The Journal of Leo Tolstoi (First Volume — 1895–1899) · 66

220. In his letter to the Swedish papers (not yet printed in Russia) Tolstoi 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 Tolstoi to ask him that he help them get back the children taken from them by the police and placed in orthodox monasteries. (See Tolstoi’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 Tolstoi, edited by Sytin, Popular Edition, Volume XXII. See also, article of A. S. Prugavin, “Leo Tolstoi and the Malakans of Samara,” in his book, On Leo Tolstoi 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 Tolstoi Museum.

224. Count A. V. Olsuphiev, Adjutant General. In letters to him and to the two other persons mentioned below, Tolstoi 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 Tolstoi 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, Tolstoi from time to time actually sent extracts of his Journal. But in general, Tolstoi, 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 Tolstoi’s wishes. When V. G. Chertkov returned to Russia, Tolstoi continually gave him his Journals to copy in their entirety.

230. In the letter to A. C. Chertkov of October 13, 1897, Tolstoi 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. Tolstoi 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 Tolstoi that he judge his poetry. Tolstoi was very much pleased with the poems, contrary to his custom, for in general he did not like poetry. Tolstoi 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. Tolstoi 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, Tolstoi 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. Tolstoi, issued by Sytin, subscribed edition, Volume XV; Popular Edition, Volume XXIV.

239. A. P. Ivanov (died 1912), ex-officer and old scribe, with whom Tolstoi 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 Tolstoi copy his manuscripts.

240. Prince D. A. Khilkov (1858–1915), who at this time was in accord with Tolstoi 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 Tolstoi and the icon, see his letter to Countess S. A. Tolstoi, which evidently by mistake is dated 1898 (Letters of Count L. N. Tolstoi to his Wife, Moscow, 1913, page 558).

243. N. N. Miklukha-Maklai (1847–1887), a well-known Russian traveller, living many years among the Tuzemts of New Guinea and other islands. In his letter to Miklukha-Maklai in the middle of the eighties, Tolstoi 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 Tolstoi in his story The Forged Coupon, under the name of the housekeeper, Vasili. (See Posthumous Literary Works of L. N. Tolstoi, issued by A. L. Tolstoi, 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; Tolstoi 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]