On 29 August, three weeks after arriving back in Starogladkovskaya, Tolstoy received a reply from Nekrasov, informing him that he had been impressed by Childhood and would be printing it in the next issue. Tolstoy was over the moon – until he finally received the September issue of the journal at the end of October. He was incensed to see that his text had been mutilated by the censor and, furthermore, was now called A History of My Childhood.57 He had expressly not set out to write the story of his childhood, he remonstrated in the angry letter he drafted to Nekrasov, which he ultimately (and wisely) decided not to send. Tolstoy was also crestfallen not to be paid a royalty. He was desperately short of money, and unaware of the practice of Russian literary journals not to pay fledgling authors for their first publication. He had no option but to acquiesce, and at least had the enviable consolation of having an editor who wanted to publish more of his writing. Tolstoy had a very warm reception for his first published work. Critics particularly praised the gifts of psychological analysis which brought Childhood to life. The Russian reading public were also full of praise for the mysterious but extremely promising new author. The members of the author’s own family, who had not been forewarned, reacted with delighted surprise when they discovered his identity.58
That autumn Tolstoy carried on writing. He was teeming with new ideas, and he began to think about resigning from the army: the success of Childhood showed him where his future lay, and it was not with the military. He now began to work on several things at once. First of all he resolved to add to Childhood by writing Boyhood. At the same time, as he became increasingly occupied by religious ideas, he began to conceive a novel about a Russian landowner wanting to improve the life of his peasantry. Finally, he was keen to publish stories about the Caucasus. This was the project he brought to completion first. He had already started writing stories inspired by his own experiences with the army, and in late December he sent Nekrasov the manuscript of ‘The Raid – A Volunteer’s Story’. It was published the following March, again with cuts dictated by the censor. With ‘The Raid’, Tolstoy turned a new page in the history of Russian writing about the Caucasus. Thanks to Pushkin and Lermontov, readers were used to a romantic and mythologised view of the Caucasus and its peoples. The story Tolstoy made of his memories of the first sortie against the Chechens which he had observed close-hand the previous year was highly realistic. Just beneath the surface we can also detect a nascent anti-militaristic stance.
The spring of 1853 was both the high point and the low point of Tolstoy’s time in the Caucasus. He took part in further skirmishes with Chechen rebels, and was commended for his bravery. After being obliged to cede the St George Cross he deserved to an old soldier who stood to receive a decent pension as a result, he was promoted to ensign instead, but then ended up being arrested when a particularly riveting game of chess led him to miss parade. His promotion was therefore cancelled (and he had to wait until 1854 for it to be reinstated). Tolstoy was bitterly disappointed to miss the St George Cross again and there were other disappointments. His brother Nikolay had decided to resign from the army the previous autumn, having served in the army for eight years,59 and in February 1853 his papers came through, permitting him to retire at the rank of staff-captain. Tolstoy was already quite lonely in the Caucasus and he felt Nikolay’s absence keenly. His financial affairs were also still in a dire state. In April his brother-in-law sold another village on his estate to provide him with funds, which meant losing another 350 acres, plus twenty-six serfs and their families.60 Even his writing suffered: the story he began about a young man in Moscow who goes to a high-society ball, then to a tavern to hear the gypsies was suddenly dropped and never picked up again.
Because fortune had not yet smiled on Tolstoy’s military career, he had initially delayed tendering his resignation, thinking it would be just too humiliating for him to return to civilian life as a retired cadet. In the end, however, he decided he would go ahead anyway, and he submitted his resignation request on 30 May 1853.61 Yet again he was unlucky. Russia had just broken off diplomatic relations with Turkey, and after its invasion of the Romanian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in June, no officer was permitted to apply for leave or resign. In July Tolstoy returned to Pyatigorsk, where he joined Nikolay and also his sister Masha, whom he had not seen for two years. She had come to spend the summer taking the waters at Pyatigorsk with her husband. It was not a particularly happy time for Tolstoy, who was feeling irritable and restless, and it was made no better by the realisation that he would have to sell the main Yasnaya Polyana mansion to rectify his financial affairs, something he had previously vowed would be an absolute last resort.62 He buried his sorrows in his writing. As well as starting the first draft of what would become his novella The Cossacks, and working further on his sequel to Childhood, he also wrote another completely different story which he started and finished in four days. ‘Notes of a Billiard Marker’, the only work Tolstoy sent off to Nekrasov that summer, is more strongly autobiographical than most of Tolstoy’s stories. It is a bleak tale of a young aristocrat’s moral disintegration, inspired by the gambling disaster which had befallen Tolstoy in Tiflis. Close reading of Rousseau’s Confessions helped to keep Tolstoy on an even keel at this time, and reminded him that he could only be happy doing good works.63 He was beginning to develop a strong social conscience.
Tolstoy was by this point bored with regimental life in the Caucasus, dissatisfied with himself and longing for a change of scenery, so before he returned to Starogladkovskaya in October, he applied to be transferred to active duty in the war against Turkey. In January 1854, when his request was granted and he was finally promoted to full officer class as an ensign, he decided to travel to his new regiment in Bucharest via Yasnaya Polyana, a detour of over 600 miles. February was an ecstatic month for Tolstoy. He was overjoyed to see Yasnaya Polyana again, and be reunited with his beloved Aunt Toinette. He went to see his sister Masha at Pokrovskoye, and his brother Dmitry at Shcherbachevka, and in Moscow the four Tolstoy brothers posed for a photograph. It was the last time they would ever be together. The visit was over all too soon. On 3 March Tolstoy set off to join his new artillery brigade, travelling via Kursk, Poltava and Kishinyov before finally arriving in Bucharest ten days later, shortly before France and Britain declared war on Russia.
The Crimean War ostensibly blew up over access to the holy sites in Palestine, but was really about Russia’s expansionist ambitions, and the threat that they represented to French and British interests. After the annexation of Georgia in 1801, and Bessarabia in 1812, Russia proceeded to defeat the Ottoman Empire in 1829, thus acquiring new powers and new territories (including part of Armenia). For the allies, it was only a matter of time before Nicholas I gained full access to the eastern Mediterranean. Hostilities between Turkey and Russia began in October 1853, most of them taking place around the mouth of the Danube. When France and Britain became involved in March 1854, and Russia was forced to withdraw from Moldavia and Wallachia, wrongly counting on Austrian support (in return for having sent in troops to quash the rebellion in Hungary in 1850), the Crimean peninsula became the main theatre of war. So Tolstoy was out of luck again, as three months after he arrived in Bucharest the main action was transferred elsewhere.