Strange rejection on the part of a man who had long been Dostoyevsky's prot6g6, confidant and intimate friend. Why did he not refuse to write the biography, if it "revolted" him to think of the man? Seeing how easily Strakhov turned coat, Tolstoy might have feared for the future of his own relations with him. But he was so habituated to the adoration of this envious, petty, prolix little writer that the idea of being betrayed by him never entered his head. He answered:
"I believe you have been victim of a false and erroneous opinion of Dostoyevsky. This opinion, which is not really yours at all but is universally held has exaggerated the man's importance and raised him to the rank of a prophet or a saint, a man who died in the throes of a ficrcc struggle between Good and Evil. lie is moving and interesting, no doubt, but an individual who was all conflict cannot be put on a pedestal as an example for future generations. . . . There are horses which are splendid to look at (thousand-ruble trotters), until suddenly one sees their 'flaw.' Then the most handsome and strongest horse in the world is worth nothing. . . . Pressense and Dostoyevsky both have flaws. One sacrificed wisdom, the other intelligence and heart, and both for nothing! Turgenev will outlive Dostoyevsky, not because he is a greater artist but because he has no flaw."36
On Monday, March 2, 18S1, one month after Dostoyevsky's death, Tolstoy was taking his customary walk along the highroad to Kiev, rutted and flooded by the spring thaw, when he saw a young itinerant musician splashing toward him through the puddles, carrying a hurdy- gurdy over his shoulder and some birds in a cage. The boy had pronounced Italian features and was presumably on his way from Tula. Owing to the state of the roads, the family at Yasnaya Polyana had been unable to send anyone to town for the newspapers for some time. Tolstoy asked the traveler what was going on in the world.
"Bad business," the boy managed to articulate. "Tsar murdered."
"What tsar?" cried Tolstoy. "Who murdered him? When?"
"Russian tsar. Petersburg. Bomb!"
The next day the papers arrived to confirm the news. Tsar Alexander II was going along the Katerina Canal in his carriage 011 his way back from reviewing the guard, which he did every Sunday in the riding school, when someone threw a newspaper-wrapped parcel under die horses' feet. A violent explosion killed the horses and injured two Cossacks in the escort and a passing child, but by some miracle the tsar was unharmed. However, instead of leaping into another carriage and riding away post-haste, he stopped to question the author of the attempt upon his life, who had also l>ccn injured. At that moment a second bomb, thrown by an accomplice, finished the work of the first. His legs crushed to a pulp, his face torn to shreds, the emperor collapsed, his blood pouring out in the snow. He was taken to the Winter Palace, where he died during the night. This was the Nihilists' seventh attempt upon his life. Their persistence was incomprehensible, especially as Alexander II had abolished slavery, recalled the exiled Decembrists, ended the disastrous Crimean War and, at the instigation of General Loris-Melikov, was about to give Russia a sort of constitution as a first step toward more far-rcaching structural reforms. It was presumably in order not to be outdistanced by a liberal monarch that the conspirators had determined to make an end of him on the eve of the publication of his manifesto: by granting more than the people
were asking for, Alexander II might well have drawn the teeth of the opposition and, by his last-minute action, rendered a revolution pointless or simply inopportune. In politics your worst enemy is the one who uses your ideas to achieve his own ends. Alexander II had to contend with both the liberals, who reproved terrorist methods but wanted him to hasten the country's administrative reorganization, and the reactionaries, who were afraid of losing their few remaining privileges in the renovation that had been in progress since the beginning of his reign.
Tolstoy, absorbed in his own battles of conscience, had paid scant attention to politics. True, "shady-looking characters" with long dirty hair and demented eyes were occasionally seen going into his study, arriving from St. Petersburg with their pockets full of subversive tracts —they wanted a cataclysm of fire and blood, from which Russia would emerge torn, impoverished and ready for her new destiny; they were proud of the assassinations perpetrated by the "People's Will" group, and wanted official support from Tolstoy. Gently but firmly, however, in the name of Christian morality, he sent them away. 'The revolutionary and the Christian," he said, "are at opposite ends of an open circle. Their proximity is only apparent. In reality, no two points could be farther apart. To meet, they would have to turn around and travel back over the entire circumference."3®
He was horror-stricken at the murder of Alexander II. Steeped in his evangelical doctrine of love and forgiveness, he was unable to understand this crime, committed without hatred, without real necessity, as part of a program, by cold-blooded, iron-nerved theorists. But he was even more tormented by the thought that the killers would themselves be sentenced and executed. Blood for blood. By going on in this way, from crime to vindication, the whole country might soon find itself being propelled toward the slaughter of civil war. To stop this chain reaction, one act of mercy by the new sovereign would suffice. A week after the assassination, when Tolstoy was taking an after-dinner nap on his leather sofa, lie had a dream: in the courtroom, it was himself, not the murderers, who was standing trial; and he was the judge, too; and Alexander III; and the executioner. He pronounccd, carried out and was victim of the sentence.
He awoke drenched with sweat. lie now knew that if he had been in the new emperor's place, it would have been a divine joy for him to pardon the assassins. Inspired by this idea, he decided to write to Alexander III forthwith. Perhaps it might appear presumptuous on his part. But he told himself that under divine law, human hierarchies ceased to exist; there was no difference between him and the monarch. In fact,
with his eternal need to teach others, be they muzhik or prince, he felt that lie was an ideal person, by virtue of his experience and fame, to preach clemency to the young sovereign. After all, potentates need Readers, too. His eyes brimming with tears, he appealed—as subject, friend and prophet—to the son of the assassinated tsar:
"Sire, your father, the emperor of Russia, an old and good man who did much that was good himself and always wished for the welfare of his people, has been cruelly tortured and slain. And he was not killed by personal enemies, but by the enemies of the established order, who destroyed him, so they claim, for the good of mankind. You have succeeded to his place and before you stand the enemies who tormented your father during his lifetime and then murdered him. Now they are your enemies, too, because you have taken your father's place and because, in order to achieve that good of mankind which they claim to be seeking, they must also wish to do away with you. Toward these men, your father's murderers, you feel a desire for vcngcance, mingled with a sense of horror at the act you arc about to commit. . . . Your position is a dreadful one, but the doctrine of Christ is neccssary precisely in order to guide us through such moments of dire temptation which befall every man. ... It is true that it is presumption and folly on my part to demand that you, the ernperor of Russia and a loving son, should pardon your father's murderers in spite of the pressure of those around you, returning good for evil. It is folly, yet I cannot do otherwise than wish it. . . . About twenty years ago a little group of young men banded together, full of hatred for the established order and the government. These young men aspire to heaven only knows what new order, or rather to none at all, and, by the basest, most inhuman mcth ods, fire and robbery and murder, they are destroying the structure of society. . . . People have tried, in the name of the State and for the welfare of the people, to suppress, deport and execute them; people have also tried, in the name of the same State and the same welfare of the people, to treat them humanely. The result has been the same in both cases. Why not try, then, in the name of God, to carry out His law, thinking neither of the State nor the people? . . .