Chapter 1
in which Leo Tolstoy becomes a symbol of the fight against the regime and the main ideologist of the opposition
A NEW CENTURY
On 24 February 1901 the Church Gazette, the official magazine of the prerevolutionary Russian Orthodox Church, publishes the text of an edict issued by the Holy Synod on the excommunication of the renowned Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. It is the church’s first excommunication in more than one hundred years, the turbulence of the previous century notwithstanding. But Tolstoy is a special case.
Petersburg society, which considers itself the epitome of modernity, is shocked by such archaism. “It must be the first time such news has been conveyed by telegraph,” quips Tolstoy’s friend, the journalist and writer Vladimir Korolenko. “Excommunication by telegraph is indeed a paradoxical start to the new century.”
The next day, 25 February, papers across the Russian Empire reprint the article in the Church Gazette, from which Tolstoy learns that he is now officially persona non grata. He is in Moscow at the time, on his estate at Khamovniki. According to his wife, Sofia Andreyevna, Count Tolstoy is deeply upset, and the whole family is at a loss: what next?
For many years Tolstoy has lived not so much outside the law as beyond it. His books have been banned, and people imprisoned and exiled for printing and distributing them. Tolstoy’s closest friend and loyal follower, the publisher Vladimir Chertkov, has been expelled from Russia. Yet the persecution has not yet extended to Tolstoy personally, perhaps because the writer is now seventy-two years old.
Formally, the Russian Orthodox Church is not separate from the state, which means that a lapse of faith is a crime punishable under secular laws, including exile or imprisonment. For the past two decades, rumors have circulated that the writer could be dispatched to the Suzdal Monastery, effectively a prison for religious offenders, including a number of Old Believers—members of the Russian Orthodox Church who refused to accept the liturgical reforms of Patriarch Nikon in 1653. But so far Tolstoy has remained at liberty. Will the new edict change that?
Tolstoy used to enjoy the patronage of Emperor Alexander III, who loved to read the writer’s early works in childhood. But the tsar passed away seven years ago, in 1894, at the tender age of fifty. Still very much alive, however, is the tsar’s former tutor and éminence grise, Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev, who is Tolstoy’s peer (just one year older) and sworn enemy. Pobedonostsev also tutored Nicholas II and retains a grandfatherly influence over the new emperor.
On learning of the Holy Synod’s decree, Tolstoy goes into town, where there is public unrest. It has nothing to do with his excommunication: student rioting began in Moscow and Saint Petersburg in 1899 when a university rector ordered that the most politically active students should be conscripted. Battles have been raging in Russia’s two capitals ever since, and February 1901 has seen a new surge. Tolstoy arrives at Lubyanka Square in central Moscow* and gets mixed up in a brawl between students and police. News of his excommunication has already spread through the city, and the writer is recognized by the students. In between throwing punches, they give him an ovation.
But not everyone is supportive. “Look, it’s the devil in human form,” someone shouts at Tolstoy on Lubyanka Square. “The mood of the crowd was split between adoration and loathing. Tolstoy hailed a cab and quickly drove off,” is how police officer Alexander Spiridovich later describes the scene. “If there hadn’t been so many students, I could have been beaten up,” recalls the writer himself.
Waiting for him back at the house are letters from total strangers. On opening them, he realizes that the persecution has begun: “You will die like a dog and rot in hell!”, “If the government doesn’t get rid of you, we will,” and “I’ll come and get you, you scum” are some of the more polite sentiments. “Even face-to-face some people expressed similar animosity,” writes Tolstoy.
Not all the messages are hostile, but Tolstoy does not note them in his diary.
The Ministry of Interior prohibits all discussion of the Holy Synod’s edict, and the ensuing lull generates plenty of rumor and speculation. Vladimir Chertkov, exiled in England, is frantic with worry about stories of Tolstoy’s arrest and showers his friend with telegrams. Pobedonostsev watches for the hateful (in his eyes) intelligentsia to react to the Holy Synod’s decision, despite the fact that officially all publications on this topic are forbidden by the censor. Even Emperor Nicholas II is perturbed by the hullabaloo surrounding Tolstoy, for he does not like scandals. He summons the ageing Pobedonostsev and asks indignantly why he was not consulted before the decision was taken to excommunicate Tolstoy. Pobedonostsev, whose official title is ober-procurator of the Holy Synod (essentially, “minister of the church”) smiles in reply: “What do you mean? I came and showed you the text. You just weren’t paying attention.”
Pobedonostsev, the personal tutor of two emperors, has a low opinion of Nicholas II. He often recalls how the young tsar would stand there picking his nose while being advised about state business.
AN OLD PROPHET
The now-excommunicated Leo Tolstoy’s position in Russia is undoubtedly remarkable. At the age of seventy-two he is one of the most famous people in Russia, yet for the past twenty years he has been at war with the state.
Step back to 1880, and Tolstoy is to be found about to undergo a spiritual revolution. “My father’s Orthodox faith ended quite unexpectedly,” describes Tolstoy’s son, Ilya. “It was Lent. A special meal was prepared for my father and others who were fasting, while the young children, governesses and tutors were served meat. A servant had just put the meat dish on the table when my father turned to me (I always sat next to him) and said, pointing to the meat: ‘Ilyushka, pass me a meat chop, there’s a good lad. No, I haven’t forgotten it’s Lent, but I’m not going to fast anymore, so no more Lenten fare for me.’ To everyone’s dismay, he ate it up and licked his lips. Seeing our father’s attitude to Lent, we soon became indifferent to religion.”
In terms of global cultural impact, those meat chops can be compared to the Ninety-Five Theses that Martin Luther allegedly nailed to the door of Wittenberg Church in 1517. By renouncing Lent, Tolstoy embarks on his own reformation of Christianity.
Having mastered Ancient Greek, Tolstoy writes his own version of the New Testament in 1880-1881 entitled The Gospel in Brief. At heart it is a psychological novel about a young Jesus who is not the son of God, rather his mother Mary knows only that his father is not her husband Joseph. Aware of this fact, Jesus experiences a profound internal drama. His conversations with the devil, for instance, are presented by Tolstoy as an inner dialogue between Jesus and himself. Tolstoy’s text makes no mention of miracles, for he does not believe in them, and his Gospel ends with Jesus dying on the cross—with no resurrection to speak of. Tolstoy’s Christ is an ordinary man, a teacher, and a philosopher, but possessing exemplary moral fiber. For Tolstoy, Christ’s gift to mankind lies in his love for humanity, ability to forgive, and rejection of violence, not in ecclesiastical rites.
Tolstoy rejects what the church has become, along with all its rituals, because all they do is divide the Christian world. He sees himself as the creator and founder of a new universal Christianity, free of impurities. Interestingly, in Tolstoy’s Gospel the word “Pharisees” is replaced with pravoslavniye, or “orthodox,” meaning those who worship correctly—which is not in fact a literal translation.
Tolstoy knows that The Gospel in Brief cannot be published in Russia, so the book is printed in Switzerland. It only appears in Russia in 1906, and even then not in its entirety. Tolstoy’s version of the New Testament is followed by the novel Confession, the treatise What I Believe, and other religious works. His spiritual transformation completely changes his life and upsets his wife. Countess Sofia does not accept her husband’s new religion and ceases to be his creative helper and muse. Tolstoy’s new “spiritual partner” and chief promoter of his ideas is now Vladimir Chertkov. Sometime in the 1880s, Chertkov and Sofia Tolstoy develop a mutual antipathy for each other, which lasts a lifetime.
Tolstoy’s attitude to his work, status, and success also changes. The copyright to all his works printed before 1881 he transfers to his family, and all those printed afterwards he declares to be in the public domain. The pre-1881 period, including War and Peace and Anna Karenina, he considers less important. Many years later, in response to guests eulogizing about his great novels, he would say: “It’s like praising Edison for being able to dance the mazurka.” Henceforth, he regards only his religious writings as worthy of attention.
And it is his religious musings that turn Tolstoy into an underground writer, for publishers are no longer allowed to print his works in Russia. Yet his teaching continues to spread. There is a spike in the number of army recruits who refuse to serve, citing that they are followers of Tolstoy and that violence goes against their religious beliefs. The “Tolstoyans,” as they are known, continue to multiply, despite the state’s persecution of them.
But Tolstoy himself remains untouched, which displeases him. All around, people are under threat, yet he seems to live in a vacuum. He himself would be happy to suffer punishment. In 1890 Tolstoy holds a conversation with the religious philosopher Konstantin Leontiev, a staunch opponent of his: “It’s a pity, sir, that there is so little fanaticism inside me,” an angry Leontiev says to Tolstoy. “For I would surely send a letter to Saint Petersburg, where I have connections, and ask that you be exiled to Tomsk, and for your wife and daughters not to visit you, and for you to be provided with very little wherewithal. You, sir, are positively harmful!” “My dear, Konstantin!” replies the writer. “For God’s sake, please do write that letter. That is my dream. I’m doing everything I can to endanger myself, yet the government turns a blind eye. I implore you to write it.”
Tolstoy’s protection comes from Emperor Alexander III himself, who values his worth as a writer and reasons that martyrdom would only disseminate his ideas even more. Although Tolstoy’s new works are not printed, his popularity grows thanks to his social activity. In 1891, central Russia is hit by a famine. Tolstoy travels to Ryazan and opens up a provincial network of soup kitchens, collecting huge amounts of money to help the starving. On one of his trips he learns that a local priest is telling the starving peasants not to accept help from Tolstoy, because he is the Antichrist. And many take it to heart. Tolstoy’s daughter, Tatiana, remembers being told by the starving, as she tried to help them, “Go away, my dear, and take your bread with you. We don’t need alms from the Antichrist.” Afterwards, the peasants begin to realize that Tolstoy does not mean them any harm and start to wonder why the clergy call him the Antichrist.
Just a few years later several thousand people will describe themselves as Tolstoyans in the Russian Imperial Census of 1897.
Meanwhile, the teaching is denounced as a harmful sect, and the struggle against it is headed by none other than the omnipotent “Minister of the Church” Pobedonostsev. Yet even he is powerless to do anything against Tolstoy himself. Censoring Tolstoy’s work brings him into conflict with the tsar. Alexander III overrides Pobedonostsev and personally allows the publication of The Kreutzer Sonata, despite the censor having banned it. Yet Pobedonostsev scores a minor victory by stopping a staging of The Power of Darkness, despite the fact that Alexander III has seen a rehearsal at the Alexandrinsky Theatre and is reported to have enjoyed it.
SENSELESS DAYDREAMS
But in 1894 Tolstoy’s protector dies. His successor, the twenty-six-year-old Nicholas II, is interested in neither politics, nor the elderly Tolstoy, nor the equally elderly Pobedonostsev, who intimidates the young tsar. Nicholas learns from Pobedonostsev one thing: imperial power comes from God and any form of constitution from the devil.
Nicholas II’s rule gets off to a bad start. After the coronation the tsar receives delegations from various provinces. During a meeting with a group of subjects from Tver, he reads out a written speech in which he says that all hopes for representative government are nothing but “senseless daydreams.”
Petersburg society is prepared to forgive the tsar’s poorly worded “mission statement,” but Tolstoy is enraged. He writes an article entitled “Senseless Daydreams”—perhaps the most complete exposition of his political views on record—in which he verbally lays into the young emperor.
Having condemned the “insolence of the young lordling,” Tolstoy concludes that the monarchy in its present form is a danger to Russia:
This huge country with a population of over 100 million is managed by one person. And this person is appointed by accident of birth, not according to merit.… No one of sound mind would get inside a cab or a train if the driver did not know how to control the vehicle, but the driver’s father supposedly did. And no one would board a boat with a captain whose only seafaring pedigree stems from the fact that he is the great-nephew of a man who once commanded the vessel. No sensible person would put his family’s life in the hands of such a driver or captain, yet all of us live in a state that is run—and absolutely at that—by the sons and great-nephews of rulers who were themselves no good at managing people.
After giving the monarchy a tongue-lashing, Tolstoy turns his attention to the bureaucracy, concluding that it is Russia’s army of civil servants, and not the emperor, that effectively rules Russia.
Tolstoy ends the article by naming the civil servant who irritates him the most: Pobedonostsev. He is a symbol of the regime, a man who “befuddles and corrupts the people.” It is a direct challenge to the state, as if Tolstoy were deliberately trying to humiliate the powers-that-be and provoke them into punishing him. But still the authorities do not react.
THE GREAT RESETTLEMENT
In the early years of the reign of Nicholas II, Tolstoy begins his most high-profile social campaign in defense of the Doukhobors, a Christian sect that is very close to him spiritually, since they reject the rituals of the Orthodox Church and any form of violence. In 1895, the Doukhobor community near Tiflis (today’s Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia) burns all the weapons it possesses as a protest against forced conscription. The oppression of them intensifies as a result, and they are put in prison, sent to serve in penal battalions, or exiled.
Tolstoy and Chertkov launch a wide-reaching campaign in support of the Doukhobors, whose persecution is soon global news. Tolstoy has the idea of helping the Doukhobors to emigrate to places where they will not be pursued. China, Cyprus, and Hawaii are among the options.
He begins raising money and even considers reversing his decision to forsake royalties. He quickly puts the finishing touches to a new novel Resurrection so that all the money from its publication can be given to the Doukhobors.
Tolstoy’s human rights activism goes unpunished, but his publisher Chertkov is exiled. In 1897 he moves to England (not the harshest punishment for a journalist fluent in English), where he becomes Tolstoy’s mouthpiece in the Western world. While in London, Chertkov seeks new ways to help the Doukhobors. The political émigré approaches another native of Russia, Prince Peter Kropotkin, who has lived in exile for more than twenty years, since 1876. The famous geographer, who uncovered the phenomenon of the Ice Age and wrote what are considered classics of anarchist literature, also supports the Doukhobors. Kropotkin’s scientific expeditions have repeatedly taken him to Canada, which, he concludes, is geologically akin to Siberia. He suggests that Canada be the new home of the Doukhobor community.
The great resettlement begins in 1898. At Batumi Port in modern-day Georgia, more than eight thousand people board ships chartered by Tolstoy for Quebec and Halifax. The massive operation to rescue the Doukhobors from state repression comes to an end in 1900, demonstrating that Tolstoy is virtually independent of the Russian authorities.
PRAYING FOR REASON
Nevertheless, the authorities, not to mention the church, are vexed. But still nothing happens. Until, that is, Tolstoy falls seriously ill. In 1899 press reports suggest that the writer’s days are numbered. The higher ranks of the Holy Synod are not quite sure what to do if Tolstoy dies. One member of the church hierarchy, the Archbishop of Kharkov, pens the first draft of what will become the edict to excommunicate Tolstoy from the church. In 1900, the oldest member of the Holy Synod, Metropolitan Ioanniky of Kiev, sends a secret letter forbidding all priests in Russia to perform a funeral service for Tolstoy. But the writer recovers, and instead it is the Metropolitan of Kiev who soon departs for the next world.
His successor as elder of the Holy Synod is Metropolitan Anthony of Saint Petersburg, who has a reputation as a liberal, and he decides to get things over and done with. Since the decision to excommunicate Tolstoy has already been made, he decides to publish the secret circular penned by his predecessor and have it approved by the state curator of the church (i.e., Pobedonostsev). But the latter amends the text, making it even more puritanical, and his is the version that ends up in the Church Gazette*, signed by seven bishops: Anthony and six other metropolitans. Pobedonostsev declines to put his name to the document.
The edict lists the charges against Tolstoy: preaching the overthrow of Orthodox dogma and denying the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth, the resurrection, life after death, the Day of Judgment, and all the sacraments of the church. Tolstoy is accused of having “consciously and deliberately torn himself from all communion with the Church,” so that he cannot be considered a member of the flock until he repents. The document ends with a short prayer for Tolstoy, asking God to make him see reason.
Even inside the imperial court, the seventy-two-year-old Pobedonostsev is not held in high esteem. “I’ve read the Holy Synod’s edict regarding Tolstoy. What a load of nonsense. It’s a personal vendetta. It’s clear that Pobedonostsev is behind it and just wants to attack Tolstoy,” writes Vladimir Lebedev, a legal adviser to the government.
Why does Pobedonostsev hate Tolstoy so much when the two men have never even met? Members of the intelligentsia believe they know the answer. Twenty-five years earlier, when Anna Karenina was published, readers began searching for prototypes. Konstantin Levin was clearly the author himself. But who was Karenin—the senior official (powerful, but titleless), whose wife’s infidelity is public knowledge? Pobedonostsev’s wife, Ekaterina, was twenty-one years younger than her husband and rumored to be in a relationship with a military officer. It was even said that after the novel’s publication Ekaterina had begun to dress like Anna Karenina.
Although Tolstoy and Pobedonostsev never meet, they do exchange letters on one occasion: five years after the appearance of Anna Karenina and twenty years before Tolstoy’s excommunication from the church.
In March 1881, on learning of the assassination of Emperor Alexander II, Tolstoy (the celebrated author of War and Peace) writes a letter to Pobedonostsev, seeking a pardon for the terrorists. Tolstoy asks for the letter to be delivered to the heir to the throne, the future Alexander III. The letter is a turning point in the history of Russia and in the lives of both Pobedonostsev and Tolstoy.
INESCAPABLE PUNISHMENT
On 1 March 1881 Saint Petersburg witnesses the assassination of Emperor Alexander II by a group of young activists from the terrorist cell known as People’s Will. The bomb that kills the tsar is thrown by the twenty-five-year-old Pole Ignacy Hryniewiecki, but the attack is orchestrated by Sofia Perovskaya, the twenty-seven-year-old daughter of the governor of Saint Petersburg. It is she who waves a white handkerchief to signal when to throw the bomb.
The emperor’s death shocks the Saint Petersburg elite to the core. Everyone knows that Russia is on the verge of adopting a constitution. Two months earlier, in January 1881, Interior Minister Mikhail Loris-Melikov writes and personally delivers a “most humble report” outlining the reforms. It is in fact a draft constitution, hailed by future historians as the “Constitution of Loris-Melikov.” The draft document foresees the phased introduction of a new parliament, and Alexander II approves it. On the morning of 1 March, just an hour before his death, the tsar informs Loris-Melikov that the document will be adopted by the Council of Ministers in just four days. The emperor’s son, the future Alexander III, is aware of the plans, since he is involved in all the discussions and also endorses the “Constitution.”*
The sudden death of the tsar changes everything. Society is stunned. Only Pobedonostsev, it seems, knows what to do. He targets his former pupil and now the new emperor, Alexander III, who falls under Pobedonostsev’s political hypnosis: “The hour is dark and time is short,” he writes to the tsar. “Either you save Russia and yourself, or both will perish. Do not be lulled by the sirens of liberalism calling for you to heed the so-called public opinion. For God’s sake, Your Majesty, remain vigilant.”
At a meeting on 8 March, Pobedonostsev delivers an even more impassioned speech against the liberal reforms. His opponents, fronted by Loris-Melikov, are stunned by the resistance. All of their ideas are rejected out of hand. “Thank God that this criminal step towards a constitution has been rejected by the Council of Ministers, if only by a tiny majority,” writes the spellbound Alexander III.
Pobedonostsev suggests placing the capital Saint Petersburg on a war footing and leaving the “wretched place” to take refuge in Moscow. He cannot stand the northern capital, considering it too secular and cosmopolitan in comparison to the patriarchal Moscow, the true center of Russia in his view.
Tolstoy is at Yasnaya Polyana, almost a thousand kilometers from Saint Petersburg. News of the attack arrives only two days later, on 3 March, and it comes as a shock. Caring little for court intrigues, his mind is drawn to the death sentence that is sure to be handed down for this act of regicide. For Tolstoy, regardless of the circumstances, capital punishment is a monstrous crime against the very essence of Christianity and in violation of the principle of “turn the other cheek.” He writes two letters: one to Alexander III, the other to Pobedonostsev. Yet both are delivered to the latter with instructions to pass the first letter to the tsar. After agonizing over them for more than a week, he finally sends them on 15 March. During this period, he suffers from nightmares, dreaming that he, not Alexander III, is about to execute the terrorists.
“I shall adopt a different tone to the one usually reserved for letters to the Sovereign, and do without flowery obsequiousness and spurious eloquence that only obscure thoughts and feelings. I shall write man to man,” begins Tolstoy’s first letter. The bluntness is part of a cunning attempt to expound to the emperor an alternative path of political and ideological development: a third way, neither liberal nor conservative.
It starts off simply enough, offering condolences to Alexander III for the “unimaginably terrible situation” in which he finds himself and the “overwhelmingly strong temptation to commit evil” against the perpetrators of the crime: “These enemies of Russia and the people are despicable godless creatures that have violated the tranquility of millions of believers and murdered your father,” he writes, implying that they cannot be pitied. However, says Tolstoy, Christ clearly instructs that they should be forgiven: “Do not hate your enemy, be charitable to him. Instead of fighting evil, learn to forgive,” Tolstoy paraphrases Christ. But moralism soon gives way to politics. Tolstoy recalls that radical opposition terrorists have been active in Russia for two decades, and so far only two methods have been applied to deal with them: conservative (execution, exile, censorship) and liberal (freedom, softly-softly measures, the offer of a constitution). Both methods have proven ineffective, asserts Tolstoy, because their proponents are divided into those who care about the interests of the state and those who care about the welfare of the masses: “Why not try a third option in the name of God? We should adhere to His law only, without thinking about the state or the masses.”
“Punishing three or four criminals only gives rise to thirty or forty more. Evil begets evil.” Tolstoy suggests that the tsar should give the assassins money and let them emigrate to America. The letter ends with these words: “As wax before the fire, every revolutionary struggle shall melt before the Tsar who accepts his own mortality and fulfills the law of Christ.”
Pobedonostsev, of course, does not show the letter to the tsar, for it employs Pobedonostsev’s own trick of using religious arguments, yet arriving, in Tolstoy’s case, at the most liberal conclusions. For Pobedonostsev, such an opponent is a real threat. Moreover, Alexander III’s former tutor knows something that Tolstoy does not—that the new emperor is very fond of the writer and adores War and Peace. For the emperor, Tolstoy’s word is law.
Instead, Pobedonostsev writes his own letter to Alexander: “There is an idea floating that appalls me. Some people are so corrupt in mind and thought that they advocate pardoning convicted killers. The Russian people are fearful that Your Majesty could be swayed by these perverted thoughts. Could this happen? No, no, a thousand times, no. It cannot be that You, in the face of all the Russian people, could forgive the murderers of Your father, the Russian Emperor, for whose blood the entire earth (save for those of feeble mind and heart) demands vengeance and groans that it is not swift enough. If this could happen, believe me, Sire, it shall be perceived as a great sin and will shake the hearts of Your subjects. I am Russian, I live among my fellow Russians and I know what the people are feeling and what they are demanding. At this moment they all crave retribution.”*
Alexander III tries to calm Pobedonostsev’s fears: “Do not worry. No one shall dare approach me with such a proposal. All six will be hanged, for that I can vouch.”
However, the emperor is wrong. For Tolstoy has written two versions of his letter. His friend, Fyodor Strakhov, having delivered one to Pobedonostsev, gives the other to the tsar’s younger brother, the twenty-three-year-old Grand Duke Sergei, who takes it to Alexander III.
Twenty-four years later, history will repeat itself. Grand Duke Sergei himself is killed by terrorists in exactly the same manner as his father, Alexander II. Sergei’s wife, Ella, follows the advice of Tolstoy and visits her husband’s murderer in prison, asking for him to be pardoned.
However, back in 1881 Tolstoy and the Grand Duke fail to persuade the tsar. Alexander III replies that if the attack had been against him, he could offer pardon, but he has no right to forgive the killers of his father. On 3 April five of the assassins are hanged. The day after the execution the minister-reformer Loris-Melikov is dismissed.
The sixth defendant, Gesya Gelfman, is granted respite, for she is pregnant. Her case becomes a cause célèbre. Alexander III receives letters in her defense from across the globe, including one from Victor Hugo.* Incidentally, she dies soon after giving birth from a lack of medical treatment.
“Pobedonostsev is a dreadful person. God grant that he does not answer me so that I shall not be tempted to express my horror and disgust at him,” writes Tolstoy on 3 April 1881, not knowing yet that the execution has taken place. Pobedonostsev has no time for letters just yet. He is busy writing his anti-constitution, the so-called “Manifesto on Unshakable Autocracy,” which is published on 30 April.
The essence of the document is simplicity itself: no more liberal reforms, no constitution, no parliament, no representative government.
So begins the Pobedonostsev era, which will last for more than two decades.
In those distant, deaf years
Slumber and haziness reigned in the heart
Pobedonostsev’s owl wings
Stretched over Russia
There was no day or night
Only the shadow of those vast wings
He drew a spellbinding circle
Around Russia, gazing into her eyes
With the vitreous stare of a sorcerer
These lines will be written forty years later by the poet Alexander Blok, who in 1881 is just one year old.
Finally, in June 1881, and in spite of Tolstoy’s prayers, Pobedonostsev responds to the former’s March-dated letter: “Do not hold it against me for not fulfilling your instruction,” he writes. “Such an important matter had to be guided by faith. After reading your letter, I saw that your faith and that of the Church are not one. Your Christ is not our Christ. Ours is a man of truth and virtue, a healer of the sick. Yours is weak-minded and in need of healing himself. Thus, my faith did not permit me to fulfill your assignment.”
Pobedonostsev wins in the end. He continues to push for Tolstoy to be punished, but is still thwarted by Alexander III.
Tolstoy, incidentally, gets his own back on Pobedonostsev in 1899, just two years before his excommunication. That year sees the publication of his final novel, Resurrection. It contains another thinly disguised Pobedonostsev—this time not the hapless Karenin, but the epitome of absolute evil in the form of “Minister of the Church” Toporov.
Toporov, like all those who are quite destitute of the fundamental religious feeling that recognises the equality and brotherhood of men, was fully convinced that the common people were creatures entirely different from himself, and that the people needed what he could well do without, for in the depths of his soul he believed in nothing, and found such a state very convenient and pleasant. Yet he feared lest the people might also come to such a state, and looked upon it as his sacred duty, as he called it, to save the people from it.… His feelings towards the religion he kept were the same as those of the poultry-keeper towards the carrion he fed his fowls on. Carrion was very disgusting, but the fowls liked it; therefore, it was right to feed the fowls on carrion.
This passage from Resurrection contains the essence of Tolstoy’s hatred of the church in general and of Pobedonostsev in particular. The censors, of course, expunge the offending chapter nine in its entirety before publication, but a privileged few, including Pobedonostsev, see the full version. By that time, however, Pobedonostsev is more than the “minister of the church.” He is now the alter ego of the emperor, the chief ideologist of the state.
A GREAT FALSEHOOD
During the life of Alexander II, almost no one in Saint Petersburg harbors any doubt that a constitutional monarchy is on its way and that change is inevitable. But through his iron will, Pobedonostsev single-handedly manages to stem the tide of reform. The most complete expression of his ideology comes in an article entitled “The Great Falsehood of Our Time,” written in 1884. The subject is democracy.
Amongst the falsest of political principles is the principle of sovereignty of the people, known as democracy. It is the principle that all power issues from the people and is based upon the national will—a principle which has unhappily become more firmly established since the time of the French Revolution. Thence proceeds the theory of parliamentarianism, which, up to the present day, has deluded much of the so-called ‘intelligentsia’ and, unhappily, has penetrated certain foolish Russian minds.
It is not that Pobedonostsev believes in Russia’s unique destiny and inherent incompatibility with democracy. No, he considers the very idea of “sovereignty of the people” to be insane no matter where in the world it manifests itself. Moreover, he believes that the idea is already showing cracks:
By the theory of parliamentarianism, the rational majority must rule; in practice, the party is dominated by five or six of its leaders who exercise all power. In theory, conviction is affirmed through clear arguments in the course of parliamentary debate; in practice, in no way do they depend on debate, but are determined by the will of the leaders and the promptings of personal interest. In theory, the representatives of the people consider only the public welfare; in practice, their first consideration is their own advancement and the interests of their friends. In theory, they are supposed to be the finest citizens; in practice, they are the most ambitious and impudent.… It is sad to think that even on Russian soil there are people who aspire to the establishment of this falsehood among us; that our professors glorify to their young pupils representative government as the ideal of statehood; that our newspapers pursue it in their articles and feuilletons under the name of justice and order, without troubling to examine without prejudice the workings of the parliamentary machine. Yet even where centuries have sanctified its existence, faith in democracy is decaying; the liberal intelligentsia exalts it, but the people groan under its despotism and recognise its falsehood. We may not live to see the day, but our children and grandchildren assuredly will, when this idol*, which contemporary thought in all its vanity continues to worship, is overthrown.
The article appears in the magazine The Citizen, published on government subsidies by Prince Meshchersky, a friend of Alexander III. Incidentally, for a brief period The Citizen’s editor-in-chief is none other than Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a friend of Pobedonostsev.
Emperor Alexander III fully concurs with his former tutor: “It is strange to listen to intelligent people talking earnestly about representative government in Russia,” he writes.
The Petersburg nobility pokes fun at Pobedonostsev. The dislike is mutual: Pobedonostsev believes that the main problem in the country is education. And by education he means education itself, not the lack thereof. The most untrustworthy and disloyal segment of the population, in his view, is made of the intelligentsia, students, professors, and civil servants. The knowledge and instruction that they receive do not promote loyalty to the emperor. However, church schools are another matter. Education, according to Pobedonostsev’s paradigm, should be limited to literacy and the word of God. Therefore, he devotes a good deal of his life to creating a network of church schools that do not teach history, mathematics, geography, or literature. In his lifetime their number increases tenfold from 4,404 to 42,884 and the number of students twentyfold from 104,781 to 2,006,847. At the same time, church newspapers and magazines double in number, all thanks to Pobedonostsev.
A KILLER AT THE WINDOW
On 8 March 1901, just two weeks after Tolstoy’s excommunication, Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod Pobedonostsev is sitting near the window in his office at his government residence. The window overlooks Liteyny Avenue in central Saint Petersburg. Pobedonostsev is accustomed to working late, and his silhouette is easy to make out from the street. Late that evening Nikolai Lagovsky, a twenty-five-year-old civil servant and statistician from provincial Samara, approaches the window. He pulls out a gun and fires six times at Pobedonostsev.
The first five bullets hit the ceiling, while the sixth shot misfires. Amidst the uproar the terrorist tries to flee, but is seized by staff who have come running out of the building.
The police are at their wits’ ends, since this is not the first such incident. The Minister of Education Nikolai Bogolepov is still warm in his coffin, having been shot just one week before. But the “minister of the church” is not even scratched.
Following the unsuccessful attempt on his life, church services are held for Pobedonostsev across the country. Not everywhere do they go smoothly. During prayers in Ryazan, for example, local students shout out, “Hail the inquisitor!” The seventy-four-year-old Pobedonostsev is perhaps the most hated official in the country and the chief enemy of all oppositionists, students, revolutionaries, and the Petersburg intelligentsia. During his interrogation Lagovsky says that he “wanted to eradicate the main obstacle to progress and freedom”; for him, Pobedonostsev’s crime is to have “spread superstition and ignorance among the people through church schools.”
Lagovsky is sentenced to six years of hard labor and dies in Siberia. Pobedonostsev not only outlives him, but also survives several more assassination attempts. In the wake of the first attempt on Pobedonostsev, Saint Petersburg sees an epidemic of political killings.
THE BATTLE OF KAZAN
On 4 March 1901, three days before the attempt on Pobedonostsev’s life, a huge crowd gathers on the square outside Kazan Cathedral in Saint Petersburg that includes not only young people, but also persons of note, among them two young socialist writers. They are the exact opposite of each other. One is Peter Struve, from a “good” family, the son of the governor of Perm; the second, Alexei Peshkov, is a man of working-class origin who goes by the pseudonym Maxim Gorky. Struve is professionally engaged in politics in a country that has no politics (at least as far as ordinary citizens are concerned). The year before in the town of Pskov, he and his friends founded Russia’s first socialist newspaper Spark [Iskra]. Gorky has not yet read Spark or made the acquaintance of Struve or the two other founders, Georgy Plekhanov and a certain Vladimir Ulyanov. For his part, Gorky has written several short stories to great acclaim from the upcoming generation, but he has not yet moved to the capital. Struve is thirty-one, and Gorky is thirty-two, the same age as Tsar Nicholas II.
The rally at Kazan Cathedral is quite possibly the first mass public demonstration in Russian history. The crowd has gathered in defense of students’ rights and is demanding a repeal of the “provisional rules” that allow any politically active student to be expelled and called up by the army. Although the rally has been approved by the authorities, the murder of the Minister of Education Bogolepov changes everything. In light of the death of his colleague, Interior Minister Dmitry Sipyagin has decided not to allow the gathering to take place.
“We are on the square. The crowd is noisy, bustling and full of nervous excitement. There’s not a single policeman in sight,” later recalls the mathematics student Razumnik Ivanov, who at that time was twenty-two years old.
The police, both mounted and unmounted, along with Cossack units, are still hidden away in the surrounding courtyards. We are waiting for the signal. The midday cannon fires and everything kicks off.… A red flag is unfurled amid the dense crowd of young people in the middle of the square, when suddenly the gates on the side of Kazan Street and Ekaterina Canal swing open, releasing the Cossack troops. They smash into the crowd, striking people with whips. There are cries of pain and rage, blood spills, the wounded groan; even passers-by on the pavements, despite the shouts of indignation, are attacked by the police.
The battered crowd consists not only of students, but also the metropolitan elite. Gorky says that many commissioned officers refused to obey the head of city police, Kleigels, who was in charge of the dispersal, and many came to blows with the police and the Cossacks.
“I saw one officer break through the chain of gendarmes. He was drenched with blood, his face mutilated by whips,” writes Gorky in a letter to his friend Anton Chekhov. “Another was shouting: ‘They have no right to beat us, we are the public!’ All the while, officers were pulling women from under horses’ hooves, rescuing people from the clutches of the police and generally behaving very decently,” says Gorky.
A hero of the Kazan Cathedral rally is Prince Leonid Vyazemsky, the former governor of Astrakhan and a member of the State Council. On seeing the carnage, he runs up to Kleigels and yells at him to stop the brutality, accusing him of exceeding his authority. Kleigels does not respond.
The student Ivanov recalls that the protesters are crushed, beaten, and driven back to the steps of Kazan Cathedral. They stumble through the doors of the shrine, dragging the wounded, who are placed on the marble benches around the tomb of General Kutuzov, the conqueror of Napoleon. “The Sunday service at the cathedral was just coming to an end when we came bursting in,” says Ivanov.
The deacon appeared from behind the altar, saying: ‘Are you people or beasts? You ungodly creatures storm into a place of worship during a divine service, don’t even remove your caps and run amok.… Shame on you!’
‘Father, it’s not us running amok, but the police. Take a look at the blood. We were driven inside the cathedral. We didn’t mean to come here.’
He is broken off by a police colonel who has just entered the cathedral and declares that all present have half an hour to disperse and thus prove that they are law-abiding people. “We hadn’t come to demonstrate our civil obedience,” recollects Ivanov. Half an hour later the injured have been carried away and the rest of the crowd (around five hundred to six hundred men and a few hundred women) are arrested.
Gorky writes to Chekhov that, according to official figures, four people are dead, sixty-two men and thirty-four women have been assaulted, and fifty-four police, gendarmes, and Cossacks are wounded. “I shall never forget that battle! The fight was wild and savage on both sides. Women were grabbed by the hair and lashed with whips. A classmate of mine had her back beaten black and blue, another had her head smashed in, another lost an eye. But even soaked in blood, we weren’t defeated,” says the writer.
Struve is detained and exiled to Tver. Gorky escapes arrest. Prince Vyazemsky is exiled for resisting the authorities and inciting unrest. Tolstoy, who at this moment is in Moscow, is struck by what has happened. Once again he is ashamed that others, including the aristocrat Prince Vyazemsky, have been punished, yet he remains untouched.
“Dear Prince Leonid Dmitrievich [Vyazemsky],” he writes to the exile. “Your noble, courageous and philanthropic actions on 4 March outside Kazan Cathedral are known throughout Russia. We hope that you, like us, attribute the emperor’s punishment of you solely to the brutality and cruelty of those who surround and deceive him. You have done a good deed, and Russian society will be forever grateful to you. You chose to sacrifice yourself in the struggle against brutal violence and to serve humanity, rather than the conventional decorum demanded by your status. Your deed commands all the respect and gratitude that we extend to you in this letter.”
A few days later Tolstoy writes a letter “To the Tsar and his aides”—his most important and opinionated text since “Senseless Daydreams,” which sets out a political reform plan consisting of three proposals:
“First, grant the peasants the same rights as other citizens” (in particular, “outlaw the nonsensical, humiliating act of corporal punishment”). Second, reform the law enforcement agencies (since police omnipotence encourages denunciations, spying and brutal violence), and “repeal the unlawful death penalty that so corrupts the people, violates the Christian spirit of the Russian folk and represents a terrible crime against God and the human conscience. Third, remove all barriers to education, upbringing and learning,” (in particular, allow schools for Jews and other minorities, as well as private schools).
Tolstoy sends the letter to Saint Petersburg. It is not published and no one takes the proposals seriously, save for the metropolitan intelligentsia, who carefully study it. The letter is circulated widely, as indeed are the rest of Tolstoy’s prohibited works. They are published abroad by Chertkov and clandestinely distributed.
Alexei Suvorin, a friend of Anton Chekhov and the publisher of Russia’s most widely read tabloid, New Time, on reading Tolstoy’s letter, notes in his diary on 29 May:
We have two tsars: Nicholas II and Leo Tolstoy. Who is the stronger? Nicholas II cannot touch Tolstoy or shake his throne, while Tolstoy can undoubtedly shake the throne of Nicholas and his dynasty. He is cursed by the Holy Synod, yet Tolstoy’s response finds its way into manuscripts and foreign newspapers. Just try to touch Tolstoy. The whole world will cry out and our administration will turn tail. A new age is dawning. It’s already evident in the way the government is so hopelessly confused that it doesn’t know whether to wake up or go to sleep. How long will this muddle last? Despotism is on its last legs and will surely collapse at the slightest breeze, never mind a gale.
WAR AND ART
On the morning of 15 March 1901, the twenty-eight-year-old Sergei Diaghilev opens a newspaper and learns from the government news section of his dismissal from the Directorate of the Imperial Theatres “without petition or pension under article three”—the most terrible wording imaginable for a Russian official. Translated into modern language, it means expulsion from the civil service, blacklisting, and disgrace.
Diaghilev cannot believe his eyes. He has always believed that he has the Directorate of the Imperial Theatres in the palm of his hand; moreover, he supposedly has the support of the emperor himself and many other influential people. And now everything has been wiped out by a stroke of the pen of his pigheaded superior.
Prior to this morning, Diaghilev has served as the editor-in-chief of two artistic publications. One of them—the aesthetic World of Art—he created himself and publishes with the help of billionaire Savva Mamontov and other sponsors. The second is the state-run, semi-official Annual of the Imperial Theatres. It goes without saying that Diaghilev’s reputation in the capital city comes from the former.
Back in 1898, the twenty-six-year-old law graduate Diaghilev, together with classmate Alexander Benois, finds the money to publish a magazine devoted to modern art. The two young law grads intend to shake up the Russian cultural community. Traditional Russian art, typified by the realism of the Itinerants movement, seems boring and outdated. Diaghilev and Benois have absolutely no interest in the politics or social issues. They are looking for a new kind of voguish and provocative art—like in the West—and the new magazine will serve that purpose. In May 1898 Diaghilev and his sponsor Mamontov jointly announce their mission: “The magazine will revolutionize the art world and shake up the public, which has hitherto fed on trends that Europe has long outgrown,” reads the bold statement.
The editorial board of World of Art includes the twenty-six-year-old Dima Filosofov, who happens to be a (male) cousin and lover of Diaghilev, and the thirty-five-year-old artist Léon Bakst. At the same time, Diaghilev arranges exhibitions of works by progressive artists, including his friends Benois and Bakst, as well as Mikhail Vrubel, Konstantin Somov, and other young innovators.
Both the exhibitions and the very first issue of the magazine manage to offend the older generation. But not all are insulted by Diaghilev. Russia’s preeminent artist of the age, Ilya Repin, has a soft spot for the young and promises to contribute articles to World of Art. But the classical landscapist Vasily Polenov is beside himself with rage. The infuriated old guard is backed by Vladimir Stasov, the most influential literary critic in Russia and a close friend of Leo Tolstoy and the now late Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He is indignant that the young generation is so “irresponsible” and “insensate” (“There is no socio-political content in their work at all”).
“An orgy of debauchery and madness” and “decadent absurdities and deformities” is how Stasov describes anything and everything that appears in World of Art, while Diaghilev is labeled the magazine’s “decadent warden.”
The resentment of the older generation raises public interest in Diaghilev and his team, but discourages sponsors. Their money runs out, and former backers keep their distance. However, help arrives from unexpected quarters. The artist Valentin Serov, seemingly unattached to the Diaghilev circle, decides to help the young provocateurs. The thirty-five-year-old Serov is the most sought-after portraitist in Russia and the emperor’s favorite. In the spring of 1900 he is commissioned to paint the portrait of Nicholas II, during which he tells the tsar about Diaghilev’s problems. “I don’t understand finance,” remarks Serov naively. “Me neither,” echoes the emperor, who subsequently makes arrangements for World of Art to receive the sum of 15,000 roubles.*
Royal patronage turns Diaghilev from a rowdy maverick into a respected innovator overnight. Sensing that World of Art is gaining cultural weight, officials start to curry favor, and by autumn he has been appointed to an important post: Officer for Special Assignments under the Directorate of the Imperial Theatres. One of his duties is to produce the annual journal, and he turns the para-governmental almanac into a sumptuous art brochure.
Diaghilev’s career takes off. He conceives bold and innovative projects, one of which is the staging of the ballet Sylvia by Léo Delibes. Sergey Volkonsky, the director of the Imperial Theatres, gives the go-ahead, but despite everything still fears a backlash from the “cultural community” if Diaghilev is credited, so the press release says that the new ballet is being staged by the director himself, with no mention of Diaghilev.
The ambitious Diaghilev is not one to give ground. Believing that he enjoys the patronage of the emperor himself, he informs his superiors that, if he is not officially appointed to an artistic role, he will have nothing more to do with the ballet or the Annual of the Imperial Theatres. Filosofov, Bakst, and Benois pledge to go with him if he walks. The young artists are sure of their invulnerability, since Diaghilev has the ear of an admiring grand duke who personally intercedes for him with Nicholas II. “Diaghilev has no reason to leave,” is the tsar’s alleged response. But the cultural functionaries are more tenacious than the fickle emperor, and so Diaghilev learns of his dismissal from the papers.
TWENTIETH-CENTURY HIPSTERS
On 8 October 1901 Pobedonostsev receives a visit from a group of young people; at least to Pobedonostsev they seem young, yet all but one are over thirty and roughly the same age as the tsar. The visitors consider themselves professional journalists, but, in the presence of the grey cardinal of the Russian Empire, they are daunted. The oldest of them is forty-five, but he is shy and does not say a word. He is Vasily Rozanov, the future philosopher and essayist. The youngest, Dima Filosofov, is twenty-nine. It is mostly the thirty-five-year-old Dmitry Merezhkovsky who does the talking.
The purpose of their visit is to obtain permission for a public debate to take place between the metropolitan intellectual elite and the clergy. The goal at first sight is naive. Church censorship is rife in Russia, all discussion of religious issues is banned, and not a single one of Tolstoy’s books about religion can be published legally. Yet this group of youngsters is petitioning the country’s chief suppressor of freedom to relax one of the most ingrained prohibitions. They ask of the “ideologue of censorship” nothing less than freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Pobedonostsev, however, does not shoo them away.
Oddly enough, for these young people Pobedonostsev is not the monster he is to the older generation of Russian intellectuals. The “elders,” whose youth and maturity came and went with the reforms of Alexander II, back in the 1860s and 1870s, are horribly politicized. The shestidesyatniki, or “sixtiers,” spend their time endlessly reading, writing, and conversing about politics, government, censorship, and the press. A mark of the older generation is their division into rival camps.
Compared to this set of venerable intellectuals, the generation of the 1890s is extremely apolitical. Many of the young provincials newly arrived in the Russian capital have no intention of recognizing the established circles. Merezhkovsky’s young wife Zinaida Gippius writes that they visit liberal journalists, conservative journalists, and even censors. On one occasion, at a social function, Gippius notices a wizened figure in the corner, but fails to recognize him. The figure stares at her through his Scrooge-like eyes, as if studying her. Only when he departs does Gippius ask the host who it was: Pobedonostsev, the all-seeing, all-knowing state ideologue.
Merezhkovsky, who has come to talk to the ober-procurator, knows Pobedonostsev only too well, but is not prejudiced against him in any way. For Merezhkovsky, he is not the medieval inquisitor who six months ago excommunicated Tolstoy from the church. Besides, this younger generation does not hold Tolstoy in any particular reverence.
Pobedonostsev has no great liking for the company assembled before him, but decides not to create problems for them just yet. He sends them to Metropolitan Anthony—let him decide, he thinks. The young men immediately depart for Alexander Nevsky Monastery. With the consent (or at least without the opprobrium) of Pobedonostsev, persuading the liberal metropolitan will be a cinch.
The idea for a public discourse on religion is the brainchild of Gippius, who happens to be a rather hip poet and journalist (officially she is known by her husband’s surname Merezhkovsky, but usually publishes under her maiden name). In September 1901, shortly before the visit to Pobedonostsev, she and Dmitry go for a stroll in the woods near their summer dacha at Luga outside Saint Petersburg and discuss returning to the capital in autumn. “What are we going to do this winter? Continue these conversations of ours?” she asks. Merezhkovsky nods.
By “conversations” Gippius means the weekly meeting of Petersburg bohemians at their apartment in Muruzi House at 24 Liteyny Avenue. The Merezhkovskys host receptions for the most celebrated young literati and artists, among them Sergei Diaghilev and friends: Filosofov, Benois, Bakst, Lanceray, and others. And every Wednesday the entire company, including the Merezhkovskys, visits Diaghilev, the editor of World of Art, at his spacious flat. The apartments of Diaghilev and the Merezhkovskys attract the Petersburg in-crowd. They host get-togethers for the capital’s most “with-it” people, where views are exchanged on everything under the sun from art to literature to religion—everything, that is, except politics. Politics and social problems are for the older generation. The young hipsters despise all of that.
Sergei Diaghilev is interested in art and Dmitry Merezhkovsky in religion and philosophy, but they rebel as a team—not against the government, but against the older generation, against dull social affectation, against old-fashioned journalism. The future belongs to them.
Merezhkovsky at this moment in time is working on his Christ and Antichrist trilogy, the first two parts of which have already been published. He and his wife want to create an “open, semi-official society of people of faith and philosophy for the free discussion of Church and cultural issues.”
The only one in their bohemian company who is acquainted with the clergy not simply by hearsay is Vasily Rozanov—also a well-known journalist and critic, although somewhat outside their circle. Rozanov likes to play the fool and pranks around in both print and conversation. He obliterates stereotypes and clichés, making fun of everyone, especially himself. He has no qualms about insulting friends or (unusually for the time) writing frank and unflattering things about himself. Rozanov is fond of internal contradictions in his arguments and often defends both points of view. “Morality? Don’t even know how to spell the word.”
Rozanov’s offensive nature is partially explained by his background. He used to be married to Apollinaria Suslova, the former mistress of his idol, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. She is sixteen years his senior. During their seven-year marriage she terrorizes Rozanov, physically beats him and then dumps him, without granting an official divorce, so that he is forced to live in a civil partnership with his new “wife” and the mother of his five children.
Rozanov does not mix with high society and lives in comparative poverty—even as a renowned journalist he still works on the side as a civil servant. In between government tasks he pens endless articles for all kinds of magazines, even ones he would rather not touch (“I write trifles for peanuts,” Rozanov says apologetically about his journalistic endeavors).
For the Merezhkovskys, Rozanov is valuable because he is visited not only by bohemians, but also by men of the cloth. Gippius and her husband use these social gatherings to test the waters for their new project.
The first meeting of the Religious-Philosophical Assembly (to which Metropolitan Anthony gave his consent) takes place on 29 November 1901 in the small hall of the Russian Geographical Society. Inside stands a huge statue donated to the Society after a recent expedition, but it is covered with a cloth so as not to distract the participants. From the outline Gippius guesses that the figure belongs to the Buddha—and that is how she refers to it in her memoirs. But she is wrong. The curious Alexander Benois decides to take a peek and discovers that the silent witness is “not the Buddha, but a gigantically fearsome Mongolian shaitan [devil], with horns, fangs and shaggy hair.”
The chairman of the meeting is the dependable rector of the Theological Academy, Bishop Sergius Stragorodsky. Forty-two years later, during the Great Patriotic War, he will become the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia appointed by Stalin. But in 1901 the thirty-four-year-old pontiff belongs to the same generation as Merezhkovsky and Gippius, although he effectively speaks on behalf of last century’s overlord, Konstantin Pobedonostsev.
Almost all the top hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church are present. The assemblies (twenty-two are held in total) spark an intellectual revolution: for the first time the Russian cultural elite has an opportunity to converse with the top echelons of the church (although not the government just yet). Officially the assemblies are not considered public events. If they were, a police presence would be required and the proceedings could be broken up at any moment. In theory only official participants are allowed to attend, but in practice the Merezhkovskys and company hand out membership cards to all comers.
Saint Petersburg’s liberal mainstream does not wholly approve of the meetings, recalls Gippius, because everything connected with religion seems backward and reactionary to liberal journalists. That said, the liberal press considers anything outside politics, including the young aesthetes and idealists of World of Art, to be backward and reactionary.
A BAD MONK
Merezhkovsky and friends are not the only young supplicants that Pobedonostsev receives in his office. Back in the summer of 1898 he is visited by a forlorn priest from Poltava who is desperate to enter the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy (which will be headed by the future patriarch, Bishop Sergius). The priest presents his graduation certificate from a local seminary, showing poor grades. It allows him to work in a provincial backwater, but is not sufficient to enroll at the capital’s premier academy. The petitioner understands that without Pobedonostsev’s personal approval the road to further education is barred to him. He sits and waits for the “minister of the church” in the latter’s empty office for what seems like an eternity.
“‘What can I do for you?’ a voice suddenly rang out behind me,” recalls the priest.
I turned round and saw the ‘grand inquisitor’ creeping towards me through a secret door concealed by the curtains. He was of medium height, skeletal, slightly stooped and dressed in a black coat.
‘Who is your father? Are you married? Do you have children?’ The questions rained down on me, and his voice was harsh and dry. I replied that I had two children.
‘I see,’ he exclaimed. ‘I don’t like that. What sort of monk has children? A bad one, that’s what. I can’t do anything for you,’ he said and promptly went away.
The young priest is shocked by Pobedonostsev’s abruptness, but calls out after him: “But, Your Excellency, you must listen to me. This is my life. All I want is to study and learn how to help people. I cannot accept rejection.”
The applicant’s voice sounds so desperate that it stops Pobedonostsev in his tracks. His temper softens, and he begins to question the priest in detail.
“Remind me, what’s your name?”
“Georgy Gapon,” replies the young man. Pobedonostsev has, of course, already made inquiries before Gapon’s arrival. Gapon is an ardent Tolstoyan, which is the root of his problems. Pobedonostsev is aware of that.
Gapon’s poor grades from the Poltava seminary are not because he was a bad student. On the contrary, he was the best student, but too feisty. While at ecclesiastical school in Poltava, one of his teachers, Ivan Tregubov, a prominent Tolstoyan and a friend of the count, gives the fifteen-year-old Gapon some of Tolstoy’s religious writings. The books have a powerful influence on the young priest: “My eyes were opened to the fact that the essence of religion lies not in external forms, but in spirit—not in ritual, but in love for one’s neighbor,” remembers Gapon. He becomes so immersed in Tolstoyism that he changes his mind about becoming a priest. Warned that he is about to lose his scholarship, he makes a point of rejecting it himself and starts giving private lessons to finance his studies.
After graduating from the seminary, Gapon intends to get married. His future wife convinces him that the priesthood is not incompatible with his Tolstoyan principles. “A doctor treats the body,” she said, “but a priest heals the soul.… People need the latter far more than the former.” Gapon argues that his beliefs contradict the teachings of the Orthodox Church, but his wife insists that “the main thing is not to be faithful to the Orthodox Church, but to Christ, who taught us how best to serve humanity.”
In the end, Gapon combines the two and becomes a Tolstoyan priest. For five years he serves at a rural cemetery church in Poltava province and becomes so popular that people from neighboring parishes join his congregation. But his wife dies in 1898, and Gapon decides to start a new life. He leaves his small children with his parents and travels to Saint Petersburg to ask (or beg) Pobedonostsev to make an exception and allow him to enter the academy.
All contact with the church establishment appalls Gapon. At the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, where he stops by on his way to Saint Petersburg, he encounters the entourage of the Moscow Metropolitan consisting of “obese monks” who banter with each other during the church service he attends. “Their insincerity in the house of the preacher of righteousness Saint Sergius filled me with disgust, and I left without waiting for the end of the vigil and without genuflecting before the holy relics, as I considered it blasphemy to do so in front of these Pharisees,” says Gapon.
In Saint Petersburg, Gapon requests an audience with Pobedonostsev from his deputy, V. K. Sabler, who has made a career for himself because “as a student at Saint Petersburg University he regularly attended the same churches as Pobedonostsev and caught the latter’s eye by praying fervently.”
“We know about your disruptive behavior at the seminary,” Pobedonostsev’s deputy greets Gapon. “We know what ideas you nurtured back then. But the bishop tells me that you are a reformed man since becoming a priest and have abandoned all your silly notions. All right, we will accept you and we trust that you will become a faithful servant of the Church.” Gapon nods. He decides to conceal his true beliefs from the church officials and enrolls at the academy.
However, just one year later Gapon becomes utterly disillusioned with his studies. He sees that his dream will never materialize. He attends church services for workers on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg and hears sermons all about the Last Judgment and nothing else. He tries to put forward his own ideas, but the ecclesiastical authorities resist. He becomes depressed.
“I felt that the work I was doing contradicted my views. I felt unable to do anything for the very people I was ordained to instruct,” he recalls. “In desperation I abandoned my missionary work and started to dream of a peaceful life in a monastery where I could pray to my heart’s content in nature’s bosom. My mood and health deteriorated. My friends were concerned and decided to send me somewhere I could recover. The Academy itself contributed to the cost.”
His doctors suspect tuberculosis and send Gapon to Crimea, where he resides not in the “bosom of nature,” but at a monastery outside Yalta, the most sumptuous city in all the empire. Back then, Yalta is the focal point of the Russian beau monde: Livadia Palace is the summer residence of the tsar; the entire court relocates there during the warm season. “Not far from the luxury homes oozing wealth and grandeur, the city was home to thousands of unfortunates—hungry, cold and homeless. Indeed, the impressionable soul is struck by the contrast between the resplendent palaces in the center and the horrible shacks in the suburbs,” writes Gapon. He is interested in all walks of life and makes the acquaintance of both the poor and the vacationing bohemia. In particular, he befriends Vasily Vereshchagin, at that time the most famous Russian artist in the world.
Vereshchagin is at the zenith of his fame and, unlike most of his peers, very politicized. Had he been born a century later, he would most likely have been a photojournalist or a war reporter: Vereshchagin’s trademark is to travel to hot spots to capture on canvas the horrors that he sees. Although his antiwar paintings are exhibited all over the world, in his homeland he is accused of sympathy for the enemy and lack of patriotism.
When Vereshchagin, aged thirty-two, held his first exhibition in Saint Petersburg, the future Emperor Alexander III is said to have remarked: “His tendentiousness goes against national pride. One might conclude that Vereshchagin is either a brute or quite mad.” In the summer of 1899, the now fifty-seven-year-old Vereshchagin forms a fatherly relationship with Gapon.
“I clearly see that you have gone through some kind of inner turmoil. Let me give you my advice. Ditch the cassock!” the artist urges the priest during one of their walks together. “You don’t need it! There are better ways to spend your energy in this world.” But Gapon does not listen to the celebrity painter. Having rested, he returns to Saint Petersburg in October 1899 and keeps the cassock firmly in place. Vereshchagin, meanwhile, sets off on a world trip: first to the Philippines, then to the United States and Cuba, and four years later to Japan.
PREPARING FOR THE TRANSITION
In August 1901, six months after his excommunication, Tolstoy again falls seriously ill. His family fears that he will not survive the winter and decides to send him to Crimea in the hope that the local climate will help the old man recover.
Countess Panina, a fan of Tolstoy’s works, rents a luxury dacha for him at Gaspra, which on one side borders the Crimean estate of the richest family in Russia—the Yusupovs (richer than the Romanovs)—and on the other Ai-Todor, the manor of a childhood friend of the emperor, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (known as Sandro by his relatives). A stone’s throw away is Livadia Palace, the summer residence of the tsar himself. The excommunicated outcast travels with his family to the most upmarket resort in the empire.
The entourage travels by train. On the way, the train stops in Kharkov, where Tolstoy is given an ovation on the station platform. Ovations in Tolstoy’s honor have become a tradition this year: when news of his excommunication first breaks, admirers in the Russian capital gather inside an art gallery in front of his portrait by Ilya Repin and rapturously applaud their idol. Immediately afterwards the portrait is removed and the exhibition closed down.
Tolstoy writes a short note to The Petersburg Gazette about his relocation to Crimea, whereupon Interior Minister Sipyagin prohibits the sale of this issue of the newspaper. The publisher Suvorin notes in his diary that the minister is upset with Tolstoy for having mentioned him in the “Letter to the Tsar and his aides.” Tolstoy did indeed write that the Interior Minister is mistaken if he believes that “were the police to fire into a crowd in good time, it would disperse peacefully.”
The young writer Maxim Gorky is not so lucky as Count Tolstoy. Back in April he is sued for an article about the “Battle of Kazan” and exiled to a district town in Nizhny Novgorod province (not far from his home, but away from the action). Gorky writes an appeal asking that he be allowed to serve his exile in Crimea, since he has tuberculosis. Permission is granted with the caveat that he must not reside in Yalta, a large city full of the metropolitan elite. Also in Yalta is Anton Chekhov, and Tolstoy has just relocated to Gaspra, a nearby spa town. Gorky moves into a house close to Alupka, next to Tolstoy and not far from the summer residences of the grand dukes.
In Crimea Tolstoy’s health continues to deteriorate. He is diagnosed with malaria, a potentially fatal disease. Tolstoy is seventy-three years old. He is sure that he is about to die and describes his condition as “preparing for the transition.” He is suffering from a fever and cannot get out of bed. Those brave enough come to bid the great writer farewell.
On 12 September Tolstoy receives a visit from Anton Chekhov, followed by a neighborly social call from Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, the great uncle of the tsar, who, like Chekhov, is only forty-two years old. He has a reputation as an enlightened member of the royal family, a historian and writer. Tolstoy is perplexed as to what the tsar’s relative wants from him. Later, when Tolstoy recovers, Chekhov brings with him Maxim Gorky.
Tolstoy is thirty-two and forty years older than Chekhov and Gorky, respectively. He considers them the best young writers in Russia and receives them warmly and paternally. “It pleases me that Gorky and Chekhov are much to my liking, especially the former,” writes Tolstoy after their visit on 29 November.
As for his “transition,” Tolstoy is wrong. His condition abates. The three great Russian writers spend the winter of 1901-1902 together. Gorky at this time is writing The Lower Depths, his most successful play, which will bring him worldwide fame. Chekhov has come up with the idea for his final play The Cherry Orchard and begins work on it, which will last for three years. Tolstoy slowly puts the finishing touches to Hadji Murad, but his thoughts are firmly elsewhere.
Both ill with tuberculosis, Chekhov and Gorky have spent a considerable amount of time over the past few years in Crimea. It is here that Chekhov recovers from his literary failures. The fiasco of The Seagull, staged in Saint Petersburg in 1896 to boos and catcalls from the audience, prompted him to head south and forget about the theatre.
However, two years later Chekhov’s friend, the director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, persuades him to stage a new production of the play in Moscow. The writer knows the new theatre founded by Nemirovich-Danchenko and his partner Konstantin Alexeyev (who uses the stage name Stanislavsky), and agrees. Moreover, Chekhov is besotted by the thirty-three-year-old actress Olga Knipper, who is due to star in the new production. “I’d marry her if I lived in Moscow,” says Chekhov only half-jokingly.
The production of The Seagull at the Moscow Art Theatre is a triumph, and Olga Knipper becomes a sensation. In 1900, the cast makes a special trip to Crimea to show the play to Chekhov, who has not yet seen it. He likes the production very much and attends all the performances together with Gorky, including plays by other writers. After a staging of Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, Chekhov and Gorky go backstage to meet the leading lady, Maria Andreyeva.
“God damn it, you’re great,” says the celebrated but overawed Gorky at the sight of the young actress, and shakes her hand rather violently.
“I looked at him with deep emotion, awfully glad that he liked the play. Everything about him seemed strange: his profane language, his suit, high boots and loose-hanging shirt, his long straight hair, coarse facial features and reddish moustache. Not the way I’d imagined he should be,” says Andreyeva. “And suddenly those blue eyes lit up under the long eyelashes, his lips curved into a charming childlike smile. His face seemed more beautiful than beauty itself, and my heart skipped a beat. I was wrong. He was exactly the way he was supposed to be, thank God!”
After that first acquaintance, they begin to meet more often. On the next occasion, Gorky visits Andreyeva with the twenty-seven-year-old opera singer Feodor Chaliapin—they are collecting money for the Doukhobors to help Tolstoy send the persecuted sect to Canada.
Chekhov, for his part, is seeing more of Olga Knipper. In 1901, they marry and spend their honeymoon at a tuberculosis sanatorium in Bashkiria. However, they soon part company, at least physically: he spends most of his time in Yalta, while she is in Moscow at the theatre.
Tolstoy is warm yet critical towards the young writers. About The Seagull, he has this to say: “It’s a bit cluttered, not sure why. Yet Europe cries that it’s amazing and that Chekhov is the most talented of them all. But The Seagull is in fact very poor.” When Gorky reads the first scene of his play The Lower Depths, Tolstoy “listens attentively and then asks: ‘What are you writing it for?’”
Although Tolstoy is affable, both Chekhov and Gorky tremble before him. Chekhov makes sure to dress properly before visiting Tolstoy, whatever the season or time of day. “Just think,” Chekhov says to Gorky, “it was he who wrote: ‘Anna felt her eyes glow in the dark.’”
“I once saw him as maybe no one had ever done before,” says Gorky.
I was on my way to his house on the coast at Gaspra, just below Yusupov’s estate. On the beach among the rocks I saw this small, angular figure in grey tattered rags and a crumpled hat. He was sat with cheekbones cupped in both palms, the silvery strands of his beard flowing through his fingers, staring far out to sea, the greenish wavelets rolling obediently at his feet, as if telling the old sage about themselves. Suddenly, the mad thought possessed me that he would rise up and wave his hand, and the sea would freeze and glass over, and the stones would stir and cry out, and all around nature would come to life, rustling and murmuring to itself in different voices. I cannot describe in words what I felt at that moment. My soul was full of rapture and horror, but then everything merged into a happy thought: ‘I am not an orphan in this world as long as this man is in it.’
The atheist Gorky practically deifies Tolstoy: “He looks like a god. Not like Jehovah or Zeus, but a sort of Russian god who sits on a maple throne under a golden lime tree. Although not very majestic, he is more astute than any other god. I, a non-believer, look at him and for some reason think, somewhat timidly, that this man is godlike!”
According to Gorky, not only the waves, but also royal personages step aside to let Tolstoy pass. He recalls one incident when Tolstoy, on the road to Gaspra, discovers that his way is blocked by three grand dukes, all uncles of the tsar: Alexander Mikhailovich (Sandro), Georgy Mikhailovich, and Peter Nikolaevich. Tolstoy “fixed the Romanovs with an inquisitive stare,” writes Gorky. The Romanovs looked away at first, but the horse of one of them, withering under Tolstoy’s gaze, moved aside to let Tolstoy by. “Even horses understand that Tolstoy must be allowed to pass.”
“LYOVOCHKA IS DYING”
In January 1902, after a long walk on a cold, windy day, Tolstoy falls ill with pneumonia. He desperately wants to write, but his health does not permit it.
On 26 January, his wife Sofia notes in her diary: “My Lyovochka [Leo] is dying.” The next day the papers write about Tolstoy’s “dangerous, hopeless illness.” Back in Saint Petersburg, Suvorin writes in his diary that Tolstoy’s health is the talk of the town. He sends a telegram to Chekhov to inquire about the count’s health. Chekhov replies: “Inflammation of the lungs. It’s dangerous, but there’s hope.” Afterwards a friend explains to Suvorin that he was lucky to get any news from Crimea, since all letters and telegrams mentioning Tolstoy are being intercepted on the Interior Ministry’s orders: not only newspapers are being censored, but correspondence too.
Suvorin also mentions that instructions have been issued in the event of Tolstoy’s death: obituaries and articles about his work can be printed, but any mention of his excommunication is prohibited. In addition, the Ministry “requires that all news and articles about Count Tolstoy be objective and circumspect.”
Tolstoy’s relatives are panicking. Manuscripts and letters are put in a suitcase and deposited with Gorky for safekeeping, just in case Tolstoy’s death prompts a search of his dwellings. Negotiations begin on the purchase of a plot of land in Crimea to bury Tolstoy without the knowledge of the authorities.
But the dying Tolstoy has his own idea to write a “political will” in the form of a letter to Emperor Nicholas II. He remembers Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, who once came to visit him, and sends a telegram asking if the duke is prepared to mediate between him and Tsar Nicholas. The duke immediately agrees. Tolstoy strains every fiber to compose the letter to the tsar. It is not a political message, rather a lecture from an elder to a pupil, a word of advice passed from one generation and one century to the next.
“My dear brother,” writes the count.
I consider this form of address to be most appropriate because I am writing to you not as the tsar, but as a man and a brother. Moreover, I am writing to you as if from the next world in anticipation of my imminent demise.… Most likely, you are under the delusion that the people love autocracy and its representative, the tsar. Everywhere you go, crowds of people greet you with cries of ‘hurrah’. Do not take it as an expression of loyalty. The masses are merely curious and would behave likewise if treated to any other spectacle. Often, these same people you take to be expressing adoration for you have simply been handpicked by the police to play the part of loyal subjects. The same as when your grandfather in Kharkov visited a cathedral full of people, yet all were plainclothes policemen. If you were able, as I am, to mingle with the peasants arranged behind the troops all along the railway and listen to what they are saying as they stand there in the cold and slush for days waiting for your train to pass by, you would hear from these genuine representatives of the people, simple peasants, an entirely different speech wholly at variance with love for autocracy and its representative.
However, Tolstoy is unlikely to be heard, even less understood. The emperor, tutored by Pobedonostsev, firmly believes in autocracy.
“Autocracy is an obsolete form of government,” writes Tolstoy, “suitable only for people somewhere in central Africa, separated from the world, but not for the people of Russia, who are becoming part of the global enlightenment. Hence, this form of government can only be maintained through violence: heightened security, exile, executions, religious persecution, prohibition of books and newspapers, distorted education and all kinds of cruel and foolish doings.”
Next, he turns to the abolition of private ownership of land. For some reason, the deathbed-ridden Tolstoy decides to counsel the emperor on this particular topic:
Your advisers will tell you that the abolition of private land ownership is a fantasy.… I personally think that in our time landed property is a blatant injustice, as serfdom was fifty years ago. I think its destruction would grant the Russian people a high degree of independence, prosperity and contentment. I think also that such a measure would surely eradicate the socialist and revolutionary petulance that is erupting among the workers and poses a grave threat to the people and the government. But perhaps I am mistaken, and maybe this issue can only be resolved by the people themselves if they have an opportunity to speak forth.
On 31 January 1902 Suvorin learns that Interior Minister Sipyagin has banned all portraits of Tolstoy from being exhibited. “Tolstoy will not have to wait [long] for a monument, nor Sipyagin for a stigma on his stupid forehead,” writes the outraged pro-government publisher Suvorin in his diary. “Does this gentleman take advice from anyone? Do others simply acquiesce to his stupid orders?”
The ban is followed by guidelines on how to proceed on the occasion of Tolstoy’s likely burial: processions and marches are prohibited, and the coffin is to be placed on the back of a wagon, covered with a black cloth, and carried to his estate at Yasnaya Polyana.
But yet again death retreats and Tolstoy recovers. He does not, however, receive a response from the tsar.
* One of the central squares of Moscow known for housing the headquarters of the KGB.
* 100 years later, the Russian Orthodox Church is still not independent. Despite being formally separated from the state it functions, essentially, as a state department under Presidential Administration control.
* The unofficial title “Constitution of Loris-Melikov” is given to the document later, after its publication in 1905, although Alexander III himself referred to the document by that name as early as 1881.
* This is a very common phenomenon: Russian officials in the twenty-first century are still sure that they know what people really want and that they can speak on their behalf. Opinion polls held in highly questionable ways only give them more confidence.
* The participation of the international community in the destiny of Russian fighters against the regime will become a long-lasting tradition. Western political and cultural figures will ask to release prisoners and mitigate their sentences both in Soviet and post-Soviet years. The Pussy Riot affair is one of the most recent examples.
* Pobedonostsev’s words are surprisingly similar to the Russian TV propaganda in the early twenty-first century. One of its main theses is that democracy does not exist at all, and all Western countries only simulate it: in fact all elections in the world are rigged, all politicians and courts are corrupt, all policemen brutally suppress demonstrations, and there are no democratic values at all. Many cynical Russians and, even more importantly, most Russian officials believe in this sincerely.
* About $197,750 in 2017.
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