Tolstoy

Kazan was a provincial city, but by the standards of provincial Russian cities at the time it was exceptional, and its university was a major reason behind the Tolstoys’ relocation there. Soon after they arrived in November 1841, Nikolay became a second-year mathematics student, having failed the exam to transfer to the third year at Moscow university.⁴ He graduated in 1844, then joined the army, and was soon transferred to the Caucasus. His younger brothers, meanwhile, started to prepare for their entrance examinations with tutors. Sergey and Dmitry both entered Kazan university in August 1843 to study mathematics like Nikolay, and Lev followed in 1844. Their sister Maria had a German governess, then was educated at the newly founded Rodionov Institute for girls in Kazan.⁵

By all accounts Aunt Polina had very little impact on the upbringing of the young Tolstoys, nor was she in any serious way involved with it. Radically different from her reclusive and abstemious late sister Aline, she was a social butterfly for whom good taste was everything. According to her nephew Lev’s subsequent reminiscences, she was a kind and pious woman, but rather frivolous. She was also vain, and clearly flattered by the chance now given to her to step into the role of saviour to the orphaned Tolstoys, but she was too busy socialising to exert any moral authority over her young charges, who now had the chance to go wild. Polina’s marriage was unhappy, and her husband was frequently unfaithful, so she seems to have drowned her sorrows in parties: the Yushkovs had a reputation for entertaining in style, and boasted one of the best chefs in town. Polina’s main contribution to the Tolstoy boys’ upbringing was to give each of her nephews their own personal serf, in the hope that each of them would become in time a faithful and devoted servant.⁶ Dmitry was given Vanyusha, whom he mistreated, according to his younger brother. Tolstoy could not remember Dmitry actually hitting Vanyusha, but he did have clear memories of him begging contritely for forgiveness.⁷ Dmitry soon radically changed his ways and became a fervent Christian, although he never lost his irascible temperament.

Dmitry is a shady figure in Tolstoy’s life – he was the first of the brothers to die, at the age of twenty-nine, and does not appear ever to have been close to his siblings – but he looms large in Tolstoy’s memoirs of their life in Kazan. It was really only in Kazan, in fact, that Tolstoy’s real memories of Dmitry began. unlike his brother Lev, just one year younger than him, who confessed to preening and being conscious of his appearance even before they moved to Kazan, Dmitry never had any aspirations to being comme il faut. With rare exceptions he was serious and quiet, particularly after he started to attend church regularly and observe all the fasts, like Aunt Aline before him. As the youngest, Lev had a tendency to envy all his elder brothers, and what he envied in ‘Mitenka’ was his indifference to other people’s opinions about him, which he believed was a trait inherited from their mother.⁸ Indeed it was only because of Mitenka’s unkempt appearance that he came to the attention of his far more image-conscious siblings, who were embarrassed by him. Dmitry had no interest in dancing or attending social events, nor did he spend much time with his family, and he stuck rigidly to his student’s uniform. Tolstoy retained a strong memory of Dmitry’s tall, thin frame, his sad, large, brown, almond-shaped eyes, and the nervous tic he developed during his first serious bout of fasting, when he would jerk his head, as if his tie was too tight. Tolstoy would draw heavily on this and other aspects of Dmitry’s life when he came to create the character of Levin’s brother Nikolay in Anna Karenina.

As the grandchildren of the former governor of Kazan, the Tolstoys were invited to all the best households in town, and they thoroughly enjoyed becoming acquainted with the local aristocracy – all except Dmitry, who only ever befriended one poor, bedraggled student who went by the unfortunate name of Poluboyarinov (apart from simply sounding clumsy, the name implies someone who is only ‘half-noble’). Otherwise Dmitry preferred to spend his time in church. Rather than go to the fashionable university church, he went to the one attached to the prison opposite their house, and at Easter probably spent more time there than at home. It is the custom for excerpts from the four Gospels concerning Christ’s Passion to be read out on Good Friday, but this church’s very strict priest unusually insisted on all four Gospels being read out in their entirety. Since the Orthodox Church requires its parishioners to stand for services, the congregation would have been on its feet for a very long time indeed, but this was probably welcomed by Dmitry, who had a tendency to apply himself with almost masochistic zeal to anything he cared passionately about.⁹