Anna Karenina

18 Decembrist: The sudden death of the emperor Alexander I on 19 November 1825 was followed by a period of confusion about the succession. A conspira torial group of officers and noblemen, opposed to imperial absolutism and favouring a constitutional monarchy or even a republican government, seized the occasion and gathered their forces in the Senate Square of Petersburg on 14 December 1825. Hence the name ‘Decembrists’. The uprising was promptly quashed by loyal contingents of the Imperial Guard; one hundred and twenty-one men were arrested, of whom five were executed and the rest stripped of their rights and fortunes and exiled to Siberia.

19 one of the most expensive regiments: A commanding officer received symbolic pay and was expected to outfit his regiment at his own expense.

20 Serpukhovskoy ... back from Central Asia: In 1873 the Khiva khanate was united with Russia. Events in Central Asia, judging by the press of the time, aroused considerable international interest. Quick and brilliant military careers could be made in the Turkestan of the 1870s, of which Serpukhovskoy is a typical example.

21 Russian communists: Various radical groups of the 1860s, including the followers of the writer N. G. Chernyshevsky (1828-89), advocated forms of communism based on the theories of French socialists such as Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and Saint-Simon (1760-1825), prior to the emergence of Marxian communism.

22 Hélène: See note 12, Part Three.

23 justice of the peace: The legal reform of 1864 handed all local civil disputes over to the justices of the peace. Their hearings were open, contentious, oral and equitable. The nobility considered this a loss of power, and complaints about justices of the peace were common among landowners of the time.

24 serf ... emancipation: The Russian serfs were emancipated by the emperor Alexander II in 1861.

25 Peter, Catherine, Alexander: The emperors Peter the Great (1672-1725) and Alexander II (1818-81) and the empress Catherine the Great (1729-96) were the most important reformers of the Russian empire. The potato, for instance, was forcibly introduced by Catherine the Great. The period ‘before the tsars’ was that of the princedoms of Novgorod, Kiev and Moscow.

26 Tosscan ... Bitiug: ‘Tosscan’ appears to come from ‘Toscan’ (i.e. ‘Tuscan’), punningly distorted by Nikolai Ivanych. Percherons are a great breed of work and draft horses from La Perche in Normandy; the Bitiug, named after an affluent of the Don, is a Russian breed of strong, heavy-set cart horses.

27 Mulhouse system: In the 1850s the German economist Hermann Schulze-Delitsch (1808-83) proposed an arrangement of independent banks and cooperatives, with the idea of reconciling the interests of workers and owners. Companies organized on his principles appeared in Russia in 1865. Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-64), a German socialist, was the founder of the German Universal Workers’ Union. Instead of Schulze-Delitsch cooperatives, he favoured manufacturing associations supported by the state. The ‘Mulhouse system’ refers to a society for the improvement of workers’ lives founded by a factory-owner named Dolfuss in the Alsatian city of Mulhouse. A commercial undertaking with philanthropic aims, it built houses which were sold to workers on credit.

28 Frederick: Poland was first partitioned between Russia, Austria and Prussia in 1772. The king of Prussia at that time was Frederick the Great (1712-86).

29 Spencer: British philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), founder of the evolutionary school, believed that education does not lead to national prosperity but that prosperity is a necessary condition for the development of education. A Russian translation of an article by Spencer on education was published in 1874.

30 Mill: See note 5, Part One. Mill’s book on political economy was translated into Russian by the radical writer N. G. Chernyshevsky (see note 21, Part Three), author of the influential novel What Is to Be Done? (1863).

31 Kauffmann, Jones, Dubois, Miccelli: These are invented names, parodying the pedantic manner of referring to obscure authorities.

32 Franklin: Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), American writer, inventor, patriot and statesman. As a young man, Tolstoy kept a diary in the manner of Franklin‘s, in which he chronicled his own moral shortcomings and exhorted himself to improve.

33 anointed: The Orthodox sacrament of the anointing of the sick is a sacrament of healing which, like the Roman Catholic sacrament of extreme unction, has come to be associated with terminal illness.

Part Four