Tolstoy

By October 1898 agreement had been reached with the Canadian authorities, and with the help of Kropotkin’s friend James Mavor, a Scottish-born Professor of Political Economy at the University of Toronto and Pavel Biryukov in Geneva, who acted as intermediary in the communications between Russia and Canada, the Lake Huron was chartered to make the first of several month-long sailings between the port of Batumi on the Black Sea and Halifax, Nova Scotia. The future Bolshevik Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich accompanied one of the sailings. He had a deep interest in the oral tradition of dukhobor hymns and psalms, and remained in Canada for a year in order to study their culture. Later, as secretary to Lenin, he would play a crucial role in protecting the Tolstoyans for a short while when they in turn became victims of persecution after the Bolshevik Revolution. Amongst the many other volunteers who also took part in the operation was Tolstoy’s son Sergey who set off first for England in August 1898 to have discussions with Chertkov and the Quakers. during his stay in London, Sergey and the two dukhobor representatives who had been visiting Chertkov were shown round the British Museum by Kropotkin. Wherever they went they were followed by a top-hatted Russian spy and curious glances aroused by the exotic clothes of the dukhobors, who were dressed in traditional blue beshmets (the belted knee-length coats worn by the Caucasian Cossacks), baggy trousers and wool caps.⁹⁸ From London, Sergey went to Paris to help negotiate first French rights to Resurrection, and then in december he accompanied 2,140 dukhobors on the first sailing to Canada.⁹⁹ Tolstoy was overjoyed by the rapprochement with his eldest son.¹⁰⁰

The exertion involved in writing and publishing Resurrection in serial form took a heavy toll on Tolstoy’s health, and news that he had fallen ill spread rapidly throughout Russia. One person who was greatly concerned was Anton Chekhov, who a year earlier had gone to live in exile in the Crimea in a desperate attempt to stem the rapid advance of tuberculosis. He had suffered his first serious haemorrhage in Moscow in March 1897, and been taken to a clinic near Tolstoy’s house. After Tolstoy came to visit him and spent hours talking to him about immortality, he had suffered another haemorrhage.¹⁰¹ Even though he was in faraway Yalta, Chekhov not only managed to procure a copy of Resurrection the minute it was published as a complete novel, but had already finished it by the end of January 1900, as he declared in a letter to the journalist Mikhail Menshikov: ‘I read it straight through in one gulp, not in instalments or in fits and starts. It is a magnificent work of art.’¹⁰² In this letter, Chekhov also confessed that Tolstoy’s illness had alarmed him and kept him in a ‘constant state of tension’. He went on to speak for no doubt millions of Russians when he explained why that was. It is a remarkable letter that deserves quoting at length:

11. Dmitry Khilkov (left) and Sergey Lvovich Tolstoy (right) standing amongst a group of those accompanying the Dukhobors to Canada, 1899

I fear the death of Tolstoy. If he were to die, a large empty space would appear in my life. In the first place, there is no other person whom I love as I love him; I am not a religious person, but of all faiths I find his the closest to me and the most congenial. Secondly, when literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know that you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be because Tolstoy achieves for everyone. What he does serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature. Thirdly, Tolstoy stands proud, his authority is colossal, and so long as he lives, bad taste in literature, all vulgarity, insolence and snivelling, all crude, embittered vainglory, will stay banished into outer darkness. He is the one person whose moral authority is sufficient in itself to maintain so-called literary fashions and movements on an acceptable level. Were it not for him the world of literature would be a flock of sheep without a shepherd, a stew in which it would be hard for us to find our way.¹⁰³

In fact, it was the much younger Chekhov who would die first.