"My whole family has separated and gone to help in the relief effort for the starving people. . . . Compelled to remain in Moscow with my four young children, all I can do to help is send money and supplies. But the needs are immense and isolated individuals arc powerless to satisfy them. And yet, if we think of all the people who are dying of hunger in this moment, every hour we spend in a well-heated house and every piece of bread we eat are living reproaches. We all live in the lap of luxury here, we cannot tolerate the slightest discomfort for our own children: would we be able to endure the sight of exhausted, heartbroken mothers who must watch their children die of hunger and cold, or of old people who can find nothing to eat? Thirteen rubles will see one person through to the next harvest. ... If each of us, according to his means, could feed one, two, ten or a hundred people in this way, our conscicnces might be cased. . . . Therefore I have de-
tided to turn for help to all those who can and will contribute by their gifts to the work begun by my family."
Sonya's letter was reproduced in every paper in Russia, and translations appeared in a few in Europe and America. The money immediately started to pour in. The astonished Sonya saw a poor woman come into the room and cross herself before handing her one silver ruble; a young socialite sniffling beneath her veil and holding out an envelope full of banknotes; a child clenching a few kopecks in his fist. ... "I do not know what you will think of my idea," she wrote to her husband, "but I had had enough of sitting still and doing nothing to help you. . . . Since yesterday, I feel better, I keep accounts, hand out receipts, say thank you; I am speaking to the public and I am happy to be able to support your effort, even with other people's money."
In two weeks she collcctcd over thirteen thousand rubles. One of the first to subscribe was Father John of Kronstadt. Soon she was sending whole wagonloads of wheat, rye, peas and cabbage to the relief workers, as well as clothes and medicine. Tin's dealing in money and goods entailed a huge amount of correspondence, which she performed without a murmur. At Begichevka, Tolstoy was flabbergasted. Was Sonya at last going through the "rebirth" he had experienced ten years before? In his tiny, chilly room, in which there was neither rug nor curtains, furnished with one rickety table and a cramped iron bed, he thanked God for this miraculous reunion. In a letter he wrote to his wife on November 14, he inserted a sentence in French: "I am sure you cannot imagine how lovingly we think and speak of you." And later: "Ever)' night I see you in my dreams, my sweet friend."*
He was preparing to return to Moscow when his friend Rayevsky, worn out by his long cross-country chases, caught a chill and took to his bed. He died of influenza after two days of high fever. Tolstoy was hard-hit by this loss, coming 011 top of another, the previous month —his childhood companion Dyakov.
Rayevsky's death left him alone at the head of the relief effort; he would have to give up all thought of quitting now. In one month he had opened thirty kitchens supplying free food to fifteen hundred people. But he knew they were not enough. Some people were saying with a sarcastic smile that he was the "thirteenth apostle." He himself continued to complain that his present activities were contrary to his principles. "There is a great deal to be said against all this," lie wrote to Gay. "There is that money from my wife, and the other contributions; there is the problem of the relations between those who eat and those who give food. Sin is everywhere. But it would be impossible for me to stay home and write."10 Yielding to Sonya's pleadings, he returned to
her at the end of November to rest for a few days. Their reunion was suffused in tenderness and gratitude. "Went to Moscow," he noted. "Joy of relations with Sonya. Have never been more warm. I thank you, Father. I had prayed to you for this. Everything, everything I asked for has been given to me. I thank you. Suffer me to become still more closely united with your will. I want only what you want."11 Ten days later he was back at Begichcvka resuming his struggle against hunger.
On January 23, 1892, Sonya, who decidedly seemed to have been touched by grace, joined him on the battlefield. She moved into the little curtainless room and was appalled at its filth and disorder. In a twinkling the entire Rayevsky house was swept and aired and put in order. Then she toured the kitchens. "When I arrived," she wrote in her diary, "I found ten people inside the isba. But they kept coming and soon there were forty-eight. All in rags, their faces emaciated and sad. They comc in, cross themselves and sit down on long benches in front of the tables which arc placed end to end. The woman in charge offers each in turn a tray full of rye bread cut in pieces, then sets a big soup tureen full of cabbage soup on the table. There is no meat in it, and it has a mild taste of hemp oil. . . . After the soup there is potato mash or peas, kasha, beet greens or barley porridge. Two dishes at noon, two at night. ... In the second kitchen I visited, I saw a young peasant woman with pale gray skin who looked at me so mournfully that I almost burst out crying. It was clearly very hard for her, as well as for an old man and several others among the group who were there, to comc and accept this handout."12
With a determination that compelled the admiration of all who saw her, Sonya tacklcd the bookkeeping, which had hitherto been kept in a state of utter chaos, and, with the help of the tailor's apprentice, cut out clothes, including thirty coats for the neediest children, from bolts of cloth sent from town. She stayed for ten days, and then returned to Moscow to her younger children, whom Tanya had been looking after in her absence.
Meanwhile, the government's uneasiness was mounting as Tolstoy's campaign gathered steam. More than anything else, it was the fever aroused abroad by the incorrigible author's articles that it found prejudicial to the Russian honor. He was becoming an international figure, denouncing his country's failings and waging his war on famine as though he himself were the government. These packages arriving from the four corners of Europe, the seven boatloads of corn being sent by the United States, the promise by the Minnesota millers to provide free flour for the muzhiks—they might all enhance the renown of the promoter of the campaign, but they cast public discredit on the im-
perial administration. To put a stop to the alarming reports being circulated, the government had already issued one communique: "There is no famine in Russia. Some localities have had a poor harvest; that is the truth." But this euphemism could not stand up to Tolstoy's broadside. Then the reactionary newspapers launched an invidious slander campaign against him; Pobyedonostsev submitted a report to the emperor accusing the writer of seeking to foment a peasant revolution.
Upon her return from Begichevka, Sonya learned that a new threat had sprung up during her abscncc. In November 1891 Tolstoy had written an article entitled "Help for the Hungry" for a publication called Philosophical and Psychological Questions. "The people arc starving because we eat too much. This has always been true, but this year's poor harvest has proved that the rope is stretched to breaking point. . . . The privileged classes must go to the people with the attitude that they arc guilty." This text, of Christian inspiration, had been so disfigured by the censor that Grot, the editor-in-chief, pronounced it unprintable, but at Tolstoy's request, he sent the uncensored proofs to French, German and English translators. On January 14 (26), 1892 the London Daily Telegraph published the articlc in full. Thereupon, an ultra-reactionary newspaper, the Moscow News, protected and directed by Pobyedonostsev, reproduced extracts of Tolstoy's message in a faulty Russian translation exaggerating its revolutionary tenor. A violent commentary accompanied this truncated and falsified version: "Count Tolstoy's appeal is based 011 the most rabid, wild-eyed form of socialism in comparison to which the pamphlets of the clandestine agitators are milk and honey. ... lie openly preaches social revolution. Using the overworked, lame-brained catchwords of the Western socialists, which the ignorant mob is always so eager to lap up, lie affirms that the rich subsist on the sweat of the people, consuming everything they possess ancl produce. Can we remain deaf to this propaganda, which is invisible only to those who have no eyes or refuse to see?"