The manuscript of the autobiography of Sophie Andreevna Tolstoy exists
among the documents of the late director of the Russian Library,
Professor Semen Afanasevich Vengerov, which, in accordance with the will
of the deceased, have been handed over to the Library. The Library is
now in the Petrograd Institute of Learning, and the documents form a
special section in the Institute under the title: "The Archives of S. A.
Vengerov."
The history of the manuscript is as follows. At the end of July, 1913,
S. A. Vengerov sent a letter to S. A. Tolstoy asking her to write and
send him her autobiography which he proposed to publish. We do not know
the details of S. A. Vengerov's letter, but from the replies of S. A.
Tolstoy which are printed below we may conclude that Professor Vengerov
enclosed in his letter to S. A. Tolstoy a questionnaire, and that,
besides the usual questions which he was accustomed to send out
broadcast to authors and men of letters, he put a number of additional
questions, especially for S. A. T., asking for light upon certain
moments in the history of the life and creative activity of Leo
Nikolaevich Tolstoy, and upon the time and causes of the differences
between the husband and wife, the beginning of that formidable drama
which took place in the Tolstoy family.