The Journal of Leo Tolstoi First. Volume—1895-1899. Лев Толстой

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СКАЧАТЬ service, while being in actual military service … See The Dukhobors in the Disciplinary Regiment, published by The Free Press, 1902, England, where was printed also the letter of Tolstoi to the commanding officer of the regiment. Stating those religious convictions of the Dukhobors for which they suffered persecutions and calling their acts … Tolstoi asked the commanding officer to do all that he could to lighten their fate. The letter of Tolstoi produced a softening effect on the commanding officer.

139

Vladimir Vasilevich Stasov (1824–1906), a critic of art and music and the librarian of the Imperial Public Library in Petrograd, a friend of the Tolstoi family. When, after Stasov’s death, his friend, the sculptor, I. Y. Ginzburg, asked Tolstoi to write his recollections of him, in the compilation, “To The Memory of V. V. Stasov,” Tolstoi in his letter of November 7, 1907, replied that it was difficult for him to write about Stasov on account of “the misunderstanding” which had taken place between them: “the misunderstanding consisted in that Vladimir Vasilevich Stasov loved and valued prejudicially in me that which I did not value and could not value in myself, and in his goodness forgave me that which I valued and value in myself above everything else, – that by which I lived and live. With every other man such a misunderstanding would lead, if not to hostility then to a coolness, but the gentle, kind, spontaneous, warm nature of Vladimir Vasilevich and at the same time, his childlike clarity, was such, that I could not help succumbing to his influence and loving him without any thought of the difference of our points of view. I shall always remember our good friendly relationship with emotion.”

140

Nicholai Nicholaievich Gay, the son of the old friend of Tolstoi, N. N. Gay.

141

These thoughts were called forth in Tolstoi by a letter received on October, 1896, from V. V. Rakhmanov, who, being acquainted with this work of Tolstoi, found it written in a cold and didactic tone and advised Tolstoi to abandon it.

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See Journal, Oct. 20, 1896. Thoughts 9 and 10.

143

This served as a beginning to Tolstoi’s book, What Is Art? completed by him only in 1898.

144

The initials I. G. C. in the original.

145

The Spaniard, Demetrio Zanini, wrote from Barcelona to Tolstoi that the members of a certain club, who were his admirers, decided to offer him a present of a splendid inkwell, money for the purchase of which was being collected by subscription. At the request of Tolstoi, his daughter, Tatiana Lvovna, wrote to Zanini, saying that he preferred this money to be used for some good work. In answer to this, Zanini informed Tolstoi that they had already collected about 22,500 francs. Tolstoi explained in a letter to him the miserable condition of the Dukhobors and suggested using the money collected for their help.

146

A close friend of Tolstoi, Senator Alexander Mickailovich Kuzminsky, president at this time of the St. Petersburg District Court. The finance-Minister, S. Y. Witte, wanted to communicate with Tolstoi through A. M. Kuzminsky, hoping to call forth his approval in the matter of his introducing the government sale of vodka and the founding of temperance societies. Tolstoi’s letter to A. M. Kuzminsky, in which he answered Witte’s proposal in the negative, with the omission of the harsh opinions concerning General Dragomirov (the author of the periodical, The Soldier’s Manual, which was being displayed in the barracks) was printed in the bulletin of the Tolstoi Museum Society, 1911, Nos. 3 to 5.

147

This article has remained unfinished and up to the present has not been printed anywhere.