The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

by Cathy Porter

  Sofia’s son-in-law Mikhail Sukhotin elected to the Duma. She prepares twelfth edition of Tolstoy’s Complete Works. Tolstoy writes ‘On the Meaning of the Russian Revolution’, and starts on ‘The Children’s Law of God’. June—peasants steal wood from the Yasnaya estate and Sofia calls police, which provokes bitter arguments with Tolstoy. August—Sofia critically ill with peritonitis, and has operation to remove fibroma of the womb. 26th November—Masha Tolstaya dies of pneumonia.

  1907

  Some 2,500 terrorist murders in this year. Terrorist campaign reaches its climax, then collapses, with hundreds of terrorists in prison, Siberia and exile. 3rd June—second Duma dissolved as too radical, and Social Democrat deputies arrested and imprisoned. July—announcement of Russo-Japanese reconciliation. August—Anglo-Russian entente. November—third Duma, dominated by conservatives, completes its full term (until June 1912).

  19th May—Sofia’s brother Vyacheslav murdered by terrorists. Marauders break into Yasnaya Polyana and Sofia applies to police for guards to protect the property. (The occasion for more bitter arguments with Tolstoy.) September—Tolstoy receives a telegram from an extreme right-wing organization threatening his life. October—his secretary, Nikolai Gusev, arrested for “revolutionary propaganda” and exiled to the Urals. November—Andrei Tolstoy marries his second wife, Ekaterina Artsimovich. Tolstoy starts evening class for peasant children and writes Children’s Circle of Reading and ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’. Winter—he has several strokes and memory losses. Chertkov returns to Russia from exile in England, and takes control of his diaries. Sofia continues work on My Life (referred to in this period as her Autobiography).

  1908

  Spring—revolution defeated, reaction once more triumphant, most revolutionaries in exile or prison. Under the patronage of Nicholas II, ultra-conservative organizations multiply. Large numbers of people move to Siberia to colonize its barren places.

  Tolstoy writes ‘I Cannot Be Silent’, a manifesto to the Tsar begging for an end to the carnage. It is banned, but circulates nonetheless (those found reading it are punished heavily). Sofia working on My Life and a series of short stories for her grandchildren. Summer—Chertkov buys estate near Yasnaya Polyana and is a constant visitor. Sofia’s battles with him begin in earnest. September—Tolstoy’s eightieth birthday celebrated in grand style. He suffers more strokes and phlebitis. Violent quarrels with Sofia over the copyright to his post-1881 works.

  7th September. It is a long time since I have written my diary.

  Living here in Yasnaya at present are Lev Nikolaevich and I, our daughter Sasha, Doctor Makovitsky, Sasha’s companion and assistant Varvara Mikhailovna Feokritova and Lev Nikolaevich’s secretary, Gusev, to whom he dictates corrections and new ideas every morning for the new edition of his Circle of Reading.

  We have recently celebrated Lev Nikolaevich’s eightieth jubilee. What an enormous amount of love and respect people have for him. This was evident from all the articles, letters and telegrams—some 2,000 in all. I am saving everything and shall send it to the Historical Museum in Moscow, which is going to open a “Jubilee Archive”.

  There were some very touching presents too: the first was from waiters at St Petersburg’s Bouffe Theatre, and was accompanied by a charming letter. The present was a nickel-plated samovar with engraved inscriptions which read: “Not in God our Strength but in Truth”, “The Kingdom of God Is within You”, and 72 signatures.* Some artists sent a lovely album of watercolours,* and there were numerous portraits of Lev Nikolaevich, one embroidered on silk, and another done from tiny words taken from a short story of his.* There was a beautiful embroidered red cushion from some craftsmen; the Borman bakery sent chocolate, of which 100 boxes were given to the Yasnaya village children. Someone else sent 100 scythes for our peasants; there were 20 bottles of St Raphael wine for Lev Nikolaevich’s stomach, and from the Ottoman factory a box of cigars, which he returned with a letter of thanks, saying he was against tobacco and smoking.

  There were also a number of malicious presents, letters and telegrams. For instance, there was a box containing some rope and a letter, signed “A Mother”, saying: “Since Tolstoy has no reason to think the government will hang him, he had better do it himself.”*

  This mother probably had a child who died in the revolution, and she blames its propaganda on Tolstoy.

  24 people gathered at the table for his birthday party, including Seryozha, Ilya, Andryusha and Misha and the Chertkovs (father and son). Then Chertkov’s wife Galya arrived, and the Nikolaevs. Everyone was calm, quiet and very moved, not least Lev Nikolaevich himself.

  He felt fairly well today, although he was again confined to his wheelchair with his slightly swollen leg stretched out in front of him. He ate a hearty lunch with us, and told us he had received a letter from some colonel he had never met, who asked him the name of the horse on which he had galloped away from the Chechens when he was in the Caucasus.*

  The story went like this:

  An “exploration party” had been organized, and they all set off in carriages and on horseback, accompanied by soldiers. Three of them, wanting to prance about and show off their horses, detached themselves from the main party and galloped on ahead—these three being Lev Nikolaevich, Sado his “kunak” (or friend) and Major Poltoratsky. Lev Nikolaevich was on a large, very beautiful grey horse, which had cost a great deal of money and had a lovely gait, but was very heavy, in other words a dawdler. His dear Sado suggested they change horses, so he could experience the speed of his own Nogai horse. They had just done so when some armed Chechens suddenly appeared from under the brow of the hill, advancing towards them. Neither Lev Nikolaevich nor Poltoratsky had a gun. Poltoratsky was on a slow artillery pony and fell behind; they shot at him, attacked his horse and slashed him with their sabres on the spot, but didn’t kill him. While Sado was brandishing his rifle and shouting something in Chechen to his fellow tribesmen, Lev Nikolaevich managed to gallop away on his “kunak’s” fleet-footed little Nogai horse. So yet again Tolstoy’s life was saved by a sheer lucky chance.

  The contractor came and drew up estimates for rebuilding the floor in Sasha’s room, repairing the bathhouse and the coach house, building a poultry yard and so on. I don’t even have the chance to take a walk: first I sit with Lev Nikolaevich, then there are things to be done in the house. I listen to Goldenweiser play the piano and long with my whole being to study music…

  8th September. Today L.N. and his secretary Gusev were composing a letter of thanks to everyone who had honoured him on his eightieth birthday. Gusev read it out to me this evening and I made one or two corrections and suggestions, with which both he and Lev Nikolaevich agreed.

  Sasha has gone to a concert in Tula with Varvara Mikhailovna. Davydov came and we spent a very pleasant day with him. We had a long talk about literature and everyone deplored the pornography, lack of talent and crude audacity of our modern writers. We discussed the death sentence, and Davydov said how utterly senseless and ineffective it was. The days fly past—and so fruitlessly it makes me wretched.

  10th September. I am completely taken up by the estate. I give orders for the potatoes to be dug up, and go to the field, and find they have all gone to dinner, and there is no one there but a puny lad of fourteen, “guarding” the potatoes from thieves. “What are you sitting there for?” I say to him. “Why don’t you dig some potatoes?” So he and I pick up sacks and we set to work digging potatoes and putting them in the sacks until the rest of the labourers return. It is so much more enjoyable to work than to be a housewife and make others work. My taking part seemed to infuse the others with energy, and on that day they dug a great many potatoes. We then sorted them out and carried them to the cellar, with me supervising and helping. The guards looked on in amazement.

  Lev Nikolaevich is much better and played vint all evening with Sasha, Varvara Mikhailovna and his niece Liza Obolenskaya, who arrived today. It is 10 degrees outside and very peaceful; everything is still green,
and there are some lovely phlox outside my window.

  13th September. Reading the newspapers in search of any mention of Lev Nikolaevich’s name takes a great deal of my time and has a very depressing effect on me. People have so little real understanding of him.

  A red-haired, barefoot peasant came to see him and they had a long talk together about religion. Chertkov brought him, saying what a good influence he had on all those around him, despite his poverty. I wanted to listen to their conversation, but whenever I stay in the room when Lev Nikolaevich has guests he gives me a questioning glance, that tells me he doesn’t want to be disturbed.

  Seryozha’s crops have burnt down and he has lost 1,000 rubles’ worth of wheat. L.N. sat out on the balcony for breakfast, and this evening he played chess with Chertkov.

  14th September. This morning I paid off the Yasnaya day-labourers. The girls and young men all gathered at the office, Varvara Mikhailovna came to give me a hand, and later on Sasha came too. We worked away, checking their tickets, noting them down and paying them. The girls broke into song and cracked jokes, and the children ran about gleefully. I paid out 400 rubles in all. I went on working in the house, and stamped “paid” in their books. It has been a still grey day—8 degrees towards evening. Sasha has picked a few large honey agarics and saffron milk caps.

  L.N. was inundated by guests all day. Eight young revolutionaries came who recently published a proclamation urging people to rise up and kill the landowners. L.N. had sent for these young men himself after learning about them from others in their group, and tried to make them see reason and inspire them with good Christian feelings.* God knows what all this will lead to.

  Then I found a young man sitting with L.N. and weeping piteously. It transpired he had been ordered to do his military service and this was abhorrent to him; first he wanted to refuse, then he weakened, now he weeps incessantly and still cannot decide what to do. Then a simple old fellow came for a chat. Two soldiers who came with a civilian weren’t allowed in, but were given books.

  16th September. After two months sitting at home, L.N. went out for the first time with Gusev in the carriage. He himself drove, and they went to see Chertkov in Telyatinki. His appetite is good and he seems to be making an excellent recovery.

  17th September. My name day. I went for a walk with Varya Nagornova, and was enchanted by the youthful beauty of the autumn countryside.

  I also took a walk with Andryusha and his new wife Katya. Maria Schmidt came too, to celebrate my name day. I don’t usually like “celebrations”, but today was most enjoyable. L.N. went for a drive with Sasha in the rubber-tyred carriage, with Chertkov riding on the box. Late this evening he began talking about his Circle of Reading, and read us some of his own sayings and those of other writers. He is very absorbed in this work at present, and obviously loves it. He said human happiness consists of universal love, constant communion with God and the aspiration to experience and fulfil God’s will throughout one’s life. He has never clearly defined exactly what he means by God’s will, however, or how to apply this to one’s life. “Through love,” he replies when one asks him.

  He has aged greatly over the past year; he has now passed over to the last stage. But he has aged well. His spiritual life evidently predominates now. He likes to go for drives, he likes good food and a glass of the wine the St Raphael wine company sent him for his jubilee, but his body seems to live a separate life, and his spirit exists on an altogether higher plane, independent of his body and indifferent to this earthly life.

  30th September. I am consumed by estate matters.

  I walked to see how they were progressing with the dam and the slope on the lower pond. Then I picked a bunch of flowers in the garden for Lev Nikolaevich, but he didn’t want it. I don’t know whether it’s this illness that has kept him at home and had a depressing effect on him, or whether it’s old age, or this wall of Tolstoyans—mainly Chertkov, who has practically moved in with us and almost never leaves him alone—but he has become not merely distant but even bad-tempered with me and with everyone else. Yesterday we had a letter from his sister Maria, a delightful letter full of warmth—and he didn’t even bother to read it.

  Heavenly weather. A bright sun, 11 degrees in the shade, the leaves haven’t fallen yet and the birches in front of our windows, bright yellow against the blue sky, are astonishing.

  The day before yesterday we had a visit from a former revolutionary called N.A. Morozov, who was in prison for twenty-eight years, first in Schlüsselburg, then in the Peter and Paul Fortress. I longed to hear him talk about his psychological state during his imprisonment, but he talked more about the way they had starved them with bad food that gave them scurvy. They would cure the scurvy then starve them again, so that of eleven prisoners in the fortress at the time only three lived out their term, and eight died.

  Morozov still looks very fit though, and got married last year. He is full of life and absorbed in his passion for astronomy. He has written and published a book about the Apocalypse,* and his work now consists in discovering references to astronomy in old sacred texts.

  8th December. I want to write down something I overheard yesterday evening. Chertkov, who visits us every day, was in Lev Nikolaevich’s room and was talking to him about the sign of the cross. L.N. said he made the sign of the cross sometimes from habit, as though even if his soul wasn’t praying at that moment, his body was making the sign of prayer. Chertkov replied that it was possible he might make the sign of the cross when he was dying or in pain, and that those with him might think he had returned to Orthodoxy; so in order that people should think no such thing, Chertkov would make a note in his notebook of exactly what he had said.

  What a narrow-minded individual this Chertkov is, what an unimaginative view he takes of everything! He isn’t interested in the psychology of Lev Nikolaevich’s soul at that moment when, alone before God, he blesses himself with the sign of the cross, as he himself was blessed by his mother, his grandmother, his father, his aunts and his little daughter Tanya, who used to bless her father every evening when she said goodnight to him, moving her little hand over him and saying, “Bless Papa!” All Chertkov ever does is to collect information, make notes and take photographs.

  Chertkov told us an interesting story of two peasants who came and asked him to make them members of any “party” he wanted, saying they would sign anything he wanted, with whatever he wanted—ink, blood, they didn’t mind, just so long as they were paid for it.

  This happened because of all the appalling characters who have gathered in Chertkov’s house. There are thirty-two people living and eating there at present; the house is a large one and it is completely full. Among them are four young Yasenki peasants, comrades of his son Dima, who do absolutely nothing, eat with their masters, collect 15 rubles a month each and are the envy of all the others. Also living there with their mother, his cousin, are my poor little grandchildren Sonyushka and Ilyushok. It grieves me to see them there.

  1909

  March—Tolstoy ill again. Chertkov expelled from his estate for “subversive activities” and moves to Kryokshino, near Moscow. October—Chertkov and Sasha Tolstaya prevail upon Tolstoy secretly to draw up a new will bequeathing all his post-1881 works to Tanya, Sasha and Sergei Tolstoy, making Chertkov sole heir to his literary estate. Sofia driven nearly mad by suspicion.

  14th January. Today I resumed my old work—copying out a new fictional work Lev Nikolaevich has just completed.*

  The subject is revolutionaries, punishments and where all this springs from. It may be interesting. But it’s still the same old themes, and the same old descriptions of peasant life. He relishes that peasant girl with her strong female body and her sunburnt legs, she allures him just as powerfully now as she did all those years ago: the same Axinya with the flashing eyes, almost unrecognizable at the age of eighty, has risen from the depths of his past. Axinya was a Yasnaya peasant girl, Lev Nikolaevich’s last mistress before his marriage, and she still li
ves in the village. He didn’t want to give it to me to copy at first, and if he had slightly more sensitivity he wouldn’t have called his peasant heroine Axinya. Then there is his peasant hero, who is meant to be sympathetic, with his smile and his accordion, who becomes a revolutionary. Maybe I shall change my mind, but so far I don’t like it at all.

  Wanda Landowska came today and performed for us.* She played a Chopin Mazurka and a Mozart sonata to perfection, bending low over the keys as if forcing them to reveal the meaning of the music to her. The refinement and expressiveness of her playing were taken to the very extremes of beauty. Apart from our family, the Chertkovs, father and son, were here, and my daughter-in-law Olga.

  1910

  Furious arguments between the Tolstoys over possession of his diaries and the copyright to his works. January—Tolstoy writes ‘On Suicide’ (later titled ‘On Madness’). Summer—Tolstoy rewrites his will, leaving everything to his daughter Tanya, should Sasha die before him, and giving Chertkov sole power to change or publish anything after his death. His sons Andrei and Sergei contemplate certifying him as insane to invalidate his will. July—Tolstoy calls in a psychiatrist to examine Sofia. Diagnosis: paranoia and hysteria. A mounting crescendo of reproaches and recriminations. 28th October—Tolstoy leaves home with his daughter Sasha and his doctor. 7th November—Tolstoy dies at Astapovo station. His death triggers student riots across Russia.