginning of the story as it was written by Tolstoy, is printed in his collected works (see the full collection of works by Tolstoy, edited by P. Biriukov, published by Sytin, 1913).

6. I.e., with Katiusha Maslov and not with Nekhliudov, as the first form of the novel was begun.

7. John C. Kenworthy, an English Methodist minister, a writer and lecturer, who shared at that time the opinions[301] of Tolstoy and who founded in England an agricultural colony composed of his co-thinkers. The author of the work, Tolstoy, His Life and Works, London, 1902. There was printed abroad in the Russian Language in the journal of The Free Press (1899, No. 2, England) his The Anatomy of Poverty. They were lectures to the English workingmen on political economy, which struck Tolstoy favorably and which he included in the manuscript which was then being issued under the title of Archives of L. N. Tolstoy, No. II, and to which he even wrote an introduction. In later life, Kenworthy fell ill of nervous prostration and was taken to a sanatorium.

8. Albert Shkarvan, a Slav, who shared Tolstoy’s opinions. An army surgeon in the hospital in Kashai (Hungary), he resigned from this service in February, 1895, for religious reasons, for which he was imprisoned for four months.

9. The Russian sect of Dukhobors, living in the Caucasus in 1895, to the number of several thousand souls, upon the suggestion of their leader, Peter Vasilevich Verigin, who was at that time in exile, gave notice to the authorities that they would no longer take the oath or serve in military service, and, in a word, would no longer take any part in governmental violence, and in the night from the 28th to the 29th of June of that year, burned all their weapons. Cossacks were sent against them and after some executions, two hundred were put in prison, many were exiled from their native land and forced to live in Armenian, Georgian and Tartar villages in the Province of Tiflis; about two or three families in a village, without land and with the prohibition against intercourse[302] among themselves. Those Dukhobors who remained in active service and refused to serve, were sent away to disciplinary regiments. (See Dukhobors, by P. Biriukov, 1908, publishers, Posrednik; besides there is much material pertaining to the history and the movement of the Dukhobors printed in various issues of The Free Press.)

10. The manager of the Moscow Little Theater, Walts, used to call on Tolstoy for the purpose of receiving information about the staging of his drama, The Power of Darkness.

11. Ivan Ivanovich Bochkarev (died 1915), former revolutionary Slavophile who suffered much for his convictions. He became acquainted with the group of people around Tolstoy because of his belief in vegetarianism, to which he arrived independently of any one. In his personal conversations with Tolstoy, Bochkarev disputed his religious convictions, heatedly denying all his religious metaphysics. At this time he lived near the village of Ovsiannikovo, six versts from Yasnaya Polyana, on the estate of Tolstoy’s daughter, T. L. Sukhotin.

12. Prince Nicholai Leonidovich Obolensky, the grandnephew of Tolstoy—later married to Tolstoy’s daughter, Maria Lvovna.

13. Maria Alexandrovna Schmidt, an old friend, who shared Tolstoy’s opinions and whose personality and whole life, Tolstoy esteemed very highly. In the Journal of February 18, 1909, he wrote, “I never knew and do not know any woman spiritually higher than Maria Alexandrovna.” In the eighties, when class-teacher in the Nicholaievsky Orphan Asylum in Moscow, Mme. Schmidt[303] made the acquaintance of the forbidden works of Tolstoy, upon which she left the asylum and went to live on the land, and up to her death supported herself by the labors of her own hand. The last ten years of her life she lived near the village of Ovsiannikovo, on the estate of T. L. Sukhotin, procuring her livelihood by the sale of the berries and vegetables from her own garden and the dairy products from her cows. She died October 18, 1911.

14. With Bochkarev.

15. Alexander Nikiphorovich Dunaev, an old friend of the Tolstoy family, later one of the directors of the Moscow Commercial Bank.

16. Constantin Nicholaievich Zyabrev, nick-named “Bieli” (White), a peasant from Yasnaya Polyana, who was also called by the villagers, “the Blessed.” Tolstoy liked to speak with him. He lived in the greatest poverty and never bothered about the next day. At the time of the visit, mentioned in the Journal, he was already near death and soon passed away. Some years before this, Tolstoy helped him to rebuild his cabin.

17. Dr. Ivan Romanovich Bazhenov, who lived at this time in Vladivostok, sent Tolstoy his manuscript essay on the necessity of calling an ecumenical council and asked his opinion on this question. In the copy of the Journal at the disposal of the editors, and perhaps in the original of the Journal, it was written Bozhanov.

18. A letter from G. F. Van-Duyl from Amsterdam. In the letter of November 18th, Tolstoy answered his letter as follows:

“Once a man has understood and is permeated with the consciousness that his true happiness, the happiness of his[304] eternal life, that which is not limited by this world, consists in the fulfillment 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.”

19. Paul Ivanovich Biriukov, one of Tolstoy’s nearest friends and followers, who later wrote his biography (two volumes, published by Posrednik, Moscow). Tolstoy often calls him Posha in the Journal.

20. The editors were unable to discover the title of this pamphlet.

21. Maria Vasilievna Siaskov, an amanuensis, who was employed for many years in the publishing house of Posrednik.

22. Tatiana Andreevna Kuzminsky (born Behrs), a sister-in-law of Tolstoy, wife of Senator A. M. Kuzminsky.

23. Konevski, this is the way Tolstoy called the novel, Resurrection, which he had begun then, the subject of which he adopted at the end of the eighties from stories told by the well-known Court-worker, A. Th. Koni.

24. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), the great German philosopher. Tolstoy evidently read the translation by Ph. V. Chernigovitz, Aphorisms and Maxims, in two parts, 1891–1892. Tolstoy, as early as 1869, wrote to A. A. Fet: “Do you know what the present summer meant[305] to me? Continual enthusiasm over Schopenhauer and a pile of spiritual pleasures which I never have experienced before.... Schopenhauer is one of the greatest geniuses among people.”

25. That which was noted down in his pocket note-book—Tolstoy had the habit of putting down thoughts which came to him and which seemed to him important in a pocket note-book which never left him. Later he copied the most valuable thoughts into his Journal, revising, more or less, as he went along. In rewriting from the note-book Tolstoy often began the entry with these words, “I have been thinking” or “I have it noted.”

26. See Note 4.

27. This essay, entitled Shameful, pointing out the cruelty and senselessness of corporal punishment which the law at that time applied to the peasants, was printed with omissions and alterations in the Russian newspapers and later abroad in full in Leaflets of The Free Press, No. IV, England, 1899; later it was printed in The Full Collected Works of L. N. Tolstoy, published by Sytin, subscribed and popular editions, volume XVIII.

28. In the Moscow Little Theater.

29. N, a young artist living in the home of the Tolstois, after refusing military service on account of religious convictions, was placed in the military hospital in Moscow in the ward for the diseases of the heart, where he was visited by Tolstoy. Later, various difficult experiences and spiritual changes led him to agree to military service....

30. Nicholai Alexeievitch Philosophov, father of Countess S. N. Tolstoy, wife of Count I. L. Tolstoy.

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31. A. A. Shkarvan sent Tolstoy his letter entitled “Why It Is Impossible to Serve as a Military Doctor.” Later this letter, in revised form, appeared in his book, My Resignation from Military Service. Notes of a Military Doctor. (Published by The Free Press, England, 1898, Chapter IV.)

32. Maria Lvovna Tolstoy (1872–1906), second daughter of Tolstoy, afterwards married to Count N. L. Obolensky.

33. Count Ilya Lvovich Tolstoy (born 1866), second son of Tolstoy. Has written a book, My Recollections (Moscow, 1914).

34. Vladimir Grigorevich Chertkov and his wife, Anna Constantinovna (born Dieterichs). V. G. Chertkov made the acquaintance of Tolstoy in 1883. For biographical information about him see under “Biography of L. N. Tolstoy” by P. Biriukov (Volume II, 1913) and also in the pamphlet, Tolstoy and Chertkov, by P. A. Boulanger (Moscow, 1911) and in the essay of A. M. Khiriakov: “Who Is Chertkov?” (Kievski Mysl, 1910, No. 333, December 2nd).

35. Soon Tolstoy began this drama (see entry of January 23, 1896), which he called And Light Lights Up Darkness. This drama, having to a great extent a biographic character, portrays the torturing condition of a man who has gone through an inner religious crisis, and who lives with his family which, not understanding him, interferes with his attempts to change his life according to the truth revealed to him. This was first printed with a great many censor deletions in The Posthumous Literary[307] Works of L. N. Tolstoy (edited by A. L. Tolstoy, 1911, Volume II).

36. The Englishman, John Manson, came to Tolstoy with a request for his opinion on the collision between the United States and England on account of the boundaries of Venezuela. Tolstoy answered by an extensive letter which was published under the title, “Patriotism or Peace?” and printed abroad (by Deibner in Berlin, and others.) It was not printed in Russia.

37. Ernest Crosby (1856–1907), an American social-worker, a poet and writer. When he was a representative of the United States in the International Court in Egypt, he read Tolstoy’s On Life, which caused an upheaval in his soul. As a result, he left the Government service and devoted his life to the propaganda of the social-religious views of Tolstoy and the social-economic views of Henry George. He founded The Social Reform League, the object of which was the discussing of the problems of reorganization of contemporary life on the basis of justice and equality, and the furthering of the actual realization of this reorganization.

38. 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[308] ... 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. Tolstoy 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 Tolstoy in the newspapers, in which he considered Tolstoy 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.

39. See Note 36.

40. A voluminous letter devoted to the problem of nonresistance to evil by violence and the relation of contemporary American writers to it.

41. Count Andrei Lvovich Tolstoy, born 1877, fourth son of Tolstoy. In this year he served in the Tver military as a volunteer (before the prescribed age).

42. Nicholai Michailovich Nagornov, husband of Tolstoy’s niece, Varvara Valerianovna. In the letter to A. K. Chertkov of January 13, 1896, Tolstoy wrote: “We had a death lately. Nagornov died, the husband of my niece. She loved him passionately and they lived together remarkably happily ... no one knows anything of him, but the good.... My heart feels solemn and good because of this death.”

43. Fedior Kudinenko, a peasant, a co-thinker of Tolstoy, a former gendarme.

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44. See note 29.

45. Dushan Petrovich Makovitsky (Dušan Makovický), a Slovak, who later became one of the closest friends and followers of Tolstoy, spent six years in Yasnaya Polyana from the end of 1904 to the day Tolstoy left, in the capacity of family doctor, and was near Tolstoy until the latter’s death. At this time he lived in his native land, in Hungary, taking part in the publication of translations into the Slavonian of Tolstoy’s books and of writers near to him in spirit. The article here mentioned is “Instances of Refusal from Military Service among the Sect of the Nazarenes, in Hungary.” Printed in Leaflets of the Free Press, England, 1898, No. I.

46. The Nazarenes, a sect spread in Hungary, Chorvatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Switzerland and the United States, whose members refuse military service.

47. Nicholai Nicholaievich Strakhov (1828–1896), a friend of the Tolstoy family, a noted writer and philosopher, highly valued by Tolstoy as a man and a literary critic. He had an extensive correspondence with Tolstoy, which was published by the Tolstoy Museum Society in Petrograd, 1914.

48. The family of the Counts Olsuphiev was very much liked by Tolstoy. This is what he wrote about them to V. G. Chertkov on February 9, 1896: “They are such very simple and good people, that the difference between their opinion and mine, and not the difference but the non-recognition of that by which I live, does not bother me. I know that they cannot, but that they want to be good and that they have gone as far as they could in that direction.”

49. Nicholai Vasilevich Davydov, an old friend of the[310] Tolstoy family, being appointed at this time President of the Tula District Court, was presented to the Emperor and had a long conversation with him about Tolstoy, answering the questions asked him by the Emperor. At present, N. V. Davydov is President of the Tolstoy Society in Moscow.

50. Alexander Ivanovich Ertel (1855–1908), a well-known writer, author of the novel The Gardenins and other stories and novels. The essay by Ertel which Tolstoy mentions was published in Nedielia in 1896, No. III, under the title, “Is Russian Society Declining?” He objected to Tolstoy who said in the article “Shameful” that one ought not to ask about the abolition of corporal punishment, but “one must and ought only to denounce such a thing.” “The way of denunciation and repentance is tested and is being tested—” wrote Ertel, “but in itself it is not sufficient for successful struggle against evil. For the greatest effectiveness in this struggle of changes, the judicial path of ‘petitions, declarations and addresses,’ deserves every kind of sympathy from the side of historical rationalism as well as from the Christian point of view.” Later Tolstoy, highly appreciating the popular style of Ertel, wrote a preface to the posthumous edition of his works, Moscow, 1909.

51. See Note 38.

52. M. A. Sopotsko, at one time in the beginning of the Nineties shared some of Tolstoy’s views in relation to the outer life, but never understood the essence of his religious philosophy. Later Sopotsko became a supporter of Orthodoxy and frequently attacked Tolstoy and his friends in print.

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53. Marian Zdziechowski, a professor in the Cracow University, a well-known social worker. In the Sieverni Viestnik for the year 1895, No. 7, under the pseudonym M. Ursin, he contributed an article: “The Religious Political Ideals of Polish Society.” In respect to this article Tolstoy wrote him a long letter which was printed abroad and later was reprinted in the New Collection of Letters of L. N. Tolstoy, collected by P. A. Sergienko (published by Okto, 1911), from which by order of the Moscow Court it was deleted. After this letter M. E. Zdziechowski wrote several times to Tolstoy on the problems of Catholicism, but to those letters, mentioned in the Journal, Tolstoy evidently answered by a personal conversation during the former’s visit to Yasnaya Polyana in the summer of 1896.

54. In her letter addressed to M. L. Tolstoy, Vera Stepanovna Grinevich touched most seriously and deeply upon the fundamental problems concerning the religious upbringing of children. This letter produced a very strong impression on Tolstoy and he intended to answer it in detail, but other work drew him away from accomplishing this resolution. The letter of V. S. Grinevich and the letter to her by M. L. Tolstoy and V. G. Chertkov are printed in her book: The New School-family and the Causes of its Origin.

55. Nicholskoe, an estate of Count Olsuphiev near Moscow, close to the station of Podsolnechnaia on the Nicholai railroad.

56. Eugene Heinrich Schmidt, a German-Hungarian writer, resembling in some respects the philosophy of Tolstoy. In the Nineties he issued a magazine in Budapest:[312] Die Religion des Geistes, and a newspaper with a Christian anarchical tendency: Ohne Staat. In 1901 he printed a book in Leipzig, Tolstoy, His Meaning to Our Civilization (see also his article on the cultural significance of the works of Leo Tolstoy, printed in the International Tolstoy Almanac by P. A. Sergienko, published by Kniga, 1909.)

57. Sergei Alexandrovich Rachinsky (1836–1902), a celebrated worker for popular education, who sacrificed his lectures in the Moscow University for his favorite occupation of teaching the peasant children in the village schools to write and read. A relative to Tolstoy on account of the first wife of his son, Sergei Lvovich, and personally acquainted with Tolstoy as early as the beginning of the Sixties.

58. Written originally in English.

59. The letter was called forth by the Italian-Abyssinian war, which was then going on. The rather extensive beginning of this letter has been preserved, but up to now has not been published anywhere.

60. Here follow words that have been crossed out. Note made by Prince N. L. Obolensky in the copy in possession of the editors.

61. Michail Petrovich Novikov, a peasant of the Province of Tula, who served a year as an army scribe in one of the regiments stationed in Moscow. After his acquaintance with Tolstoy he suffered much because of his endeavor to realize his beliefs in his life. A gifted writer.

62. Countess Tatiana Lvovna Tolstoy (born 1864), the eldest daughter of Tolstoy. In the year 1899 she married M. S. Sukhotin.

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63. Maria Michailovna Kholevinsky, a woman doctor, living in Tula. By Administrative order, after the event mentioned in the Journal, she was exiled to Orenburg.

64. This letter, sent to both ministers (I. L. Goremykin and N. V. Muraviev) and to the same publishing house, was printed at first abroad in the paper The Free Press, No. 2, in 1902 (England), afterwards in Russia. (See Full Collected Works of Tolstoy, published by Sytin, 1913—popular edition, Volume XXII. It is known that the request of Tolstoy in this letter: To direct all the prosecutions for the spreading of his forbidden books in Russia to himself and not to his followers and friends, as well as a whole series of subsequent similar petitions to Governmental officials—was not granted.)

65. The second act of Wagner’s opera, Siegfried. For the impression produced on Tolstoy, see What Is Art? chapter XIII—in the letter to his brother, Count S. N. Tolstoy, on April 20, 1896, Tolstoy under the fresh impression of this opera wrote the following: “Last night I was at the theater and heard the celebrated new music of Wagner’s opera, Siegfried. I could not sit through a single act and I fled from the place like mad, and now I cannot talk calmly about it. It is stupid, unfit for children above seven years of age, a Punch and Judy show, pretentious, feigned, entirely false and without any music whatever. And several thousand sat and pretended to be fascinated.”

66. Aphrikan Alexandrovich Spier (1837–1890), a remarkable Russian philosopher, who lived many years in Germany and who wrote his works in German: Thinking and Reality, Morality and Religious, etc.[314] Tolstoy was then reading his principal work, Denken und Wirklichkeit (Thinking and Reality)—in a letter of 1896 to Countess S. A. Tolstoy, Tolstoy wrote: “I am reading a newly discovered philosopher, Spier, and am rejoicing.... A very useful book, destroying many superstitions, especially the superstition of materialism.” (The Letters of Count L. N. Tolstoy to his Wife, Moscow, 1913, page 510.)

67. The philosopher’s daughter, Elena Aphrikanovna Spier, who sent her father’s works to Tolstoy.

68. Grigori Grigorevich Myasoyedov (1835–1912). A celebrated artist, the painter of the picture, “The Reading of the Ordinance, of February 19th” and others; one of the principal initiators and founders of the Society of Traveling Expositions.

69. Dmitri Dmitrievich Sverbeev, the Governor of Courland, an acquaintance of the Tolstois’.

70. The cement factory, Gill, within 7 versts of Yasnaya Polyana.

71. To the Coronation in Moscow there went: Countess S. A. Tolstoy and Countess A. L. Tolstoy; while Countess T. L. Tolstoy went to Sweden for the coming marriage in Stockholm of Count L. L. Tolstoy and D. Ph. Westerlund.

72. The branch post office, 7 versts from Yasnaya Polyana.

73. Died in 1913.

74. The well-known publisher of Novoe Vremia, M. O. Menshikov, a contributor at that time to the liberal magazine, Knizhki Nedieli, where among other things, he occupied himself with popularizing Tolstoy’s ideas.[315] In the article “The Errors of Fear,” printed in that magazine in 1896 (Nos. IV to VI) Menshikov sharply condemned certain governmental repressions of the time. For this article the magazine received a warning. Towards the later journalistic activities of Menshikov, Tolstoy took a critical attitude.

75. Fedior Alexeievich Strakhov, a friend, who shared the views of Tolstoy, author of philosophic articles published by Posrednik under the titles Beyond Political Interests, The Search For Truth. Posrednik also published a collection of articles of various thinkers compiled by him under the title Spirit and Matter (against materialism).

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

76. Nicholai Nicholaievich Strakhov (died in January of this year).

77. With F. A. Strakhov.

78. Timofei Nicholaievich Granovsky (1813–1855), a Russian historian, a professor at the Moscow University.

79. Vissarion Grigorevich Bielinsky (1810–1848), the critic—see in Journal, March 7, 1899, a comparison between Bielinsky and Gogol.

80. Alexander Alexandrovich Herzen (1812–1870), a great writer. From 1847 to his death he lived abroad as an exile. His collected works with censor deletions have been published in Russia only in 1905. Tolstoy as early as August 4, 1860, wrote in his Journal, “Herzen, a scattered mind, sickly ambition. But his broadness, skillfulness, kindness and refinement is Russian.” Soon after, in the beginning of 1861, Tolstoy, being abroad,[316] spent a month in London, where he saw Herzen almost daily. In addition to the opinion expressed in this note of Tolstoy’s about Herzen, it should be noted that afterwards Tolstoy, appreciating him from another point of view, acknowledged a broad educational significance to his works (see, for example, Journal, October 12, 1895). In the letters to V. G. Chertkov of February 9, 1888, and to N. N. Gay of February 13 of the same year, Tolstoy called Herzen “a man remarkable in strength, in mind and in sincerity” and expressed regret that his works were forbidden in Russia, as the reading of them, according to his opinion, would be very instructive to the youth.

81. Nicholai Gavrilovich Chernishevsky (1828–1889) and Nicholai Alexandrovich Dobroliubov (1836–1861), Russian critics. Tolstoy became acquainted with Chernishevsky when he published his works in Sovremennik, which was edited by Chernishevsky.

82. Five-year-old daughter of F. A. Strakhov.

83. Declaration of Faith, later re-named The Christian Doctrine.

84. The estate of Tolstoy’s brother, S. N. Tolstoy, in the district of Krapivensk, in the Government of Tula, 35 versts from Yasnaya Polyana.

85. Count Sergei Nicholaievich Tolstoy (1826–1904). See for him in Biography of L. N. Tolstoy by P. Biriukov and in My Recollections by Count I. L. Tolstoy, Moscow, 1914.

86. The daughters of Count S. N. Tolstoy: Vera, Varvara and Maria Sergievna.

87. Charles Salomon, the translator of some of Tolstoy’s[317] works into French, and a professor of the Russian language in the higher institutions in Paris.

88. Sergei Ivanovich Tanyeev (1856–1915), composer, at one time director at the Moscow Conservatory, an acquaintance of the Tolstoy family, who lived three summers (1894–1896) in Yasnaya Polyana.

89. On the Khodinka field at the time of the coronation celebration of May 18, 1896. In the beginning of the year 1910, Tolstoy wrote a little story called Khodinka, printed for the first time in his Posthumous Literary Works, Volume III, published by A. L. Tolstoy, Moscow, 1902.

90. Timofei Nicholaievich Bondarev (1820–1898), a peasant of the district of the Don. In 1867 he was exiled to Siberia for conversion to the Jewish faith and lived in the district of Minusinsk, in the Province of Yeniseisk, to the end of his life. Wrote a work called Industriousness and Parasitism, or The Triumph of the Agricultural Worker (issued with abbreviations in 1906 in Petrograd by Posrednik,) in which he proved the moral obligation of each man to do agricultural work. Tolstoy wrote a long introduction to this work. As to the impression which this work produced on Tolstoy, he himself wrote in his book What Then Shall We Do? (1884–1886) the following: “In all my life, two Russian thinkers had upon me a great moral influence and enriched my thought and clarified my philosophy. These people were not Russian poets, scholars, preachers—they were two remarkable men who are now living, and who all their life labored in the muzhik labor of peasants, Siutaev and Bondarev.” In his letter here mentioned to[318] Bondarev, Tolstoy touched upon those religious problems which Bondarev asked him. For more details about Bondarev see in the article of C. S. Shokhor-Trotsky: “Siutaev and Bondarev” (in the Tolstoy Annual, 1913), Petrograd, 1914, issued by the Tolstoy Museum Society, following which are printed ten letters by Tolstoy to Bondarev and some writings of Bondarev himself.

91. My Refusal From Military Service, The Memoirs of an Army Physician, issued by The Free Press, 1898, England. Tolstoy read this work even before, in manuscript, and at this time probably was re-reading it. In his letter to A. A. Shkarvan of December 16, 1895, Tolstoy wrote: “Your memoirs are interesting and important to the highest degree. I read them with spiritual joy and was touched.”

92. See Note 29.

93. Stephane Mallarmé (1842–1898), French poet, considered one of the most prominent Symbolists. For a more detailed opinion of him by Tolstoy, see his book, What Is Art? Chapter X.

94. Goethe (1749–1832), the German poet. See for Tolstoy’s opinion of him in his Journal, September 13, 1906. Earlier in 1891, in his letter to Countess A. A. Tolstoy, Tolstoy wrote: “As to Goethe, I do not like him at all. I don’t like his conceited paganism.”

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

95. Declaration of Faith.

96. Henry George (1839–1897), noted American social worker and writer on economic questions. In his[319] numerous works, chiefly on agrarian questions, he was a warm defender of the destitute and the oppressed. George considered the existence of private land ownership as the principal cause of the existence of poverty; appearing as its opponent, he suggested the abolition of all existing taxes, substituting for them a single tax on the value of land; by means of this reform, land would pass into the hands of people cultivating it by their own labor, because for people who did not work it, it would be unprofitable to own great stretches of land, since they would have to pay a large amount of taxes on them.

Tolstoy sympathized 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, Tolstoy recognized as the best his Social Problems, to the Russian translation of which he wrote a preface. In the last years of George’s life, Tolstoy was in correspondence with him; in his letter to him of 1894 Tolstoy 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, Tolstoy wrote to Countess S. A. Tolstoy 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.”[320] 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.

97. Anna Constantinovna Chertkov.

98. In the letter to Count L. L. Tolstoy of June 7, 1896, Tolstoy related the incident as follows: “Yesterday a remarkable event happened to me. Two or three times there came to me a young civilian from Tula asking me to give him books. I gave him some of my articles and spoke with him. He was, according to his convictions, a Nihilist and an Atheist. I told him from the bottom of my heart all that I thought. Yesterday he came and gave me a note: ‘Read it,’ he said, ‘then tell me what you think of me.’ In the note it was written that he was a junior officer in the gendarmerie, a spy, sent to me to find out what is going on here, and that he became unbearably conscience-stricken and that is why he disclosed himself to me. I felt pity and disgust and pleasure.”

99. The priest, John Ilich Sergiev (of Kronstadt) (1829–1908), who enjoyed great fame as “The supplicator for the sick.” In his preaching and his books he many times made sharp attacks against Tolstoy and his views.

100. Declaration of Faith.

101. Zakaz, a piece of Yasnaya Polyana forest, not far from the house. Tolstoy was afterwards buried there.

102. Tolstoy had the opportunity to closely observe the nomadic life of the Bashkirs in the province of Samara, where he went in the Sixties to drink kumyss,[321] and in the Seventies and Eighties to his own estates (see The Biography of L. N. Tolstoy written by P. I. Biriukov (Moscow, 1913) published by Posrednik, Volume II, Chapter VIII; and also the Recollections in the Children’s Magazine, Mayak, 1913, by V. S. Morosov, a former pupil of the Yasnaya Polyana school in the beginning of the Sixties).

103. A village within four versts from Yasnaya Polyana.

104. Leonilla Fominishna Annenkov (1845–1914), an old friend of Tolstoy’s and an adherent of his philosophy, the wife of a Kursk landlord, the well-known scholarly lawyer, K. N. Annenkov (1842–1910). She made the acquaintance of Tolstoy in 1886 and from that time on corresponded very much with him. Completely sharing the opinions of Tolstoy, she applied them with a rare sequence to life and she was noted for her remarkable abundance of love which attracted every one who met her. Tolstoy valued her highly, considering that she had “a clear mind and a loving heart.”

105. Farther on one line is crossed out. A note of Princess M. L. Obolensky in the copy at the disposal of the editors.

106. It weighed upon him that certain persons to whom he did not want to show his Journal had read it nevertheless. In the last years of his life he was compelled to hide the current Journal somewhere in his rooms, and the finished note-books he gave away in safe keeping.

107. A village four versts from Yasnaya Polyana, where the Chertkovs lived in summer.

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108. Declaration of Faith.

109. The note of July 19, 1896, he evidently originally inserted in a note-book from which he later wrote it out in his Journal.

110. Tolstoy’s brother, Count S. N. Tolstoy.

111. This article under the title of “How to Read The Gospels and What Is Its Essence” was printed at first in the edition of The Free Press, 1898, and after in 1905 in Russia. (See the complete works of Tolstoy published by Sytin, Popular Edition, Volume XV.) The central thought of this article is that in order to understand the true meaning of the Gospels, one has to penetrate those passages which are completely simple, clear and understandable. Tolstoy advises all those who wish to understand the true meaning of the Gospels to mark everything which is for them completely clear and understandable with a blue pencil and marking at the same time with a red one, around the words marked in blue, the words of Christ Himself as differing from the words of the Apostles. It is those places marked by the red pencil which will give the reader the essence of the teaching of Christ. Tolstoy in his own copy of the Gospels made such marks which he mentions later in the Journal with the words: “Marked the Gospels.”

112. Hajji Murad, one of the boldest and most remarkable leaders of the Caucasian mountaineers who played a big rôle in the struggle of the mountaineers with the Russians in the Forties of the Nineteenth Century. In 1852 he was killed in a skirmish with the Cossacks. Tolstoy heard much about him as early as the beginning of the Fifties, when he himself took part in the fight with[323] the mountaineers. A month after the above-mentioned note in the Journal, Tolstoy made a rough sketch of his story, Hajji Murad, on which he worked with interruptions until 1904. This story was printed for the first time in his Posthumous Literary Works (published by A. L. Tolstoy, Volume III, 1912.) It is interesting to compare the introduction to it with the above note of Tolstoy’s in his Journal.

113. As in the copy at the disposal of the editors.

114. Afanasie Afanasevich Fet (Shenshin) (1820–1892), a Russian lyric poet and translator and friend of the Tolstoy family. Concerning the relations of Tolstoy with him, see My Recollections, by Fet (Volume II, 1890) and The Biography of L. N. Tolstoy by Biriukov. In the letter of November 7, 1866, Tolstoy wrote to Fet: “You are a man whose mind, not to speak of anything else, I value higher than any one of my acquaintances’ and who in personal intercourse is the only one who gives me that bread by which it is not alone that man lives.” Later Tolstoy and Fet became estranged from each other.

115. Kant, the German philosopher (1724–1804). For the opinions of Tolstoy about him see the Journal, February 19, and September 22, 1904, and September 2, 1906; August 8th, 1907; March 26, 1909. Kant’s Thoughts, selected by Tolstoy, were published by Posrednik, Moscow, 1906.

116. As a sixth sense, Tolstoy recognized the muscular sense. See the note of October 10, 1896.

117. S. I. Tanyeev.

118. The Shenshins—Tula landlords who lived on[324] their estate, Sudakovo, five versts from Yasnaya Polyana.

119. Prosper St. Thomas, tutor of Tolstoy and his brothers. The incident mentioned in the Journal produced a tremendous impression on Tolstoy. “It may have been that this incident was the cause of all the horror and aversion to all kinds of violence which I experienced throughout life,” Tolstoy wrote afterwards in his recollections. (See P. Biriukov: The Biography of L. N. Tolstoy, Moscow, issued by Posrednik, Volume I, pages 99–100.) In Tolstoy’s story Boyhood, St. Thomas is pictured under the name of Saint Jerome. The incident mentioned here is described in Chapters XIV, XV and XVI of that story.

120. Written in English in the original.

121. Tolstoy, together with Countess S. A. Tolstoy, visited his sister, Countess Maria Nicholaievna, living in the convent of Shamordino near the Optina Desert. In his letter to her of September 13, 1896, Tolstoy wrote, “With great pleasure and emotion I recall my stay with you.”

122. The story, Hajji Murad. See Note 112.

123. Count Sergei Lvovich, with his wife, Countess Maria Constantinovna (born Rachinsky, who died in 1899); Count Ilya Lvovich, with his wife, Countess Sophia Nicholaievna, and Count Leo Lvovich, with his wife, the Countess Dora Fedorovna.

124. The Dutchman, Van-der-Veer, refused military service, as he declared in his letter to the Commander of the National Guard, on the grounds that he hated every kind of murder of men as well as of animals, especially[325] murder at the order of other people. The military authorities sentenced him to three months’ solitary confinement. Later Van-der-Veer for several years published a magazine with a Christian tendency called Vrede.

125. Van-der-Veer’s letter, with the appendix by Tolstoy under the title “The Beginning of the End” was printed in the edition of The Free Press, 1898, England, later in Russia in the Obnovlenia, Petrograd, 1906, which was soon confiscated.

126. Alexandra Mikhailovna Kalmikov, a noted worker for popular education, who turned to Tolstoy with the request that he express himself in regard to the order then given by the Minister of the Interior to close the committees on illiteracy. In answer to her letter, Tolstoy expressed his opinion about the activity of the Russian Government in general and about the methods of resisting it used by the Liberals. His answer, under the title of “A Letter to the Liberals,” in revised form was printed in full in the publication of The Free Press: “Concerning the Attitude Towards the State” (England, 1898) and with omissions in the publication of Obnovlenia (Petrograd, 1906,) which was confiscated.

127. Ioga’s Philosophy. Lectures on Rajah Ioga or Conquering Internal Nature, by Swâmi Vivekânanda, New York, 1896.

128. “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” discovered in 1883. A document of the Christian literature of the First Centuries. Tolstoy translated it from the Greek and twice wrote a preface to it: in 1885 and twenty years later, in 1905. The passage mentioned in the Journal reads this way: “It is not good to love only those[326] who love you. Heathens do the same. They love their own and hate their enemies and therefore they have enemies, but you should love those who hate you and then you will have no enemies.”

129. Daniel Pavlovich Konissi, a Japanese, converted to the Greek Church, who studied in the Kiev Theological Academy, then came to Moscow and here made the acquaintance of Tolstoy. Later he became professor in the University in Kioto. Translated Lao-Tze from the Chinese into the Russian (this translation was printed at first in Problems of Philosophy and Psychology and later in separate pamphlet, Lao-Se, Tao-Te-King, Moscow, 1913.) For D. P. Konissi see article of I. Alexeev, “The Skies Are Different—the People Are the Same” (in the paper, Nov, 1914, No. 154.)

About the Japanese who visited him, Tolstoy wrote to Countess S. A. Tolstoy, 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 Tolstoy to his Wife, Moscow, 1913, page 507).

130. Peter Vasilevich Verigin, the leader of the Dukhobors, when in exile in the town of Obdorsk, in the province of Tobolsk, wrote to Tolstoy about his life and expounded his views on the printing of books. Tolstoy’s reply, written on October 14, 1896, in which he answered the objections of Verigin against the printing of books, was printed in the book, The Letters of the Dukhobor Leader, P. V. Verigin, published by The Free Press, 1901,[327] England. See also the letter of P. V. Verigin on his acquaintance with Tolstoy printed in the International Tolstoy Almanac compiled by P. A. Sergienko (issued by Kniga, 1909).

131. Further in Tolstoy’s manuscript, one page has been crossed out. A note by M. L. Obolensky in the copy in possession of the editors.

132. This letter was printed at first in an issue of The Free Press, No. 8, 1898, England, and later in Russia in Obnovlenia, Petrograd, 1906, and was confiscated.

133. Brother of Tolstoy, Count S. N. Tolstoy.

134. A peasant of the province of Kharkov in the district of Sumsk, Peter Vasilevich Olkhovik. Refused military service October 15, 1895, at recruiting, in the city of Bielopolie, province of Kharkov. Was sentenced by the Vladivostok military court to three years in a disciplinary battalion. The letters of Olkhovik to his relatives and acquaintances about his refusal were published by The Free Press, 1897, England, and in 1906 in Russia by Obnoblenia (and were confiscated). Influenced by Olkhovic, the private, Cyril Sereda, also refused military service, with whom Olkhovic became friendly on the steamer on the way to Siberia, where he was appointed for service. Both of them were turned over to the Irkutsk disciplinary battalions. Tolstoy’s letter to the commanding officer of the regiment, in which he asks him “as a Christian and as a kind man to have pity on these people ...” was printed at first also in The Free Press and afterwards in various publications in Russia. (See the Complete Works of Tolstoy, published by Sytin:[328] subscribed edition, Volume XX, popular edition, Volume XXII.) On the effect that Tolstoy’s letter produced on the officer of the regiment, Tolstoy himself wrote the following in a letter to P. A. Boulanger, March 29, 1898: “Recently I was surprised, and very pleasantly, by a letter from a man exiled administratively from Verkholensk, who writes that the commanding officer of the disciplinary battalion in Irkutsk openly told Olkhovich and Sereda that my appeal for them saved them from corporal punishment and shortened their sentence. Let a thousand letters pass in vain: if but one has such a result, then one ought to write unceasingly.” The fate of P. V. Olkhovich was as follows: From the disciplinary battalion he was exiled for eighteen years to the district of Yakutsk, where he lived together with the exiled Dukhobors until 1905, when together with them he went to America. At the present moment he is living in California.

135. Edward Carpenter, a noted contemporary English thinker, some of whose works Tolstoy valued highly. Carpenter’s article, “Contemporary Science,” was later translated into Russian by Countess Tolstoy and printed with a preface by Tolstoy in the magazine Sieverni Viestnik (1898, No. 3), later it was issued separately (Posrednik, Moscow, 1911).

136. Count Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy (born, 1863), eldest son of Tolstoy.

137. To the Ekaterinograd disciplinary battalion were sentenced the Dukhobors (41 in number) who had refused military service, while being in actual military service ... See The Dukhobors in the Disciplinary Regiment, published by The Free Press, 1902, England,[329] where was printed also the letter of Tolstoy to the commanding officer of the regiment. Stating those religious convictions of the Dukhobors for which they suffered persecutions and calling their acts ..., Tolstoy asked the commanding officer to do all that he could to lighten their fate. The letter of Tolstoy produced a softening effect on the commanding officer.

138. Vladimir Vasilevich Stasov (1824–1906), a critic of art and music and the librarian of the Imperial Public Library in Petrograd, a friend of the Tolstoy family. When, after Stasov’s death, his friend, the sculptor, I. Y. Ginzburg, asked Tolstoy to write his recollections of him, in the compilation, “To The Memory of V. V. Stasov,” Tolstoy in his letter of November 7, 1907, replied that it was difficult for him to write about Stasov on account of “the misunderstanding” which had taken place between them: “the misunderstanding consisted in that Vladimir Vasilevich Stasov loved and valued prejudicially in me that which I did not value and could not value in myself, and in his goodness forgave me that which I valued and value in myself above everything else,—that by which I lived and live. With every other man such a misunderstanding would lead, if not to hostility then to a coolness, but the gentle, kind, spontaneous, warm nature of Vladimir Vasilevich and at the same time, his childlike clarity, was such, that I could not help succumbing to his influence and loving him without any thought of the difference of our points of view. I shall always remember our good friendly relationship with emotion.”

139. Nicholai Nicholaievich Gay, the son of the old friend of Tolstoy, N. N. Gay.

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140. These thoughts were called forth in Tolstoy by a letter received on October, 1896, from V. V. Rakhmanov, who, being acquainted with this work of Tolstoy, found it written in a cold and didactic tone and advised Tolstoy to abandon it.

141. See Journal, Oct. 20, 1896. Thoughts 9 and 10.

142. This served as a beginning to Tolstoy’s book, What Is Art? completed by him only in 1898.

143. The initials I. G. C. in the original.

144. The Spaniard, Demetrio Zanini, wrote from Barcelona to Tolstoy that the members of a certain club, who were his admirers, decided to offer him a present of a splendid inkwell, money for the purchase of which was being collected by subscription. At the request of Tolstoy, his daughter, Tatiana Lvovna, wrote to Zanini, saying that he preferred this money to be used for some good work. In answer to this, Zanini informed Tolstoy that they had already collected about 22,500 francs. Tolstoy explained in a letter to him the miserable condition of the Dukhobors and suggested using the money collected for their help.

145. A close friend of Tolstoy, Senator Alexander Mickailovich Kuzminsky, president at this time of the St. Petersburg District Court. The finance-Minister, S. Y. Witte, wanted to communicate with Tolstoy through A. M. Kuzminsky, hoping to call forth his approval in the matter of his introducing the government sale of vodka and the founding of temperance societies. Tolstoy’s letter to A. M. Kuzminsky, in which he answered Witte’s proposal in the negative, with the omission of the harsh opinions concerning General Dragomirov (the author[331] of the periodical, The Soldier’s Manual, which was being displayed in the barracks) was printed in the bulletin of the Tolstoy Museum Society, 1911, Nos. 3 to 5.

146. This article has remained unfinished and up to the present has not been printed anywhere.

147. Ilya Efimovich Repine, an old acquaintance of Tolstoy and one of his most favorite Russian painters. On the occasion of the celebration of his twenty-fifth year of artistic work, I. E. Repine wrote a letter in the Novoe Vremia, 1896, No. 7435, Nov. 7th, expressing gratitude to all those who honored him, in which among other things he said, when comparing the work of artists with the work of teachers, officials, bookmakers, doctors, agricultural workers, “We are the lucky ones, our work is play.”

148. Ivan Michailovich Tregubov, a friend and follower of Tolstoy, later a noted student of religious sects.

149. Ivan Ivanovich Gorbunov (Posadov), an adherent of Tolstoy’s views and a close friend of his; an active contributor and from 1897 the editor-publisher of Posrednik, and his brother, Nicholai Ivanovich, a performer (pianist and reader).

150. Paul Alexandrovich Boulanger, a friend and adherent of Tolstoy’s views, author of several works on Oriental religions published by Posrednik.

151. Gabriel Andreevich Rusanov (1844 to 1907), friend and adherent of Tolstoy’s views; a small landowner in the province of Voronezh. Until 1884 he was a member of the Kharkov district court. In his will, among other things, he wrote the following: “Already at the age of fourteen or fifteen (now I am about fifty-seven)[332] I ceased to be Orthodox and lived until the age of thirty-eight as an atheist. At thirty-eight, thanks to the greatest of men, Leo Tolstoy, I acquired faith in God and believed in the teaching of Christ. Tolstoy gave me happiness. I became a Christian.” For several decades G. A. Rusanov was confined to his arm-chair with an incurable disease—consumption of the spinal cord; notwithstanding his illness, he preserved his full freshness of mind up to the end of his life, reading much and being possessed of a rich memory. A splendid student in Russian and foreign literature, and noted for his extraordinary artistic instinct, Tolstoy valued his opinions, especially in regard to his own literary writings.

152. Alexander Borisovich Goldenweiser, friend and follower of Tolstoy, professor in the Moscow Conservatory. Tolstoy valued his piano playing highly and loved it very much. Towards the end of Tolstoy’s life, A. B. Goldenweiser visited him often and took a close interest in his life. In 1910, according to Tolstoy’s wish, he acted in the capacity of witness to his will.

153. Chromatic fantasy and fugue by Bach.

154. Anton Stepanovich Arensky (1861–1906), a celebrated Russian composer, later personally acquainted with Tolstoy.

155. See Note 144. Receiving a letter from Zanini that the collection reached to 31,500 francs, Tolstoy in his letter to him of December 6, 1896, asked that this money be transferred through the Tiflis bank to his Caucasian friends, who were in charge of helping the Dukhobors. At the end of his letter he wrote that he was[333] touched by “this sign of sympathy” which the Spaniards expressed for him in this unusual way. This money, though, was never received by Tolstoy, nor was the inkwell. (See Letters of Count L. N. Tolstoy to his Wife, Moscow, 1913, page 516.)

156. This story of F. F. Tistchenko under the title, Daily Bread (A true tale of the sufferings of a village School teacher), was printed with a letter of Tolstoy in Knizhki Nedieli, 1897, No. 10, and later in the collection of Tales by Tistchenko.

157. Princess Gorchakov, a distant relative of Tolstoy, a lady-in-waiting, and principal of one of the Moscow gymnasiums.

158. Anatol Fedorovich Koni, a well-known jurist, a member of the Imperial Council and a writer. Became acquainted with Tolstoy in the eighties and wrote recollections of him (see his book, On the Path of Life, Volume II, 1913). He gave Tolstoy the theme for Resurrection (see Note 23).

159. Maria Fedorovna Kudriavtsev, an adherent of Tolstoy’s views.

160. The Appeal, under the title Help, was written and signed by P. I. Biriukov, I. M. Tregubov and V. G. Chertkov. This was an appeal to society to render assistance to the persecuted Dukhobors “by money sacrifices, so as to ease the sufferings of the old, the sick and the young, as well as by lifting one’s voice in defense of the persecuted.” The Appeal was spread by the authors in manuscript and in typewritten copies and among other things was delivered to many persons of high position.[334] Tolstoy wrote the appendix to it, in which he explained the significance of the act of the Dukhobors towards the realization of Christianity in our life. Help! was printed with Tolstoy’s appendix by The Free Press (1897, England). The appendix is printed also in the Full Collected Works of Tolstoy, published by Sytin, subscribed edition, Volume XVI, popular edition, Volume XIX.

161. The editors were unable to ascertain the author of the history of music which Tolstoy was reading.

162. Jean Batiste Faure, the celebrated French singer and composer (in the second half of the Nineteenth Century), author of Tolstoy’s favorite duet, “The Crucifix.”

163. Vasili Stepanovich Perfileev, a former Moscow Governor, a friend of Tolstoy in the fifties and sixties, and a distant relative of the Tolstois.

164. An omission in the copy in possession of the editors.

165. This theme was not executed by Tolstoy. A work under a similar title begun by him in 1883 was printed in Volume III of The Posthumous Literary Works of Tolstoy, issued by A. L. Tolstoy.

166. Katiusha Maslov and Nekhliudov, the principal characters of the novel.

167. Alexander Ivanovich Arkhangelsky (1857–1906), an adherent of Tolstoy’s views, about whom after his death in the letter of October 26, 1906, Tolstoy wrote: “This was one of the best men I ever happened to know in my life.” A. I. Arkhangelsky was a veterinary surgeon in the district of Bronnitsk, Province of Moscow. Later, becoming acquainted with the works of Tolstoy, he left his position, considering it impossible to apply against the[335] peasants the compulsory measures required of him as veterinary surgeon, and became a watch-maker, by which he supported himself until his death. His work, Whom to Serve? is devoted to explaining the question of the incompatibility ... with the service to God. When he read this work in manuscript in 1895, Tolstoy wrote Arkhangelsky that “it will do the people much good and will advance the word of God.” This work was issued only in 1911 in the Russian language by the publishing house, “Vozrozhdenie,” in Bourgas (Bulgaria). The same publishing house issued a biography of A. I. Arkhangelsky compiled by Kh. N. Abrikosov. Extracts from Whom to Serve signed by the pseudonym, “Buka,” were printed by Tolstoy in The Reading Circle. It should be also mentioned that the publication of the Veterinary Manual compiled by Arkhangelsky was suspended at one time by the censor, who demanded that it include the compulsory regulations. Protesting against this, Arkhangelsky wrote a remarkable letter to I. I. Gorbunov which Tolstoy included in his Archives of L. N. Tolstoy, No. 5. This letter formed the basis of the article, “Whom To Serve.” Later the veterinary manual was issued by Posrednik.

168. Prince Ilya Petrovich Nakashidze, a Georgian writer, a close adherent of Tolstoy’s ideas.

169. Tolstoy had the intention of writing (but did not write) an introduction to the Russian translation of the Philosophical Work of A. A. Spier, which was to have appeared in Problems of Philosophy and Psychology.

170. Tolstoy was considering at this time an appeal against the existing social-political order.

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171. An omission in the copy in possession of the editors.

172. Stepan Andreevich Behrs, Tolstoy’s brother-in-law, author of Recollections About Count L. N. Tolstoy (Smolensk, 1894), now dead.

173. V. G. Chertkov and P. I. Biriukov, and later also I. M. Tregubov, were exiled after a search of their homes: V. G. Chertkov abroad—P. I. Biriukov to Bausk in Courland, and I. M. Tregubov to Goldingen, also in Courland. The cause of exiling was the writing of an appeal to help the persecuted Dukhobors (see Note 160) and their activity in behalf of the Dukhobors and the persecuted sects in general. See the memoirs of P. I. Biriukov, “The Story of My Exile,” printed in the publication O Minuvshen (Petrograd, 1909). These memoirs contain several letters by Tolstoy to Biriukov.

174. Tolstoy went to take leave of the Chertkovs who were then living in Petrograd.

175. Nicholai Alexandrovich Yaroshenko (1846–1898), a well-known artist, to whose brush belongs also the portrait of Tolstoy, painted in 1895.

176. Countess Alexandra Andreevna Tolstoy (1817–1904), a second cousin of Tolstoy, lady-in-waiting to the Empress. Tolstoy in his youth was on friendly terms with her. His correspondence with the Countess A. A. Tolstoy, with the addition of a memoir by her, was published by the Tolstoy Museum Society, Petrograd, 1911. In reference to this meeting with her, mentioned by Tolstoy in the Journal, see the memoirs (pages 71, 72 of the above mentioned publication). About this same meeting[337] and about the visit to Petrograd in general, Tolstoy wrote to V. G. Chertkov the following (February 15, 1897): “St. Petersburg gave me a most joyous impression. Of course the principal thing was the meeting at your house. The depressing impression was my conversation with A. A. Tolstoy. The terrible thing was not only the coldness, but the cruelty and the forcing oneself into one’s soul and the violence, the very same which had estranged us. What a bad belief it is, which makes good people so cruel and therefore so insensible to the spiritual condition of others. Believe word for word as I do, otherwise if you are not exactly my enemy, still you are a stranger.” It should be noted that from the autumn of 1895, for the course of several years, Tolstoy did not write at all to the Countess A. A. Tolstoy.

177. In considering Tolstoy’s opinions concerning women found in the Journal, one should be particularly careful to avoid misunderstanding. First, Tolstoy, wishing from natural delicacy to make his remarks impersonal, often generalized his private impressions and observations from intercourse with separate individuals, and therefore these remarks in reality carried no reflection whatever against all women in general.

Second, even in those instances where Tolstoy 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 favor 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[338] 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, recognizing fully their merits and their great significance to humanity. In his literary works, Tolstoy, 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, Tolstoy 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[339] 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.)

178. On Life—a religious-philosophic work by Tolstoy, written by him in 1887 and printed in all his collected works. An abbreviation of this work and an exposition of it written in simple language for plain readers was made by an American, Bolton Hall, and was approved by Tolstoy and printed under the title, Life, Love and Death. Later a translation of this under the title, True Life, appeared in an issue of the Ethical Artistic Library, Moscow, 1899. See article of Bolton Hall in the International Tolstoy Almanac compiled by P. A. Sergienko (Kniga, 1909).

[340]

179. See Letters of L. N. Tolstoy to his Wife, Moscow, 1913, pages 518 to 519.

180. Tolstoy made a mistake of one year: the battle against the Caucasian mountaineers in which he took part in the capacity of an artillerist, took place February 18, 1853. (See P. Biriukov’s Biography of Tolstoy, Volume I, page 226.) Nine years after the above mentioned note, February 18, 1903, Tolstoy wrote to Rusanov: “To-day it is fifty-three years since hostile enemy shells struck the wheel of that cannon which I directed. If the muzzle of the gun from which the shell emerged had deviated 1-10,000ths of an inch to one side or another, I would have been killed and I would no longer have lived. What nonsense. I would have existed in a form now inconceivable to me.”

181. What Is Art?

182. Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), a well-known English poet, critic and student of literature. Shortly before his death, Arnold printed an article in The Fortnightly Review, devoted to the critical analysis of Anna Karenin and some of the religious philosophic writings of Tolstoy. (See Novoe Vremia, December 11, 1887, the article, “An English Critic on Leo Tolstoy.”) The thought quoted by Tolstoy was expressed by Arnold in his article, “The Problems of Modern Criticisms” (a Russian translation was issued by Posrednik). Tolstoy valued the writings of Arnold highly, especially his book, Literature and Dogma, of which a Russian translation was published by Posrednik under the title, Wherein Lies the Essence of Christianity and Judaism (Moscow, 1907).

[341]

183. Tolstoy, for the sake of an airing, rode about ten versts to a dressmaker, for the dress of Nadezhda Mikhailovna Yushkova.

184. Jules and Leo Edwardovich Konius, the violinist and the pianist.

185. Countess T. L. Tolstoy and Count Mikhail Adamovich Olsuphiev performed two small plays, Feminine Nonsense by I. L. Stcheglov and The Lady Agreeable In All Respects.

186. According to the copy in possession of the editors.

187. Evidently a mistake in the copy in possession of the editors. This extract refers not to Book VII, but to Book VI of Politics. The quotation cited by Tolstoy reads in the Russian translation of Prof. S. A. Zhebelev in this way: “In a state enjoying the best organization, and uniting in itself men absolutely just, and not relatively just (in relation to this or that political system), the citizens should not lead a life such as is led by craftsmen or merchants (such a life is ignoble and is contrary to virtue); the citizens of the state planned by us should likewise not be agricultural workers, because they will be in need of leisure for the development of their virtue.” Aristotle’s Politics: Works of the Petrograd Philosophic Society, Petrograd, 1911, pages 318, 319.

188. An omission in the copy in possession of the editors.

189. The editor knows nothing about the acquaintanceship of Tolstoy with Madame Shorin.

190. Countess A. M. Olsuphiev, who had been on friendly terms with Tolstoy. In a note to V. G. Chertkov,[342] written on a piece of proof of Resurrection, June 8, 1899, Tolstoy communicated: “I have a sorrow. Anna Mikhailovna Olsuphiev died.”

191. A village near Nicholskoe, as well as the village Shelkovo, mentioned below.

192. A young lively girl, whom Tolstoy met at the Chertkovs’ when they lived in the summer of 1896 near Yasnaya Polyana. Being arrested on suspicion of revolutionary activity and imprisoned in the fortress of Peter and Paul, she committed suicide by setting herself on fire.

In the letter to V. G. Chertkov, Tolstoy 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[343] 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.”

Tolstoy 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?

193. Two lines crossed out by Tolstoy. A note by M. L. Obolensky in the copy in possession of the editors.

194. The Englishman, Aylmer Maude, translator of many works of Tolstoy into English. The agricultural colony which Tolstoy mentions was being founded at that time in England in the town of Purleigh in Essex. Maude settled in the neighborhood of the colony and supported it materially. Maude himself and several representatives of this colony visited Tolstoy at this time. He wrote and published in England, a biography of Tolstoy, The Life of Tolstoy, by Aylmer Maude, two volumes, London, 1908 to 1910. Unfortunately this most detailed biography of Tolstoy in English, contains among other things the most perverted information about Tolstoy and an absolutely incorrect interpretation of his views, as well as of some of his acts. Tolstoy himself, learning before his death of the contents of some of these chapters which were sent to Yasnaya Polyana in manuscript, found the interpretation of the relation among people near to him so incorrect that he wrote about it to Maude.

[344]

195. I. M. Tregubov, sentenced to exile by administrative order, was living in the Caucasus among the Dukhobors, far from the centers of administration, and remained still free. (See entry of following day.)

196. This search was made in connection with I. M. Tregubov’s things, who was wanted at that time, and which were left by him in A. N. Dunaev’s apartment.

197. That is, in England at the V. G. and A. K. Chertkovs.

198. Further in Tolstoy’s manuscript two pages are cut out. Note of M. L. Obolensky in the copy in possession of the editors.

In reference to the mood during the month mentioned by him as “bad and unproductive” Tolstoy 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.”

199. In the beginning of June of that year, Tolstoy decided to leave the conditions of his life which tortured him and wrote a letter to his wife about this. But later he changed his mind and on the envelope of this letter made an inscription: “If I will make no special provision about this letter, then give this after my death to S. A.” This letter he gave afterwards for safe-keeping to his son-in-law, Prince N. L. Obolensky, who did deliver it, as was designated, after Tolstoy’s death. At[345] that time it was printed in different publications. (See Letters of Count L. N. Tolstoy to his Wife, March, 1913, pages 524 to 526.)

200. In his letter to V. G. Chertkov of July 12, 1896, Tolstoy informed him of his illness: “About a week ago when I began to answer letters, I fell terribly ill with a bilious attack, so that I could only answer one letter. My illness was very painful, but it passed away quickly. I am now vigorous and healthy.”

201. Tolstoy’s daughter, Maria Lvovna, married to Prince N. L. Obolensky.

202. Tolstoy wrote about him to A. C. Chertkov (July 12, 1897): “A young peasant, Shidlovsky, came to me from the province of Kiev, a man with a very lively spirit.”

203. In his letter to Chertkov of July 23, 1897, Tolstoy wrote: “Latterly I have begun again to make entries in the Journal—a sign that I have revived somewhat spiritually and no longer feel myself alone.”

204. William Crookes, a well-known English physicist and chemist, a follower of spiritualism. A detailed report about this speech was printed in the Novoe Vremia of 1897, under the title, “On the Relativity of Human Knowledge.”

205. M. P. Novikov gave Tolstoy his notes, through his brother, in which he described all the persecutions which he had to undergo for his friendship with Tolstoy. The notes up to this time have not yet been printed.

206. Paul Carus, editor of a Chicago magazine, The Open Court, devoted to the scientific explanation of religious[346] questions. (See his article, “A Tribute to Tolstoy,” printed in the International Tolstoy Almanac, compiled by P. A. Sergienko, Kniga, 1909.)

207. Evgenie Ivanovich Popov, friend and adherent of Tolstoy’s ideas, author of the book, The Life and Death of E. N. Drozhin (see Note 38), several other works on vegetarianism, the simple life, mathematics, etc.

208. The family of Count I. L. Tolstoy.

209. Vasili Vasilevich Longinov, later Rector of the Kharkov Theological Seminary.

210. In a letter to the Chertkovs of August 8, 1897, Tolstoy wrote: “I feel weak also from the fact, that we have a pile of visitors here ... all this wastes time and strength and is useless. I thirst terribly for silence and peace. How happy I would be if I could end my days in solitude and principally, in conditions, not repulsive and torturing to my conscience. But it seems that it is necessary. At least, I know no way out.”

211. Peter Alexeevich Bulakhov, a peasant from the province of Smolensk, belonging to the sect of the Old-Believers, the followers of which avoid military service.

212. Mikhail Alexandrovich Stakhovich, afterwards a member of the Council of Empire, an old friend of the Tolstoy family, and probably his sister, Sophia Alexandrovna, or his brother, Alexander Alexandrovich (1858–1915).

213. Probably—Vasili Alexeevich Maklakov, a well-known lawyer, afterwards a member of the Duma, and his brother, Alexei Alexeevich, a well-known Moscow physician.

[347]

214. Ilya Yakovlovich Ginsburg, a well-known Russian sculptor, who made several busts and statues of Tolstoy.

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

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

215. In regard to this letter of the Japanese, Tolstoy in a letter of August 8, 1897, wrote: “Recently I received a letter from Crosby with an enclosure of a letter from a Japanese who lived with him in New York. The Japanese read The Gospel in Brief, and writes that it explained to him the meaning of life and that he is now going home to Japan, in order to apply these beliefs to his life and to the life of others and to establish settlements there. A splendid letter which touched me deeply and gave me joy. The same truth evidently is accessible and necessary to every one.”

216. Count L. L. Tolstoy (born in 1869), Tolstoy’s third son, and his wife, the Princess Dora Fedorovna (born Westerlund).

217. B. N. Leontev, at one time calling himself a follower of Tolstoy, committed suicide in 1909.

218. In the Russkia Viedomosti (No. 211, 1897), in the report of the missionary congress which took place in Kazan in August, 1897, in which many high representatives of the hierarchy participated, it was stated among other things, that for combating the spread of sects and dissensions, the congress considered it necessary to adopt the following measures: To forbid the dissenters to open schools for their children and to close all the schools[348] existing at the present moment; to declare the adherence to a particularly obnoxious sect as a compromising circumstance and to thus give the right to peasant communities to expel from their midst members discovered as belonging to an obnoxious sect and to exile them to Siberia. For the sake of combating dissensions and sects, still other measures were suggested and discussed at the congress, which among others were: The soliciting of the passing of a law, by which it would be possible to take away by force the children of the dissenters and sectarians, and the establishing of asylums in every diocese for bringing them up in the orthodox faith.... The Archbishop of Riazan, Meletie, called the attention of the congress to another very important measure, and to his mind, a very useful one for the success of missionary work: the confiscation of the property of the dissenters and sectarians.

219. P. A. Boulanger was sent abroad for continuing the affair of helping the Dukhobors, for which V. G. Chertkov, P. I. Biriukov and I. M. Tregubov were exiled before him.

220. In his letter to the Swedish papers (not yet printed in Russia) Tolstoy wrote that the Nobel prize ought to be awarded to the Dukhobors, as people who have done their utmost towards the establishment of universal peace. This letter, dated August 27, 1898, was printed in P. I. Biriukov’s paper: Svobodnaia Mysl (Geneva), No. 4, 1899.

221. Arthur St. John, an Englishman, a former officer in the India service, came to Moscow to deliver the money[349] donated for the benefit of the Dukhobors by English Quakers. Wishing to come into personal relation with the Dukhobors, he went to the Caucasus, where he was arrested and sent out of Russia. Later, he went with the Dukhobors to America and lived with them a long time.

222. The Molokans, from the province of Samara, district of Buzuluk, came twice (in April and September, 1897) to Tolstoy to ask him that he help them get back the children taken from them by the police and placed in orthodox monasteries. (See Tolstoy’s letter about this to the editor of the Peterburgskaia Viedomosti, printed in that paper in October, 1897, and reprinted in the Collected Works of Tolstoy, edited by Sytin, Popular Edition, Volume XXII. See also, article of A. S. Prugavin, “Leo Tolstoy and the Malakans of Samara,” in his book, On Leo Tolstoy and the Tolstoians, Moscow, 1911.)

223. About the children taken away from the Molokans. The rough draft of this letter is now in the Petrograd Tolstoy Museum.

224. Count A. V. Olsuphiev, Adjutant General. In letters to him and to the two other persons mentioned below, Tolstoy asked their collaboration in freeing from the monasteries, the children taken from the Molokans.

225. Charles Heath. An Englishman now dead, a former instructor of English language and literature in a law school, and later one of the tutors of the Emperor, Nicholas II.

226. Mme. E. I. Chertkov, the widow of an Adjutant[350] General, a well-known follower of the “Evangelist” teaching or what is known as The Pashkov Evangelist Doctrine. The mother of V. G. Chertkov.

227. The Swede, Langlet, who previously had given detailed information to Tolstoy about the Nobel prize. He was a guest at Yasnaya Polyana at this time.

228. The last sentence was marked off in the original.

229. To V. G. Chertkov, during the time of his enforced two-year sojourn abroad, Tolstoy from time to time actually sent extracts of his Journal. But in general, Tolstoy, for reasons which will be given at the proper time and place, found it later necessary to change his decision not to give his Journal to be copied in its entirety to any one; the confirmation of this can be found in the fact that the present issue of the Journal is being printed from a transcript made according to Tolstoy’s wishes. When V. G. Chertkov returned to Russia, Tolstoy continually gave him his Journals to copy in their entirety.

230. In the letter to A. C. Chertkov of October 13, 1897, Tolstoy wrote: “How many people are there with whom one does not speak unreservedly, because you know that they are drunk. Some are drunk with greed, some with vanity, some with love, some simply with drugs. Lord forfend us from these intoxications. These intoxications place no worse boundaries between people than religion, patriotism, aristocracy do, and prevent that union which God desires.”

231. V. G. Chertkov lived through hard times in England; his condition naturally reflected itself upon his[351] family, among which number was his sister-in-law, O. K. Dieterichs, who was their guest at this time.

232. Tolstoy sent to the editor of the Peterburgskaia Viedomosti a letter in regard to the children taken away from the Samara Molokans, and about those measures which were suggested as a means of fighting the sectarians and Old-Believers which were made in the missionary congress in Kazan. This letter was printed in No. 282, of October 15th.

233. Protestant ministers of various localities in Holland: L. A. Beller, A. De-Kuh and I-Kh. Klein, at a meeting in Grevenhagen, definitely expressed themselves against war and military service.

234. N took an adverse attitude to Chertkov’s social work among Englishmen. Chertkov fell ill with pneumonia.

235. To Moscow to be copied.

236. V. D. Liapunov (1873–1905), peasant-poet of Tula. Working in Tula, Liapunov in the autumn of 1897 came to Tolstoy that he judge his poetry. Tolstoy was very much pleased with the poems, contrary to his custom, for in general he did not like poetry. Tolstoy proposed that Liapunov stay in his house to help copy his manuscripts.

237. Afanasi Aggeev, a free-thinking peasant from the village of Kaznacheevka, 4 versts from Yasnaya Polyana. In 1903 he was sentenced by the Tula District Court to exile in Siberia for life for the public utterance of words insulting to the Orthodox Faith. He died in 1908.

238. N. Y. Grot (1852–1899), professor at the Moscow[352] University, author of numerous articles on philosophic questions and editor of the magazine, Problems of Philosophy and Psychology. Tolstoy submitted his work, What Is Art? to Grot to be printed in his magazine. Shortly before his death, at the request of Grot’s brother, Tolstoy wrote his recollections about him, which were printed, together with his letter to Grot, in the compilation, N. Y. Grot, in Sketches, Recollections and Letters by Comrades and Pupils, Friends and Admirers, Petrograd, 1911, and in the Full Collected Works of L. N. Tolstoy, issued by Sytin, subscribed edition, Volume XV; Popular Edition, Volume XXIV.

239. A. P. Ivanov (died 1912), ex-officer and old scribe, with whom Tolstoy became acquainted at the time of the census of 1862, having found him among the Moscow tramps. He led a vagabond life, coming or tramping from time to time to Yasnaya Polyana to help Tolstoy copy his manuscripts.

240. Prince D. A. Khilkov (1858–1915), who at this time was in accord with Tolstoy in several questions of a more external nature, formerly an officer of the Hussars and afterwards of the Cossacks, a landlord in the district of Sumsk, province of Kharkov. In the eighties, he resigned from military service and sold for a trifle his 400 dessiatines of land, the only personal property he had at the time, to the peasants of the village of Pavlovok; in 1889, on account of his propaganda against religion, he was exiled by administrative order to Zakavkaz. In 1893 Khilkov and his wife suffered a great sorrow: their children were taken away from them by order of the government (following the manipulations of Khilkov’s[353] mother), and they were given over to this lady for bringing up, she having absolutely no sympathy with the opinions of her son. Afterwards, when a strong movement among the Dukhobors began in the Caucasus, Khilkov was sent over to the Baltic Provinces, where he lived up to 1899, at which time it was decided that he be sent abroad. In his sojourn abroad, his convictions underwent a change to the side of the violent revolutionaries. But when Khilkov returned to Russia in 1905, he absolutely abstained from every political activity. In the beginning of the Russian-German War, Khilkov entered the army as a volunteer and in October, 1914, was killed at Lvov (Lemberg).

241. A peasant from Yasnaya Polyana, now dead, who was well-lettered and loved to read.

242. The clergy who came carried the icon to the churches, in the parish of which stood Yasnaya Polyana. According to the order of the clergy, the elder of Yasnaya Polyana called a village meeting and ordered every one to go to church and meet the icon which was afterwards carried from house to house in all the households of the village. Concerning Tolstoy and the icon, see his letter to Countess S. A. Tolstoy, which evidently by mistake is dated 1898 (Letters of Count L. N. Tolstoy to his Wife, Moscow, 1913, page 558).

243. N. N. Miklukha-Maklai (1847–1887), a well-known Russian traveler, living many years among the Tuzemts of New Guinea and other islands. In his letter to Miklukha-Maklai in the middle of the eighties, Tolstoy wrote that he considered him remarkable, not for what every one else considered him remarkable, but that[354] “he could find manifestations of humanity among the wildest men on the globe.”

244. Such a type was afterwards portrayed by Tolstoy in his story The Forged Coupon, under the name of the housekeeper, Vasili. (See Posthumous Literary Works of L. N. Tolstoy, issued by A. L. Tolstoy, Volume I.)

245. Every group of people is always inferior to the elements which compose it.

246. The work by M. O. Menshikov, Concerning Holy Love and Sex Love, was printed in Knizhki Nedieli in 1897, No. 11. In Chapters IV and V of this work, Menshikov wrote about the struggle of the two principles: The many-gods and the One-God; Tolstoy was probably pleased with the following lines: “The great teaching about One-God wiped out, together with the idols, the very conception of separate gods; the gods disappeared but their elements—the passions—remained, until now the overwhelming majority of Christians who profess by word in the One-God, in reality bow to a plurality.... (Italics made by the author.) Notwithstanding the thousand year rule of the Gospels, we, in an overwhelming majority are more sincerely idolaters than Christians—of course without suspecting it.... Nihilist, Godless, paganized, the contemporary generation accepts as an undoubted law, that the development of man consists in enlarging the number of needs and refining them to the point of a cult. Is this not a new plurality of gods, an idolatry?”

247. In his book, What Is Art?

248. St. John, Chapter XIV, Verse 2.

[355]

249. Chapter I, Verse 24, St. Paul to the Colossians.

250. See letter of Count L. N. Tolstoy to his Wife, March, 1913, page 535 (No. 583) and page 537 (No. 585).

251. See letter of Count L. N. Tolstoy to his Wife, March, 1913, pages 536–537.

252. About this time Tolstoy wrote to an acquaintance of his: “You know Mme. M. A. Schmidt. She lives near us, straining every effort, notwithstanding her weak health and her age (about 50), to work to support herself. (She constantly helps people) and it is impossible to see her without a softening of the heart and ... envy. She is always joyous, calm and graceful.”

253. In the Novoe Vremia (November 19, 1897, No. 7,806) there appeared an article by V. V. Rozanov: “Graceful Demonism” in which, in an ironic tone, he criticized Menshikov’s article, “On Sex Love,” which was printed in Knizhki Nedieli (1897, Nos. 9–11). In his words later on, Tolstoy speaks of his deeply loved brother, Nickolai Nickolaievich (1823–1860). In his Recollections, Tolstoy relates the incident as follows: “I remember how once, a very stupid and bad man, an Adjutant General, who was hunting with him, laughed at him and how my brother, glancing at me, smiled kindly,” evidently finding great satisfaction in this. (Biriukov, Biography of L. N. Tolstoy, Vol. I, Moscow, 1911, pages 43–44).

254. A. Maude translated What Is Art? into English.

255. The letter of N. Y. Grot is printed, I think, in Tolstoy’s book, What Is Art?

[356]

256. Grigori Antonovich Zakharlin (1829–1895), a well-known professor in the Moscow University, in his day, one of the most popular Moscow physicians.

257. Countess Maria Nicholaievna Tolstoy (1830–1912), Tolstoy’s only sister. As a young girl, she married her second cousin, Count V. P. Tolstoy; some time later she separated from him and soon after she became a widow. When her daughters were married (Mme. V. V. Nagornov, Princess E. V. Obolensky and Mme. E. S. Denisenko) Countess Tolstoy, under the influence of the well-known Father Ambrose, of the Optina Desert, entered the convent of Shamordino (in the province of Kaluga) and later took the veil. In this convent she spent the rest of her life.

258. Monk Ambrose, the celebrated holy man of the Optina Desert, died in 1891, at the age of 80. About Tolstoy’s visits to the Optina Desert see fragment of notes made by S. A. Tolstoy under the title My Life (Tolstoy Annual, 1913, Petrograd, 1914).

259. Dushan Petrovich Makovitsky, then editor in Hungary (in Ruzhomberg), of the Slavic publication which corresponded to the publication Posrednik issued in Moscow, in which Tolstoy and some of his friends took a most active interest.

260. In this place, in the original Journal, a page had been entered in Tolstoy’s hand; evidently the beginning of a letter. This was its contents:

“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[357] 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 program of life, but the ideal; and that the program 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....”

261. The village of Dolgoe, province of Tula, district of Krapevensk, nineteen versts from Yasnaya Polyana. The Yasnaya Polyana house in which Tolstoy was born stands there. In the fifties this house was sold to a neighboring landlord, Gorobov, who took it from Yasnaya Polyana to Dolgoe, where it remained until 1913, when it was destroyed.

262. Nicholai Ilich Storozhenko (1836–1906), professor in the Moscow University, author of numerous books and articles on Russian history and general literature.

[358]

263. Tolstoy probably asked N. A. Kasatkin for examples of true art in painting.

264. N’s stories seemed to be about some of the Chertkovs’ difficult experiences in England.

265. Prince S. N. Troubetskoi (1862–1905), professor of philosophy in the Moscow University, took an active part in the magazine, Problems of Philosophy and Psychology, and became after N. Y. Grot’s death, the editor of it. Tolstoy, as was said above, gave his work, What Is Art? to this magazine.

266. Of these subjects Tolstoy, as much as can be judged, made use of the following: the first, Father Sergius, 1898; the second, The Posthumous Memoirs of the Monk, Fedor Kuzmich, 1905; the fourth, Korni Vasiliev, 1905; fifth, The Resurrection of Hell and Its Destruction, 1902; sixth, The Forged Coupon, 1902–1904; seventh, Hajji Murad, 1898, 1902–1904; the tenth, Resurrection, 1898–1899; and the thirteenth, The Divine and the Human, 1903–1904; the twelfth subject, Mother, was begun by Tolstoy in the beginning of the nineties (Introduction to The Story of a Mother, or A Mother’s Notes).

267. It was disagreeable to Tolstoy that the foreign publishers, who wished to print the first edition of his book, What Is Art? made the condition that it should appear everywhere simultaneously and that it should not be published anywhere first, not even in Russia. Tolstoy, being little acquainted with the conditions of foreign publication, did not understand at first how unavoidable these demands were for a simultaneous publication of books in various countries, and he was disagreeably embarrassed[359] that he had to absolutely forbid the appearance of the book in Russia before the day arranged for foreign publication. Later, realizing the affair more closely, Tolstoy saw the necessity of these conditions of the publishers.

268. I.e., he entirely finished the work What Is Art? and gave it to Problems of Philosophy and Psychology.

269. V. G. Chertkov, being exiled from Russia, settled in England, where he founded the publication, The Free Press, in which the works of Tolstoy were printed, as well as of authors near to him in point of view which could not be printed in the Russian papers. He also arranged for the translations of the new works of Tolstoy into the important European tongues. The telegram which Tolstoy mentions must have been about the English translation of What is Art?

270. Sofron Pavlovich Chizhov, a peasant from the district of Umansk, in the province of Kiev, because of his spreading of views adverse to the orthodox religion, was exiled by administrative order, first to Poland and then to eastern Siberia. His Memoirs were printed in The Free Press, No. 10, 1904. Tolstoy often wrote to Chizhov in exile, expressing his joy that he bears all oppression “like a man, with patience and with love.” Chizhov has remained in Siberia for life and at present is living near Yakutsk.

271. As in the copy in possession of the editors.

272. See Note 267.

273. In a letter to Chertkov, January 18, 1898, Tolstoy wrote: “Letters with threats have, of course, no effect, but they are unpleasant, in this sense, that there should be[360] people who hate futilely. I am always ready to die and that is the thing. I thought a little while ago: ... that when one is healthy one ought to try to live better on the outside, but when one is ill then learn to die better. Besides, these letters haven’t even this merit: they are so stupidly written that they have been conceived evidently only to frighten.”

274. Concerning this illness, Tolstoy, mentioning it in his letter to the Chertkovs, December 28, 1897, said: “The illness was the usual one, biliousness, and has now passed away.”

275. Tolstoy began and finished this drama only in 1900.

276. Tolstoy’s brother-in-law, A. A. Behrs.

277. Sergei Mickailovich Soloviev (1820–1879), the Russian historian, the father of the philosopher, Vladimir Sergeevich, and the novelist, Vsevolod Sergeevich Soloviev.

278. The preface to the English edition, What Is Art? In his letter to Chertkov, December 27, 1897, Tolstoy wrote:

“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.”

[361]

279. Nicholas Evgrafovich Phedoseev, a political exile, who went by étape with the Dukhobors exiled to Siberia. In his letter Fedosiev told Tolstoy about the interviews given to him by the Dukhobors themselves, concerning the suffering those who were sent to the Ekaterinograd disciplinary battalion had to undergo, and he also gave him information about the Dukhobors in Siberia. This letter was printed in Leaflets of The Free Press, 1898, No. I.

280. “I received a letter through the Chertkovs,” wrote Tolstoy, January 18, 1898—from G. Bedborough, the publisher of The Adult, a letter with questions about sex-problems and a very lightheaded program.

281. Written in English, in the original.

282. Ilya Efimovich Repine. Concerning this visit, Tolstoy wrote to Chertkov, January 21, 1898: “One of the recent pleasant impressions was the meeting with Repine. I think we made a good impression on each other.”

283. Countess Alexandra Lvovna Tolstoy (born, 1884), Tolstoy’s youngest daughter.

284. The literary work conceived and written by Tolstoy only in 1902: The Legend of the Destruction of Hell by Christ and Its Resurrection by the Devils, arranging the teaching of Christ so that it improve the evil life of people.

285. As in the copy at the disposal of the editors.

286. Michail Fedorovich Gulenko, serving in the department of the Moscow-Kursk Railroad, and at this time one of the most active contributors to Posrednik.

287. Leopold Antonovich Sullerzhitsky, later one of the managers of the Moscow Artistic Theater. In the Tolstoy family he was often called for short, Suller.

[362]

288. A poem by V. D. Liapunov, printed at first with a letter by Tolstoy in the magazine, Russkaia Mysl (1898, No. 1): and later in the book, V. D. Liapunov, a Young Poet, “Library of Leo Tolstoy,” edited by P. I. Biriukov, Moscow, 1912.

289. In Paths of Life Tolstoy expresses this thought more exactly: “That which we consider for ourselves as evil, is in most cases a good which is not yet understood by us.” In another place he says in speaking of the same problem: “We must distinguish between our conceptions of evil in general, ‘objective’ evil, as philosophers say, an outer one, and between evil for each man individually, a ‘subjective’ evil, an inner one. There is no objective evil. Subjective evil is a departure from reason, it is indeed death.” (A combination, The Four Gospels Harmonized, Translated and Studied, Chapter III.) See also Journal of May 28, 1896, thought 1.

290. One word illegible. Note by Prince Obolensky in the copy in possession of the editors.

291. To avoid misunderstanding as to whom this remark of Tolstoy’s refers, it is proper here to cite an extract from another one of his writings: “They say that defense is impossible under nonresistance; but the Christian does not need any defense. All that an evil-doer can do is to deprive one of property, to kill, and a Christian is not afraid of that. The Christian not worrying about what to eat, what to drink, what to wear, and knowing that without the will of the Father not a hair will fall from his head, the Christian has no need to use violence against the evil-doer. The evil-doer can do nothing to him.” (From the rough draft of The Kingdom of God Within[363] Us, 1890–1893, with later corrections by Tolstoy made during a revision of his Complete Collection of Thoughts.)

292. Jean Grave, a contemporary French writer, of anarchical tendencies.

293. Shortly before that, February 14, 1898, Tolstoy wrote to V. G. Chertkov: “About myself I can say that I would be satisfied with my spiritual state, if I were not dissatisfied with my small external output. The causes are: Ill health, as well as the bustle of city life (although now for about three days I have been well).”

294. The twentieth, the concluding chapter of What Is Art? is devoted to a criticism of contemporary science from the standpoint of Christian philosophy.

295. Anatol Ivanovich Pharesov, the democratic fiction writer and publicist.

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 Tolstoy and the Man-Gods,” and the book on Leo Tolstoy and the Tolstoians, Moscow, 1911.

296. The agricultural colony, Georgia, issued a magazine[364] with a Christian tendency, called Social Gospel. Among the members of this colony was Crosby. There were about one hundred colonists. In this letter, addressed to George Howard Gibson, Tolstoy expressed his opinion on agricultural societies in general.

297. At this time, the Dukhobors received permission from the Russian authorities to emigrate. Tolstoy addressed himself to Russian, European and American society with an appeal, in which he summoned them to help the Dukhobors with money as well as with direct assistance in the difficulties of emigration. The appeal to Russian society was printed among other places in the Full Collected Works of Tolstoy, published by Sytin, subscribed and popular editions, Volume XVIII; and the letter to the English newspapers was printed in The Free Press, No. I (1898, England), in the article of P. I. Biriukov and afterwards reprinted in his book The Dukhobors.

298. When What Is Art? was already printed in the Problems of Philosophy and Psychology and submitted to the censorship there came an order from Petrograd to submit it to the theologic censorship. The theologic censor not only crossed out many passages, but in some places made changes which perverted the very thought of the author. In the preface to the English translation of this work, Tolstoy expressed regret that, contrary to his custom, he consented at the request of N. Y. Grot to print this work with the censor deletions and softenings. And he also speaks about the harm of every kind of compromise.... This preface was printed in Russian in The Free Press, No. 1.

[365]

299. At this place in the Journal there was a diagram composed of flowing lines, irregularly drawn. As the editors did not have the original of the Journal, but used the copy made by Prince Obolensky, it was impossible to make an exact facsimile of the original diagram.

300. In his letter to V. G. Chertkov, Tolstoy 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,” Tolstoy wrote April 6th, “was to ask some one of our friends to go to visit Verigin in Obdorsk.”

301. Ivan Petrovich Brashnin, a typical old-fashioned Moscow merchant, a dealer in raw silks; his family consisted of his wife and two sons. A. N. Dunaev introduced him to Tolstoy in the eighties. He was then over 60. He had wanted to make his acquaintance, because the views of Tolstoy were near to his soul; in spite of his former strict orthodoxy he warmly accepted the views of Tolstoy. Being sincere and straight-forward, he rejected the ... teaching and became a convinced follower of the pure Christian teaching. He spoke with great pleasure and emotion about his visits and talks with Tolstoy, which gave him the greatest joy.

A few years prior to his death he became a strict vegetarian.[366] 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, Tolstoy 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.”

302. The article on war and on military service was called forth by the request of two foreign papers to the representatives of political and social workers, and the representatives of science and art, to express themselves on whether war was necessary in our time, what were the consequences of militarism and what were the means that led the quickest way to a realization of universal peace.

303. The former estate of Count I. L. Tolstoy in Cherni, the province of Tula, to which Tolstoy went to[367] help the famine-stricken peasants. As in the year 1891 when Tolstoy helped the famine-stricken peasants of the province of Riazan, he considered the establishment of soup-kitchens as the most sensible form of help, for which he set himself to work upon his arrival in Grinevka. On May 2, 1898, in his letter to the Countess S. A. Tolstoy, Tolstoy wrote in reference to his activity that “the work which was being done was necessary and is advancing. There is no famine, but the need is killing, cropless, very difficult, and it helps us to see it.” (Letters of Tolstoy to his Wife, Moscow, 1913, pages 542 and 543.)

304. April 21, 1898, by order of the Minister of the Interior, the Russkia Viedomosti was suspended for two months “for the collection of contributions in aid of the Dukhobors and for evading the executive orders of the Moscow Governor-General.” The regulation of the Moscow Governor-General which the newspaper did not fulfill was to give over for disposal to the authorities the money contributed through the editorial offices for the aid of the Dukhobors. The editors could not do that, because the money had already been sent to Tolstoy.

305. Lopashino, as well as Sidorovo, Kamenka, Gubarevka, Bobriki, Michails Ford, Kukuevka, which are mentioned below, are villages near to Grinevka where Tolstoy established soup-kitchens for the famine-stricken.

306. For an orderly organization of aid for the needy, Tolstoy had collected the necessary detailed information concerning the number of souls and the economic condition of each household in the suffering villages.

307. See Note 136.

[368]

308. The Tsurikovs and Ilinskys—neighboring landlords.

309. Tolstoy wrote to V. G. Chertkov on that day: “I haven’t written for a whole week, but I feel pretty well. It seems to me that after the Moscow bustle my impressions are finding their place, the necessary thoughts are coming forth.”

310. See Letters of Count L. N. Tolstoy to his Wife, March, 1913, pages 543 and 544.

311. I.e., at his son’s, Count S. L. Tolstoy, on his estate of Nicholskoe, near the station of Bastyevo.

312. V. G. Chertkov then wrote an article, “Where is Thy Brother? About the attitude of the Russian Government to the People Who Cannot Become Murderers,” in the defense of the oppressed Dukhobors. This article was published in The Free Press (England, 1898).

313. G. R. Lindenberg, one of Tolstoy’s coworkers in aid of the famine-stricken, an artist.

314. The name of this teacher is Gubonin. Together with Lindenberg he came to Tolstoy from Poltava.

315. The Appeal served as the beginning of two articles on the labor question: Should it really be so, and Where is the way out? upon which Tolstoy worked during the year 1898 and revised it once again for printing in 1900.

316. The deceased, N. N. Strakhov.

317. The county seat of the province of Orel.

318. A railroad station on the Moscow-Kursk Railroad.

319. Tolstoy speaks here of gymnastic exercises which he sometimes took (see entry of May 11, 1898).

[369]

320. Tolstoy used to receive contributions in aid of the famine-stricken from various people.

321. In this article under the title, “Is There Famine or No Famine?” Tolstoy answers the following questions: 1. Is there in the current year a famine or is there not a famine? 2. To what is due the oft-repeated need of the people? 3. What is to be done in order that this need be not repeated? These were printed with omissions in the newspaper, Russ, of July 2 and 3, of 1898 and in full in Leaflets of The Free Press, No. 2 (England, 1898).

322. The Countess S. N. Tolstoy (born Philosophov), wife of Tolstoy’s son, Count I. L. Tolstoy.

323. Neighboring landlords near Grinevka.

324. After a tiring, long ride by horse, Tolstoy arrived at the Levitskys’, and fell ill of severe dysentery.

325. Tolstoy was forced to stop his work in aid of the famine-stricken, as the Tula Governor forbade all nonresidents without his permission to establish and help in the construction of soup-kitchens. Without these people it was impossible to continue the work. (See article “Is There Famine or No Famine?”)

326. The well-known Swedish physician, Ernest Westerlund, and his wife—parents of the wife of Count L. L. Tolstoy, Dora Fedorovna—who arrived from Sweden to visit her.

327. The novel, Father Sergius, which Tolstoy wrote from 1890–1891.

328. I.e., from V. G. and A. K. Chertkov.

329. The story, The Forged Coupon, begun by Tolstoy[370] as early as the end of the eighties and only begun again by him at the end of 1902.

330. N. S. Lieskov (1831–1895), a well-known writer. In the last years of his life he shared in many respects the views of Tolstoy. The story of Lieskov mentioned by Tolstoy is called The Hour of the Will of God.

331. Five years later, in 1903, Tolstoy worked this theme out in a story entitled Three Problems.

332. The christening of the first child of Count L. L. Tolstoy.

333. About this time Tolstoy wrote to V. G. Chertkov: “My sickness at first began as dysentery, then I had very great pains and fever and weakness. Now everything has passed.”

334. Prince E. E. Ukhtomsky, the editor and publisher of the Petrograd Viedomosti.

335. “Is There Famine or No Famine?”

336. The weekly newspaper issued in Petrograd by S. F. Sharapov.

337. This was done in those places where Tolstoy organized aid to the famine-stricken.

338. I. C. Dieterichs, a former Cossack artillery officer, who held the same views as Tolstoy, a brother of Madame A. C. Chertkov, and his sisters, Maria and Olga Constantinovna.

339. There occurred in England at this time, some misunderstandings between several friends of Tolstoy, who had to be convinced by experience that having the same point of view is far from being of one mind. The misunderstandings were later smoothed over.

[371]

340. The contemporary French novelist.

341. See Note 339.

342. Elizabeth Picard, a Quaker, wrote an open letter to the well-known English publisher, Stead, editor of the magazine War Against War, which preached universal peace, and which at the same time was against those persons who refused military service.

343. C. T. Willard of Chicago offered himself as mediator in the emigration of the Dukhobors to America. Tolstoy sent his letter to England to V. G. Chertkov, whose house at this time was the headquarters for all communications concerning the emigration of the Dukhobors.

344. V. P. Gaideburov, from 1894 on, editor and publisher of Nediela.

345. In English in the original.

346. This intention was carried out by Tolstoy, at least in regard to Resurrection, which he gave to the publication Niva, edited by A. F. Marx, who paid twelve thousand rubles for the first printing. The money was used by Tolstoy in aid of the emigrating Dukhobors.

Originally, Tolstoy 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 Tolstoy[372] decided to give only Resurrection for the benefit of the Dukhobors and did not begin to work on Father Sergius.

347. Arvid Järnefelt. The well-known Finnish writer who held the same opinions as Tolstoy. After graduating from Helsingfors University, he prepared himself for the career of magistrate, but becoming acquainted with the writings of Tolstoy, he brusquely changed his life. He learned the trade of cobbler and locksmith and later, at the end of the nineties, he bought a plot of land and began to till the soil, not ceasing his literary labors, however. He translated many works of Tolstoy into Finnish. The novels of Järnefelt are My Native Land, Children of the Earth and several stories which are translated into Russian. The acquaintance of Järnefelt with Tolstoy began with his sending his book called My Awakening to Tolstoy in 1895. It was in Finnish, and with it he sent a translation of one of his chapters: “Why I Did Not Undertake the Post of Judge.” This chapter, together with an accompanying letter by Järnefelt, Tolstoy included in his manuscript No. 4, Archives of L. N. Tolstoy.

Tolstoy’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[373] 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 Tolstoy.”

In explanation of this letter Järnefelt communicated the following to the editors: “I quickly answered Tolstoy’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, Tolstoy 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, Tolstoy 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, Tolstoy 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[374] that then everything is clear. But they are rare moments.”

348. See Note 347.

349. A collection in the church Slavonic tongue, Love of Good, or Words and Chapters of Sacred Sobriety, collected from the writings of the Saints and God-inspired fathers. In his library, Tolstoy had a volume of Love of Good with a great many notes in the margin made in his own hand.

350. With I. I. Gorbunov, who came for a short time to Ovsiannikovo to his brother, who lived there at this time, the actor N. I. Gorbunov. At this meeting, Tolstoy said to I. I. Gorbunov that it was the gentlemanly state of his life that had become more agonizing to him, that he was “ashamed to look in the eyes of his lackeys” and that he wanted to go away. He said among other things that he was thinking of going away with I. I. Gorbunov to Kaluga (where Gorbunov lived at that time)—and further than that, he still had another plan ... perhaps it was the plan about which Tolstoy had written a little while before to Järnefelt. (See Note 347.)

351. Tolstoy’s brother, Count Serge Nicholaievich.

352. Tolstoy’s sister, Countess M. N. Tolstoy.

353. The English authorities of the Island of Cyprus asked a money guarantee of about two hundred and fifty rubles for each man from the Dukhobors emigrating there, so that in case of need they would not have to be supported at the government expense. At that time it became known, that in Russia several influential governmental persons had begun to zealously urge the government to send the Dukhobors to Manchuria for[375] the Russification of those Chinese borders adjacent to Russia. It was necessary to hurry with the emigration of the Dukhobors; the English Quakers pulled them out of their helpless position, who first of all persuaded the English Government to decrease the guarantee from two hundred and fifty rubles to one hundred and fifty for each man, and afterwards in several days, collected among themselves a guarantee of one hundred thousand rubles, which, together with the fifty thousand rubles which were contributed at that time by various people, made up the necessary sum for giving the guarantee for the whole party of Dukhobors. In his letter to the Dukhobors of August 27, 1898, Tolstoy ended thus: “May God help you to accomplish His will with Christian manhood, patience and faithfulness, in establishing this change in your life.”

354. M. N. Rostovtzev, the daughter of Madame M. D. Rostovtzev, a land-lady of Voronezh, and a follower of Tolstoy, on coming from the Chertkovs, was arrested on the border because, at the custom examination some pieces of proof of a forbidden book were found on her. She was soon freed.

355. The interruption in receiving letters from V. G. Chertkov was caused by the secret police looking through them. Therefore Chertkov was forced to carry on a part of this far-distant correspondence through a circuitous address. In the letter to him at the end of August, 1898, Tolstoy, informing Chertkov that one of his letters was kept back a month, wrote: “Yesterday I received your letter of August 5th. It is terribly vexing, this interference with our communications which now[376] have become so specially important. And what is it for?”

356. See Note 355.

357. L. A. Sullerzhitsky went to the Caucasus to help the Dukhobors arrange for their emigration abroad.

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 Tolstoy, 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.

358. The sister of Tolstoy, Countess Maria Nicholaievna. A month later, September 30, 1898, Tolstoy wrote to V. G. Chertkov: “Yesterday my sister, M. N., left, with whom I spent a very friendly month, never having been so loving.”

359. V. A. Kuzminsky, a niece of Countess S. A. Tolstoy.

360. Countess Vera S. Tolstoy, a niece of Tolstoy, daughter of Count S. N. Tolstoy.

361. Tolstoy’s seventieth birthday, celebrated August 28, 1898.

362. According to the contract with the publisher of Niva, A. F. Marx, Tolstoy at the conclusion of the contract, received the whole of his royalty for only the first 200 pages of Resurrection.

363. In regard to the false rumors which were reaching[377] Tolstoy at this time, about the affairs of the emigrating Dukhobors.

364. One of the Dukhobors exiled to Siberia, V. N. Pozdniakov, was sent by his brethren to the leader of the Dukhobors, P. V. Verigin, who was then in exile in the village of Obdorsk in the province of Tobolsk. Receiving a letter of instructions from Verigin for the group in general, he brought this letter to his brethren in the Caucasus and on his way reached Yasnaya Polyana. He showed Tolstoy marks on his body from ill-treatment he had suffered three years before.

365. Herbert Archer, an English coworker with V. G. Chertkov, who went at his request to Tolstoy to transmit information to him with regard to the Dukhobors and to dissipate the false rumors about them which had reached Tolstoy from outsiders. About this time, in his letter to Countess S. A. Tolstoy, Tolstoy wrote about Archer: “He looks insignificant, but he is a very good man and a remarkably clever one.” (Letters of Count L. N. Tolstoy to his Wife, March, 1913, page 555.)

366. This thought Tolstoy changed in the following form for The Reading Circle: “Now I consider as myself my body with its senses, but then something entirely different is being formed in me. And then the whole world will become different, since the whole world is not something different, only because I consider myself such a being separated from the world and not another. But there may be an innumerable quantity of beings separated from the world.” The Reading Circle, issued by Posrednik, Volume I, Moscow, 1911, for April 16.

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367. Tolstoy’s son, S. L. Tolstoy, and L. A. Sullerzhitsky went to the Caucasus to accompany the remaining Dukhobors to Canada. Tolstoy in order to protect them from the oppression of the authorities wrote a letter to the commander-in-chief of the Caucasus, Prince G. S. Golitsin.

368. Tolstoy sometimes could not remember which thought from his pocket note-book he had written out into the Journal and which one he had not. This explains the fact that several thoughts are entered without any changes at all in the Journal, in places not far from one another.

369. In the eighties and nineties the Tolstois went yearly from Yasnaya Polyana to Moscow to spend the winter.

370. Princess E. V. Obolensky, niece of Tolstoy, daughter of his sister, Countess Maria Nicholaievna.

371. In the finished form, the novel had 129 chapters.

372. In another place Tolstoy says: “Playing the fool (like Christ) i.e., the purposeful representing of yourself as worse than you are, is the highest quality of virtue.” (Journal, May 29, 1893.)

373. An omission in the copy in possession of the editors.

374. Tolstoy wrote to V. G. Chertkov as early as December 13, 1898: “I absolutely cannot occupy myself with anything else than with Resurrection. Just like a shell, when it gets to the earth, falls more and more quickly, in the same way I now, when I am nearing the end, I cannot think—no, not that I cannot: I can and[379] even do think—but I don’t want to think about anything else but about it.”

375. At this time the emigration of the Dukhobors to Canada had not yet been accomplished. Tolstoy took an active part in the affair: he addressed various people with the request for contributions for this purpose, he carried on a correspondence with friends in England in regard to a place of settlement for the Dukhobors, he sent letters to the authorities to try to remove obstacles which were in their way, he saw agents who suggested places of settlement, he carried on a correspondence with the Dukhobors themselves, etc.

376. February 15, 1899, Tolstoy wrote to V. G. Chertkov: “My back hurts all the time and I am weak and I am disgusted with Resurrection, which I can’t touch.”

377. The retired officer addressed himself to Tolstoy with the question whether the Gospels were not against military service. Tolstoy’s answer was printed in the leaflets of The Free Press, No. 5, 1899, and in 1906 in Petrograd in the publication, Obnovlenia, No. 130 (which was confiscated).

378. A group of representative Swedish intellectuals addressed themselves to Tolstoy with a letter as to the means of attaining universal peace. In this letter on the one hand, they expressed the thought that universal disarmament could be attained by the surest path of each separate individual refusing to take part in military service, and on the other hand, they acknowledged that the Peace Conference fixed for The Hague at the[380] instigation of the Russian Government was useful to the attainment of universal peace....

379. In the middle of February, 1898, the students of the University of Petrograd, in the form of a protest against the beating of people in the streets, decided on the day of the student holiday, February 8th, as a peaceful-minded group of students, to cease work. They were soon joined by students of other higher schools in Petrograd and later in Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov, Jurev, Odessa, Tomsk, Kazan, Riga and Novaia Alexandria. In this way the studies of several thousand men and women students were suspended. The representatives of the Moscow and Petrograd student bodies came to Tolstoy with the purpose of obtaining his opinion and sympathy for the student movement.

380. Sinet, an artist, who refused military service on religious grounds and was sent to the Algerian disciplinary battalion and who escaped from there. Tolstoy called Sinet the first religious Frenchman, therefore, because he was the first Frenchman he met who believed truly as he did.

381. In his letter to V. G. Chertkov of July 9, 1899, Tolstoy wrote, “The matter of the translations worry me. I can imagine, therefore, how they worry you. To-day I thought this: To drop all contracts with the translators and print the following in the newspaper....” Further on Tolstoy expounds the project of his letter to the newspapers, that he, in the matter of translation, decided to destroy the contracts with the publishers of the translations and to refuse the royalty of the first printing of these translations. And yet the[381] need of the Dukhobors was so great that “having no means of employing cattle, they have hitched themselves and their wives to the plow and are plowing with human power to till their land.” For this reason, Tolstoy drops his plan: “I ask all the publishers who will print this novel and the translators of it, as well as the readers of the novel, to remember those people for whom this publication has been begun and as far as their strength and their desire go, to help the Dukhobors by giving their mite to the Dukhobor fund in England.”

382. Taking no part in 1899, in the work of organizing help for the famine-stricken peasants, Tolstoy directed the contributions received for this purpose from various people, to be sent to those who were occupied on the spot in giving help to the inhabitants.

383. Originally in English.

384. This thought was maintained in the book then being read by Tolstoy: Vergleichenden Uebersicht der Vier Evangelien, von S. G. Verus, Leipzig, 1897. In the letter of Biriukov of August 1, 1899, Tolstoy wrote thus about the significance of Verus’ book: “This supposition or probability is the destruction of the last suburbs which are susceptible to attacks from the enemy, so that the fortress of the moral teaching of the good, flowing not from a source which is only temporary and local, but from a totality of the whole spiritual life of humanity, be unshaken.”

385. Countess S. N. Tolstoy.

386. See Note 384.

387. This thought is developed more in detail by Tolstoy[382] in the Legend of the Stones (see The Reading Circle, Volume II).

388. Alfred B. Westrup. Plenty of Money. N. Y., 1899.

389. Countess O. C. Tolstoy, born Dieterichs, first wife of A. L. Tolstoy.

390. The artist, Julia Ivanovna Igumnov, who lived a long time in Yasnaya Polyana. At this time she helped Tolstoy to copy his manuscripts and his letters.

391. A. D. Arkhangelsky, a student in the Moscow University, who lived as a teacher in Tolstoy’s house.

392. These chapters on Resurrection were sent to the publishing house of Niva to be set up.

393. An interrogation point in the copy at the disposal of the editors.

394. Living at this time with the Tolstois in Moscow, Countess O. K. Tolstoy, in a letter to V. G. Chertkov on November 22nd, 1899, described Tolstoy’s illness in this way: “Yesterday we lived through a terrible evening and night. In the evening after dinner, Tolstoy went to his room to lie down, and after several minutes we were all attracted by terrible groans from him ... he was taken with severe stomach pains which were very severe from four o’clock in the morning to seven in the evening. He suffered terribly and at first nothing helped.” Tolstoy suffered especially from vomiting which lasted twenty-eight hours. His doctors were P. S. Usev and Prof. M. P. Cherinov. “Both medicine and feeding,” another person wrote to Chertkov from Moscow, December 5, 1899, “is given now by entreaty and persuasion, now by tears and now by deception, which is[383] even more depressing than tears. To-day everything is better: pains and appetite and strength.” Tolstoy got out of bed December 6th and little by little began to walk. But the following days he had pain and felt weakness.

395. An omission in this place in the copy in possession of the editors.

396. This word in the original is underlined twice.

397. From Derzhavin’s Ode, “God.”

398. The exact title of the book by M. A. Engelhardt is Progress, As an Evolution of Cruelty, issued by F. F. Pavlenkov, Petrograd, 1899. To the author of this book, M. A. Engelhardt (1858–1882), Tolstoy wrote, in 1882, a very remarkable letter on the problem of nonresistance to evil by violence.

399. The journal, Niva.

400. The novel, The Forged Coupon.

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