Tolstoy (63 page)

The government had initially discouraged ordinary Russians from becoming involved in famine relief, but they were obliged to change policy in the face of their own helplessness. Nevertheless they were alarmed by Tolstoy's activities, and sent out a circular to all Russian newspapers forbidding them to publish any articles by him. The editor of the
Russian Gazette
had received a reprimand for publishing 'A Terrible Question', but on 10 December he went ahead and published its sequel: 'About Ways to Help the Population Suffering from the Failed Harvest'. Chekhov exclaimed the next day in a letter to Suvorin that Tolstoy was no longer just a man, but a 'giant, a Jupiter', and immediately contributed an article of his own to the collection of essays put together by the newspaper. Tolstoy's friend Nikolay Grot, meanwhile, called him a 'spiritual tsar' on whom all of Russia's hopes were pinned at this difficult time.
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But an enormous scandal was brewing. 'About the Famine' had now finally been approved for publication after drastic editing, and it was published in
The Week
in early January 1892. Tolstoy also wanted his uncensored text to be known abroad, and he now got in touch with various foreign acquaintances to ask them to translate it. Isabel Hapgood produced a translation for publication in America, and she printed an announcement in the New York
Evening Post
that she was setting up a campaign to raise funds to help those starving in Russia (contributions had already started arriving from England, France and Germany).
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Emile Dillon, an English academic who had been teaching at the University of Kharkov, placed his translation of Tolstoy's article in the
Daily Telegraph
on 14 (26) January. It was given the inflammatory title 'Why Are Russian Peasants Starving?'. As Tolstoy had hoped, extracts were then translated back into Russian for the press at home, but his words were twisted by right-wing publications, and immediately denounced by the more reactionary journalists as the most dangerous revolutionary propaganda. Tolstoy found himself being branded as the Antichrist, and as someone inciting the peasants to revolt.
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There was no way the liberal-minded Nikolay Grot could publish Tolstoy's article in his journal now. Conversations at court revolved around whether Tolstoy should be locked up in the Suzdal Monastery prison (the traditional place of incarceration for heretics in Russia), sent into exile abroad, or committed to a lunatic asylum (the link between holy fools and madness was well established in Russia).
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In faraway Smolensk there was even a rumour that Tolstoy had already been exiled to the Solovetsky Monastery prison (the place of his ancestor Pyotr Andreyevich's incarceration), and before the
SECTARIAN, ANARCHIST, HOLY FOOL
writer and journalist Jonas Stadling left his native Sweden to volunteer, he heard reports that Tolstoy was a 'prisoner on his estate, and that he was to be banished from the country'.
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But once again Alexander III opted for clemency—not for the first time was Alexandrine forced to answer for her wayward relative at court, but her very proximity to the Tsar was a guarantee of his safety.
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Tolstoy was longing for martyrdom, so was infuriated that he could continue unhindered. But as Suvorin pointed out in a letter he wrote at the time, Tolstoy was the only person who managed to do anything, while everybody else had to clothe their ideas 'in velvet' in order for any action to be taken: 'they are persecuting him, but to no avail; he can't be touched, and even if he is, he will just be pleased, for how many times has he said to me: "Why aren't they arresting me, why aren't they putting me in jail?" It's an enviable lot.'
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Sonya was concerned that their whole family was on the brink of ruin, and she wondered what had happened to Tolstoy's doctrine of love and pacifism.
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Her commitment to the cause had brought them together, however, which made him very happy, and she also came out to Begichevka for a ten-day visit at the end of January 1892.
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She had been collecting donations and publishing reports, and now she saw for herself emaciated, shivering peasants dressed in rags, their sad expressions speaking of the humiliation they felt to receive charity.
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She also saw what difficult and exhausting work it was for her husband and daughters (Tolstoy sometimes sat up until three in the morning in an attempt to continue with his writing). Apart from the physical challenges of working during the freezing winter months in villages where people had no means of feeding themselves or heating their homes, the sheer scale of the disaster was sometimes demoralising—it was impossible to help everyone. When she returned to Moscow in February, Sonya found herself having to nurse three-year-old Vanechka, who was seriously unwell again, but also soothe ruffled feathers. The repercussions of Dillon's translation of Tolstoy's article in the
Daily Telegraph
amongst ministers and court officials were such that she was obliged to send mollifying letters, and make repeated visits to Governor General Grand Duke Sergey Alexandrovich and his wife Elizaveta Fyodorovna.
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The Tolstoys' famine-relief work proved to be infectious; soon they were joined by friends and relatives who wanted to help, and then by foreign volunteers like Jonas Stadling, who arrived in February 1892. In the book he later published about his experiences, Stadling described accompanying Tolstoy's daughter Masha on her visits on his first day, including one to a school:

We stopped at one of the
izbas,
in which the Count had opened a school and eating-room. For some time after our entrance we could see nothing distinctly, but our feet told us that the naked soil served as floor. When our eyes grew accustomed to the gloom we saw a number of benches, and standing between them about thirty children, silently looking at us ... In one corner were a couple of elderly people. From the neighbourhood of the [stove] came heavy breathing, and lying on top of it, we saw three children, covered with black small-pox. I suggested that these ought to be removed at once, and the Countess replied that it would be done as soon as possible, but as there were no hospitals, and almost every house was infected, it was not easy to isolate the sick. These poor children had been brought to the school 'because it was warm there'.
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When there was no longer any money to pay the teachers, the local schools had been forced to close, but Tolstoy had done what he could to reopen some of them. Stadling was full of admiration for all the Tolstoys—for the indefatigable Sonya, dealing on her own with an enormous correspondence in Moscow, for Lev Lvovich, heading the relief effort in Samara (where Stadling also volunteered), and the two dedicated daughters Tanya and Masha, who assisted their father not only with the operation of the soup kitchens and the establishment of separate premises for feeding children, but also with the procurement of feed for the horses and the distribution amongst the peasants of fuel, seed for planting, and flax and bast, to give them some work.

By the autumn of 1892, when Tolstoy eventually returned to Yasnaya Polyana, donations of over 100,000 roubles, plus two ships from America with a cargo of flour, grain and potatoes, had helped with the setting up of 212 emergency soup kitchens in four districts, which had functioned until July. Along with teaching at the Yasnaya Polyana school, and his work on the
ABC
books, Tolstoy later declared that this had been one of the happiest times of his life. In September he returned to Begichevka for another visit, and carefully toned down his language when he wrote a moving account of how the donations received between April and July had been used. It was published on 31 October in the
Russian Gazette,
and at least 5,000 extra copies had to be printed to meet the demand.
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Tolstoy would continue to make further visits to Begichevka in the winter of 1893, but he was now free to spend more time working on the treatise about non-violence which he had begun two years earlier. He had worked further on it during the three weeks he had spent resting in Moscow back in January, and in April Chertkov had sent out to him in Begichevka not only his latest manuscript, but also a young peasant with good handwriting keen to work as a copyist. Tolstoy had thus been able to continue writing, and now that he was back in the peace and quiet of Yasnaya Polyana he was able to give his treatise his full attention.

After Tolstoy's religious writings began to be published abroad, he had started to receive letters, books and pamphlets from enthusiastic readers from all over the world who were sympathetic to his cause. When Alice Stockham had come to visit Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy had been greatly interested in what she had to tell him about all the various branches of Christianity in America which were 'moving towards practical Christianity, towards a universal brotherhood and the sign of this is non-resistance'.
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He began to learn for the first time about Universalists, Unitarians, Quakers, spiritualists, Swedenborgians and also Shakers. On 30 March 1889 the Shaker Asenath Stickney had sent Tolstoy photographs of the leaders of their community, and two books:
The Shaker Answer
and George Lomas's
Plain Talks upon Practical Religion: Being Candid Answers to Earnest Inquirers.
In the autumn of 1889 Tolstoy entered into correspondence with another Shaker, Alonzo Hollister, explaining where he agreed and disagreed with their beliefs.
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Tolstoy also now came into contact with the Quakers, who had preached non-resistance for over 200 years, and refused to take arms even in self-defence. Wendell Garrison, who edited a journal called
Non-resistance,
sent Tolstoy works by his father, the famous abolitionist and social reformer William Lloyd Garrison (who had died in 1879). And in 1889 Tolstoy was also sent Adin Ballou's
Catechism of Non-violence,
which he was very impressed by. Ballou was an abolitionist pastor who had formed a utopian community to live a rigorous life of Christian non-violence in Massachusetts back in 1841. Tolstoy exchanged warm letters with the eighty-seven-year-old pastor in the last year of his life.
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As Tolstoy's ideas matured, partly under the impact of all the kindred spirits with whom he had come into contact, he began to realise that there was one more important book he needed to write after
What I Believe.
The idea of non-resistance to violence was a central plank in his religious and ethical system, but he did not feel his exegesis had been sufficiently wide-ranging in works he had published thus far. As Jonas Stadling described it after conversations with Tolstoy at Begichevka, the new book was going to be 'a kind of counterblast to the increasingly martial spirit of the time, that seemed almost personified in the young German Emperor'.
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Tolstoy had thought initially that he would be able to write this new book quickly, and he already had a full draft two days after his return to Yasnaya Polyana, but he would not be satisfied with his manuscript for another year.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You
became his magnum opus amongst his religious writings, and its importance can be gauged by the fact that when Tolstoy finally finished it in May 1893, he had written over 13,000 manuscript pages—almost as many as he wrote for
War and Peace, Anna Karenina
and his later novel
Resurrection
put together.
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It was also his most strident work yet.

Tolstoy begins by discussing some of the people who had felt moved to express their support after reading
What I Believe
by sending him letters, brochures and books. He also answers his critics, before going on to assert that neither believers nor non-believers understand Christianity, and that it is impossible to live as a true Christian in conventional society. Finally, he analyses contemporary attitudes to war and the meaning of conscription, and is categoric about the fundamental incompatibility of Christianity with any form of government. By the end of the book Tolstoy is no longer able to maintain the calm tone with which he begins his treatise. In his twelfth and incandescent last chapter he recounts meeting a battalion of 400 soldiers when he was on his way to Begichevka for the last time. Armed with rifles, they were travelling by special train to quell disturbances amongst the starving peasants whom he had been trying to help. For Tolstoy, this served only to confirm the validity of his ideas.
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In July 1892 Tolstoy set out a useful summary of the main ideas in his treatise in a letter to Charles Turner, an English teacher who had settled in Russia, and translated some of his works:

In this book there are three main ideas: 1) Christianity is not only worship of God and a doctrine on salvation, as it is understood by the majority of false Christians, but is first of all a different understanding of life, which changes the whole structure of human society; 2) from the time of the arrival of Christianity there have been two opposing tendencies: one that has been clarifying over time the new and genuine understanding of life which it has given people, and another which has been distorting Christianity and turning it into a pagan doctrine; in our time that contradiction has become particularly acute and is fully expressed in universal armament and general military conscription; 3) the necessary solution of this critical contradiction, which has been concealed by an absurd degree of hypocrisy in our time, can only happen through the sincere effort made by each individual person to coordinate one's life and actions with those moral foundations one considers to be true, regardless of the demands of family, society and government.
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