Tolstoy goes into extraordinary detail in his discussion of pedagogical methods in ‘On Popular Education’, and shows deep knowledge of the educational provision in his own district. He summarised the flaws of Russian primary education as: ‘(1) lack of knowledge of the people, (2) the attraction of teaching what the pupils already know, (3) a tendency to borrow from the Germans, and (4) a criticism of the old without the establishment of new principles.’86 Tolstoy had strong ideas about how Russian children should be taught letter and syllable formation, and was adamant that the phonetic method that had been adopted from Germany was not practicable in Russia, and certainly not suitable for disadvantaged peasant children. In some respects, he was ahead of his time, as what he was advocating later became axiomatic in twentieth-century remedial education.87 Tolstoy’s ABC was eventually approved by the Russian government in September 1874. Even repackaged, it had continued to sell poorly, and Tolstoy complained that he made a loss of 2,000 roubles,88 but he was now keen to revise it.
To begin with, Tolstoy’s plans for revision were minor, but typically for him, he ended up producing an almost completely new book. Something similar had happened with War and Peace, which he revised in 1873 for a new, third edition. His new frame of mind led him to turn six volumes into four, translate all the French text in the novel into Russian and place all his historical digressions into a separate epilogue. Strakhov was also instrumental in this project. For his New ABC, as it was now called, Tolstoy actually heeded his critics by providing an introduction and reducing the cost.89 He wrote more than 100 new miniature stories, but by separating the ‘ABC’ section from the reading primer, he reduced the overall size of the book to ninety-two pages. It went on sale for a much more reasonable fourteen kopecks.90 The New ABC proved to be as successful as the first edition had been a failure. It was published in February 1875, was swiftly recommended by the Ministry of Education, and became a best-seller, running into twenty-eight editions during Tolstoy’s lifetime, with print runs of up to 100,000. Over a million copies had been sold by the time of his death. No other textbook was more widely read in pre-revolutionary Russia.91 The poet Anna Akhmatova was just one of scores of Russians who benefited from Tolstoy’s child-centred approach in learning their alphabet. The new primer, now entitled Russian Books for Reading, was based on the texts used in the first edition and was published later in October 1875. Since most of the first book from the 1872 edition had gone into the New ABC, Tolstoy produced twelve new stories and fables for the first of the four parts.92 They proved equally popular with Russian children.
Tolstoy had conclusively proved that he wanted to improve the deplorable literacy levels in Russia, and that he cared deeply about Russian boys and girls of all classes discovering the joys of their native language when they learned to read. But what about his own children? What kind of a teacher was he to them? What was it like being used as a guinea-pig for his educational ideas? What was it like, indeed, growing up with a famous writer for a father? In October 1872 Tolstoy responded to Alexandrine’s request that he for once tell her something about his children – for the most part, his letters to her, as to everyone else, concerned his current projects and intellectual preoccupations. It was indeed rare for Tolstoy to talk much about his family in his letters, and the thumbnail sketches he provides of his six children are thus often quoted.
Tolstoy described fair-haired Sergey, his eldest, as being bright, with a natural ability for mathematics and art. He was a good pupil, he told Alexandrine, and proficient in gymnastics, but rather gauche and absentminded. Tolstoy was flattered to think Sergey reminded some people of his brother Nikolay, who had been famous for his lack of ego. unlike Sergey, sensitive, pink-cheeked Ilya was always healthy, Tolstoy wrote, but he did not like studying much. Also unlike Sergey, he was a great original, and rather pugnacious, but at the same time he had a great capacity for tenderness, and had an infectious laugh. Tolstoy was confident that Sergey would excel in any environment, but he felt that Ilya would always need the strong leadership of someone he respected. Eight-year-old Tanya was very like her mother, Tolstoy wrote, and was already very maternal, liking nothing better than to take care of her younger siblings. Lev junior, then three and a half, he described as lithe, graceful and very capable, but for sickly little Masha, whom he described as ‘very clever and unattractive’, he foresaw a life of seeking and not finding. ‘Skin white as milk, blonde curly hair; strange, large blue eyes – strange because of their deep, serious expression’ – Tolstoy felt she would be a mystery to everyone. He openly confessed to Alexandrine that he found children in general hard to deal with until they were about three years old, but described Pyotr, the youngest, as a wonderful, bouncing six-month-old baby.93
As Sonya later emphasised, her husband’s work was always the most important thing in his life,94 and she would later actually reprove him for his neglect of the younger children when he became a full-time campaigner on behalf of the oppressed. He was the one to make all the decisions about how the children would be educated, however, and was a charismatic figure when they were growing up, all the more so because they saw him less. It was in the 1870s that Tolstoy was most active and involved as a father, particularly in the first half of the decade, before he became swept up by the writing of Anna Karenina and the spiritual crisis which immediately followed it. The elder Tolstoy children consequently received considerably more attention from their father than their younger siblings who grew up in the 1880s, as would become apparent in the case of Andrey and Misha, who later showed no interest whatsoever in living according to their father’s teachings. The younger Tolstoy children also grew up with no memory of their parents being happily married, unlike the three eldest, who as adults all wrote revealing memoirs of their idyllic early years at Yasnaya Polyana.95
Even though the Tolstoy children saw less of their father than their mother, his influence was certainly greater when they were young: his word was law. When they were very young, it was always an event whenever he appeared in the nursery, and throughout their childhood they cherished the times he spent with them. In the 1870s the Tolstoy children remembered their father still being full of joie de vivre, and somehow life became more interesting for them when he was present, as he seemed to possess a special energy. He hated to be disturbed while he was working, and insisted on complete peace and quiet, but at other times he was often in high spirits, with the exuberance of an overgrown child himself. As an aficionado of physical exercise and the benefits of being outdoors in the fresh air, he enjoyed taking his children riding, swimming and skating. Tolstoy was particularly keen that his sons take up gymnastics, but he was not at all keen on toys, which were banished from the nursery, forcing Sonya to produce horses and dogs out of cardboard, and sew rag-dolls herself so the children had something to play with. Tolstoy compensated for depriving his children of conventional playthings by granting them the greatest possible liberty. What he hated most of all in his children were lies and rudeness, and to see them eating from their knife; he punished their misdemeanours by simply ignoring them. The Tolstoy children found it impossible to lie to their father, and sometimes found it hard to face his steely gaze, as they were convinced he could read their thoughts. They never doubted his love for them, but since he regarded it as a weakness to exhibit tenderness towards his sons, he was not always demonstrative. Indeed, Ilya could not remember ever being caressed by his father. Tolstoy was always much more physically affectionate with his daughters.