Letter to Tolstoy about his stories. Leo Tolstoy's letter to the Synod. Renunciation of the Orthodox Church. About an illegitimate family and how to pay off sins

At first I did not want to answer the Synod's decision about me, but this decision caused a lot of letters in which correspondents unknown to me - some scold me for rejecting what I do not reject, others exhort me to believe in what I have not ceased to believe, others express with me an unanimity, which hardly exists in reality, and sympathy, to which I hardly have a right; and I decided to answer both the resolution itself, pointing out that it was unfair, and the appeals to me by my unknown correspondents.
The resolution of the synod in general has many shortcomings. It is illegal or deliberately ambiguous; it is arbitrary, unfounded, untrue and, moreover, contains slander and incitement to bad feelings and actions.
It contains an obvious lie, asserting that unsuccessful attempts of enlightenment were made on the part of the church regarding me, while nothing of the kind ever happened.
It is what in legal language is called slander, since it contains statements that are deliberately unfair and tend to harm me.
So the decision of the Synod is generally very bad; the fact that at the end of the decree it says that the persons who signed it pray that I will become like them does not make it better.
This is so in general, but in particular the ruling is unfair in the following. The ruling says: known to the world the writer, Russian by birth, Orthodox by baptism and upbringing, Count Tolstoy, in the seduction of his proud mind, boldly rebelled against the Lord and against his Christ and his holy heritage, clearly before all he renounced the mother of the Orthodox Church that nurtured and raised him.
—
The fact that I renounced the church that calls itself Orthodox is absolutely fair. But I renounced it, not because I rebelled against the Lord, but, on the contrary, only because I wanted to serve him with all the strength of my soul.
Before renouncing the church and unity with the people, which was inexpressibly dear to me, I, having some signs of doubting the correctness of the church, devoted several years to researching theoretically and practically the teachings of the church: theoretically - I re-read everything I could, about the teachings of the church, studied and critically analyzed dogmatic theology; in practice, he strictly followed, for more than a year, all the prescriptions of the church, observing all fasts and attending all church services. And I became convinced that the teaching of the Church is theoretically an insidious and harmful lie, while in practice it is a collection of the grossest superstitions and sorcery, which completely hides the whole meaning of Christian teaching.

One has only to read the breviary and follow those rites that are performed without ceasing by the Orthodox clergy and are considered Christian worship to see that all these rites are nothing but various tricks of sorcery, adapted to all possible occasions in life. In order for the child, if he dies, to go to heaven, you need to have time to anoint him with oil and redeem him with the pronunciation of certain words; in order for the woman in childbirth to cease to be unclean, it is necessary to utter certain spells; so that there is success in business or a peaceful life in a new house, so that bread is born well, the drought stops, so that the journey is safe, in order to be cured of an illness, in order to ease the situation of the deceased in the next world, for all this and a thousand other circumstances, there are known spells that, in famous place and for certain offerings, the priest pronounces.

And I really renounced the church, stopped performing its rites, wrote in my will to my relatives, so that when I die, they would not allow church ministers to see me, and my dead body would be removed as soon as possible, without any spells and prayers over it, as they remove any nasty and unnecessary thing, so that it does not interfere with the living.

The same as it is said that I dedicated my literary activity and the talent given to me by God for spreading among the people teachings that are contrary to Christ and the church, etc. within the borders of our dear fatherland, I preach with the zeal of a fanatic the overthrow of all dogmas Orthodox Church and the very essence of the Christian faith, then this is unjust.

I never cared about spreading my teachings. True, I myself expressed in my writings my understanding of the teachings of Christ and did not hide these writings from people who wanted to get acquainted with them, but I never printed them myself; I spoke to people about how I understand the teachings of Christ only when they asked me about it. To such people I said what I thought, and gave, if I had them, my books.

Then it is said that I reject God, in the holy trinity of the glorious creator and providence of the universe, I deny the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man, the redeemer and savior of the world, who suffered for us for the sake of people and for our salvation and rose from the dead, I deny the seedless conception according to the humanity of Christ the Lord and virginity before Christmas and after the birth of the Most Pure Theotokos.

That I reject the incomprehensible trinity and the fable of the fall of the first man, which has no meaning in our time, the blasphemous story of a god born of a virgin who redeems the human race, is completely justified. God — spirit, God — love, the only God — the beginning of everything, I not only do not reject, but I do not recognize anything really existing, except God, and I see the whole meaning of life only in the fulfillment of the will of God, expressed in Christian teaching.

It is also said:<не признает загробной жизни и мздовоздаяния>. If we understand life after death in the sense of the advent, hell with eternal torment, devils, and paradise - permanent bliss, then it is quite right that I do not recognize such an afterlife; but I acknowledge eternal life and retribution here and everywhere, now and always, to such an extent that, standing on the edge of the grave in my years, I often have to make efforts not to desire carnal death, that is, birth to a new life, and I believe that every good deed increases the true good of my eternal life, and every evil deed reduces it.

It is also said that I reject all the sacraments, then this is perfectly true. I consider all the sacraments base, rude, witchcraft, inconsistent with the concept of God and Christian teaching, and, moreover, a violation of the most direct instructions of the gospel.

In infant baptism, I see a clear perversion of all the meaning that baptism could have for adults who consciously accept Christianity; in the performance of the sacrament of marriage over people who were obviously united before, and in the permission of divorces and in the consecration of divorced marriages, I see a direct violation of both the meaning and the letter of the gospel teaching. In the periodic forgiveness of sins at confession, I see a harmful deception that only encourages immorality and destroys the fear of sinning.

In unction, as well as in chrismation, I see methods of gross witchcraft, as well as in the veneration of icons and relics, as well as in all those rites, prayers, spells that the breviary is filled with. In communion I see the deification of the flesh and the perversion of Christian teaching. In the priesthood, in addition to the obvious preparation for deceit, I see a direct violation of the words of Christ - directly forbidding anyone to be called teachers, fathers, mentors
(Matt. XXIII, 8 - 10).

Finally, it is said, as the last and highest degree of my guilt, that I, scolding the most sacred objects of faith, did not shudder to mock the most sacred of the sacraments - the Eucharist. The fact that I did not shudder to describe simply and objectively what the priest does to prepare this so-called sacrament is completely just; but the fact that this so-called sacrament is something sacred, and that it is blasphemy to describe it simply as it is done, is completely unjust. It is not blasphemy to call a partition a partition, and not an iconostasis, and a cup a cup, and not a chalice*, etc. possible means deception and hypnotization, children and the simple-hearted people assure that if you cut pieces of bread in a certain way and while pronouncing certain words and put them in wine, then God enters into these pieces; and that the one in whose name a living piece is taken out will be healthy; in the name of the dead person such a piece is taken out, then it will be better for him in the next world; and that the one who ate this piece, God himself will enter into him.
After all, it's terrible!

No matter how anyone understands the personality of Christ, his teaching, which destroys the evil of the world and so simply, easily, undoubtedly gives good to people, if only they do not pervert it, this teaching is all hidden, everything is converted into a crude sorcery of bathing, anointing with oil, body movements, incantations, swallowing pieces, etc., so that nothing remains of the teaching. And if when any person tries to remind people that not in these sorceries, not in prayers, masses, candles, icons - the teachings of Christ, but in the fact that people love each other, do not repay evil for evil, do not judge, do not kill each other, then a groan of indignation will rise from those who benefit from these deceptions, and these people speak loudly, with incomprehensible audacity in churches, print in books, newspapers, catechisms, that Christ never forbade an oath (oath), never forbade murder (executions, wars), that the doctrine of non-resistance to evil with satanic cunning was invented by the enemies of Christ.

What is terrible, most importantly, is that people who benefit from this deceive not only adults, but, having the power to do so, also children, the very ones about whom Christ said that woe to the one who deceives them. It is terrible that these people, for their own small gains, do such a terrible evil, hiding from people the truth revealed by Christ and giving them a blessing that is not balanced even in a thousandth part by the benefit they receive from it. They act like that robber who kills a whole family, 5-6 people, in order to take away an old coat and 40 kopecks. money. They would gladly give him all the clothes and all the money, if only he did not kill them. But he cannot do otherwise. It is the same with religious deceivers. One could agree 10 times better, in the greatest luxury, to support them, if only they would not ruin people with their deceit. But they cannot do otherwise. This is what is terrible. And therefore it is not only possible, but necessary, to expose their deceptions. If there is anything sacred, then it is by no means what they call a sacrament, but precisely this obligation to expose their religious deception when you see it. If a Chuvash smears his idol with sour cream or flogs him, I can pass by indifferently, because what he does, he does in the name of his superstition, which is alien to me, and does not concern what is sacred to me; but when people, no matter how many there are, no matter how old their superstition and no matter how powerful they are, in the name of the God by which I live, and that teaching of Christ, which gave life to me and can give it to all people,
they preach gross sorcery, I cannot see it calmly. And if I call by name what they do, then I only do what I must, what I cannot but do, if I believe in God and Christian teaching. If, instead of being horrified at their blasphemy, they call the denunciation of their deception blasphemy, then this only proves the strength of their deception and should only increase the efforts of people who believe in God and in the teaching of Christ, in order to destroy this deception, hiding from of people true god. About Christ, who drove the bulls, sheep and sellers out of the temple, they should have said that he was blaspheming. If he came now and saw what is being done in his name in the church, then with even greater and more legitimate anger he would probably throw away all these terrible antimensions, and spears, and crosses, and bowls, and candles, and icons, and all that. whereby they, conjuring, hide God and his teachings from people.

So this is what is fair and what is unfair in the resolution of the Synod concerning me. I don't really believe what they say they believe. But I believe in a lot of things that they want people to believe that I don't believe.

I believe in the following: I believe in God, whom I understand as a spirit, as love, as the beginning of everything. I believe that he is in me and I am in him. I believe that the will of God is most clearly, most understandably expressed in the teaching of the man Christ, whom I consider to be the greatest blasphemy to understand God and to pray to. I believe that the true good of a person is in the fulfillment of the will of God, and his will is that people love each other and, as a result, do to others the way they want to be done to them, as it is said in the gospel that this is the whole law and the prophets. I believe that the meaning of the life of each individual person, therefore, is only in increasing love in oneself, that this increase in love leads an individual person in this life to an ever greater and greater good, gives after death the greater good, the more love there is in a person, and at the same time, and more than anything else, it contributes to the establishment in the world of the kingdom of God, that is, such a system of life in which discord, deceit and violence that now reign will be replaced by free consent, truth and brotherly love of people among themselves. I believe that there is only one means for success in love: prayer—not public prayer in churches, expressly forbidden by Christ (Matt. VI, 5-13), but prayer, an example of which was given to us by Christ—solitary, consisting in restoration and strengthening in your mind the meaning of your life and your dependence only on the will of God.
Offend, upset or seduce someone, interfere with something and someone, or do not like these beliefs of mine - I can change them just as little as my body. I myself need to live alone, and die alone (and very soon), and therefore I cannot believe in any other way than as I believe, preparing to go to the god from whom I came. I do not say that my faith is one undoubtedly true for all time, but I do not see another - simpler, clearer and meeting all the requirements of my mind and heart; if I recognize one, I will immediately accept it, because God needs nothing but the truth. But I can’t return to that from which I just came out with such suffering, just as a flying bird cannot enter the shell of the egg from which it came out.

He who begins by loving Christianity more than the truth will very soon love his church or sect more than Christianity, and end up loving himself (his peace of mind) more than anything in the world, said Coleridge.
I went the other way. I began by loving my Orthodox faith more than my calmness, then I loved Christianity more than my church, and now I love the truth more than anything in the world. And until now, the truth coincides for me with Christianity, as I understand it. And I profess this Christianity; and to the extent that I confess it, I live calmly and joyfully, and calmly and joyfully approach death.
April 4, 1901 Leo Tolstoy ***
Moscow

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Full composition of writings. Volume 74

State publishing house

fiction

Moscow - 1954

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Preface to the electronic edition

This publication is an electronic version of the 90-volume collected works of Leo Tolstoy, published in 1928-1958. This unique academic publication, the most complete collection of Leo Tolstoy's legacy, has long become a bibliographic rarity. In 2006, the Yasnaya Polyana Estate Museum, in cooperation with the Russian State Library and with the support of the E. Mellon Foundation and coordination The British Council carried out the scanning of all 90 volumes of the publication. However, in order to take full advantage of electronic version(reading on modern devices, the ability to work with text), there were still more than 46,000 pages to be recognized. To this end, the State Museum of Leo Tolstoy, the Yasnaya Polyana Museum-Estate, together with a partner, ABBYY, opened the project “All Tolstoy in One Click”. More than 3,000 volunteers joined the project on readingtolstoy.ru, and they used ABBYY FineReader to recognize text and correct errors. Literally in ten days, the first stage of reconciliation was completed, and in two months, the second. After the third stage of proofreading volumes and individual works published in in electronic format on the site tolstoy.ru.

The edition retains the spelling and punctuation of the printed version of the 90-volume collected works of Leo Tolstoy.

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LETTERS

PREPARATION OF THE TEXT AND COMMENTS

V. A. ZHDANOVA

EDITORIAL NOTES

This volume includes 316 letters for 1903 (of which one is printed under the number with the letter A- No. 185a). 126 letters are printed from autographs, 13 from photocopies, 159 from copy sheets (or a book), which is an exact print of an autograph made on thin paper using copy ink and a press, 11 from copies, and 7 from printed texts. 214 letters are printed.

The texts of four letters to Sofya Andreevna Tolstoy are published in volume 84 and thirty-two letters to V. G. Chertkov - in volume 88.

When reproducing the text of Leo Tolstoy's letters, the following rules are observed.

The text of Tolstoy's letters, as a rule, is reproduced with the latest corrections made by the author. From the crossed out in the footnote, only the most significant options are reproduced, and the footnote sign is placed at the word, after which there is a crossed out one.

All the features of the author's spelling are preserved, for example, the different spelling of the same words ("aunt" and "aunt"), the stresses set by him.

Words written incompletely are printed in full, and the complemented letters are placed in straight brackets: “k-th” - “k[otor] th”; because - t [ak] to [ak]; b. - was]. The generally accepted abbreviations are not supplemented: etc., etc., etc.

Misspellings (omissions, permutations of letters, replacement of one letter by another, etc.) are corrected without reservation.

In place of unreadable words in brackets is put: [ 1 unsorted], [2 unparsed.], where the numbers indicate the number of unparsed words.

New paragraphs are introduced only in those places where a text that is sharply different in topic and character from the previous one begins, and each time it is specified in a footnote: editor's paragraph. The footnote mark is placed before the first word of the paragraph entered by the editor.

Letters published for the first time, as well as those that were previously published incompletely or in translations into foreign languages are marked with an asterisk.

All dates up to December 31, 1917 are given in the old style, and from January 1918 in the new style.

Conditional abbreviations are used in the notes:

B, IV - P. I. Biryukov, “Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Biography”, M.-P. 1923.

GMT - State Museum of Leo Tolstoy in Moscow.

PT - “Correspondence of L. N. Tolstoy with gr. A. A. Tolstoy, St. Petersburg. 1911.

PTS, I, II - Letters of L. N. Tolstoy, collected and edited by P. A. Sergeenko, ed. "Book", I - 1910; II - 1911.

PTSO - A new collection of letters by L. N. Tolstoy, collected by P. A. Sergeenko, edited by A. E. Gruzinsky, ed. "Okto", M. 1912.

TP, 2, 3 - “Tolstoy. Monuments of creativity and life, 2, M. 1920; 3, M. 1923.

TS - “Leo Tolstoy and V.V. Stasov. Correspondence, ed. Surf, L. 1929.

LETTERS

* 1. D. F. Tolstoy.

Dear Dora, I have long wanted to write to you, firstly, to sympathize with your situation, and secondly, to destroy the coldness that seems to have been established between us. If this is, then it is completely in vain, because I appreciate and love you both as a beautiful wife to Leva and in and of itself, as a sweet, kind and truthful woman.

So if there was anything from your side, then please erase it so that nothing remains.

Now about your situation: I feel very sorry for you, especially because, it seems to me, you still do not know how to submit, and this is necessary both for your own happiness and for the happiness of those around you. You can find consolation in any situation, especially in yours, which requires only endurance and patience from you. You are so young, and your nature is so energetic that this disease, in all likelihood, will pass without leaving traces: you are a lucky woman in comparison with Tanya, 1 - and Tanya is a lucky woman in comparison with hundreds and thousands of women, and those too in compared to even more unfortunate ones. But, of course, you will find consolation not in the misfortune of others, but in how you relate to your grief. And so I would like you to make the best use of your illness and bring out of it the refreshment and strengthening of the soul. I always experience this. And what I gain for my soul during an illness is bought too cheaply by several months of physical, I won’t say suffering, but trouble. Our soul, like children, grows during illness. I wish you this. Farewell, dear Dora, I kiss you, Leva and the children. 2

• About bigamy and conscience
• ABOUT domestic violence and pity
• About the wickedness of the bride

Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana. Photo by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky. Early 20th century Library of Congress

About how to make the spirit outgrow the flesh

“Count Lev Nikolaevich! I am a very small person, and only my years and a whole bunch of sufferings I have experienced give me the right to appeal to you. The fact is that only today I managed to get and read your Kreutzer Sonata ...

Reading it, she only regretted that it came out now, and not twenty years ago; selfishly sorry, for my own sake. I would not have broken my life so stupidly then because of an empty, jealous suspicion, I would have stopped in time. And I think that this thing is purely pedagogical, because it makes the spirit outgrow the flesh. And I, now a mother and grandmother, want to save my children from those fatal, ugly mistakes that I made.

So I decided to write to you and ask you to give me one copy of this "Kreutzer Sonata" in order to make it a reference book for my children. It is not possible to buy it; You can get it only for a day, a lot of two. I am not a rich person, I live by work and support the family of my daughter, who married a student who has no time to work, because he has to study. I know that my request is very bold. But you must somehow forgive me for this and do not refuse it. What to do if your “Sonata” turned my whole forty-five-year-old soul upside down?<…>Oh Lev Nikolaevich! I need your Sonata, I need it, I need it, I need it! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Without date

About love, physiology and the horrors of the wedding night

“No, Lev Nikolaevich, Pozdnyshev says it’s wrong, terribly false. I can’t express it, I don’t know how, I don’t have your talent, and even just words are not enough to challenge you. It's embarrassing to tears and I would like to prove the contrary. I remember my youth. I was sixteen years old in 1876 when I finished high school. Compared to today's girls, I was stupid, that is, I "read little" and knew nothing of the natural sciences. We were not forbidden to read anything, even though my mother marked books in the catalog that were good and bad… How we read War and Peace! Many times after you find, it happened, open volume even in the middle, you start to read and do not fall behind until you read it to the end again. We were carried away by Pugachevtsy, In the Forests, Anna Karenina - wherever there is love, ideal, pure love, love from the heart. And we did not know, no one explained to us that there is no such love in the heart, that in physiology it is not at all the same ...

On holidays, young people gathered, we read, discussed, argued, but not one of our visitors would have had the tongue to read even your Sonata to us girls. Soon I fell in love with one of our old guests (thirty-two years old), fell in love again with my heart, with all my heart, with all my passion, just like he did with me!

"That's where the debauchery is, this honey night and honey morning with congratulations and curious glances"

It was this love that was dear to my heart, and if someone proved to me that his love was a thirst for a woman, perhaps it would be enough for me to stop loving, stop respecting my fiancé ... A month passed before the wedding, understandably, in mercy, passionate caresses, and (I throw an experienced glance back), and if it were not for the prudence of the groom, I could “fall”, and (I now add) it would be quite natural and moral, although I don’t look at it that way -rit light, recognizing moral wedding night! That's where the debauchery is, this honeyed night and honeyed morning with congratulations and curious glances. It is necessary to acquire a lot of shamelessness in one night in order to endure congratulations indifferently, without embarrassment. Thirteen years later, it's embarrassing to remember.

I will extend this little digression to tell you the feeling of a woman on her wedding night. As I already wrote, I loved the groom to self-forgetfulness, and if I “fell” in a fit of affection and mutual passion, then everything would be brightened up, called out, and therefore natural and necessary. But here? I was busy all day packing things, fitting dresses, tight boots. Then congratulations, then the pastor, who appeared for some reason (although I got married in the Orthodox Church), angered me, then we came home. It just hit me once joyful feeling, as in the picture "Enfin seuls"; all day she did not see her fiancé, and even thought very little of him. The husband is tired, almost ill from the hassle and fuss - he would like to go to bed for twelve hours at the best, and then, whether you like it or not, go to your young wife. The young wife, lying down in bed, felt an oilcloth under the sheet (carefully placed by a loving mother), and that was enough. I was seized by such a disgusting feeling, for which I am still ashamed of my husband. The question is, what kind of night is this, what kind of congratulations?

“I was seized by such a disgusting feeling, for which I am still ashamed in front of my husband”

I know a girl who was not at all naive, who loved her fiancé terribly, who ran away on the first night - everything seemed so rude to her, contrary to her dreams. Then she returned, of course, and has a child. She says that she will tell and warn her daughter's fiancé. Me too. The man, they say, looks at it quite differently. But a woman can only find satisfaction in this act when it occurs in a fit of love - then in a loved one, as in her child, there is nothing nasty, squeamish. Otherwise brr.

I will stop there. What are you and other writers doing with our girls? It is impossible not to let them read books and newspapers: they will take it themselves, so as not to say that they have not read such and such a critic about the Kreutzer Sonata or Zola's atavism!<…>

Is it really better to take away from us all the illusions that give us happiness, help us get used to a person, forgive him the past, believe in the possibility of living together, lovingly, strong family until the end of days? If it is possible for future men to become better, purer - what is better, every girl will be happier with such. But for now? When they taught the girls to see through all the nasty past and turned her away from the man - is it better? What will remain for poor women in consolation? After all, frankly speaking, you love children at first because they are from your beloved husband. I don’t know if I would have loved my child if it had somehow been conceived by a nasty person. And what a miserable existence of a girl in her old age! What will you offer her? Good deeds? Eh, they will never be able to do for others, they will not have love for others, because they will become stale, everything will become disgusting, all people will seem disgusting - and they will love cats.

1891

On family life and the position of women

“How is it to be understood that people who deny brothels, who deny with horror and disgust the necessity of visiting these houses properly, start worse at home this! Why, not allowing the thought of the necessity of debauchery, cannot they themselves do without the fact that, in spite of any protest, they use their wife like a prostitute? Yes, just like a prostitute. There is no other way to call it, if the husband talks all day about her bad character, about her misunderstanding of him, about her bad influence on children and on his life, curses the minute when he began to live like that, that is, with her, and then at night he appears and , despite any protest, uses it - how can you call it? How to understand such a life? Is this really a family, is this a legal marriage? Legal because I have no right to dispose of myself ...

Dear Lev Nikolayevich, write about this, you will be able to instill in the hearts of such people that it is necessary to live differently, not only during the day, but also at night. After all, they will listen to you, they will understand. The horror of the position of a woman, ten and fifteen, giving birth for twenty years in a row, nursing without interruption and rest, and even at that time without interruption serving her husband for his lust. I am not writing this way because I do not love my husband or love another person (even writing is disgusting). I love my husband and my children. And not because I don’t want to give birth and nurse children, but because I want to do it intelligently, but, like all earthly creatures do it, and not so humiliating, disgusting. After all, this is so true, Lev Nikolaevich, I feel that a lot in people's relations depends on this. So explain to people the whole horror of such a life! Only soon, soon, there is no more strength to endure!

1901

About an illegitimate family and how to pay off sins

“Dear sir, knowing your good understanding of religion, I ask you what you will tell me about my question. The question is next. My religion is Orthodox, and at the age of sixteen, even fifteen and a half, I had intercourse for the first time, and I did it with a young girl, whom I, therefore, violated. After a few months, she gave birth, but, my God, what a hassle. After a few more months, she still gave birth, therefore, two children, and I was only eighteen years old from this month. Therefore, according to the charter of the church, I can only get married.

“Fifteen and a half, the first time I had intercourse, and I did it with a young girl”

One of the babies died, the other is sick, and I think that if she dies, I want to give her some money and, how to say, pay her off, but, turning to the priests, they advised to get married, but how poor she is, then I do not quite agree to get married. But I am a merchant’s son, and yet I have an opinion to get married, but I don’t know what to do, and I ask you, be so kind as to write to me, as the Savior of the world taught to do, who are in such position. If your grace gives an answer, then write to the editorial office of the Saratov Gubernskie Vedomosti, therefore, in this way you will write a letter to the editorial office in which there will be an answer to me, and the editorial board will print it in the newspaper, since I am a subscriber of this newspaper and I can read concerning correspondence to me. unknown to you.

So write: Unknown.

A Tsaritsyno merchant's son, but I am currently living in Dubovka on the occasion of the fair.

I beg you, as soon as you read my letter, or even not, then destroy it now, either burn it or tear it up. Too unpleasant for myself; I didn't tell anyone about this, I just opened up to you. I beg you convincingly not to show it to anyone, the conscience is too tormenting at such years to have an illegal wife and two children. Too nauseating in front of people and God. Please, I ask you to give an answer, what should I do and how to live better. I really want to know what opinion you will have about me and what I have done or will do badly.

Without date

House of Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana. Photo by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky. Early 20th century Library of Congress

About bigamy and conscience

“Your Excellency, I beg you to answer in print and immediately, how, in your opinion, Nekhlyudov should have acted if he were already married.

The fact is that before the appearance of your novel, my son-in-law got along with the nanny of his child, who has now given birth. Now, under the influence of your novel, he considers himself obliged to take her to him, to settle in a separate wing (they live in a village), in a word, to arrange another family in front of his wife. You will understand how my daughter suffers from this. She wants to leave, but her husband does not give her a son, whom she idolizes. In the end, the daughter will not stand this torture, she will secretly take her son away and leave, but she is a very young woman and without any means; what if she becomes Katyusha Maslova? There are many Nekhlyudovs in Rus', and there are many similar dramas. Answer, teacher, answer the cry of the mother and wife, what needs to be done in this case.

Does a husband have a moral right at the cost of the health and peace of his wife to calm his conscience?

1899

Of damned instinct and salvation from the fall

“Knowing your teaching on the sexual question, I think that you alone can clarify the doubts that torment me. There is not a single fresh person around me, and therefore I allow myself to turn to you. Now I am in a difficult transitional age, when the damned instinct awakens, with which you don’t know how to fight. In addition, the question is: is this struggle necessary and should I go against nature? I know that our "scientists" - doctors will answer me; I know what “intelligent people” will say, who themselves are all without exception “not without sin.” In your writings on this subject, I found the following thought: “What should one who has not fallen yet do? Avoid falling with all your might." (I quote these words not literally, because now this book is not at hand.)

Show me how to keep from falling. Explain to me how you, who consider communication with nature a condition for human happiness, in this case go against this nature. I don't know what is truth. Is it the life that all the people around me lead, or the one that you set as an ideal? I know one thing, that my mind struggles with feeling and gradually loses all its evidence and strength, being further embarrassed by all that rampant lust that is now raging in our society. I have one unshakable desire - not to be like everyone else, and this desire holds me back. Answer me, Lev Nikolaevich. So I want to go on the real path, so I don’t want to die.”

From L. Ostroumov, at that time still a student, 1907

About domestic violence and pity

“Dear Count Lev Nikolaevich, I have long wanted to turn to you for advice, but I did not dare, being afraid to disturb you. I am the daughter of a colonel, a landowner of the St. Petersburg and Novgorod provinces. From the age of seven she lost her mother; my father then took the place of the zemstvo chief. He gave me for a year to the neighbors, at that time he got along with a peasant woman, a married woman, and a year later he took me to his place. At the same time, his twenty-one-year-old stepson came to visit him. I was left to the mercy of fate - no supervision. His stepson began to play with me with genitals, but did not rape me. He also forced me, an eight-year-old child, to extract money from my father, as it turned out later, about a hundred rubles. His father kicked him out for it. At the age of eleven I entered the gymnasium (but did not finish it), and at the age of twelve my father raped me and lived with me until 1907, that is, until I came of age. I could not do anything, my family knew, but no one wanted to intervene. I will not say that I had to experience a lot morally. I never loved my father, I was afraid of him, by nature he is very rude. Such a spiritual, good thing could never be shared with him, he never caressed me in a good way. In 1905, a child was born to me, whom he gave in Moscow to a Moscow educational home. Nobody knew about the birth of a child, because I was in a secret department.

“I never loved my father, I was afraid of him, by nature he is very rude”

After giving birth, I settled in the estate of the St. Petersburg province and lived alone, looking after the management of the economy ... My father began to write rude letters to me. I decided to apply to the St. Petersburg District Court. IN given time many witnesses have already been interrogated, who have proved in my favor. Of all my relatives, only my aunt (father's sister) and her children stood up.

I heard from many that my father is suffering a lot at this time. I felt sorry for him. He's sixty-eight years old, after all. He was brought up in the Corps of Pages, lived well all the time, and suddenly hard labor. It seemed to me that when I filed, it would be easier for me, and now I am convinced that it will not be easier for me. And he, perhaps, suffered more during this time even than I have in all the years. He might be arrested soon. Count, but I can save. Refusing the application, I am threatened prosecutor's supervision serve six months in prison. After all, I'm younger than him, I can easily endure it ...

What should I do, give me some advice, Count. It's hard for me; In my heart, I forgave him. What's past, you can't bring back. I have a notebook where I describe my whole life in detail, but I write to you briefly - after all, you will understand anyway. I no longer want to go to the monastery, there is no such caress, simplicity, which, in my opinion, should exist among the sisters. Count, answer my letter, give me advice on what to do with my father, and what else I should do in life. I now live in St. Petersburg with a cousin.

1908

About the wickedness of the bride

“Dear Lev Nikolaevich, peace and many years!

For a long time I hesitated what to do - whether I should turn to you for advice. You, I know, are worried about so much, and meanwhile you need peace - but what was I to do when I realize that only your advice will relieve me and serve as a guiding star for me.<…>I am a student of Kyiv University, a Jew, a lawyer, I graduate in May. This summer I had the intention of marrying an educated poor girl. The wedding day was scheduled for August 7th.

My joy knew no bounds: it seemed to me that I had found happiness - a pure, innocent girl. But suddenly, oh horror! I learn that she has been in relations with a young man for a year. And from whom do I know? - from the same young man, my former student. I found out three days before the wedding. The bride's parents went bankrupt on preparations for the wedding, and then ... I could refuse everything by telegraph, since there was irrefutable evidence of my bride's criminal connection with this young man; but what a misfortune it would be for my bride - the girl whom I loved so passionately with the purest love! What a horror, what a disgrace! She wouldn't have survived!

And I decided to marry her in order to remove the stain of her past from her, but then get a divorce if she does not confess and does not express repentance until ... I waited, I thought that she would turn out to be honest and repent of her sins, but nothing happened. When I after... expressed my opinion that she was not a virgin, she swore innocence and even wished her daughters were so innocent. Then I gave her a letter from that young man - a letter in which he reminded her of all the sinful past. It was no longer possible to lock up, and she confessed. Since then, the worm of nightmarish thoughts and memories has been gnawing at me, and I cannot be calm, I cannot reconcile myself to the idea that my wife, for whose sake I gave up wealth and honors, so sinned before marriage and even wanted to hide from me. -nya, fool me. Determined to divorce her, I left her in Odessa with her parents, while I myself went to my home.

For five weeks now I have been tormented by the torments of hell and do not know what to do. At times it seems to me that I will still be able to be happy with her (I love her - she is so very good, kind), but sometimes it seems to me that the vice should be punished, and meanwhile she threatens suicide. What should I do, great teacher of wisdom and lofty ideals? Point out the path - I will follow it, confident that this path is the best. If your enlightened advice did not bring me external happiness, then inwardly I will be satisfied, since for me there will be no doubt that you have shown me the lesser of two evils. Advise me, highly esteemed Lev Nikolaevich! Your advice I will honor sacredly and indestructibly, whatever it may be, and the day I receive your answer and advice will be the most memorable day in my life. All my life I will pray to the Lord God, may he grant you many years for the joy of all mankind.

1909

About the betrayal of her husband and how to continue to live

“Dear Lev Nikolaevich. I appeal to you with a great request, with confidence in your readiness to help the suffering, that you will not refuse me advice.

I have been married for thirteen years and have two children, a girl of twelve and a boy of six. She married for love, loved strongly, purely - the way you need to love, loved even with the shortcomings that happen in every person. She worked for herself and, as far as she could, helped her husband, did not skimp on time, spent the most necessary things on herself, although there was something to spend more of. It seemed to me that I didn’t work much, I wanted to accomplish feats - feats with small children and the household were not accomplished, and I had to be content with a quiet family life. And that's okay. By family circumstances we moved from the village to the city and have been living for a year now with my mother and sister of twenty-three years.

I recently found out that my husband lives with my sister. It struck me terribly. I sobbed, kissed his feet, asked him to tell me the truth - why deceive; if he loves her, then why deceive me, let him say - and I will leave. He answered me that he did not love her, that the saint calls me - pure, that he lives with her so-so, because he is a nasty person, that I don’t need to leave, but if I myself want to leave, then he won’t keep me, and If I love him, then let me love him the way he is. The sister also confessed that she had only played at love, and that she did not love to love seriously and that she would try to stop; husband promised the same. But I see that they continue in the old way, and, living in the same house and in cramped quarters, I have to stumble upon their intimate meetings at every step. And I suffer unspeakably because I then have to accept the caresses of my husband - sometimes my sister does not wish; not accept his caresses - I'm afraid to push him to the worst. Nobody in the house knows anything, and I won't say they can't help me, I see and feel it.

I can't give myself advice. Leave? - and how will I feed my children (the girl entered the gymnasium this year), and will I do well by depriving the children of their father? Die? - what about children? Live together and endure? I don't know if that's good or bad either. All day long and all night long I think and think and suffer, and again I think and do not know what to decide on. The husband, too, apparently suffers, but I do not know the reason for his suffering: he does not speak; Yes, in general, we now try not to touch on this issue. In temperament he is quiet, not a spendthrift, phlegmatic. Your teaching is not to resist evil. But I can't figure out if that applies to this case. For the sake of all that is holy to you, I beg you, advise me what to do, how to act. I believe you, your word will be law for me. Whatever you advise me, I feel it will not be difficult for me to fulfill. I won't do anything until you answer me. Your advice will be to me the alms you are always eager to give to the poor. Maybe, in your opinion, I am not poor - in any case, explain to me that, this will also be alms. I beg you to help me. As long as I live, I will pray to God for your health. Respecting you more than anyone in the world."

1908

Is there pure love?

“Several times I re-read your Kreutzer Sonata, and it always produced such a heavy feeling on me, although I do not consider myself among the weak-nervous young ladies, that I could not sometimes fall asleep for several nights in a row. This was still two years ago. For a long time she did not fall into my hands, but just now I fell in love - I'll be frank, let me - became his bride, and I attacked her. That he is highly moral and good man I know, and so do my parents. I have known him and his family since I was nine years old. But when I read the Sonata again, thinking about what might happen after - our wedding was postponed for a year, when he will be of age - I felt unspeakably hard. Is it true, is it really not? pure love, is it not? What is this? Is everything really like that? He writes beautifully, read a lot of serious good books; I myself, as they say, read a lot beyond my years. Although both he and I good means, we wanted to work: he - to write, everyone recognizes his indisputable talent (he still does not publish and does not want to for anything), I wanted to help him with all my might, and then - do not laugh, I'm telling the truth - I wanted to do for the theater all the best: to help artists in their needs, to promote talents, to renew a good, classical repertoire; in general, I passionately love the theater, although not a professional actress. And what? If there is no pure, albeit conjugal, love, if the husband does not need an assistant - we wanted to achieve the goal together to the best of our ability - but only a woman, a female, then getting married is ridiculous, and not to love, you understand, at eighteen years old is impossible. Everything that we dreamed about, all our plans, thoughts, everything boils down to the fact that this is sensuality. Then it's not worth living, because how many collisions you have to endure, how much thirst for life.

“For God's sake, Lev Nikolaevich, explain, is it really all true?”

No, I would not like to die from cowardice, but because everything that seems good, pure, everything is just a decoration for sensuality, everything is disgusting and bad. For God's sake, Lev Nikolaevich, explain, is it all true? You know, I cherish this love so much and I'm so afraid to break the wolf So in the original. life and yours! I don’t sleep all night, I think about every word, I keep thinking that I understand it wrong. But I spoke with many people who have a reputation for being good and, most importantly, smart, and from no one to no avail, nothing. Who says: early to know. But how early, when I am declared a bride? I'm going crazy, I don't know what to think. For God's sake, help me figure it out, I'm completely confused. Forgive me, for God's sake, that I bother you, but only you and no one else can save me, just saved me, because since there is nothing good, everything is disgusting and dirty, a woman cannot live. Also, forgive the dirty and stupid letter, my hands are trembling with excitement. Your answer, if you only want to save me, will decide my life.”

Without date

Sources

• From letters to Tolstoy (According to the materials of the Tolstoy archive).

  Lev Tolstoy. literary heritage. T. 37–38. Book. 2. M., 1939.

Dear brother!

I considered this appeal most appropriate because in this letter I am addressing you not so much as a king, but as a man - a brother. In addition, it is also because I am writing to you as if from the next world, being in anticipation of imminent death.

I did not want to die without telling you what I think about your present activity and what it could be, what great benefit it could bring to millions of people and to you, and what great harm it could bring to people and to you, if will continue in the same direction in which it is going now.

A third of Russia is in a position of enhanced protection, that is, outside the law. The army of police officers - overt and covert - is increasing. Prisons, places of exile and penal servitude are overcrowded, over hundreds of thousands of criminals. political, to which the workers are now included. Censorship has reached the absurdity of prohibitions, to which it did not reach in worst time 40s. Religious persecutions have never been so frequent and cruel as they are now, and they are becoming more and more cruel and more frequent. Troops are concentrated everywhere in cities and factory centers and are sent out with live ammunition against the people. In many places there have already been fratricidal bloodsheds, and everywhere new and even more cruel ones are being prepared and will inevitably be.

And as a result of all this intense and cruel activity of the government, the agricultural people - those 100 million on which the power of Russia is based - despite the exorbitantly increasing state budget, or rather as a result of this increase, are impoverished every year, so that hunger has become a normal phenomenon. . And the same phenomenon was the general dissatisfaction with the government of all classes and a hostile attitude towards it.

And the reason for all this, obviously clear, is one: that your helpers assure you that by stopping every movement of life among the people, they thereby ensure the well-being of this people and your peace and security. But after all, it is more likely to stop the flow of the river than the ever-changing forward movement of mankind established by God. It is clear that people who benefit from this order of things and who say in the depths of their souls: “apres nous le deluge” * can and should assure you of this; but it is amazing how you, a free, wanting person, and a reasonable and kind person, can believe them and, following their terrible advice, do or allow to do so much evil for the sake of such an impossible intention as stopping the eternal movement of mankind from evil to good, from darkness to light.

* after us even a flood (fr.)

After all, you cannot fail to know that since the life of people has been known to us, the forms of this life, both economic and social, as well as religious and political, have constantly changed, moving from more rude, cruel and unreasonable to softer, humane and reasonable. .

Your advisers tell you that this is not true, that Orthodoxy and autocracy were once characteristic of the Russian people, so it is characteristic of them now and will be characteristic to the end of days, and that therefore, for the good of the Russian people, it is necessary at all costs to support these two related forms: religious belief And political structure. But this is a double lie. Firstly, it cannot be said that Orthodoxy, which was once characteristic of the Russian people, is characteristic of it now. From the reports of the chief procurator of the Synod, you can see that the most spiritual developed people people, despite all the disadvantages and dangers to which they are exposed, retreating from Orthodoxy, every year more and more go over to the so-called sects. Secondly, if it is true that Orthodoxy is characteristic of the people, then there is no need to support this form of belief so strongly and persecute those who deny it with such cruelty.

As for autocracy, it is exactly the same, if it was characteristic of the Russian people, when this people still believed that the tsar was an infallible earthly god and himself alone governs the people, then it is far from being characteristic of him now, when everyone knows or, as soon as a little they learn, they learn - firstly, that a good king is only “un heureux hasard” *, and that there can be and have been kings and monsters and madmen, like John IV or Paul, and secondly, what, what no matter how good he is, he cannot govern the 130 million people himself, but the people are governed by those close to the king, who care most about their position, and not about the welfare of the people. You will say: the king can choose for his assistants people who are disinterested and good. Unfortunately, the king cannot do this because he knows only a few dozen people who, by chance or by various intrigues, approached him and diligently blocked from him all those who could replace them. So the tsar chooses not from those thousands of living, energetic, truly enlightened, honest people who are striving for the public cause, but only from those about whom Beaumarchais spoke: “Mediocre et rampant et on parvient a tout” **. And if many Russian people are ready to obey the tsar, they cannot, without feeling insulted, obey the people of their own circle, whom they despise and who so often govern the people in the name of the tsar.

*happy accident (fr.)

** “Be insignificant and obsequious and you will achieve everything” (fr.). Tolstoy does not quite accurately quote Beaumarchais ("The Marriage of Figaro", Act 3, Figaro's remark: "Slavish mediocrity - that's who achieves everything." - Translation by N. Lyubimov).

You are probably misled about the love of the people for the autocracy and its representative, the tsar, by the fact that everywhere when you meet in Moscow and other cities, crowds of people run after you with shouts of “hurrah”. Do not believe that this is an expression of devotion to you - this is a crowd of curious people who will run in the same way for any unusual sight. Often, however, these people, whom you take as the spokesmen of the people's love for you, are nothing more than a crowd gathered and arranged by the police, which is supposed to portray the people devoted to you, as, for example, it was with your grandfather in Kharkov, when the cathedral was full of people , but the whole people consisted of disguised policemen.

If you could, like me, walk along the line of peasants stationed behind the troops along the entire railway, and listen to what these peasants say: the elders, sots, tenths, driven from neighboring villages and in the cold and slush without remuneration with their bread for several days waiting for passage, you would hear from the most real representatives of the people, simple peasants, all over the whole line of speech, completely disagreeing with love for the autocracy and its representative. If about 50 years ago, under Nicholas I, the prestige of tsarist power was still high, then over the past 30 years it has not ceased to fall and fell into Lately so that in all classes no one is embarrassed to boldly condemn not only the orders of the government, but the king himself, and even scold him and laugh at him.

Autocracy is an obsolete form of government, capable of meeting the demands of a people somewhere in central Africa, separated from the whole world, but not the demands of the Russian people, who are becoming more and more enlightened by the enlightenment common to the whole world. And therefore, it is possible to support this form of government and the Orthodoxy associated with it only, as it is done now, through any kind of violence: increased security, administrative exile, executions, religious persecutions, the prohibition of books, newspapers, perversion of education and, in general, all kinds of bad and cruel deeds. .

And such have been the affairs of your reign hitherto. Starting with your response to the Tver delegation, which aroused the indignation of the entire Russian society, where you called the most legitimate desires of the people "meaningless dreams" *, - all your orders about Finland ** about Chinese seizures ***, your draft of the Hague Conference, accompanied by the strengthening of the troops ** ** your weakening of self-government and strengthening of administrative arbitrariness, your support for persecution for the faith, your consent to the establishment of a wine monopoly, that is, trade from the government in poison that poisons the people, and, finally, your persistence in withholding corporal punishment, despite all the ideas that are made to you about the abolition of this senseless and completely useless measure that shames the Russian people - all these are actions that you could not have done if you had not set yourself, on the advice of your frivolous assistants, an impossible goal - not only to stop the life of the people, but to return them to previous, experienced state.

* Nicholas II, in his speech delivered to representatives of the Zemstvo and the nobility, warned them against "meaningless dreams of participating in the affairs of internal self-government" and declared that he would "guard the principles of autocracy."

** The tsarist government pursued a cruel policy of Russification of Finland. In 1900 the Russian language was declared official language; June 29 was introduced new law, according to which the Finns were to serve military service in the Russian army.

*** This refers to the intervention of a series foreign countries(Germany, USA, England, France, Japan, Italy, Austria-Hungary, tsarist Russia) in China 1900-1901. to put down the so-called Boxer Rebellion.

**** In 1899, on the initiative of Russia, a peace conference was convened in The Hague. At the same time, tsarism was preparing for a new war in the Far East.

Violent measures can oppress a people, but they cannot be controlled. The only means in our time to really govern the people is only to become the head of the people's movement from evil to good, from darkness to light, to lead them to achieve the goals closest to this movement. In order to be able to do this, it is necessary first of all to give the people the opportunity to express their desires and needs and, having listened to these desires and needs, to fulfill those of them that will meet the requirements not of one class or estate, but of its majority, the mass working people.

And the desires that the Russian people will now express, if they are given the opportunity to do so, in my opinion, will be the following:

First of all, the working people will say that they want to get rid of those exclusive laws that put them in the position of a pariah who does not enjoy the rights of all other citizens; then he will say that he wants freedom of movement, freedom of learning and freedom to profess the faith appropriate to his spiritual needs; and, most importantly, the entire 100 million people will unanimously say that they want freedom to use the land, that is, the abolition of the right to land ownership.

And it is precisely this abolition of the right to landed property that, in my opinion, is the immediate goal, the achievement of which the Russian government must make it its task in our time.

In each period of the life of mankind there is the nearest stage corresponding to the time of the realization of the best forms of life, to which it aspires. Fifty years ago the abolition of slavery was such an immediate step for Russia. In our time, such a stage is the liberation of the working masses from the minority that rules over them—what is called the labor question.

IN Western Europe the achievement of this goal is considered possible through the transfer of plants and factories to the common use of workers. Is this resolution of the question true or false, and is it achievable or not for Western nations, - it is obviously not applicable to Russia, what it is now. In Russia, where a huge part of the population lives on the land and is completely dependent on the big landowners, the emancipation of the workers obviously cannot be achieved by the transfer of factories and plants to common use. For the Russian people, such liberation can only be achieved by abolishing landed property and recognizing the land as common property—thus, which has long been the heartfelt desire of the Russian people and the fulfillment of which they still expect from the Russian government.

I know that these thoughts of mine will be taken by your advisers as the height of the frivolity and impracticality of a person who does not comprehend all the difficulties. government controlled, especially the idea of ​​recognizing the land as common national property; but I also know that in order not to be compelled to commit more and more cruel violence against the people, there is only one means, namely: to make it your task an end that would be ahead of the desires of the people. And, without waiting for the rolling person to hit his knees, to carry him yourself, that is, to go in the forefront of the realization of the best forms of life. And such a goal for Russia can only be the destruction of landed property. Only then can the government, without making, as it is now, unworthy and forced concessions to factory workers or student youth, without fear for its existence, be the leader of its people and really govern them.

Your advisers will tell you that the liberation of the land from the right of ownership is a fantasy and an impossible task. In their opinion, to make a 130 million living people stop living or show signs of life and squeeze it back into the shell from which it has grown a long time ago is not a fantasy and not only not impossible, but the most wise and practical deed. But after all, one only has to think seriously in order to understand what is really impossible, although it is being done, and what, on the contrary, is not only feasible, but timely and necessary, although it has not begun.

I personally think that in our time landed property is just as flagrant and obvious an injustice as it was serfdom 50 years ago. I think that its destruction will put the Russian people on a high degree independence, prosperity and contentment. I also think that this measure will undoubtedly destroy all that socialist and revolutionary irritation which is now kindling among the workers and threatening both the people and the government with the greatest danger.

But I may be mistaken, and the decision of this question in one direction or another can again be given only by the people themselves, if they have the opportunity to express themselves.

So, in any case, the first thing that now faces the government is the destruction of that oppression that prevents the people from expressing their desires and needs. It is impossible to do good to a person whom we will gag, so as not to hear what he desires for his own good. Only by knowing the desires and needs of the whole people or the majority of them, it is possible to govern the people and do good to them.

Dear brother, you have only one life in this world, and you can spend it painfully in vain attempts to stop the movement of mankind from evil to good, darkness to light, ordained by God, and you can, having delved into the needs and desires of the people and dedicating your life to fulfilling them, calmly and joyfully spend it in the service of God and people.

No matter how great your responsibility for those years of your reign, during which you can do much good and much evil, but even greater is your responsibility before God for your life here, on which your eternal life depends and which God did not give you for to prescribe all kinds of evil deeds, or even to participate in them and allow them, but in order to do his will. His will is to do not evil, but good to people.

Think about it not before people, but before God and do what God, that is, your conscience, tells you. And do not be embarrassed by the obstacles that you will meet if you step on new way life. These obstacles will be destroyed by themselves, and you will not notice them, unless what you do is not for the glory of the people, but for your soul, that is, for God.

Forgive me if I have inadvertently offended or upset you with what I have written in this letter. I was guided only by the desire for the good of the Russian people and you. Whether I have achieved this will be decided by the future, which I, in all likelihood, will not see. I did what I considered my duty.

Your brother who truly desires you true good

Lev Tolstoy.

P. A. STOLYPIN

I am writing to you about a very miserable person, the most miserable of all whom I now know in Russia. You know this man and, strange to say, love him, but you do not understand the full extent of his misfortune and do not pity him, as his position deserves. This person is you.

For a long time I have wanted to write to you and even began to write a letter to you not only as a brother in humanity, but as a person exceptionally close to me, as the son of a friend I love. But I did not have time to finish the letters, when your activity, more and more bad, criminal, more and more prevented me from finishing the letter I began to you with unfeigned love.

* A.D. Stolypin served as a staff officer in Sevastopol during the Crimean campaign. Tolstoy then established friendly relations with him, which remained until the death of Stolypin in 1899.

I cannot understand the blindness in which you can continue your terrible activity - an activity that threatens your material good(because every minute they want and can kill you *), ruining your good name, because already by your present activity you have already earned that terrible fame, in which always, as long as history lasts, your name will be repeated as an example of rudeness, cruelty and lies.

* On August 12, 1906, an explosion occurred at the dacha of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Minister of the Interior Stolypin near St. Petersburg, as a result of which more than 20 people were killed, about 30 were injured, including his son and daughter. Stolypin himself was not injured.

It destroys, most importantly, your activity, what is most important, your soul. After all, it would still be possible to use violence, as is always done in the name of some goal that gives good a large number people, appeasing them or changing them to best device their lives, you are doing neither, but the exact opposite. Instead of appeasement, you bring the irritation and embitterment of people to the last degree of tension with all these horrors of arbitrariness, executions, prisons, exiles and all kinds of prohibitions, and not only do not introduce any such new device that could improve the general condition of people, but introduce into in one, the most important issue of people's lives - in their relation to the land - the most rude, absurd assertion of that, the evil of which is already felt by the whole world and which must inevitably be destroyed - landed property.

After all, what is being done now with this absurd law of November 9*, which aims to justify landed property and does not have any reasonable argument for itself, as soon as the fact that this very thing exists in Europe (it’s time for us to think with our minds) - after all, what is being done now with the law of November 9th is similar to the measures that would have been taken by the government in the 50s not to abolish serfdom, but to establish it.

* This refers to the law of November 9, 1906, according to which peasants were granted the right to freely leave the community and move to farms and cuts. The creation of strong kulak farms as the backbone of autocracy in the countryside was one of the most important points in Stolypin's reactionary agrarian program.

It is so clear to me, standing with one foot in the grave and seeing all the horrors that are now being committed in Russia, that the achievement of the goal of appeasement, to which you, together with your accomplices, seem to be striving, is possible only in a completely opposite way than that which you are following: firstly, by ending violence and cruelty, in particular the death penalty that seemed impossible in Russia decades ago, and, secondly, by satisfying the demands of all truly thinking, enlightened people, on the one hand, and on the other - a huge mass of people who have never recognized and do not recognize the right of personal land ownership.

Yes, think, think about your activity, about your destiny, most importantly, about your soul, and either change the whole direction of your activity, or, if you cannot do this, get away from it, recognizing it as false and unfair.

I am writing this letter only to you, and it will remain unknown to anyone for, say, a month. From the first of October, if there is no change in your activity, this letter will be printed abroad*.

* The letter was not sent, because Tolstoy, on the experience of previous letters to Stolypin, realized the utopian nature of his intention: “L.N. said that it was incomprehensible to him how one could seriously address the tsar, Stolypin, listen to them, ”Makovitsky wrote.

>Reproduced from the edition:
L.N. Tolstoy, Collected. op. in 22 volumes, M., Ed. "Fiction",
volume 19-20, p. 502, 673, 1984

Dear brother!

I considered this appeal most appropriate because in this letter I am addressing you not so much as a king, but as a man - a brother. In addition, it is also because I am writing to you as if from the next world, being in anticipation of an imminent death.

I did not want to die without telling you what I think about your present activity and what it could be, what great benefit it could bring to millions of people and to you, and what great harm it could bring to people and to you, if will continue in the same direction in which it is going now.

A third of Russia is in a position of enhanced protection, that is, outside the law. The army of police officers - overt and covert - is increasing. Prisons, places of exile and penal servitude are overcrowded, over hundreds of thousands of criminals. political, to which the workers are now included. Censorship has reached the point of absurd prohibitions, which it did not reach at the worst time of the 1940s. Religious persecutions have never been so frequent and cruel as they are now, and they are becoming more and more cruel and more frequent. Troops are concentrated everywhere in the cities and factory centers and are sent out with live ammunition against the people. In many places there have already been fratricidal bloodsheds, and everywhere new and even more cruel ones are being prepared and will inevitably be.

And as a result of all this intense and cruel activity of the government, the agricultural people - those 100 million on whom the power of Russia is based - despite the exorbitantly increasing state budget, or rather as a result of this increase, are impoverished every year, so that hunger has become a normal phenomenon. . And the same phenomenon was the general dissatisfaction with the government of all classes and a hostile attitude towards it.

And the reason for all this, obviously clear, is one: that your helpers assure you that by stopping every movement of life among the people, they thereby ensure the well-being of this people and your peace and security. But after all, it is more likely to stop the flow of the river than the ever-changing forward movement of mankind established by God. It is clear that people who benefit from this order of things and who in the depths of their souls say: "apres nous le deluge", can and should assure you of this; but it is amazing how you, a free, wanting person, and a reasonable and kind person, can believe them and, following their terrible advice, do or allow to do so much evil for the sake of such an impossible intention as stopping the eternal movement of mankind from evil to good, from darkness to light.

After all, you cannot fail to know that since the life of people has been known to us, the forms of this life, both economic and social, as well as religious and political, have constantly changed, moving from more rude, cruel and unreasonable to softer, humane and reasonable. .

Your advisers tell you that this is not true, that Orthodoxy and autocracy were once characteristic of the Russian people, so it is characteristic of them now and will be characteristic to the end of days, and that therefore, for the good of the Russian people, it is necessary at all costs to support these two interconnected forms: religious belief and political structure. But this is a double lie. Firstly, it cannot be said that Orthodoxy, which was once characteristic of the Russian people, is characteristic of it now. From the reports of the Chief Procurator of the Synod, you can see that the most spiritually developed people of the people, despite all the disadvantages and dangers to which they are exposed, departing from Orthodoxy, every year more and more go over to the so-called sects. Secondly, if it is true that Orthodoxy is characteristic of the people, then there is no need to support this form of belief so strongly and persecute those who deny it with such cruelty.

As for autocracy, it is exactly the same, if it was characteristic of the Russian people, when this people still believed that the tsar was an infallible earthly god and himself alone governs the people, then it is far from being characteristic of him now, when everyone knows or, as soon as a little educate, learn - firstly, that a good king is only "un heureux hasard", and that kings can be and have been, and monsters and madmen, like John IV or Paul, and secondly, that, no matter what he was not good, he cannot govern the 130 million people himself, but the people are governed by the tsar's close associates, who care most about their position, and not about the welfare of the people. You will say: the king can choose for his assistants people who are disinterested and good. Unfortunately, the king cannot do this because he knows only a few dozen people who, by chance or by various intrigues, approached him and diligently blocked from him all those who could replace them. So the tsar chooses not from those thousands of living, energetic, truly enlightened, honest people who are striving for the public cause, but only from those about whom Beaumarchais spoke: “Mediocre et rampant et on parvient a tout.” And if many Russian people are ready to obey the tsar, they cannot, without feeling insulted, obey the people of their own circle, whom they despise and who so often govern the people in the name of the tsar.

You are probably misled about the love of the people for the autocracy and its representative, the tsar, by the fact that everywhere you meet in Moscow and other cities, crowds of people run after you with shouts of “Hurrah”. Do not believe that this is an expression of devotion to you - this is a crowd of curious people who will run in the same way for any unusual sight. Often, however, these people, whom you take as the spokesmen of the people's love for you, are nothing more than a crowd gathered and arranged by the police, which is supposed to portray the people devoted to you, as, for example, it was with your grandfather in Kharkov, when the cathedral was full of people , but the whole people consisted of disguised policemen.

If you could, like me, walk along the line of the peasants stationed behind the troops, along the entire railway, and listen to what these peasants say: elders, sotsky, tenth, driven from neighboring villages and in the cold and in the slush without remuneration with their bread for several days waiting for passage, you would hear from the most real representatives of the people, simple peasants, entirely along the entire line of speech, completely disagreeing with love for the autocracy and its representative. If 50 years ago, under Nicholas I, the prestige of tsarist power was still high, then over the past 30 years it has not ceased to fall and has recently fallen so that in all classes no one is embarrassed to boldly condemn not only the orders of the government, but the very king and even scold him and laugh at him.

Autocracy is an obsolete form of government, capable of meeting the demands of a people somewhere in central Africa, separated from the whole world, but not the demands of the Russian people, who are becoming more and more enlightened by the enlightenment common to the whole world. And therefore, it is possible to support this form of government and the Orthodoxy associated with it only, as it is done now, through any kind of violence: increased security, administrative exile, executions, religious persecutions, the prohibition of books, newspapers, perversion of education and, in general, all kinds of bad and cruel deeds. .

And such have been the affairs of your reign hitherto. Starting with your response to the Tver delegation, which aroused the indignation of the whole Russian society, where you called the most legitimate desires of the people "meaningless dreams" - all your orders about Finland about the Chinese seizures, your draft of the Hague Conference, accompanied by the strengthening of the troops, your weakening of self-government and the strengthening of administrative arbitrariness, your support for persecution for the faith, your consent to the establishment of a wine monopoly, that is, trade from the government in poison that poisons the people, and, finally, your persistence in withholding corporal punishment, despite all the ideas that are made to you about the abolition of this disgraceful Russian people senseless and absolutely useless measures - all these are actions that you could not have done if you had not set yourself, on the advice of your frivolous assistants, with an impossible goal - not only to stop the life of the people, but to return them to their former, experienced state.

Violent measures can oppress a people, but they cannot be controlled. The only means in our time to really govern the people is only to become the head of the people's movement from evil to good, from darkness to light, to lead them to achieve the goals closest to this movement. In order to be able to do this, it is necessary first of all to give the people the opportunity to express their desires and needs and, having listened to these desires and needs, to fulfill those of them that will meet the requirements not of one class or estate, but of its majority, the mass working people.

And the desires that the Russian people will now express, if they are given the opportunity to do so, in my opinion, will be the following:

First of all, the working people will say that they want to get rid of those exclusive laws that put them in the position of a pariah who does not enjoy the rights of all other citizens; then he will say that he wants freedom of movement, freedom of learning and freedom to profess the faith appropriate to his spiritual needs; and, most importantly, the entire 100 million people will unanimously say that they want freedom to use the land, that is, the abolition of the right to land ownership.

And it is precisely this abolition of the right to landed property that, in my opinion, is the immediate goal, the achievement of which the Russian government must make it its task in our time.

In each period of the life of mankind there is the nearest stage corresponding to the time of the realization of the best forms of life, to which it aspires. Fifty years ago the abolition of slavery was such an immediate step for Russia. In our time, such a stage is the liberation of the working masses from the minority that rules over them—what is called the labor question.

In Western Europe, the achievement of this goal is considered possible through the transfer of plants and factories to the common use of workers. Whether such a resolution of the question is true or false, and whether it is achievable or not for Western peoples, is obviously not applicable to Russia as it is now. In Russia, where a huge part of the population lives on the land and is completely dependent on the big landowners, the emancipation of the workers obviously cannot be achieved by the transfer of factories and plants to common use. For the Russian people, such liberation can only be achieved by abolishing landed property and recognizing the land as common property—thus, which has long been the heartfelt desire of the Russian people and the fulfillment of which they still expect from the Russian government.

I know that these thoughts of mine will be accepted by your advisers as the height of frivolity and impracticality of a person who does not comprehend all the difficulties of state administration, especially the idea of ​​recognizing the land as common people's property; but I also know that in order not to be compelled to commit more and more cruel violence against the people, there is only one means, namely: to make it your task an end that would be ahead of the desires of the people. And, without waiting for the rolling person to hit his knees, to carry him yourself, that is, to go in the forefront of the realization of the best forms of life. And such a goal for Russia can only be the destruction of landed property. Only then can the government, without making, as it is now, unworthy and forced concessions to factory workers or student youth, without fear for its existence, be the leader of its people and really govern them.

Your advisers will tell you that the liberation of the land from the right of ownership is a fantasy and an impossible task. In their opinion, to make a 130 million living people stop living or show signs of life and squeeze it back into the shell from which it has long grown is not a fantasy and not only not impossible, but the most wise and practical deed. But after all, one only has to think seriously in order to understand what is really impossible, although it is being done, and what, on the contrary, is not only feasible, but timely and necessary, although it has not begun.

I personally think that in our time landed property is just as flagrant and obvious an injustice as serfdom was 50 years ago. I think that its destruction will put the Russian people on a high degree of independence, prosperity and contentment. I also think that this measure will undoubtedly destroy all that socialist and revolutionary irritation which is now kindling among the workers and threatening both the people and the government with the greatest danger.

But I may be mistaken, and the decision of this question in one direction or another can again be given only by the people themselves, if they have the opportunity to express themselves.

So, in any case, the first thing that now faces the government is the destruction of that oppression that prevents the people from expressing their desires and needs. It is impossible to do good to a person whom we will gag, so as not to hear what he desires for his own good. Only by knowing the desires and needs of the whole people or the majority of them, it is possible to govern the people and do good to them.

Dear brother, you have only one life in this world, and you can spend it painfully in vain attempts to stop the movement of mankind from evil to good, darkness to light, ordained by God, and you can, having delved into the needs and desires of the people and dedicating your life to fulfilling them, calmly and joyfully spend it in the service of God and people.

No matter how great your responsibility for those years of your reign, during which you can do much good and much evil, but even greater is your responsibility before God for your life here, on which your eternal life depends and which God did not give you for to prescribe all kinds of evil deeds, or even to participate in them and allow them, but in order to do his will. His will is to do not evil, but good to people.

Think about it not before people, but before God and do what God, that is, your conscience, tells you. And do not be embarrassed by the obstacles that you will meet if you enter the new path of life. These obstacles will be destroyed by themselves, and you will not notice them, unless what you do is not for the glory of the people, but for your soul, that is, for God.

Forgive me if I have inadvertently offended or upset you with what I have written in this letter. I was guided only by the desire for the good of the Russian people and you. Whether I have achieved this will be decided by the future, which I, in all likelihood, will not see. I did what I considered my duty.

Your brother who truly desires you true good