Tolstoy

The Kreutzer Sonata – circulates immediately in samizdat Tolstoy’s sister Masha becomes a nun

1890

Sonya obtains permission to publish The Kreutzer Sonata after an audience with Alexander III; Tolstoy is anathematised

1891

Renounces copyright and divides property among his wife and children. By now vegetarian, teetotal; no longer smokes or hunts

1892

Famine relief in Ryazan province

1893

The Kingdom of God is Within You – immediately published in translation

1894

Death of first Tolstoyan ‘martyr’; meets first Dukhobors

1895

Death of Ivan Tolstoy before his seventh birthday; Tolstoy takes up cycling

1896

First Tolstoyan colony established in England

1897

Chertkov exiled to England; founds press to publish Tolstoy’s writings

1898

What is Art?

1899

Resurrection – royalties pay for Dukhobors to emigrate to Canada

1901

Excommunicated

1902

Recovers from serious illness in the Crimea

1904

Death of brother Sergey

1906

Chertkov allowed to return from exile

1908

‘I Cannot Be Silent!’

1910

Death at Astapovo railway station

TOLSTOY FAMILY TREE

Note: The Tolstoy and Bers family trees reproduced here are principally designed to clarify the genealogies of Tolstoy and his wife Sonya and are not comprehensive.

BERS FAMILY TREE

NOTE ON CONVENTIONS

A simplified transliteration system has been used in the body of the text (e.g. ‘Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy’), but a more accurate one in the notes and bibliography (e.g. ‘Petr Andreevich Tolstoi’). Exceptions are made in the case of accepted spellings such as ‘Potemkin’ (pronounced ‘Potyomkin’), ‘Tchaikovsky’ and ‘Bolshoi Theatre’.

Russian dates before 1918 are given according to the Julian calendar, which was twelve days behind the Gregorian calendar in the nineteenth century, and thirteen days behind in the twentieth century.

INTRODUCTION

IN JANUARY 1895, deep in the heart of the Russian winter, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy left Moscow to go and spend a few days with some old friends at their country estate. He had just experienced another fracas with his wife over the publication of a new story, he felt suffocated in the city, and he wanted to clear his head by putting on his old leather coat and fur hat and going for some long walks in the clear, frosty air, far away from people and buildings. His hosts had taken care to clear the paths on their property, but Tolstoy did not like walking on well-ordered paths. Even in his late sixties he preferred tramping in the wilds, so he invariably ventured out past the garden fence and strode off into the deep snow, in whichever direction his gaze took him. Some of the younger members of the household had the idea of following in his footsteps one evening, but they soon had to give up when they saw how great was the distance between the holes left in the soft snow by his felt boots.¹

The sensation of not being able to keep up was one commonly felt by Tolstoy’s contemporaries, as he left giant footprints in every area of his life. After racking up enormous gambling debts as a young man, during which time he conceived and failed to live up to wildly ambitious ideals, he turned to writing extremely long novels and fathering a large number of children. When he went out riding with his sons, he habitually went at such a fast pace they could barely keep up with him. Then he became moral leader to the nation, and one of the world’s most famous and influential men. A tendency towards the grand scale has been a markedly Russian characteristic ever since the times of Ivan the Terrible, who created an enormous multi-ethnic empire by conquering three Mongol Khanates in the sixteenth century. Peter the Great cemented the tradition by making space the defining feature of his new capital of St Petersburg which arose in record time out of the Finnish marshes. By the time Catherine the Great died at the end of the eighteenth century, Russia had also become immensely wealthy. Its aristocrats were able to build lavish palaces and assemble extravagant art collections far grander than their Western counterparts, with lifestyles to match. But Russia’s poverty was also on a grand scale, perpetuated by an inhumane caste system in which a tiny minority of Westernised nobility ruled over a fettered serf population made to live in degrading conditions. Tolstoy was both a product of this culture and perhaps its most vivid expression.