Great Britain: Greenwich bomb outrage.
Socialist Revolutionary Party founded in Russia.
Pobedonostsev urges the Tsar to imprison Tolstoy.
Spanish-American War. Curies discover radium.
Russian Social Democrat Party founded.
DATE
AUTHOR’S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
1899
Publishes
Resurrection
(begun 1889). Son Sergei accompanies Dukhobors to Canada.
Leonov, Olesha, Nabokov born.
Gorky:
Foma Gordeyev
.
Chekhov:
The Lady with the Dog
.
1900
Freud:
The Interpretation of Dreams
.
Chekhov:
In the Ravine
.
1901
Excommunicated by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. Writes
Reply to the Synod’s Edict
. Convalescing in Crimea, meets Gorky, Chekhov.
Chekhov:
Three Sisters
. Fadeyev born.
1902
Writes to the Tsar about the evils of autocracy and private land ownership. Finishes
What is Religion?
Gorky:
The Lower Depths
.
Death of Zola.
1903
Protests against anti-Jewish pogroms in Kishinyov and contributes three short stories for a benefit anthology published in Warsaw. Writes
After the Ball
.
Kuprin:
The Duel
.
1903–6
Writes
Reminiscences
.
1904
Death of brother Sergei. Finishes
Hadji Murad
. Writes a pamphlet against the war with Japan,
Bethink Yourselves!
, published in England. Writes
The Forged Coupon, Divine and Human
.
Chekhov:
The Cherry Orchard
.
Death of Chekhov.
Blok:
Verses about the Beautiful Lady
.
Bely:
Gold in Azure
.
1905
Writes
Alyosha Gorshok, Fëdor Kuzmich. The One Thing Needful seized by police
.
Rilke:
The Book of Hours
.
Sholokhov, Panova born.
Sologub:
The Petty Demon
(to 1907).
1906
Writes
What For?
Wife seriously ill
1907
Police raid Yasnaya Polyana and seize books.
Gorky:
Mother
.
Blok:
The Snow Mask
.
Bryusov:
The Fiery Angel
.
1908
Writes
I Cannot Be Silent
, a protest against the hanging of the 1905 revolutionaries. Tolstoy’s secretary Gusyev arrested and exiled. Chertkov returns from exile to live nearby.
Andreyev:
The Seven who were Hanged
.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Student riots: temporary closure of universities.
Boer War begins.
Russia occupies Manchuria.
Social Democrat Party brings out newspaper The Spark.
Great Britain: Death of Queen Victoria; accession of Edward VII.
Wave of political assassinations in Russia.
Boer War ends.
Lenin’s faction (Bolsheviks) prevails at Social Democrat Party congress in London.
Massacre of Jews in Kishinyov.
Lenin launches newspaper Forward.
Russo-Japanese War (to 1905); Russian fleet destroyed in Tsushima Straits.
First Russian Revolution: Bloody Sunday, general strike, Tsar’s October Manifesto. Witte becomes First Minister.
Meeting of the first Duma (elected parliament).
Austria annexes Bosnia-Herzegovina.
DATE
AUTHOR’S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
1908
cont
.
Growing quarrels with his wife and Chertkov about mss. and copyright ownership.
1909
Draws up will relinquishing copyright on his published works since 1881 and his unpublished works from before 1881. Chertkov expelled, goes to Moscow.
Bely:
The Silver Dove, Ashes, The Urn
.
Wells:
Tono-Bungay
.
1910
More quarrels with wife (now seriously unbalanced) about wills and copyright. Tolstoy leaves home and sets out to visit the monastery at Optina Pustyn. Taken ill on a train, he dies at the station of Astapovo on 7 November, aged 82. His body is buried without religious rites on the edge of the forest near Yasnaya Polyana.
Kuprin:
The Pit
.
Bunin:
The Village
.
Forster:
Howards End
.
Rilke:
Sketches of Malte Laurids Brigge
.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Blériot flies the English Channel.
Great Britain: Death of Edward VII; accession of George V.
Street demonstrations and strikes in response to Tolstoy’s death.
THE RAID
A VOLUNTEER’S STORY
The portions of this story enclosed in square brackets are those the Censor suppressed; they were published in English for the first time in Aylmer Maude’s translation (1935).
Chapter I
[WAR always interested me: not war in the sense of manœuvres devised by great generals – my imagination refused to follow such immense movements, I did not understand them – but the reality of war, the actual killing. I was more interested to know in what way and under the influence of what feeling one soldier kills another than to know how the armies were arranged at Austerlitz and Borodinó.
I had long passed the time when, pacing the room alone and waving my arms, I imagined myself a hero instantaneously slaughtering an immense number of men and receiving a generalship as well as imperishable glory for so doing. The question now occupying me was different: under the influence of what feeling does a man, with no apparent advantage to himself, decide to subject himself to danger and, what is more surprising still, to kill his fellow men? I always wished to think that this is done under the influence of anger, but we cannot suppose that all those who fight are angry all the time, and I had to postulate feelings of self-preservation and duty.
What is courage – that quality respected in all ages and among all nations? Why is this good quality – contrary to all others – sometimes met with in vicious men? Can it be that to endure danger calmly is merely a physical capacity and that people respect it in the same way that they do a man’s tall stature or robust frame? Can a horse be called brave, which fearing the whip throws itself down a steep place where it will be smashed to pieces; or a child who fearing to be punished runs into a forest where it will lose itself; or a woman who for fear of shame kills her baby and has to endure penal prosecution; or a man who from vanity resolves to kill a fellow creature and exposes himself to the danger of being killed?