In January 1882, hoping to understand the roots of social evil and ways in which it might be alleviated more deeply, Tolstoy volunteered to take part in conducting the census. He chose one of the most notorious parts of Moscow, full of shelters for the homeless and the outcast. He spoke to people, listened to their life stories and gave out significant amounts of money. For a while Tolstoy sought to advance plans for a charity that would collect money by subscription and administer the relief. This venture failed. The rich were not interested in providing the required funds and the poor themselves tended to spend the money Tolstoy gave them on drinking, gambling and fornication.
Charity was not an answer, but Tolstoy could never accept the idea that any problem was completely insoluble. He spent several years working on an essay in which he tried to apply his new religious views to practical social issues. The title What then Must We Do? openly echoed that of Chernyshevsky’s banned novel What Is to Be Done?, in which the main female character organized cooperatives among working-class girls, often real or potential prostitutes, and managed to put their lives back on track. Chernyshevsky did not doubt that given support, guidance and education, the poor would rationally choose what was more beneficial for them.
Tolstoy knew better. He spent time and money researching the reactions of the destitute to the patronizing help of intellectuals. He soon learned that while small gifts, commonly of two or three kopecks, were met with a sort of ritual gratitude, attempts to donate significant sums only provoked animosity and resentment towards the benefactor. The poor interpreted excessive generosity as a paternalistic attempt to subjugate them to the rules and discipline of a society they rejected. Anger and cheating served as perverse means to defend their human dignity.
In his essay Tolstoy proceeded from his own first-hand experience of big city misery to address the problems of division of labour, the nature of money, property, taxation and so on. The structure of his argument was rambling and even included a detailed history of Britain’s colonization of the islands of Fiji, but his conclusions were clear and straightforward. He was convinced that the lifestyle of the leisured classes, centred on artificial needs and dependent upon taxation and property rights, brought destitution to working people and could only be sustained through coercive institutions like the army, the courts and the police.
A social and political order based on violence and injustice was rapidly losing the air of legitimacy it had once held in the eyes of the oppressed. The only way for the rich to avoid imminent catastrophe was to renounce privilege and go back to manual labour, a natural life and the eternal principles of Christian morality. The nineteenth century had seen many refutations of modernity, but no other mainstream thinker had dared to be so uncompromising.
As far as Tolstoy was concerned, no idea, belief or conviction had any value unless it shaped personal behaviour. It took him several years to overhaul his lifestyle completely, but he was constantly making changes. He began working in the fields, wearing peasant clothes and grew a peasant-style beard that was easier to take care of. He reverted to simple food, gradually becoming a complete vegetarian, stopped smoking and drinking and renounced the hunting that had once been his favourite sport. He explained each step in a passionate article. Tolstoy dismissed his personal servants and started to bring water to the house, cut wood and clean his room. The most difficult thing to get used to, by his own admission, was taking out and washing his chamber pot, but he did that too. He also renounced financial transactions and carried only small amounts of cash for the needy. Arguably the most eccentric of his new preoccupations was shoemaking, something he engaged in with such real passion that every success in the craft caused childlike happiness.
Ilya Repin, Leo Tolstoy Ploughing, 1887, oil on card.
Tolstoy’s behaviour provoked in people who surrounded him emotions that ranged from mild amusement to outright indignation. Fet ordered a pair of boots, insisted on paying six roubles and provided an invoice with a pledge to wear them regularly. Most likely, he did not keep his promise. The boots are still on display in the Tolstoy museum in Moscow and do not look worn out. As an atheist, conservative and aesthete, Fet could not approve the ‘new direction’ taken by his friend.
Turgenev’s feelings were stronger. In June 1883, as he readied himself for death, Turgenev wrote a farewell letter to Tolstoy. Too weak to hold a pen, he scribbled with a penciclass="underline"
I cannot recover – there is no use thinking of it. I am writing to you particularly to tell you how glad I am to have been your contemporary and to express to you my last, sincere request. My friend, return to literary activity! That gift came to you from whence come all the rest. Ah, how happy I should be, if I could think that my request would have an impact on you!! . . . My friend, great writer of the Russian land, heed my request. Let me know if you receive this bit of paper, and permit me once more to embrace you heartily, heartily and your wife and all yours. I can’t write more, too tired. (TP, p. 203)
He died two months later. Tolstoy was moved deeply enough to agree, in spite of his hatred of public ceremonies, to give a speech at Turgenev’s commemoration in Moscow. The appearance of Tolstoy’s name in the announcement made the authorities ban the event altogether. At the same time this final manifestation of Turgenev’s desire to guide him and his excessive rhetorical flourish irritated Tolstoy. Much later he repeated the formula ‘the great writer of the Russian land’, sarcastically adding ‘and what about water?’3 Still, he partially ‘heeded’ Turgenev’s request. After several years he resumed writing prose, but always regarded this as being subordinate to his role as a moral and religious preacher.
The people who were most alarmed by Tolstoy’s evolution were the members of his family. In May 1881, in the wake of the riots and Jewish pogroms that followed the assassination of Alexander II, Tolstoy recorded his impression of one family conversation:
Seryozha [Sergei, his eldest son] said: ‘Christ’s teaching is well known, but it is difficult’. I said: ‘You would not say it is difficult to run out of a blazing room through the only door . . .’ They began to talk. Hanging is necessary, flogging is necessary, to prevent the people from rioting – that would be terrible. But hitting Jews – that’s not a bad thing. Then without rhyme or reason, they talked about fornication and with relish. Somebody is mad – either them or me. (Ds, p. 175)
Two months later he was appalled by an ‘enormous dinner with champagne’ at which all the Tolstoy and Kuzminsky children wore belts that cost the equivalent of a month’s salary for the hungry and overworked peasants around them. He discussed it with Tatiana Kuzminsky, who used to understand him better than others. After that he contemplated ‘until morning’ about his irreparable rift with the people who were so close to him, writing in despair, ‘They are not human beings’ (Ds, pp. 176–7).
His wife was the main culprit. She was accustomed to shifts in his ‘fickle opinions’, but this crisis threatened the very foundations of her life. Initially Sofia was inclined to interpret it in line with her old fears. After one of their quarrels in 1882, she recorded in her diary that, for the first time in twenty years of living under one roof, Leo had spent the night in a different bed. She was convinced that if he would not come to her, it meant that he loved another woman. Finally he appeared and they reconciled in the usual way. Sofia came to realize that her family problems were not caused by other women, but that did not make her any happier or less jealous.