Tolstoy had begun writing The Kingdom of God Is Within Us before the famine. On a train to Begichevka he had met soldiers sent to suppress riots caused by a dispute between peasants and a landowner over a mill. According to his follower and early biographer Pavel Biryukov, this encounter with decent, open-faced young men who were nonetheless ready to kill their brethren made as powerful an impression on Tolstoy as that of the death of his brother or the sight of the execution he had witnessed in Paris. In the conclusion to the book, Tolstoy explained this transformation of ordinary people into professional torturers and murderers as a kind of social hypocrisy that allowed a man to believe the atrocities he had to perform were necessary and justifiable. Tolstoy conceded that a person may not always be able to follow his conscience, but at least he should not deceive himself about the real motives for his behaviour. This sincerity was the first step on the road to moral regeneration. Anyone who let the ‘Kingdom of God’ enter his soul would finally find himself unable to resist it.
To submit such a work to a Russian publisher would have been pointless. Having finished the book in 1893, Tolstoy immediately sent it abroad both for translation and publication in the original. Rules were more lenient for books in foreign languages as their audience was inevitably limited to the educated classes, but in this case the Russian censors moved quickly to ban imports of even the French translation of ‘the most harmful book they had ever forbidden’ (CW, XXVIII, p. 366). Nevertheless, this did not stop any literate Russian from reading it in hectographed copies.
Living according to the rules of the Kingdom of God was not easy. In September 1891, after prolonged conflicts, Tolstoy finally convinced his wife to publish a statement renouncing copyright for the works he had written after 1881, the year of his conversion. His earlier works, including the two great novels, remained Sofia’s exclusive property. She also continued publishing and selling Tolstoy’s collected works, even if their contents were not protected by copyright. The next spring Tolstoy gave his land away. Renouncing his rights as a landowner, he transferred ownership not to the peasants but to his wife and children.
This tortured compromise might possibly have worked as a divorce arrangement, but Tolstoy continued to live in the same house. He now had the dubious status of a dependant without responsibility for the well-being of his family and legally unable to interfere in any conflict that might arise between his family and the peasants. In his diaries, letters and conversations Tolstoy often expressed his revulsion at the ‘luxurious’ life he was living. Today’s visitors to his houses at Yasnaya Polyana and in Moscow will struggle to notice this luxury. The houses seem modest, if not ascetic, and inadequate for such a large family. Tolstoy, however, compared himself not to his peers, but to the hungry peasants jammed in dirty huts. He found the minimal comfort he enjoyed unbearable, directly contradicting what he was preaching to a world that could observe and question the conflict between his teachings and his lifestyle.
Tolstoy’s working room in Yasnaya Polyana.
The copyright agreement was no less precarious. In early 1895 Tolstoy promised his new story ‘Master and Man’ to Liubov’ Gurevich, editor of the magazine Severnyi vestnik (Northern Messenger). In this story a rich merchant, Vasily Brekhunov, rushing to complete a profitable deal in spite of repeated warnings, orders his coachman Nikita to drive him in a snowstorm. They lose their way in the country at night. Suddenly, in an outburst of joy and tenderness he has never experienced before, Brekhunov unbuttons his fur coat and warms Nikita with his body, saving his life but dying himself instead.
Sofia had, by this time, reluctantly reconciled herself to the fact that her husband would publish his works for the benefit of the ‘dark ones’ in cheap editions from ‘Intermediary’. But Tolstoy’s preference for a highbrow literary magazine over her collected works edition insulted her. She concluded that his decision had been caused by an infatuation with ‘the scheming half-Jewess’ (SAT-Ds, I, p. 233) Gurevich and went into a bout of jealous rage. Intending, or pretending to intend, to commit suicide, she rushed out of the house into the freezing night in her gown and slippers. Tolstoy caught her on the way and convinced her to return, but in the following days she made two new attempts to escape and was brought back by children. Later Sofia wrote that she had relished the thought of freezing herself to death like the character in Tolstoy’s story. Finally, Leo backed down and agreed to let her publish the story simultaneously with Northern Messenger. Sofia recorded this in her diary on 21 February 1895. The same night their six-year-old son Ivan (Vanechka) fell ill. He died two days later.
Both Tolstoys knew that Vanechka was their last child and loved him with the tenderness and devotion of late parents. The boy himself was angelic: intelligent, kind, meek, totally devoid of childish egotism and endowed with a unique ability to understand others. As is typical in dysfunctional families, both parents were pulling their children in opposite directions: the daughters took Leo’s side; the sons, with the exception of Sergei, the eldest, who tried to remain neutral and remote, sympathized with their mother. Vanechka was the only one who tried to bring the family together, showing unending love and compassion for both estranged spouses: ‘Isn’t it better to die than to see how people get angry?’ he once said. The physical and moral suffering he experienced as a result of his parents’ quarrels forced them to control their words and behaviour. In a way, he was the only remaining link that still united the family.
Shortly before his death, speaking to his mother about his late brother Alyosha (Alexei), Vanechka had asked whether it was true that children who died before they were seven became angels. Sofia told him that many people believed that. He replied, ‘It would be better for me, Mama, if I too were to die before seven. My birthday will be soon. And if I don’t die, dear Mama, let me fast so that I will not have sins’ (SAT-Ds, I, 512). After that he started to give away his toys and drawings as presents to his siblings and the servants.
‘Mother is terrible in her grief. All her life was in him, she gave him all her love. Papa is the only one who can help her, but he suffers himself terribly and cries all the time,’ wrote Tolstoy’s daughter Maria in a letter to a friend.7 Tolstoy, who believed that Vanechka would be ‘his only son to continue the work of God after him’ (SAT-Ds, I, p. 515), had turned overnight from a strong and energetic middle-aged man into a sickly old one. He confessed to his wife that for the first time in his life he felt completely hopeless.
The young writer and future Nobel Prize laureate Ivan Bunin recalls how Tolstoy tried to overcome this despair. Bunin, who visited him in Moscow around that time, began telling Tolstoy how much he admired the recently published ‘Master and Man’:
[Tolstoy] turned red and waved his hands saying: ‘Oh, let’s not talk about this! It is a horrible thing; it is so worthless that I am ashamed even to go out on the street.’ On that evening his face was thin, dark and severe. His seven-year-old son Vanya had died only a short time before; so after disavowing ‘Master and Man’ he began to talk about his son. ‘Yes, yes, he was a dear charming boy. But what does it mean that he is dead? There is no death. As long as we continue to love him, to live by him, he has not died.’