Tolstoy

Sasha came back from World War I with the rank of colonel, and two St George medals awarded for bravery (the decoration which had once eluded her father). She had served on the Western Front, and also in the Caucasus, where she set up orphanages and ran a field hospital, but the situation became dangerous after the February Revolution and she returned home.³⁴ It was Sasha, or Alexandra, as we should call her, since she was now stepping out of the role of daughter, who took over the running of Yasnaya Polyana from her ailing mother at the end of 1917. She took up residence in the old family home again along with her aunt Tanya, her sister Tanya (both now widowed) and her niece Tanya, and now began to turn her attention back to her father’s legacy. It was now that Sonya finally handed over the keys to the twelve chests of Tolstoy’s manuscripts under her jurisdiction to Alexandra, removing the last bone of contention between them. Sonya’s eldest and youngest children (Sergey was now fifty-five, Alexandra was thirty-four) were thus at last able to start serious work on preparing their father’s manuscripts for the projected complete scholarly edition.

It was thanks to Lenin’s personal initiative that the gargantuan project of Tolstoy’s collected works was moved to the top of the agenda in the cultural sphere and viewed as a matter of state importance. An article to this effect appeared in the Bolshevik newspaper Sovetskaya pravda at the end of January 1918, when the figure of sixty volumes was mentioned.³⁵ (It was also at Lenin’s personal behest that Sonya’s state pension was reinstated in March 1918, having been reduced in 1917.³⁶) The archives in the Rumyantsev Museum, which had once again become the repository of Tolstoy’s early manuscripts, became a hive of activity in the winter of 1918. Pashkov House, the elegant mansion that housed the Rumyantsev Museum, located a short walk from the Kremlin, was still the home of Moscow’s most important library, and would later become the nucleus of the Lenin Library. In the harsh post-revolutionary conditions of 1918, however, no one cared much for well-appointed surroundings, particularly in the winter months when there was no heating. Alexandra, Sergey and their colleagues were forced to work in their overcoats and hats, with regular bursts of gymnastics in order to survive the freezing temperatures. They had formed a Society for the Study and dissemination of the Works of L. N. Tolstoy, chaired by Alexandra, but it soon became clear to them that Chertkov and other key followers of their father would be instrumental in the preparation of any authoritative edition. Chertkov was not a member of their society, as he was preparing a rival edition. Having appointed himself as chief editor of the Complete Collected Works, he started negotiations with Lenin and Anatoly Lunacharsky, the new Commissar of People’s Enlightenment, for the publication of an edition which he now projected would comprise ninety volumes. By december 1918 he had won assurances that 10 million roubles would be allocated by the Bolshevik government to fund the entire enterprise, but until the money became a reality, he paid the thirty-strong editorial team he assembled out of his own pocket.³⁷