Tolstoy

Twice every week all of the Russian Empire is informed that N. N. or B. B. is unable or unwilling to pay what he has borrowed, taken or what is demanded from him. The borrowed money has been gambled away, traveled away, spent away, eaten away, drunk away, given away or has perished in fire and water … Any case will do for the announcement which reads: At ten o’clock this morning, on order of the county court or city magistrate, the real estate of retired captain T … consisting of house no. X, in such and such a district, and six male and female souls, will be sold at auction … Everyone is interested in a bargain. The day and hour of the sale has arrived. Buyers are assembling from all around. In the hall where the sale is to take place, the condemned are standing motionless. An old man of 75 years, leaning on an elmwood cane, is anxious to find out into whose hands his fate will pass, who will close his eyes. He served with the Master’s father in the Crimean campaign under Field Marshal Munnich. At the battle of Frankfurt he carried his wounded master off the field of battle on his shoulders. Returning home, he became the tutor for his young master. In [the Master’s] childhood, he had saved the boy from drowning, jumping into the river into which he had fallen while crossing on a ferry, and putting his life at risk, pulled him out. In [the Master’s] youth he had bailed him out of prison where he had been confined for his debts incurred while serving as a junior officer …¹⁹

It was Radishchev’s book (republished by Herzen in London in 1858) which launched the birth of Russia’s intellectual aristocracy – its intelligentsia. For the most progressive members of this class of Russians defined by their opposition to the state, of whom the editorial staff on The Contemporary were amongst their number, the abolition of serfdom was the single burning issue which needed to be addressed. Only writers had dared to broach this and other sensitive topics before the accession of Alexander II, hence their hallowed status in Russia, and the noble tradition of the writer as the moral voice of the nation would in time be continued by Tolstoy.

Tolstoy had become a confirmed opponent of serfdom while he was in Sebastopol, but his views were no doubt further influenced by the conversations he had with Nekrasov and his new colleagues. After many meetings and consultations, including with the historian and liberal thinker Konstantin Kavelin, whose proposal for the emancipation of the serfs had been circulating in samizdat form for the previous year, Tolstoy went to discuss his own emancipation plan with a senior bureaucrat at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. His intention was to give his serfs complete personal freedom, and to sell the land to them over a thirty-year period for 150 roubles for each desya-tina (2.7 acres). The Ministry was not yet ready to make decisions on such matters at this point, but Tolstoy was firmly resolved.

Although he was promoted in March 1856 to the rank of lieutenant for his bravery in Sebastopol,²⁰ Tolstoy had little interest in continuing his military career. He immediately put in a petition for an eleven-month leave. The winter months he had spent in Petersburg had been exceptionally busy. He had largely managed to curb his degenerate habits and had worked hard on his writing, but there were a few cultural outings. The flat he had taken on Ofitserskaya Street was close to the city’s two main opera houses, and on 4 May he sat in the same box as the composer at the premiere of Dargomyzhsky’s Rusalka at the Circus-Theatre (home to the Russian opera, and forerunner of the Mariinsky Theatre).²¹ Later in the month he took the train out to Pavlovsk, and is bound to have been at the second concert given that season by Johann Strauss Jr and his orchestra. Pavlovsk had become an important concert venue after the opening of the railway link with St Petersburg in 1837 (the first in Russia). The country’s first railway station – called, for reasons that are not entirely clear, a vokzal after the English ‘Vauxhall’ – included a spacious and well-appointed pavilion where the performance of light music had turned into regular orchestral concerts during the summer months, and one of the first signs of the liberalisation of Russian society under Alexander II was the invitation to the ‘Waltz King’ to come to Russia. The arrival in Russia of dance music seemed to augur well for the new reign. On 16 May, the day after he went to Pavlovsk, Tolstoy was finally given permission to go on leave, which meant he could finally head back to Yasnaya Polyana and put his emancipation plans into action. Within two days he had packed his bags and departed.