Leo Tolstoy had planned to spend at least two years at Yasnaya Polyana with his dear Aunt Toinette, but after eighteen months, having lost faith in the muzhiks, he conceived a loathing for the country. He read, yawned, dreamed of the city, women, lights. Toward mid- October 1848, when the peasants had dug themselves into their isbas and a sleet-storm was lashing at the trees, the anchorite of Yasnaya Polyana decided to go to Moscow.
He stayed only a few weeks—long enough to cultivate a few connections and suffer heavy losses at cards—and then, at the end of January 1849, he abruptly left for St. Petersburg, where two of his friends, Ozerov and Fersen, were also going. At first he felt out of place in the foggy, damp European capital, divided by broad rectilinear avenues, where fake Greek palaces stood perishing of boredom beneath a polar sky. The passers-by in the street all seemed to be traveling along a wire that drew them unwillingly toward their work. Not one familiar facc. Hardly any trees. Granite, marble, bronze. Surrounded by so much austerity, his love of study returned. He was even glad to be in a city in which everything spoke to him of order, labor, career. Always eager to give himself good reasons for his optimism, he wrote to his brother
Sergey on February 13, 1849, saying that he intended to sit his remaining law examinations in Petersburg and then go into the government, as a fourteenth-class civil servant if need be: "I know you won't believe I have changed, and you'll say, 'That makes at least the twentieth time; no good will ever come of him, he's a dead loss.' No; this time, the change is completely different; before, I said, '1 shall change.' This time I see 1 have changed and I say, '1 have changed.'"
He immediately confirmed these resolutions in a letter to Aunt Toinette.5
"I like life in Petersburg. Here everyone has his job, everyone works and minds his own business and pays no attention to anybody else; even though the atmosphere is cold and selfish, it is essential for young people like us, who arc inexperienced and lack savoir faire; it will teach me to be orderly and keep myself occupied, the two indispensable qualities in life, of which I am totally devoid. ... As for my plans, here they are: before I do anything else, I want to sit my examinations at the University of Petersburg and then enter some administrative department, here or somewhere else, however circumstances decide. . . . Don't be surprised, dear Aunt, I have truly changed, I am not in one of those philosophical ecstasies you so often used to reproach me for at Yasnaya. . . ."
Between "rules of life" and life itself, what a chasm! To be sure, Tolstoy began to study, prepared his law examinations and even muddled through one or two, but then gave up the rest overnight.t Once more his passion for the legal science palled. Too many pleasures and too many worries were crowding his mind—the latter resulting, as is only proper, from the former. And at the head of the list, there were his gambling debts. He turned automatically to his brother Sergey, to whom he had declared two months previously that he was a changed man. On May 1, 1849 he confessed his relapse in a missive bearing at the top the terse commcnt: "Read this letter alone." He was probably afraid its receiver would alert Aunt Toinette. "Sergey, you must be saying—I can hear you—that I am a good-for-nothing, and you are right," he wrote. "My God, what have 1 done? I came to Petersburg for no good reason, I've done nothing worthwhile here except spend masses of money, and I've gone into debt. It's so stupid, so unbearably stupid. You can't imagine how it infuriates me. First of all, there are the debts I must pay and without a moment's delay, for if I don't pay them soon I shall lose not only the money but my reputation to boot.
t Afterward he wrote, in Education and Instruction: "I passed an examination at the University of St. Petersburg without knowing a single thing, having begun to study for it, at most, one week in advance."
For the love of heaven, do this: say nothing to the aunts, or to Audrey,! and sell Vorotinka." . . . While I'm waiting for the money to come through, I must absolutely have 3500 rubles right away.t ... I know you will moan and groan, but what else can I do? You only make this kind of mistake once in a lifetime. My freedom and my philosophy are expensive and now I am having to pay! . . . There was nobody to give me a beating, that's what's the matter!"
Not for one moment did the would-be savior of the muzhiks falter at the thought that in order to pay his gambling debts he had to sell a scorc of men, women and children along with his wood, land and livestock. He was merely acting according to the customs of the times. Anything, rather than be declared insolvent by his creditors, who had taken his word. Besides, he had not lost hope. No one scrambled back into the saddle more quickly than he, after a tumble. Yesterday he fancied himself a law graduate, senior civil servant, diplomat. . . Errors all! He would be a soldier, or more precisely a non-commissioned officer in the Ilorse Guards. The moment seemed propitious: Nicholas I, his nerves already on edge after the Revolution of 1848 in France, had decided to send an anny to Hungary to put down Kossuth's proletarian uprising and seat the young emperor Franz-Josef more firmly on his throne. A fine opportunity to gain glory serving his country. Of course, he would be fighting people who claimed allegiance to republican doctrines—but those were foreign notions, French ideas, which need not trouble a Russian mind. Tolstoy admired Montesquieu and Rousseau, abominated oppression and desired the good of the poor, but the events of the Revolution of 1848 left him cold, whereas the promise held out by the campaign of 1849 tickled his warrior's bump. Indeed, it was not among his gambling-cronies that he would have been likely to find a professor of political science. His great friend of the moment was Konstantin Islcnycv, a homeless rake who refused work of any kind, took life as it came and subsisted from day to day on money extorted from his father. 'Hie presence of this jolly debauchee prevented Tolstoy from making friends with people of higher moral cast. He was not overamazed to learn that in the night of April 22, 1849 a group of young men suspected of conspiring against the government under the leadership of Petrashevsky, an official in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, had been arrested and thrown into prison.! He was
t Andiey Ilich Soholcv, administrator of Leo Tolstoy's property at Yasnava Polyana.
• A picce of Tolstoy's property- comprising twenty-two peasants.
t In the neighborhood of $9900.
t The prisoners were convicted and led out to a mock execution, after which they were sent to Siberia.
vaguely acquainted with two of the conspirators, Milyutin and Beklemi- shev. Also said to be among them was a certain Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, whose first novel, Poor Folk, had caused something of a stir in 1846. Tolstoy had never met the author, and could not have cared less whether he had any talent or was guilty or not. He was a long way, in those days, from art, literature or the principles of non-violence.
"1 have high hopes for my military service," he wrote to Sergey. "It will accustom me to the practical side of life and I shall be forced to stay in until I receive a commission, whether 1 like it or not. If I am lucky, that is, if the Guards see any action, I could be promoted within two years."
A few day's later, a new about-face. Tolstoy had told his brother he would enter the Horse Guards, "provided the war were in earnest."" But the war must not have been earnest enough, for he suddenly decided not to enlist. He no longer saw his salvation in Hungary and in uniform, but at Yasnaya Polyana, in work, thrift and thought. Besides, Sergey, alarmed at his brother's spending, agreed to help him only on condition that he go back to live on his estate. On May 26, 1849 Leo Tolstoy wrote to Aunt Toinette, once again in French: