Tolstoy

‘Lev Nikolayevich’ had long been a household name in Russia, and it had become quite common to overhear passengers on a train discussing him as if he were a close acquaintance. The labels accompanying the photographic chronology in the special supplement published by the newspaper Russian Word to mark Tolstoy’s eightieth birthday said it all – from the earliest photographs, labelled ‘Count L. N. Tolstoy’ when he was an unknown author, to ‘Lev Tolstoy’, and finally the familiar ‘Lev Nikolayevich’. There were only a few notes of criticism amongst the scores of birthday tributes published, and one of them was by Lenin, whose first and most famous article about Tolstoy, ‘Lev Tolstoy as a Mirror of the Russian Revolution’ appeared in The Proletarian. While praising his attacks on the tsarist regime, Lenin not surprisingly condemned Tolstoy’s philosophy of non-violence which he held responsible for the failure of the 1905 Revolution.

In addition to all the greetings cards and telegrams, Tolstoy received gifts, some of which were rather ill-judged, such as the several thousand cigars in boxes with his picture on the front.¹⁸¹ Having Chertkov living so near to him was undoubtedly the best birthday present as far as Tolstoy was concerned. The Chertkovs and all the local Tolstoyans, such as Maria Alexandrovna Schmidt and Ivan Gorbunov-Posadov, were invited to a festive dinner at Yasnaya Polyana along with family members, friends and relatives. It was the first and last such occasion, as in 1909 Sonya started to become increasingly paranoid, and also increasingly hostile to Chertkov. The battle with him revolved around Tolstoy’s will and his late diaries. She was as obsessive as Chertkov about her husband’s legacy, but not as powerful as he was. Much as it was rewarding to enter into correspondence with figures like Gandhi in 1909, and exciting to be filmed by some of Edison’s colleagues, Tolstoy’s desire to become a homeless wanderer became more and more intense.

In March 1909 Chertkov was ordered to leave Tula province. Politics and personnel had changed in St Petersburg, and suddenly he no longer had so many friends at court. Tolstoy was mortified, and even Sonya wrote to protest, but the Chertkovs were obliged to move from their new home. They took up residence at Vasily Pashkov’s old estate Krekshino, about twenty miles outside Moscow. As the year went by, relations between Tolstoy and Sonya now sharply deteriorated. First she found the manuscript of Tolstoy’s unpublished story ‘The devil’, about a young nobleman’s passion for a peasant girl, which opened up a lot of old wounds. Then, in July, she discovered that the power of attorney Tolstoy had given her to manage his property in 1883 did not give her any legal rights to them.¹⁸² She was livid. during Tolstoy’s illness in the Crimea, Masha had managed to procure her father’s signature on a will which relinquished the copyright on all his works. Sonya had managed to reinstate her name as a beneficiary back then, wanting to ensure that her children and not publishers would benefit from royalties after her husband’s death. Tolstoy, however, had other ideas, of course, and Chertkov fully supported his desire to waive all rights over his works. Sonya also faced a new problem as there was a new Tolstoyan in the midst of her family: her daughter Sasha, who had long resented her mother. Sasha turned twenty-five in 1909, and she now devoted herself to working for her father, and with Chertkov. She was determined to thwart her mother, and make sure a will was drawn up which denied her any rights to her father’s works.

Tolstoy had been tipped for one of the recently introduced Nobel Prizes several times, and had published a letter in the Stockholm Tageblatt in 1897 suggesting the dukhobors were more deserving recipients of the prize money, but the Swedish Academy had been repeatedly frightened off by his ‘anarchism’.¹⁸³ In 1909, through the agency of Chertkov, he was invited to the Stockholm Peace Congress. Sonya suspected her husband was going to meet Chertkov behind her back and threatened to poison herself.¹⁸⁴ Tolstoy finally agreed not to go, and then in August the Congress was cancelled anyway. It was just at this time that Gusev was arrested for a second time, which was a further blow.¹⁸⁵ This time he was exiled to the Urals for two years. Chertkov began the search for a new secretary.