The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy (88 page)

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
.

a cinematographic lampoon about me
: A reference to the film
The Flight of a Great Old Man
, scenario by I. Teneromo, produced by A. Ya. Protazov; the role of Tolstoy was played by V.I. Shaternikov. The preview in St Petersburg was attended by Lyova Tolstoy and Tanya Kuzminskaya, who protested against its screening. Outraged responses to the film, which depicted the last days of Tolstoy's life in a distorted and disrespectful fashion, appeared also in the press. After Sofia's complaint the police department ordered all cinema proprietors to destroy the film.

complaint…Senate
: In this complaint against L.A. Kasso, Minister of Education, which she sent to the Senate, she disputed the actions of the Museum in forbidding her access to the manuscripts, and on the basis of existing civil laws and supplementary documents, she proved her right to them. Her application was discussed by the Senate on 3rd April.

cinematographic lampoon against me…Caucasus
: The film was banned everywhere.

a spiteful note by Chertkov in Speech
: Chertkov published an article called ‘The Blessing of Love. L.N. Tolstoy's Attitude to his Fellow Men' with his own “Note”, in which he again developed the idea that his “flight” was prompted merely by family circumstances. Stating that Tolstoy's article was written when he was “seriously ill”, Chertkov explained that “this illness was the direct consequence of the shock he suffered from those spiritual crises which periodically attacked him in connection with
the agonizingly painful conditions of his family life and the circumstances of his life in general”. Further on Chertkov sought to prove Tolstoy was “on the point of leaving his family on several occasions” but stayed to “carry his cross”.

Rod
: E. Rod, a French writer and author of novels and philosophical works in which Tolstoy was very interested. There are several of his novels, with dedications, in the Yasnaya Polyana library.

Today a young priest…requiem
: This priest, Grigory Lavrentevich Kalinovsky (he told his name to no one but Bulgakov), “announced that he didn't recognize the Synod's prohibition against praying for L.N., as he considered L.N. had brought nothing but good to people”.

Pankratov's lying article about the priest's visit
: A. Pankratov's article condemned the funeral service at Tolstoy's grave, on the grounds that this appeared to accept Tolstoy back into the bosom of the Church which he did not recognize and from which he had been excommunicated. She responded with a letter justifying the priest's “selfless” action, since, in her words, Tolstoy “was distinguished by his supreme religious tolerance”. The story of the service over Tolstoy's grave was given wide publicity by the press.

the Illustrated Anthology on War and Peace…censors
: On 20th December the Moscow Committee on Press Affairs placed a ban on the book, and the publishers were tried in court. The ban was subsequently lifted and the trial cut short.

1913

the Senate's decision…cowards
: Several newspapers published an announcement that in connection with the Senate's imminent discussion of her complaint to the Minister of Education, L.A. Kasso, the senators had already reviewed the question privately and had come to the conclusion that “The Senate had no right to enter into discussions as to the ownership of the material kept in the Historical Museum”, and would only debate the issue of “the legality of the Museum's action in putting a ban on this property, without being granted special legal powers to do so”.

numbered L.N.'s letters
: In the first edition of the book
Count L.N. Tolstoy's Letters to his Wife
, Moscow, 1913, she included 656 letters and seven notes.

the buying and selling of Yasnaya Polyana
: “The forest was sold on contract to the merchant Chesnokov,” she wrote to her daughter Tanya on 28th February. “I have bought 400 acres of land from my sons—with the estate—for 150 thousand rubles, and have sold my own land to Sasha.”

my sons' payment for the trees
: Tolstoy's sons had sold 300 acres of forest for felling.

Sasha's article…manuscripts
: A reference to Alexandra Tolstaya's
Explanation
, in which she invoked Tolstoy's will to reaffirm her exclusive rights to the disputed manuscripts, and urged that the Senate should not support Sofia Tolstoy's complaint.

the Circassian guard
: Osman, the old Circassian who guarded the house at Yasnaya Polyana between 1912 and 1913. He and his brother had been exiled from the Caucasus to Central Russia in their youth for participating in a bloody vendetta. Sofia petitioned for them to return to their native land.

I am writing to the newspapers about our badly behaved visitors
: Her letter in which she referred to the “unbecoming behaviour of the public visiting Yasnaya Polyana and the grave of Count Lev Nikolaevich”, and announced she was allowing access to his grave and rooms “only once a week”.

Sasha…lovely little place
: Sasha Tolstaya had sold Telyatinki and bought a small farm not far from Yasnaya Polyana called Novaya Polyana.

Landau's Moses
: Dr L.A. Landau,
Moses. An Analysis of His Psychological Life
. (In the series Psychiatric Analysis, issues 1, 2 and 3. Sofia Tolstoy's library.)

1914

The Chertkovs have been searched by the police
: Chertkov was searched when S.M. Belinky, who was living with him, was arrested and charged with distributing 5,000 copies of various works of Tolstoy's.

he should travel…giving lectures about his father
: Ilya Tolstoy visited Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and various other towns, lecturing on “Personal Memories of My Father”.