The Death of Lev Nikolayevich

Darya Protopopova (University of Oxford) writes about the centenary of Leo Tolstoy’s Death (20 November 1910 – 20 November 2010)

On the eve of the centenary of Tolstoy’s death the Russian TV channel Culture will be showing a four-part documentary ‘In Search of Tolstoy’, directed by Alexander Krivonos. The first part explores Tolstoy’s war experience, first in the Caucasus and then, during the Crimean War, in Sebastopol. It searches for the roots of Tolstoy’s pacifist philosophy in his first-hand impressions of death on the battlefield. The second part looks at Tolstoy’s complicated relationship with his wife Sofya Andreyevna. The third part tells the story of Tolstoy’s daughter Alexandra who fulfilled her father's wishes by turning his estate into a museum. Alexandra Tolstoy was arrested several times by the Soviet government, but in 1929 she managed to emigrate, first to Japan, and then to the USA, where she founded the Tolstoy Foundation, active to this day. The last part of the documentary contains a somewhat ossifying message. According to the channel’s website: ‘Tolstoy’s philosophical quest will always be cherished by the progressive mankind’. Out of all people across the world who have dedicated their lives to studying and promoting Tolstoy’s works, the creators of the documentary have chosen to talk about a certain Alexander Shevchenko, an 82-year-old industrial worker from the Crimea who propagandises Tolstoy’s teachings on the streets of Sebastopol. They obviously wanted to demonstrate that Tolstoy, like Lenin from a famous Soviet slogan, ‘lived, is alive, and will live’ in the hearts of simple Russian people. Tolstoy’s works, especially his novels, are indeed still loved by the common Russian reader. But does his ‘quest’ resonate in the hearts of modern Russian politicians?

According to Miriam Elder, Fyokla Tolstaya, a great-great-granddaughter of the writer, said in a recent interview:

Lev Nikolayevich [Tolstoy] posed very uncomfortable questions. The problems he wrote about — militarism and pacifism, justice, religion, the Caucasus — none of them have been solved.

‘He is a very difficult author for today’s leadership,’ she added in the same interview. Tolstoy’s nonconformist views may be the reason behind the lack of official ceremonies commemorating the writer’s death in his homeland. But the absence of government-organised tributes is probably for the better: Tolstoy himself hated public homage. Alexander Goldenveizer remembered how Tolstoy said, with reference to the addresses and congratulations on his eightieth birthday (28 August 1908):

I believe I am right in saying that I have no vanity, but I can’t help being touched involuntarily. And yet, at my age, I live so far away from all this, it is all so unnecessary and so humiliating. Only one thing is necessary, the inner life of the spirit. (Trans. by Samuel Koteliansky and Virginia Woolf)

In a diary entry for 7 September 1908, Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya gives a detailed account of her mixed feelings about the ‘so called Tolstoy’s eightieth jubilee’, through which, to use her words, the family had to ‘survive’. Tolstoy received around 2,000 congratulatory telegrams, along with presents, from his admirers. But some ‘presents’ showed that he remained a controversial figure even amidst this universal approbation. A mother who probably had lost her son during the revolutionary turmoil in Russia at the time, sent a box with a hanging rope and a note wishing Tolstoy to die. Tolstoy preached peace, but his ideas of equality were often misused or misinterpreted by Russian radicals.

Tolstoy's deathbed - from Smert' Tolstogo (Moscow, 1929)

So perhaps it is best in the end that in Russia the commemoration of Tolstoy’s death at Astapovo railway station is restricted to TV documentaries and an opening of the Tolstoy Educational and Tourist Centre in Lipetsk, the administrative centre of the area to which Astapovo belongs. The railway station itself will be at the heart of the commemoration. The death that it witnessed on 20 November 1910 was not a tranquil event and certainly did not lack in publicity. Tolstoy’s ‘escape’ from his estate, his sudden illness at Astapovo, his wife’s futile attempts to see her husband, who was being guarded by his daughter and close friends including Vladimir Chertkov – these famous aspects of Tolstoy’s last days make up a dramatic and, in a way, sordid story, which was reported daily by international newspapers. The Times, for instance, published fifteen articles dedicated to Tolstoy between 14 November and 26 December 1910, covering Tolstoy’s death, funeral arrangements, and proving of the will.

While Tolstoy was lying on his deathbed, Astapovo was surrounded by a whole camp of prying people: journalists, devotees, and simply curious. They stayed in tents, warmed themselves around fires, and kept vigil under the station’s windows. They also sent and received numerous telegrams from Astapovo, over a thousand in total, which in 1929 were collected in a book titled The Death of Tolstoy (Smert’ Tolstogo), published by the Russian (then Soviet) National Library.

This collection of telegrams constitutes a valuable and moving source for today’s reader. Around 5.50 am on 20 November telegrams started flying from Astapovo to the rest of the world, containing two words, ‘Tolstoy skonchalsya’ (‘Tolstoy has passed away’). Two hours later journalists started telegraphing more detailed accounts of Tolstoy’s death. By that time it had become known that the writer’s last words were: ‘There are many people in this world, and you are worrying about one Lev [the Russian version of Tolstoy’s name]’. Telegrams were also flying from the outside world back to Astapovo: in one night the station received 8,000 words of condolence.

An interesting telegram was sent by a correspondent of the Russian newspaper The Morning of Russia. It reports that a few hours after Tolstoy’s death the sun was shining brightly and the station started attracting ‘pilgrims’ from nearby villages and towns. People were coming in big numbers to venerate Tolstoy’s body. Among crowds of agitated peasants the legend was born that Tolstoy did not die, but is only asleep, like miraculous saints of the past. Other journalists were using this legend figuratively, asking their newspapers to announce that although Tolstoy died in Astapovo, his spirit lives on in all Russia and the rest of the world, ‘for where love is, death does not exist’.

Tolstoy’s body being carried outside the Astapovo station - from Smert' Tolstogo

To me, the most touching evidence of Tolstoy’s life after his death is the story of the writer’s posthumous portrait by Leonid Pasternak. Pasternak, who admired Tolstoy greatly and painted numerous portraits of him during the writer’s life, arrived at Astapovo a few hours after the tragic news. With him he brought his twenty-year-old son Boris, at the time a philosophy student at the Moscow University. Thirty-five years later Boris Pasternak started working on his novel Doctor Zhivago, which can be described as the War and Peace of the twentieth century. The epic novel tracing personal biographies against a vast historical background, Doctor Zhivago undoubtedly continues the Tolstoyan tradition of fiction-writing. And the symbol of this for me is an image of the young Pasternak at Tolstoy’s deathbed.