Leo Tolstoy

One can discern here not only a criticism of Tolstoy’s ethical theories, but a clear feeling that her husband’s sympathy for the poor undermined her status in his life. She belonged to the world of his novels and his rejection of prose challenged her own perception of her identity and mission of ‘a writer’s wife who takes our authorial business close to heart’ – as she once put it in a letter to her sister.⁴

Tolstoy’s new philosophy valued universal love for humankind above ‘exclusive love’ for the objects of personal commitment. In his translation of the Gospels he summarized the relevant lines from Luke and Matthew as ‘For those who understood my teachings neither father, nor mother, wife or children or property would have any meaning.’ Tolstoy saw the absolute embodiment of ‘exclusive love’ in sexuality. The Christian ideal demanded total chastity. Even if original sin could be partially redeemed by procreation, it remained immoral not only outside the family, but within it as well.

Until late in his life Tolstoy felt carnal desires for his wife, but always regarded them as a sign of weakness he was unable to overcome. Sofia repeatedly wrote in her diary and autobiography that after their most passionate lovemaking Lev became cold and detached. In 1908, before his eightieth birthday, he complained in the ‘secret diary’ that his multiple biographies would not discuss his ‘attitude to the seventh commandment’: ‘Although I have never once been unfaithful to my wife, I have experienced loathsome, criminal desire for her. Nothing of this will appear and ever appears in biographies. And this is very important’ (Ds, p. 423).

Tolstoy knew that after his death his diary could become available to his wife and even be made public, yet there is no reason to doubt his claim of being always faithful to his wife. He was never shy about blaming himself for actual or imaginable sins. Once, in 1879, he was close to succumbing to temptation. Heading for an encounter with a house cook, Domna, he was stopped by his son, who asked him for help with his lessons. Tolstoy was certain that divine intervention had saved him, but for a while he lost confidence in his strength to resist the Devil. He asked Vasily Alekseev, the tutor of his children, to accompany him all the time to avoid falling into the abyss. Five years later he described the same episode in detail in a repentant letter to Vladimir Chertkov.

It is notable that the maniacally jealous and suspicious Sofia never accused him of adultery in her own diaries, even though they were full of bitter and venomous reproaches. In her memoirs, written with the specific goal of settling scores with her husband and listing all his offences against her, she wrote that not a single time in her life had she experienced his infidelity. Still, she could not reconcile herself to the role of necessary evil she had to play in her husband’s moral universe. She refused to ‘follow’ Tolstoy, because she knew that he was not calling her anywhere.

Rumours about Tolstoy’s new religious beliefs spread quickly. Scores of visitors eager to discuss God, morality, life and love with the most famous Russian writer flocked to Yasnaya Polyana and Tolstoy’s Moscow house in Khamovniki. Most of them were peasants disillusioned with the official Church, persecuted sectarians, self-appointed prophets, wanderers and mystics – ‘the dark ones’, as Sofia contemptuously called them. Both Sofia and Alexandra Tolstoy wrote about Vasily Siutaev, a peasant from the Tver region, who preached in favour of fraternal relations among people, denied the division of property, condemned church rituals and educational institutions and exerted influence on the author of War and Peace.

The most important visitor Tolstoy ever received, however, came from his own social milieu. Vladimir Chertkov belonged to the cream of the Russian aristocracy and was exceptionally rich. As an officer in an elite guards regiment he had led a dissipated life, but suddenly repented and engaged himself in the education of peasants and charitable work. He had spent time in England, where he became close to the British evangelicals. When he came to see Tolstoy for the first time in 1883, Chertkov was 29: the remaining 53 years of his life, half before and half after Tolstoy’s death, were wholly dedicated to the dissemination of Tolstoy’s work and the popularization of his teachings. He became Tolstoy’s closest friend and most devoted and trusted disciple.

Vasily Siutaev (the first ‘dark one’), 1880s.

Portrait of Vladimir Chertkov by Mikhail Nesterov, 1890.