The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

by Cathy Porter

  I jumped…alas: According to Bulgakov, Chertkov’s mother told Goldenweiser on 29th October: “Sofia Andreevna has been in a state of great agitation. She has attempted to kill herself by various methods.”

  They didn’t let me in to see Lev Nik: The only members of Tolstoy’s family who were with him were his daughters Tanya and Sasha and his son Sergei. The ‘Medical findings on the illness and death of L.N. Tolstoy’, dated 9th November and signed by Makovitsky, Nikitin and Berkenheim, gave the following explanation for this: “It was decided at a family council, in accordance with the doctors’ proposal, that no other members of his family should be allowed in to see L.N., as there was good reason to believe he would grow extremely agitated at the appearance of any new faces, and this might have dire consequences for his life, which was hanging on a thread.”

  Daily Diary

  1907

  her splendid article about the fire…moved: Tanya’s letter to the newspapers of 5th August 1907 about the fire on her estate, and the peasants’ attitude to it. Edited by Tolstoy and with a preface by him, it was published in Voice of Moscow, no. 188, 14th August 1907. “Tanya’s article touches me,” wrote Tolstoy after receiving a copy.

  1909

  a 30-year-old Romanian…The Kreutzer Sonata: A. Marukhin. Tolstoy’s comment on him in his diary was: “an exceedingly interesting man”.

  some cinematographers from Paris: Representatives of the French cinematographic firm Pathé received permission to visit Tolstoy and film him. But on 2nd September a telegram was sent on Tolstoy’s instructions asking them not to come. They came nonetheless, and filmed his departure from Shchekino station.

  1910

  officer…scurrilous verses about Lev Nikolaevich: A retired colonel called Trotsky-Sanyutovich wrote some verses accusing Tolstoy of apostasy towards the Orthodox Church and the government. After talking to Tolstoy he became ashamed of his verses and decided to burn them.

  Two real Japanese men: Harala Tatsuki, director of a high school in Tokyo, and Mitsutaki Hodze, an official at the Ministry of Communications.

  I sat down to play the piano…listened happily: According to Bulgakov’s memoirs:

  Lev Nikolaevich said as he went out for tea how much he had enjoyed her playing.

  She flushed: “You’re joking,” she said hesitantly.

  “Not a bit of it. That adagio in ‘Quasi una fantasia’ was so delicate…”

  How happy Sofia Andreevna was!

  “I deeply regret how badly I play, never more so than when Lev Nikolaevich is listening to me,” she said later.

  Painful discussion…for me: Sergei Tolstoy explains this entry thus: “L.N. didn’t ‘drive’ Sofia Andreevna anywhere, he merely said to her, when she complained about the difficulty of running Yasnaya Polyana, that she didn’t need to live there and could live anywhere, even in Odoev, a town in Tula province.”

  the Circassian guard has brought Prokofy in…with him: Ahmet the Circassian, who guarded the forest and meadows of Yasnaya Polyana, caught the peasant Prokofy Vlasov stealing wood and brought him into the office to be charged; Vlasov was a former student of Tolstoy’s, from his first peasant school in Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy referred to this episode in his diary: “It has become insufferable here. I have considered leaving.”

  L. Nik. had gone to Belev…to see his sister Maria Nikolaevna: Tolstoy set off from Yasnaya Polyana, accompanied by Doctor Makovitsky, his daughter Sasha and Varvara Mikhailovna, to Shchekino station, and from there took a train to Shamordino to see his sister Maria.

  Lev Nik. did visit his sister in Shamordino…where: They left Shamordino early on the morning of 31st October. On arriving at the station of Kozelsk, they boarded a train and travelled south.

  Rastorguev, and a young lady fresh from medical school: Doctor Rastegaev (she has misspelt the name) was accompanied by a medical student called Skorobogatova.

  Lev Nik. wired for Chertkov in person: At Tolstoy’s request Sasha sent Chertkov a telegram on 1st November: “Got out yesterday at Astapovo. High fever. Lost consciousness. This morning temperature normal. Chills. Impossible to leave. Expressed desire to see you. Frolova.” Wanting to keep his whereabouts a secret, Tolstoy and Sasha used pseudonyms in their correspondence. Tolstoy was “Nikolaev” and Sasha “Frolova”.

  At 6 o’clock in the morning Lev Nikol. died…Cruel people: Her daughter Tanya recalled: “Mother went to him, sat at the head of the bed, leant over him and started whispering tender words to him, saying farewell and begging him to forgive her for the wrong she had done him. His only reply was a number of deep sighs.”

  I wrote to…Taneev: Sofia Tolstoy wrote to Taneev: “At the end I caused L.N. a lot of distress and grief with my nervous illness and my dislike of Chertkov, who he didn’t see on my account, and this is now the chief cause of my unhappiness. I live alone here in this great house, with the same servants and the same furniture as before. Everyone has left apart from Doctor Makovitsky, and he too will soon leave.”

  1911

  my sons Ilya…America to sell Yasnaya Polyana: Sofia and her youngest son, Vanechka, had been allotted the Yasnaya Polyana property. After Vanechka’s death in 1895, the property was left to her and her sons. Immediately after Tolstoy’s death the question arose as to the future of Yasnaya Polyana, since his heirs hadn’t the means to maintain it. There was a scheme to redeem the property with money collected in “civilized countries”, with a view to turning it into an international cultural monument, and selling the rest of the land to Americans for $1.5 million. Sofia’s brother-in-law Mikhail Kuzminsky arrived in New York on 1st January, and conducted negotiations with various foreign industrialists. After interviews with Kuzminsky were published in the papers Stock Exchange Gazette and Odessa Leaflet, it became clear that this plan to sell Russia’s national property to foreigners aroused deep indignation, and this was expressed in speeches, articles and letters. At the end of April there was an interview with Tolstoy’s sons (Sergei Tolstoy wasn’t party to this and refused his share of the inheritance), in which they announced: “We did indeed hold negotiations with American millionaires, but these concerned only the sale of the land, not the property. Our common desire was to sell everything to the nation.” Ilya Tolstoy didn’t go to America.

  The newspapers and lawyers have stood up for my rights: She is referring to a series of articles sympathetic to her point of view which appeared in several papers.

  pages from Lev Nik.’s notebooks…period: The plan for the novel was familiar to her. But this was evidently her first acquaintance with the texts of the rough versions. “At our recent meeting,” wrote A. Ksyunin after visiting Yasnaya Polyana, “Sofia Andreevna told me she had just found some pages written in pencil relating to Tolstoy’s planned epic about Peter the Great. L.N. didn’t write this work, as he said ‘I couldn’t recreate the everyday life of the period.’”

  my letter to Koni: Her letter of 4th December 1910 about Tolstoy’s flight was published, translated into French, under the title ‘Tolstoy’s Last Days’, Le Figaro, 11th February 1923.

  Volumes 16, 19 and 20…have been seized: Vols. 16, 19 and 20 were seized after the censors sent a report to the Moscow Committee on Press Affairs about the instigation of criminal proceedings against the publishers for including “criminal works” in them.

  Lyova’s letters from America: L.L. Tolstoy wrote about the problems of organizing an exhibition of his sculptures there.

  the Palace of Justice has decided to destroy…edition: It was announced in the press that the Moscow Palace of Justice had decreed that vols 16, 19 and 20 of the 12th edition should be destroyed because of the articles ‘To the Working People’, ‘The Slavery of Our Time’, ‘A Great Sin’, ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’, ‘Change Your Mind’, ‘I Cannot Keep Silent’, ‘The Law of Violence and the Law of Love’, ‘To the Tsar and His Assistants’ and others, as they were found to contain “blasphemy”, “inciting the people to adopt a hostile attitude to the government and an insolent disresp
ect for the higher authorities”.

  I went to the Palace of Justice…the new edition: On this day she wrote to her daughter Tanya: “I visited the Censorship Committee at the Palace of Justice. I demanded, insisted and complained, and was eventually told that at 5 p.m. tomorrow I would be given a list of the banned articles with permission to reprint them; otherwise they would have destroyed 3 volumes.”

  Visited the censorship inspector…three volumes: Sofia Tolstoy received permission to republish the last three volumes of the Collected Works. “After consideration of S.A. Tolstoy’s petition, the Committee For Press Affairs agreed that the articles banned from L.N. Tolstoy’s famous three volumes be cut from the published volumes. In the execution of this decree there took place yesterday, 28th April, in S.A. Tolstoy’s warehouse, in the presence of representatives of the Censorship Committee, the police and one of the directors of the Kushneryov works, the removal of the seals from the confiscated books. These books will be taken to the printing works where the removal of the forbidden articles will proceed. The printing works are obliged to keep all the cut pages. After the cutting has been completed, officials from the Censorship Committee will take the exact number of cut pages, and the entire mass will either be shredded in the office of the printing works’ director, or burnt under the observation of Censorship Committee officials in the stoves of the Kushneryov company.”

  The Empress has refused me an audience: Sofia wrote on 3rd May to her sister Tanya: “The Empress has refused me an audience. It is said she hasn’t forgotten what was said about me long ago: that I deceived Alexander III by promising not to publish The Kreutzer Sonata separately, then bringing it out in a separate edition. In fact it was brought out by some underground publishers.”

  give the Tsar my letter: In her letter to the Tsar, dated 10th May, Sofia Tolstoy suggested that Yasnaya Polyana should be bought by the government. “It is our most passionate wish to leave his cradle and grave in the protection of the state,” she wrote. “I consider it my last duty to his memory to keep the material and spiritual wealth of the Russian state in its own hands, and to preserve it untouched.” She referred also in her letter to the situation with the Tolstoy manuscripts, and explained that it was her desire to “see that everything he wrote stays in Russia and for Russia”, to “be kept permanently, free of charge, in some state or scientific safe in Russia”.

  talked to Guchkov about the sale of the Moscow house: The purpose of her meeting with N.I. Guchkov, mayor of Moscow, was to propose that the Khamovniki Street house be sold to the town.

  an old French book called De l’Amour: Probably Pascal’s Discours sur les passions de l’amour.

  The plan is for me to move to the Kuzminskys’ wing: The Tolstoys’ offer to sell Yasnaya Polyana to the government contained a number of conditions, including the burial of Sofia Tolstoy and her sons beside Tolstoy’s grave, and her right to live there for the rest of her life in the so-called “Kuzminskys’ wing”.

  a chapter in Resurrection…published abroad: Chapter 39 of Resurrection, banned by the censors in Russia, was published in the anthology From the Life of the Clergy, London, 1902.

  an application…Khamovniki Street: The application was addressed to N.I. Guchkov. Sofia wrote that she agreed to sell the Khamovniki Street house, as well as the furniture in Tolstoy’s study and the other rooms.

  Does Woman Represent God: English in original; not attributed.

  Lev Nikolaevich’s birthday…Lev Nik: “On this unforgettable day for Russia,” wrote the journalist Spiro in his essay, ‘The 28th in Yasnaya Polyana’, “the anniversary of the birth of the great writer of the Russian land, there gathered at his grave Tula police officers, the Tula police chief, the district police officer, district sergeants, village policemen and approximately a hundred armed mounted police guards. The police from virtually the whole of Tula province were there.”

  Prince Dolgorukov came to discuss the peasants’ library: Dolgorukov’s arrival was occasioned by the decision of the Moscow Society of Literacy to build a reading room named after L.N. Tolstoy beside the Yasnaya Polyana peasant library.

  Socrates’s last discussion with his pupils: ‘The Death of Socrates. From Plato’s Dialogues’ in the Circle of Reading.

  Our wedding anniversary…The Living Corpse: On this day The Living Corpse was published for the first time.

  Andryusha…The Living Corpse and the Tolstoy exhibition: On 24th September The Living Corpse opened at the Arts Theatre. Dress rehearsals (on 20th and 21st September) were attended by Sergei, Ilya and Sasha, Tanya and many friends and followers of Tolstoy’s. (Andrei Tolstoy was not there.) The solemn opening of the Tolstoy Exhibition took place on 11th October in Moscow, in the building of the Historical Museum.

  the album and Skeleton Dolls: Her album From the Life of Tolstoy and her anthology of children’s stories.

  Spent the morning at the Tolstoy Exhibition…interesting: Her visit to the exhibition was given wide coverage in the newspapers, which published her replies to journalists’ questions about the exhibition.

  Arabazhin’s book about Lev Nikolaevich: K. Arabazhin, L.N. Tolstoy (as Personality, Artist and Thinker). Public Lectures about Russian Writers, St Petersburg, 1909.

  the waltz and the poems: Tolstoy’s musical and poetic works were on display at the exhibition. Having familiarized herself with them, she made a few revisions, on the basis of which an article was written by “S.T.” (probably Sergei Tolstoy), which said: “I: Waltz ascribed to L.N. Tolstoy. He himself played this waltz several times as his own composition. S.I. Taneev noted it down after hearing L.N. play it. II: The refrain of a Sevastopol Song. This is a somewhat variable refrain from an old gypsy song: ‘I’m a young gypsy girl, but I’m clever, I can tell fortunes.’ L.N. frequently played the accompaniment to this song, or he and another person would play melody and accompaniment arranged for four hands.”

  Speshnev the notary…Yasyana Polyana: In the offices of Speshnev Sofia Tolstoy completed a deed of purchase to enable the City to buy the Khamovniki Street house. A commission was set up, headed by the architect A.A. Ostrogradsky, with responsibilities for taking over the house. In her letter to the Tsar, sent on 18th November and delivered by Bogdanov, she wrote: “If the Russian government does not buy Yasnaya Polyana, my sons, some of whom will be left in a greatly impoverished state, will be forced, with much anguish in their hearts, to sell it privately, either in separate plots of as a whole. The hearts of Lev Tolstoy’s descendants and of the whole Russian people will grieve if the government does not defend the cradle and the grave of a man who has glorified the name of Russia to the entire world and who is so loved by his people and his country. Do not let Yasnaya Polyana perish by allowing it to be sold into private hands, rather than to the Russian government.” The Tsar’s response to this letter was: “I consider the purchase of Count Tolstoy’s estate by the government entirely impermissible. It is for the Council of Ministers merely to discuss the extent of the pension to be allocated to his widow.”

  ‘The Forged Coupon’: The story on which Tolstoy worked, off and on, from the end of the 1880s to February 1904.

  1912

  Tolstoy Museum…English guests: The Tolstoy Museum was visited by members of a British group called the Interparliamentary Alliance.

  thanking the Tsar for my pension: Sofia Tolstoy was “graciously awarded a pension from the State Treasury of 10,000 rubles a year”.

  A large crowd of strangers unexpectedly arrived…them: N.A. Sokolov later recalled: “I visited Sofia Andreevna at Yasnaya Polyana in 1912 over Easter. Three of us travelled from St Petersburg to see her. We were received immediately—to our great surprise, for we were quite unexpected, and were shown absolutely everything, to the very last corner of the house, given exhaustive explanations of almost every object, and told a lot about L.N. and S.A.’s life together.”

  an article about my sister-in-law Maria Nikolaevna: Almost all the newspapers contained obituaries of Maria Nikolaevna
Tolstaya and articles dedicated to the memory of Tolstoy’s sister.

  Maria Nikolaevna’s…funeral: Maria Nikolaevna Tolstaya’s funeral was attended by two members of the Tolstoy family, Ilya and Andrei.

  Wrote to Kasso, Minister of Education, about the manuscripts: “I saw Kasso,” she wrote to her sister on 28th April. “He refused to give me the manuscripts and instructed me to complain to the Senate about his refusal. His explanation was that he was afraid to take sole responsibility, and that it was the Senate and the judges who should settle the argument.” On 12th May she received an official reply from Kasso: “I cannot agree to release the 12 boxes of L.N. Tolstoy’s manuscripts, at present in the Historical Museum, in view of the argument that has arisen between you and Alexandra Tolstaya (Sasha) about the rights to the ownership of these manuscripts. Taking copies from the manuscripts and sorting them out may only be permitted with her consent.”

  Pascal’s Pensées: Pensées de Pascal, Paris, 1898 (Sofia Tolstoy’s library, with margin notes).

  Korotnyov brought an estimate for the forest…sale: Sasha Tolstaya bought some Yasnaya Polyana land from her brothers to give to the peasants, in accordance with her father’s wishes. Sofia acquired for herself the house, the grounds and the garden—about 170 acres in all.

  Snegiryov’s letter to me: A letter of 10th April 1911, in which V.F. Snegiryov, a Professor of Medicine, expressed his opinion of Tolstoy’s “flight” and shared his impressions of their family life. “There was not an hour, not a minute of your life when you were distracted from him,” he wrote. “Your entire being was filled with him and his life. He had much to be grateful to you for.”

  a strange essay called ‘Passion et l’amour’: Discours sur les passions de l’amour, by B. Pascal.

  her notes about our genealogy: Tanya Kuzminskaya’s memoirs, My Life at Home and at Yasnaya Polyana. A History of the Behrs and Islenev Family Lines.