Tolstoy solemnly repeated these phrases to the American, English, French, Swedish and German press correspondents who thronged to Yasnaya Polyana to seek the opinion of the seer of seers. They questioned him about politics, and he answered them with religion; they talked about the tsar, the ministers or the leading revolutionaries and he referred them to God; they spoke of the imperatives of the moment and he proclaimed that the true moment was that of the Beyond. Besides, at the mere sight of all these news-hungry foreigners, he felt himself turning more and more into a Slavophil. Russia had no use for the West. She must follow her own path, lighted by God. To him it was not beyond the realm of possibility that God was Russian. "If the Russian people are truly uncivilized and barbarian, then we have a future," he wrote in his diary. "The Westerners are civilized barbarians, so they have nothing more to live for. It would be as aberrant for us to imitate them as for a stalwart, hard-working, healthy young man to envy a rich Parisian who is bald before thirty and sits in his townhouse moaning, 'Ah, how tedious it all is!' He is to be pitied, not envied."0
lie predicted that if the Russian revolutionaries began to ape the West, they would be degraded by politics as soon as they came into power: "Smugness, pride, vanity and, above all, contempt of their fellow men."
This refusal to take sides was beginning to alarm the Tolstoyans themselves. In England, Chertkov received the text of the manifesto The Government, the Revolutionaries and the People, read it with astonishment and wrote to Tolstoy imploring him to tone down his derogatory remarks about the Marxists. Tolstoy paid no attention, feeling that he had divided his blows very equitably between the adversaries. The article was not published until later, with minor changes. With the same conccrn for equity, he dccided to break off all relations with Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, whose amiability and broad- mindedness he had found so congenial in the Crimea. "There is something unnatural about our relationship and I think it is better not to go on with it," he wrote to the grand duke on September 14, 1905. "You are a grand duke, a rich man and a close relative of the tsar, I am a man who rejects and condemns the established order and the authorities and I make no secret of it."
The grand duke replied on October 1 that he quite understood and
indeed agreed wholeheartedly with Tolstoy but was compelled to keep silent because of his position at court. "I suffer all the more from my silence," lie confessed, "because ever)' one of the government's flaws is so blindingly clear to me and I see no remedy except in a radical change from everything that now exists. But my aged father is still alive and, out of respect for him, I must be careful not to offend him by my views or my behavior. . . . Thus I shall say au revoir to you, dear Leo Nikolayevich, but not farewell."*
Tolstoy was touched by this letter. Were there then good men in every station of socicty? Yet, back in the citics, the blood was still flowing. "The revolution is in full swing," Tolstoy wrote on October 23, 1905. "They arc killing on both sides. . . . The contradiction, as always, lies in wanting to stop violence by violence." A little later he confessed to Chertkov that he was weary of the battle and wished to extricate himself: "The more savage this revolution becomes, the more I want to withdraw into myself and have 110 more part, whether by- act, word or even opinion, in the whole dirty business."10
In the thick of the social upheavals, an unhoped-for event occurred to gladden the hearts at Yasnaya Polyana. Since their marriages, both Tanya and Masha, dogged by ill-luck or some mysterious malformation, had had an uninterrupted series of miscarriages and stillbirths. But on November 6, 1905, to the stupefaction of one and all, Tanya—who was nearly forty—gave birth at the homestead to a living, normal girl child, who was given her mother's name.f When Sasha told him the news, Tolstoy snapped at her for seeming so affected: "What an idiot you are!" he muttered. "What are you crying about?" But then he had to blow his own nose to hide his tears. Shortly after, Michael Sukhotin, the baby's father, who had been ordered by his doctors to move to a warmer climate, left for Rome with Sasha, Masha and her husband Obolensky, the "sponger."
"I advise you," Tolstoy wrote to Masha on March 22, 1906, "to get the most you can from Europe. I personally don't want anything from it at all, despite the cleanliness and neatness that are its main features. To my great regret I observe that we are continually borrowing bits of it: political parties, electoral campaigns, blocs, etc. Abysmal! . . . The only possible result of all these constitutions is to allow a different set of people to exploit the majority. The faces will change, as they do in
0 Two years later Tolstoy changcd his mind and wrote to the grand duke: "I am ashamed, now, when I think of the letter I wrote in 1905. Today I would not have written it. You cannot imagine how one's views changc as one approaches old age, that is, death. What matters most to me now is a loving communion with all men, be they tsar or beggar."
\ Tanya had five stillborn babies before this one.
England, Francc, America and everywhere else; and in their eagerness to make greater and greater profits from each other, men will come more and more to abandon the soil, which is the only basis for a rational and honest existence, and will hand over such drudgery to slaves from India, Africa, Asia, Europe or anywhere else. Materially, the European way of life is very clean; morally, very dirty."
A peasant named Voronin from the government of Kostroma wrote seeking his advice as to the best choice to make in the present political situation, and Tolstoy told him, mincing no words: "I advise you to join no party, except the Tolstoyan party if there is one."
He would have been happy to see his family's names on the roster of members of that party, but apart from his daughter Sasha, every single Tolstoy had rejected his doctrine. His sons Leo and Andrey (discharged after a few months in the army),! even had the nerve, one day, to declare to his face that the death penalty might be defensible in some cases. Carrying contrariness to such lengths was, Tolstoy felt, an insult to his gray head. "I told them," he wrote, "that they had no respect for me and hated me. I left the room and slammed the door. And for two days I have been unable to forget it."11 Once again he was stifling in the atmosphere of Yasnaya Polyana and wanted to flee this easy, aristocratic life filled with dcccit, idle talk, food and money. But he could foresee what would happen. "It is plain to me," he told his daughter Sasha, "that after two days Sofya Andreyevna would come after me with her flunkeys and doctors and everything would begin all over again."
In August 1906, while he was bemoaning his inability to get rid of his wife, she fell critically ill. She had long been complaining of pains in her stomach, and they suddenly grew worse. She took to her bed, the doctors diagnosed a fibroma and recommended surgery, but she was too weak to be taken to the hospital, so an eminent surgeon, Professor Snegirev, came to the house and brought his assistants, a nurse, even an operating table with him. Alerted by telegram, the family came running. When she saw all her sons and daughters around her bed, Sonya felt that she must be dying. After having nursed so many, it was something new for her to be nursed in turn; weakened by spasms, fever, hunger and thoughts of death, she became so tractable that Tolstoy hardly knew her. She apologized for upsetting the household routine, murmured words of tenderness to the family and her old servants. When her husband came into the room she tried to smile reassuringly and sometimes, taking his wrinkled hand, she kissed it and begged him
I Andrcy was discharged for a navous disorder and sent home in January 1905.
to forgive her for all the wrongs she had done him. Overwhelmed by this spiritual elevation, Tolstoy withdrew to wander tearfully through the house with hanging head, return to his study and scribble a few words. "Sonya's condition is growing worse," he wrote on September 1, 1906. "I felt deeply sorry for her today. She has become so reasonable, sweet and considerate that she is touching. . . . My three sons—Sergey, Andrey and Michael—are here, and my two daughters, Masha and Sasha. The house is full of doctors, which is very trying. Instead of submitting to the will of God in a sublimely religious state of mind, they all give way to selfishness, revolt, pettiness . . ." He deplored his sons' determination to keep their mother alive. Didn't they understand that their tactless meddling might destroy the majesty of a such beautifully Christian leave-taking? "Seen that way, death is not the end of something, but a complete revelation," he added with a flourish of enthusiasm.