Tolstoy

by A. N. Wilson

  Tolstoy, who was reading again the epistles of John and finding them ‘wonderful’, also took turns at sitting by the bed. ‘There is no fear in love. . . . Beloved, now are we the children of God and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him.’

  On her deathbed, Masha, aged thirty-six, demonstrated all her qualities of innate calm, spiritual courage and resignation. She remained conscious to the end. Her husband and her father were with her. An hour before she died, she opened her eyes, took Tolstoy’s hand and laid it on her breast. She whispered, ‘I’m dying.’ Thus she died.

  Tolstoy went to his study and wrote, ‘Masha is dead. Strange, I feel neither any horror, nor fear, nor any consciousness that something out of the ordinary has occurred, not even any pity or pain. . . . I watched her all the while she was dying. It was so amazingly calm, for me she was a being in a state of revelation, preceding my own revelation. . . .’7

  Telegrams and letters of condolence poured in. They seemed ‘falsely sympathetic’. But the genuine response of the peasants to Masha’s death could not fail to move him. It took a long time to carry her coffin from the house to the cemetery where lay buried Tolstoy’s parents and three of his children. All the peasant women wanted to pause and say a prayer for Masha’s soul, so that the coffin stopped at each house in turn. Every door had a particular memory for Masha. Here she had sat up all night nursing a child with scarlet fever. There she had sat by a woman in labour. Here she had come to weep with one newly widowed woman.

  Tolstoy’s favourite encounter was not at the funeral, but while he was out walking. He bumped into Kunya, who was an idiot. ‘Have you heard about our grief?’ Tolstoy asked. ‘Yes, I’ve heard.’ And then immediately, ‘Give me a kopeck.’ ‘How much better and easier that is,’ he told his diary.8

  Now, at seventy-eight, he assumed that his own demise could not be far away. He looked forward with momentary religious detachment and calm to following Masha and being absorbed into the likeness of Christ. But his own temperament and situation were wildly different from Masha’s. Moreover, he failed to recognise how deeply he had relied on Masha. ‘Nor did I know,’ wrote Sasha, ‘how irreparable that loss was to us, how Father would need Masha in the tragedy that was to be played out four years later, when I was destined to take on my young shoulders a responsibility beyond my powers.’9

  The tensions in the household continued to provide a grotesque parody of Tolstoy’s quarrel with the political condition of Russia as a whole. For example, Tolstoy continued to advocate, both by the written and the spoken word, the theories of Henry George, and to insist on the wickedness of land ownership. The land belonged to all! Yet, throughout the year of 1907, there were outbreaks of petty violence and thieving which Countess Tolstoy felt unable to ignore. Her own brother, Vyacheslav Bers, an engineer, was murdered by unemployed workmen while he was helping with the excavation of a harbour near St. Petersburg, and this did not dispose Sofya Andreyevna kindly in favour of the revolutionaries. These were dangerous times. ‘Lev Nikolayevich constantly compares the present situation with the French Revolution as described by Taine,’ she wrote.10 On the estates of her son Misha they set fire to the sheds which housed all his valuable agricultural equipment. A neighbour of the Tolstoys, Madame Zvegintseva, had a coachman who was set upon by prowlers and shot.

  It was all very well for Tolstoy to preach brotherly love and the universality of property. What did he intend to do about the fact that the peasants had cut down a hundred and twenty-nine of his oak trees and taken away the timber? Nothing. It was not his property any more. The paradox of the situation was that, because he had signed away his estate to his wife and family, they were in the position to make the decisions; and they took a decidedly un-Tolstoyan and common-sense approach to the matter. Their nightwatchman was shot by someone coming through the woods near the house and the cabbage fields were raided. At that point, Sofya Andreyevna, with the support of her son Andrey, called in the police.

  On September 7, 1907, the governor of Tula came over. It was a slightly embarrassing visit since Andrey, a pious conservative in politics and Orthodox in religion, was having an affair with the governor’s wife. The police rounded up four of the peasants, and guards were stationed by the house. ‘I have not been able to get rid of an ugly feeling,’ Tolstoy said. The whole episode made his position more ridiculous. Not only was he in all but name the laird of a large estate and fortune, while he professed the need for dispossession; but worse, the apostle of non-violence was now compelled to accept the presence of armed guards, who stood about in the hall and on the verandahs, smoking and swearing and leaning on their guns. The fact that Chertkov tried to interest them in his pacifist pamphlets and to engage them in dialogue somehow only made the situation more galling.11

  The old man tried to get away. Would it not be possible for him to go to live in Tanya’s house? But Sofya Andreyevna would have none of it. Then, would she at least ask the police to release the peasants they had arrested? It was not a matter for discussion. Sasha, in tears, went to Andrey and begged him to relent, but the answer was firm: ‘Your mother asked me to undertake the protection of Yasnaya Polyana and of your family and I am merely carrying out her request.’

  So Tolstoy remained indoors, dictating thoughts to his helpers and to his secretary. Spiritually preparing for death, he revised and enlarged his spiritual lectionary, The Circle of Reading, passages from the Hindu and Buddhist Scriptures, from the Philokalia of Orthodox spirituality and from the New Testament. All members of the household took turns at copying and recopying bits of this Circle. But while all these religious writings were used by Tolstoy in a conscious effort to prepare for his own death, the writings of these years reveal an inability to let go, and a longing to remain on the earthly scene and to be directing operations as much as he could. I Cannot Be Silent was the title of a pamphlet which he dictated to his secretary Gusev and had printed in 1908. It was a protest against the reintroduction of the widespread use of the death penalty in Russia. The title was really true. He had to go on talking and writing. ‘You say that you do all these horrible things in order to restore peace and order. . . . But how do you restore them? By destroying the last trace of faith and goodness in men. . . . By committing the greatest crimes. . . . You say that this is the only way of pacifying the populace and quelling the Revolution; but that is evident nonsense! It is obvious that you can’t pacify the people unless you satisfy the demand for the most elementary justice. . . . that is the demand for the abolition of private property in land. . . .’12 And so on.

  He could not be silent. When the young Gandhi wrote to Tolstoy about the appalling conditions under which Indians laboured in the Transvaal, he received copious encouragement for his campaigns of civil disobedience and passive resistance. For Tolstoy, the struggle was the same, whether it was the people of Russia against their Government, or the peoples of the Transvaal against the English, or the Negro against his American oppressors. He quoted Krishna – ‘Children, look at the flowers at your feet; do not trample upon them. . . .’ ‘What are needed for the Indian as for the Englishman, the Frenchman, the German, and the Russian, are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many clever devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all the sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the wealthy, powerful classes; nor new schools and universities with countless faculties of science, nor the augmentation of papers and books, nor gramophones and cinematographs, nor those infantile and for the most part corrupt imbecilities called Art – but only one thing is needful – the law of love which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. . . .’13

  This was the sort of thing which he had been saying for the last thirty years, and he went on saying it, day after day in his letters and diaries. The more he said it, the more his disciples wanted to hear it, and the more it spread lik
e wildfire among the Russian people, and the less notice was taken by any authority in the world who might have actually changed things for the better.

  Tolstoy’s full-time secretary, supplied by Chertkov, was called Nikolay Gusev. He was to be one of the most punctilious of scholars, both as an editor of Tolstoy’s works, and as the compiler of a chronology of Tolstoy’s life. But Gusev had not been Tolstoy’s secretary for long before, in October 1907, he was arrested as a propagandist of the Revolution. He was only put away for two months. ‘How I envy you,’ Tolstoy told the young man when he came back to Yasnaya Polyana in December. ‘How I wish they would put me in jail, into a real, stinking one. Evidently I have not yet deserved this honour.’14

  That summer of 1907, the Government had lifted its ban on Chertkov and allowed him to return to Russia. He settled about three miles from Yasnaya Polyana, in a derelict manor house belonging to Sasha. ‘It pains me to see Chertkov building such a house,’ Tolstoy confided to his daughter. ‘It is too big and too grand, and he is spending so much money on it!’15

  Tolstoy did not quite realise that Chertkov needed less a house than a headquarters for a worldwide religious organisation based on Tolstoyan principles. Tolstoy’s blinking incredulity as he watched the builders sawing and hammering was a miniature version of what Christ might have felt had He been able to watch His followers laying the foundation stones of the Vatican. Chertkov was moving not just his wife and family, but a whole entourage. Telyatinky – the name of the manor – was built to house stenographers, copyists, and a number of bearded persons with an unspecified function who were called ‘assistants’. There was also an English photographer, who was brought over to Yasnaya Polyana at every available opportunity to photograph Tolstoy – ‘from every angle’, as Sasha remarked.

  In spite of her impeccable Tolstoyan credentials, Sasha found the curia who had been imported from Bournemouth rather unappealing. ‘The Russian blouses, the boots, the long beards, unkempt hair, the always earnest faces, as if people had vowed not to joke, laugh or be merry. It was only Father and sometimes Chertkov who introduced any liveliness into this group by their jokes, laughter and puns. The fact that all these Tolstoyans were splendid people and Father valued them still could not relieve the overwhelming boredom.’16

  There can be no doubt of Chertkov’s genuine devotion to Tolstoy. He was not a charlatan or a rogue. But his fanatical religious zeal (shared by his beautiful, staring, pale wife Galya) made him believe that he was entitled to possess Tolstoy, to take him over like some commodity. The return of Chertkov was inspired by a burning personal love. And with this love, there was the calculated desire to make sure that Tolstoy, before he left this earth, should entrust his mantle, quite unambiguously, to Chertkov himself. This was not merely a spiritual thing. As the Tolstoy family divided, and the children lined up behind one parent or the other, everyone was concerned with the very important matter of Tolstoy’s last will and testament.

  During the last years, Tolstoy wrote several wills. It need hardly be said that they were all the cause of bitter acrimony – an acrimony, as we now see, all the more pointless since, within seven years of his death, the Revolution came, abolishing all claims to personal property. The wills are also remarkable as demonstrations of the legal and professional incompetence of all concerned. Accounts have also been muddled, in modern biographies, by the existence of two Strakhovs in the story, an old Strakhov and a young Strakhov, very different in character and unrelated.

  In 1883, Tolstoy had given his wife power of attorney which, in effect, gave her ownership and control of all his lands and houses. These, in a series of agreements and disagreements among the children, were eventually divided up among the family during Tolstoy’s lifetime in much the same way as if he had died. Ever since that time, Tolstoy had been accused of hypocrisy. Though technically having renounced his possessions, he still lived in a style which most Russians would have regarded as luxurious, and his simple vegetarian meals were served to him by a lackey wearing white gloves. One caricature in a newspaper depicted Tolstoy in a room full of valuables, labelled ‘property of my wife’. He was guzzling rich food and drinking fine wine while starving onlookers held out their skinny hands in vain. It was an unfair joke, but one which arose inevitably out of the way in which Tolstoy had chosen to dispose his affairs.

  Tolstoy appears to have been determined, by his will, to have disentangled himself and his heirs from the taint of property. The fact that this was legally impossible took a very long time to penetrate his brain. The first will was a note, made in his diary, that he entrusted his old friend N. N. Strakhov, together with V. G. Chertkov and Countess Tolstoy, to sort through his papers and dispose of them as they saw fit. This note was made on March 27, 1895; Strakhov died in the following year. The next note, claiming to be a will, is a letter to Chertkov in which the beloved disciple was asked to collaborate with Sofya Andreyevna in the disposition of the papers.

  Since, after his return to Russia, Chertkov had been purloining all Tolstoy’s manuscripts, including that of his story Hadji Murat, it is understandable why Sofya Andreyevna felt it unlikely that she would ever enjoy a very influential role in this ‘sorting’ after Tolstoy’s death. On August 11, 1908, Tolstoy drew up another will, this time dictated to his secretary, N. N. Gusev. Here he expressed the wish that all his writings should be placed by his heirs in the ‘public domain’.

  None of these wills were legal. But what Sofya Andreyevna did not realise was that the power of attorney of 1883 did not, during Tolstoy’s lifetime, give her automatic legal right over all his published works. She in effect owned his houses, his cows, and his crops. But she did not automatically own his copyright. She had no legal title to any of his works published before 1881. In fact for the last quarter-century, she had not, as she supposed, been the legal owner of Childhood, The Cossacks, War and Peace or Anna Karenina. It was essential to clear this matter up for two very obvious reasons. Firstly, until a legal document made it clear that these books belonged to Tolstoy’s family, they would not, in future, be able to live on the royalties. Secondly and, for Sofya Andreyevna almost as importantly, the great Collected Edition of her husband’s works could not exist if the copyrights were scattered to the winds. In September 1909, Chertkov, realising that this was the case, drew up a fourth legal will with the help of a Moscow attorney, N. K. Muravyov. This made Chertkov into Tolstoy’s sole heir, but specified that none of Tolstoy’s works were anyone’s private property, and that they could not ‘be published and copied by all without compensation’.

  But this will ran into difficulties. In the first place, the lawyer changed his mind about the legality of the will. The inclusion of the phrase about the copyrights belonging to one and all invalidated the testament. In the second place, Tolstoy’s conscience could not live with making an undercover arrangement. He tried to express his doubts about the morality of the case in secret letters to Chertkov. Obviously, having embarked on the crazy idea of making a secret will, and concealing all knowledge of it from Sofya, Tolstoy was compelled to be secret, even in his protestations that they should be more honest and open.

  Sofya Andreyevna was now beyond reason. The children were slow to recognise how serious her psychological condition was, but her outbreaks of hysteria and paranoid fears were inflamed by the secret correspondence which she soon discovered was taking place between her husband and Chertkov. She could not get her hands on the letters, but her nose for these matters was infallible, and she was aware that letters were being exchanged. Since it was by no means clear any longer who owned the copyright to Tolstoy’s works, nor who would inherit them when he died, it was understandable that she should want to watch the old man like a hawk. She did not think, however, that the letters passing between the two men were just about business matters. In her present paranoid condition it was obvious to her that they were love letters and that Tolstoy’s lust for her, which had apparently at the age of eighty-one cooled, had, in reality, been tra
nsferred to the ‘evil spirit in Chertkov’. She tried to explain this to her husband a few months later: ‘I showed him that page of his old diary for 1851, in which he writes that he had never fallen in love with a woman but has frequently fallen in love with men.’ This did not go down very well. Tolstoy turned white and flew into a terrible rage. ‘Get out! Get out!’ he shouted. ‘I said I will leave you and I will!’ Then he went to his room, slammed the door and locked it. ‘Where is his love?’ she asked. ‘His non-resistance? His Christianity?’17

  Tolstoy’s fifth will was drawn up in very shady circumstances towards the end of 1909. Chertkov and Muravyov drafted it, with the assistance of F. A. Strakhov. This got round all the previous difficulties by bequeathing Tolstoy’s literary estate to his daughter Sasha on the understanding that, when he died, she would abandon her claim to the copyright. By what justice Sasha was allowed to take away the inheritance of her mother, her brothers and sisters, it was not considered. Sasha herself expressed some doubts to Tolstoy, not least her worry about how the rest of the family would treat her after he died. ‘No, I have decided it that way,’ he said firmly. ‘You are the last one to remain with me, and it is entirely natural that I entrust this matter with you. But in the case of your death the rights will pass to Tanya.’

  This may have been Tolstoy’s intention, but it was not written into the will. Can any lawyer have ever been less competent than Muravyov? The will of November 1909 makes no provision for what should happen to the estate in the event of Sasha’s death. It therefore had to be redrafted in July 1910. Tolstoy copied out the whole thing himself in a little wood a couple of miles from his house, so as not to be spotted by his wife or sons. This will did allow for the literary estate to pass to Sasha’s sister Tanya, and thereafter to her dependants. ‘It was not easy for Father to decide on this step,’ Sasha tells us, ‘not easy to conceal his decision from his family. But he had firmly decided to make amends for the sin, as he called it, of having sold his own works.’ It is a classic example of what Bonhoeffer called valuing our own innocence above the happiness of others.