The Reformer of the East
Italy had won unity after a gallant struggle, and Greece some fifty
years before revolted from the barbarous Turks and became an
independent kingdom. The traditions of the past had helped these,
since volunteers remembered times when art and beauty had dwelt upon
the shores of the tideless Mediterranean. Song and romance haloed the
name of Kossuth's race when the patriot rose to free Hungary from the
harsh tyranny of Austria. General sympathy with the revolutionary
spirit was abroad in 1848, when the tyrant Metternich resigned and
acknowledged that the day of absolutism was over.
It was otherwise with the revolting Poles, who dwelt too far from the
nations of the West to rouse their passionate sympathies. France
promised to help their cause, but failed them in the hour of peril.
Poland made a desperate struggle to assert her independence in 1830,
when Nicholas the Autocrat was reigning over Russia. The Poles entered
Lithuania, which they would have reunited with their ancient kingdom,
but were completely defeated, losing Warsaw, their capital, and their
Church and language, as well as their own administration.
Under Nicholas I, a ruler devoted to the military power of his Empire,
there was little chance of freedom. He had himself no love of the West
and the bold reforms {217} which might bring him enlightened and
discontented subjects. He crushed into abject submission all opposed
to his authority. The blunt soldier would cling obstinately to the
ancient Muscovy of Peter. He shut his eyes to the passing of
absolutism in Europe and died, as he had reigned, the protector of the
Orthodox Church of Russia, the sworn foe of revolutionaries.
Alexander II succeeded his father while the Crimean war was distracting
the East by new problems and new warfare. Christian allies fought for
the Infidel, and France and England declared themselves to be on the
side of Turkey.
At the famous siege of Sebastopol, a young Russian officer was fighting
for promotion. He wrote vivid descriptions of the battle-fields and
armies. He wrote satirical verses on the part played by his own
country. Count Leo Tolstoy was only a sub-lieutenant who had lived
gaily at the University of Kazan and shared most of the views of his
own class when he petitioned to be sent to the Crimea. The brave
conduct of the private soldiers fighting steadfastly, without thought
of reward or fear of death, impressed the Count, with his knowledge of
the self-seeking, ambitious nobles. He began to love the peasantry he
had seen as dim, remote shadows about his father's estate in the
country. There he had learnt not to treat them brutally, after the
fashion of most landowners, but it was not till he was exposed to the
rough life of the bastion with Alexis, a serf presented to him when he
went to the University, that Tolstoy acquired that peculiar affection
for the People which was not then characteristic of the Russian.
After the war the young writer found that, if he had not attained any
great rank in the army, high honours were awarded him in literature.
Turgeniev, the veteran {218} novelist, was ready to welcome him as an
equal. The gifted officer was flattered and fêted to his heart's
content before a passionate love of truth withdrew him from society.
After the death of Nicholas reaction set in, as was inevitable, and
Alexander II was eager to adopt the progress of the West. The German
writers began to describe the lives of humble people, and their books
were read in other lands. Russia followed with descriptions of life
under natural conditions, the silence of the steppes and the solitude
of the forest where hunter and trapper followed their pursuits far from
society.
Tolstoy set out for Germany in 1857, anxious to study social conditions
that he might learn how to raise the hapless serfs of Russia, bound,
patient and inarticulate, at the feet of landowners, longing for
independence, perhaps, when they suffered any terrible act of
injustice, but patient in the better times when there was food and
warmth and a master of comparatively unexacting temper.
Tolstoy had already written _Polikoushka_, a peasant story which
attracted some attention. He was in love with the words People and
Progress, and spoke them continually, trampling upon conventions. A
desire to be original had been strong within him when he followed the
usual pursuits of Russians of fashion. He delighted in this wandering
in unknown tracks where none had preceded him. He was sincere, but he
had not yet taken up his life-work.
At Lucerne he was filled with bitterness against the rich visitors at a
hotel who refused to give alms to a wandering musician. He took the
man to his table and offered wine for his refreshment. The indignation
of the other guests made him dwell still more fiercely upon {219} the
callousness of those who neglect their poorer neighbours. Yet the
quixotic noble was still sumptuous in his dress and spent much time on
the sports which had been the pastimes of his boyhood. He nearly lost
his life attempting to shoot a she-bear in the forest. The beast drew
his face into her mouth and got her teeth in the flesh near the left
eye. The intrepid sportsman escaped, but he bore the marks for long
afterwards.
In 1861 a new era began in Russia, and a new period in Tolstoy's life,
which was henceforward bound up with the history of the country folk.
Alexander II issued a decree of emancipation for the serf, and Tolstoy
was one of the arbitrators appointed to supervise the distribution of
the land, to arrange the taxes and decide conditions of purchase. For
each peasant received an allotment of land, subject for sixty years to
a special land-tax. In their ignorance, the serfs were likely to sell
themselves into new slavery where the proprietors felt disposed to
drive hard bargains. Many landlords tried to allot land with no
pasture, so that the rearer of cattle had to hire at an exorbitant
rate. There had been two ways of holding serfs before--the more
primitive method of obliging them to work so many days a week for the
master before they could provide for their own wants, and the more
enlightened manner of exacting only _obrók_, or yearly tribute.
Tolstoy had already allowed his serf to "go on _obrók_," but, according
to himself, he did nothing very generous when the new act was passed
providing for emancipation.
He defended the freed men as far as possible, however, from the tyranny
of other landowners, who began to dislike him very thoroughly. He had
won the poor from their distrust by an experiment in education which he
tried at his native place of Yasnaya Polyana.
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The school opened by Count Tolstoy was a "free"; school in every sense
of the word, which was then becoming popular. The children paid no
fees and were not obliged to attend regularly. They ran in and out as
they pleased and had no fear of punishments. It was a firm belief of
the master that compulsory learning was quite useless. He taught in
the way that the pupils wished to learn, humbly accepting their views
on the matter. Vivid narration delighted the eager peasant boys in
their rough sheepskins and woollen scarves. They would cry "Go on, go
on," when the lesson should have ended. Any who showed weariness were
bidden to "go to the little ones." At first, the peasants were afraid
of the school, hearing wonderful stories of what happened there. They
gained confidence at length, and then the government became suspicious.
Tolstoy had given up his work with a feeling of dissatisfaction and
retired to a wild life with the Bashkirs in the steppes, where he hoped
to recover bodily health, when news came that the schools had been
searched and the teachers arrested. The effect on the ignorant was to
make Tolstoy seem a criminal.
Hatred of a government, where such a search could be conducted with
impunity, was not much modified by the Emperor's expression of regret
for what had happened. The pond on Tolstoy's estate had been dragged,
and cupboards and boxes in his own house opened, while the floor of the
stables was broken up with crowbars. Even the diary and letters of an
intimate character which had been kept secret from the Count's own
family were read aloud by gendarmes. In a fit of rage, the reformer
wrote of giving up his house and leaving Russia "where one cannot know
from moment to moment what awaits one."
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In 1862 Tolstoy married Sophia Behrs, the daughter of a Russian
physician. He began to write again, feeling less zeal for social work
and the need to earn money for his family. The _Cossacks_ described
the wild pleasures of existence away from civilization, where all joys
arise from physical exertion. Tolstoy had known such a life during a
sojourn in the Caucasus. It attracted him especially, for he was an
admiring follower of Rousseau in the glorification of a return to
Nature.
On the estate of Yasnaya there was work to be done, for agricultural
labour meant well-cultivated land, and that meant prosperity. A large
family was sheltered beneath the roof where simplicity ruled, and yet
much comfort was enjoyed. Tolstoy wore the rough garments of a
peasant, and delighted in the idea that he was often taken for a
peasant though he had once been sorely troubled by his blunt features
and lack of physical beauty. Family cares absorbed him, and the books
he now gave to the world in constant succession. His name was spoken
everywhere, and many visitors disturbed his seclusion. _War and
Peace_, a description of Napoleonic times in Russia, found scant favour
with Liberals or Conservatives in the East, but it ranked as a great
work of fiction. _Anna Karenina_ gave descriptions of society in town
and country that were unequalled even by Turgeniev, the writer whose
friendship with Tolstoy was often broken by fierce quarrels. The
reformer's nature suffered nothing artificial. He sneered at formal
charity and a pretence of labour. Hearing that Turgeniev's young
daughter sat dressed in silks to mend the torn and ragged garments of
poverty, as part of her education, he commented with his usual
harshness. The comment was not forgiven, and strife separated men who
had, nevertheless, a {222} curious attraction for each other. Fet, the
Russian poet was, indeed, the only friend in the literary world
fortunate enough always to win the great novelist's approbation.
As the sons grew up, the family had to spend part of the year in Moscow
that the lads might attend the University. It was necessary to live
with the hospitality of Russians of the higher class, and division
crept into the household where father and mother had been remarkable
for their strong affection. Tolstoy wore the sheepskin of the labourer
and the felt cap and boots, and he ate his simple meal of porridge at a
table where others dined with less frugality. He had given up the
habits of his class when he was fifty and adopted those of the
peasantry. In the country he rose early, going out to the fields to
work for the widow and orphan who might need his service. He hoped to
find the mental ease of the manual labourer by entering on these
duties, but his mind was often troubled by religious questions. He was
serving God, as he deemed it, after a period of unbelief natural to
young men of his station.
He had learnt to make boots and shoes and was proud of his skill as a
cobbler. He gave up field sports because they were cruel, and
renounced tobacco, the one luxury of Mazzini, because he held it
unhealthy and self-indulgent. Money was so evil a thing in his sight
that he would not use it and did not carry it with him. "What makes a
man good is having but few wants," he said wisely. There were
difficulties in the way of getting rid of all his property, for the
children of the family could not be entirely despoiled of their
inheritance. There were thirteen of them, and they did not all share
the great reformer's ideas.
In 1888, Tolstoy eased his mind by an act of formal {223} renunciation.
The Countess was to have charge of the estates in trust for her
children. The Count was still to live in the same house, but resolved
to bind himself more closely to the people. He had volunteered to
assist when the census was taken in 1880 and had seen the homes of
poverty near his little village. He had been the champion of the
neighbourhood since he defended a young soldier who had been unjustly
sentenced. There was always a knot of suppliants under the "poor
people's tree," ready to waylay him when he came out of the porch.
They asked the impossible sometimes, but he was always kindly.
Love for the serf had been hereditary. Tolstoy's father was a
kindly-natured man, and those who brought up the dreamy boy at Yasnaya
had insisted on gentle dealings with both men and animals. There was a
story which he loved of an orderly, once a serf on the family estate,
who had been taken prisoner with his father after the siege of Erfurt.
The faithful servant had such love for his master that he had concealed
all his money in a boot which he did not remove for several months,
though a sore was formed. Such stories tallied with the reformer's own
experiences of soldiers' fighting at Sebastopol.
His mind was ever seeking new ways to reach the people. He believed
that they would read if there were simple books written to appeal to
them. He put his other labours on one side and wrote a series of
charming narratives to touch the unlettered and draw them from their
passion for _vodka_, or Russian brandy, and their harmful dissipations.
_Ivan the Fool_ was one of the first of these. The _Power of Darkness_
had an enormous popularity. The ABC books and simple versions of the
Scriptures did much to dispel sloth of mind in the {224} peasant, but
the Government did not look kindly on these efforts. To them the
progressive Count was dangerous, though he held apart from those
fanatics of the upper classes who had begun to move among the people in
the disguise of workers, that they might spread disturbing doctrines.
The police system of Russia involved a severe censorship of literature.
Yet only one allusion did Tolstoy make in his _Confessions_ to the
revolutionary movement which led young men and women to sacrifice their
homes and freedom from a belief that the section of society which they
represented had no right to prey upon the lower. Religion, he says,
had not been to them an inspiration, for, like the majority of the
educated class in Russia, they were unbelievers. Different in his
service toward God and toward Mankind was the man who had begun life by
declaring that happiness came from self-worship. He prayed, as age
came upon him, that he might find truth in that humanity which believed
very simply as others had believed of old time, but he could not be
satisfied by the practises of piety. He was tortured until he built up
that religion for himself which placed him apart from his fellows who
loved progress.
The days of persecution in the East were as terrible as in the bygone
days of western mediaeval tortures. For their social aims, men and
women were condemned to death or banishment. The dreary wastes of
Siberia absorbed lives once bright and beautiful. Known by numbers,
not by names, these dragged out a weary existence in the bitter cold of
an Arctic winter. "By order of the Tsar" they were flogged, tormented,
put in chains, and reduced to the level of animals, bereft of reason.
Fast as the spirit of freedom raised its head, it was cowed by
absolutism and the powerful machinery {225} of a Government that used
the wild Cossacks to overawe the hot theories of defenceless students.
Educated men were becoming more common among the peasants, thanks to
Tolstoy's guidance. He had shown the way to them and could not repent
when they took it, for it is the duty of the reformer to secure a
following. Anarchy he had not foreseen, and was troubled by its
manifestations. The gentle mind of an old man, resting peacefully in
the country, could not penetrate the dark corners of cities where the
rebellious gathered together and hatched plots against the tyrant. In
spite of Alexander's liberal measures, the Nihilists were not satisfied
with a Government so despotic. Many attempts had been made to
assassinate him before he was killed by a hand-bomb on March 13th, 1881.
Alexander III abandoned reforms and the discontent increased in Russia,
where the plots of conspirators called forth all the atrocities of the
spy-system which still existed. Enmity to the Government was further
roused in a time of famine, wherein thousands of peasants perished
miserably. Tolstoy was active in his attempts to relieve the sick and
starving in the year 1891, when the condition of the people was
heartrending. He received thanks which were grateful to one very
easily discouraged. The peasants turned to him for support quite
naturally in their hour of need.
Trouble came upon the aged leader through a sect of the Caucasian
provinces who had adopted his new views with ardour. The Doukhobors
held all their goods in common and made moral laws for themselves,
based on Tolstoy's form of religion. They refused to serve as
soldiers, which was said to be a defiance of their governor. The
leaders were exiled and some hundreds enrolled in "a disciplinary
regiment" as a punishment. {226} Tolstoy managed to rouse sympathy for
them in England, and they were allowed to emigrate instead of suffering
persecution. He wrote _Resurrection_, a novel dealing with the
terrible life of Russian prisons, to get money for their relief. He
was excommunicated formally for attacking the Orthodox Church of Russia
in 1901. The sentence caused him to feel yet more bitterly toward the
Russian government. He longed to see peace in the eastern land whence
tales of cruelty and oppression startled the more humane provinces of
Europe. He would fain have stayed the outrages of bomb-throwing which
the Nihilist societies perpetrated. He could feel for the unrest of
youth, but he knew from his long experience of life that violence would
not bring them to the attainment of their objects.
The tragedy of the Moujik-garbed aristocrat, striving for
self-perfection and cast down by compromise made necessary by love for
others, drew to a close as he neared his eightieth year. He would have
given everything, and he had kept something. Worldly possessions had
been stripped from his dwelling, with its air of honest kindly comfort.
More and more the descendant of Peter the Great's ambitious minister
began to feel the need of entire renunciation. It was long since he
had known the riotous life of cities, but even the peace of his country
retreat was broken by discords since all did not share that longing for
utter self-abnegation which possessed the soul of Leo Tolstoy, now
troubled by remorse.
In the winter of 1910 the old man left the home where he had lived in
domestic security since the first years of his happy marriage. It was
severe weather, and his fragile frame was too weak for the long
difficult journey he planned in order to reach a place of retreat in
the {227} Caucasus Mountains. He had resolved to spend his last days
in complete seclusion, and to give up the intercourse with the world
which made too many claims upon him. He died on this last quest for
ideal purity, and never reached the abode where he had hoped to end his
days. The news of his death at a remote railway station spread through
Europe before he actually succumbed to the severity of his exposure to
the cold of winter. There was universal sorrow, when Tolstoy passed,
among those who reckoned him the greatest of modern reformers.
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