Dostoyevsky, The Man Behind: Memoirs, Letters & Autobiographical Works. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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communism. His ideal is the Oriental ideal of the Russian masses : to do nothing, to cross one's arms, and lie on one's back, yawning and dreaming. An apostle of pacifism, he advised his disciples to lay down their armS before the enemy, and not to struggle against wrong but to let it invade the world, leaving its overthrow in the hands of God. He prepared the triumph of the Bolsheviks, and asserted ingenuously that he was preaching Christian ideas. He forgot that Jesus did not remain in a Yasnaia Poliana, but that He went from place to place, eating as He journeyed, sleeping little, appealing to all hearts, awaking all consciences, sowing the seeds of truth in every town He entered, training disciples and sending them to preach His doctrine in other lands, fighting against evil to His last breath.
The difference between my father's ideas and those of Tolstoy manifested itself very clearly during the Russo-Turkish War. Dostoyevsky in his newspaper. The Journal of the Writer, demanded the hberation of the Slav nationalities, their independence, and the free development of their national ideal. He was indignant when he read how the Turks tortured the hapless Serbs and Bulgarians, and he incited the Russians to deliver these persecuted peoples by force of arms. He reiterated passionately that this was the duty of Russia, that she could not abandon people of her own race and religion. Tolstoy, on the other hand, thought Russia had nothing to do with Balkan affairs, and that she ought to leave the Slavs to their fate. He even asserted that the indignation of Russians at the Turkish atrocities was merely a pose, and that a Russian was not and could not be moved by descriptions of these cruelties. He confessed himself that he felt no pity. " How is it possible that he should feel no pity? It is incomprehensible to me ! " wrote Dostoyevsky in The Journal of the Writer. Tolstoy's hostile attitude in the midst of the general enthusiasm for the Slav cause seemed so scandalous to his publisher, Katkov, that he refused to allow the epilogue to Anna Karinina, in which Tolstoy expounded his anti-Slav ideas, to appear in his paper. The epilogue was published as a separate pamphlet. As a leading Slavophil, Dostoyevsky thought it his duty to protest in his own journal against Tolstoy's strange attitude towards the unhappy victims of the Turks. In combating Tolstoy, he did not adopt the same method as in his conflict with Turgenev. He had despised the cruel comrade of his youth, and had not spared him. But he loved Tolstoy and did not wish to give him pain. To take the sting out of his criticism, he exalted Tolstoy to a giddy height, proclaiming him the greatest of Russian writers, and declaring that all the rest, himself included, were merely his pupils.91
91 Dostoyevsky specially admired Tolstoy's powers of description and his style, but he never looked upon him as a prophet. He thought indeed that Tolstoy did not imderstand our people. Often in talking to his friends my father said that Tolstoy and Turgenev could only paint truthfully the life of the hereditary nobUity, which, according to him, was in its decline, and would soon be extinguished. This surprised his friends very much, but Dostoyevsky was right, for the Revolution has changed all the conditions of Russian life. He looked upon Tolstoy and Turgenev as gifted historical novelists.
Such reverent criticism could not anger Tolstoy, and did not affect his admiration for Dostoyevsky. When my father died Tolstoy wrote to Strahoff: " When I heard of Dostoyevsky's death I felt that I had lost a kinsman, the closest and the dearest, and the one of whom I had most need."
Tolstoy's European biographers generally describe him as a great aristocrat, and contrast him with Dostoyevsky, whom, I know not why, they believe to be a plebeian. The better informed Russian biographers know that both belonged to the same union of hereditary nobles. I suppose it was Tolstoy's title of Count which misled European writers. In Russia the title was nothing; it was possible there to meet titled people, bearing historic names, who belonged to the middle classes, and others, who had no titles, but were members of the aristocracy. European biographers of Tolstoy who wish to understand his position in Russia should read the history of the Counts Rostov in War and Peace. In this family Tolstoy describes that of his paternal grandfather. Count Ilia Rostov lives in Moscow, and receives every one; but when he goes to Petersburg with his family he knows no one save an old Court lady, who is only able to procure them a single invitation to a ball in the great world, and even on this occasion cannot introduce any partners to the charming Natalia, because she knows no one herself. Count Rostov is very popular with the nobles of his own province who chose him as their Marshal; but when he goes to invite a travelling aristocrat, Prince Volkonsky, to dinner, the Prince receives him insolently, and refuses his invitation. When Countess Bezuhov insists that Natalia should come to her party, all the Rostov family is much flattered by the graciousness of the great lady. And yet the Countess only invites her to please her brother, Prince Kouragin, who is in love with the fair Natasha and wants to carry her off. He is already secretly married, so he cannot marry her; but he does not hesitate to compromise the girl, a villainy he would never have committed if she had belonged to his own world, for it would have ruined his career. Evidently, in the eyes of a Russian aristocrat the Counts Rostov were hereditary nobles of no importance, whom they could treat cavalierly. In contemporary times, the relations between the Russian aristocrats and the hereditary nobles were greatly modified, but in 1812 they were very cruel. In War and Peace Tolstoy carefully explained the position occupied by his grandfather and his father in Russia. But his mother was a Princess Volkonsky, a very ugly old maid, who, unable to find a husband in her own world, had married Count Nicolai Tolstoy for love. She was a provincial, but she must have had relations in Petersburg, through whom Tolstoy could have gained admittance to the great world of the capital much more easily than Turgenev had been able to do. But he made no bid for such recognition. He was no snob, and had all that dignity and independence of spirit which have always characterised our Moscow nobility. He made an unambitious marriage with the daughter of Dr. Bers, and spent all his life in Moscow, receiving every one who was congenial to him without asking to what class of society his visitors belonged. Tolstoy had no love for the aristocrats. He shows his antipathy to them very plainly in War and Peace, Anna Karinina and Resurrection. He contrasts their opulent, luxurious and artificial existence with the simple, hospitable life of the Moscow nobility. Tolstoy was right, for indeed the latter were very sympathetic. Their houses were not rich, but they were always open to their friends. The rooms were small and low, but there was always a corner for some old relative or invalid friend; they had a great many children, but they always managed to find a place among them for some poor orphan, who received the same education and treatment as the children of the house. It was in this hospitable, cheerful, kindly and simple atmosphere that Tolstoy was brought up, and it is this world that he describes in his novels. " Tolstoy is the historian and the poet of the lesser Moscow nobility," wrote Dostoyevsky in his Journal of the Writer.
Tolstoy's European biographers, who have blamed his aristocratic luxury, are strangely ill-informed; they can never have been either to Moscow or to Yasnaia Poliana. I remember one day going with my mother when we were in Moscow to call on Countess Tolstoy. I was struck by the poverty of her house; not only was there no single good piece of furniture, no single artistic object, such as one might find in any Petersburg home, but there was absolutely nothing of the smallest value of any sort. The Tolstoys Uved in one of those small houses between courtyard and garden which are so common in Moscow. Rich people build them of stone, poor people are content with wood. The Tolstoy house was of wood, and was built without any architectural pretensions. The rooms of these little houses are generally small, low, and ill-Ughted. The furniture is bought in cheap shops, as was the case in the Tolstoys' home, or it is made by old workmen who were formerly serfs, as was that I saw in other houses in Moscow. The hangings are faded, the carpets threadbare, the walls are hung with family portraits, painted by some poor artist, to whom a commission was given to save him from starvation. The only luxury of these houses consists of a pack of dirty, ill-tempered old servants, who show their fidelity by meddling in the affairs of their masters and speaking impertinently to them, and in a couple of clumsy ill-matched horses, brought from the country in the autumn, and harnessed to some old-fashioned carriage. Tolstoy's " luxury " was indeed far from dazzling; any prosperous European who has a pretty villa and a smart motor-car lives more sumptuously than he. I do not even know whether it would have been possible for Tolstoy to surround himself with luxuries. He owned a great deal of land, but the land of central Russia does not represent much wealth. It yields little income, and absorbs a great deal of money. He could not sell it, for by Russian law, land inherited from a father must be transmitted to a son. Tolstoy had five sons; as they grew up and married, he was obliged to divide his estates between them, and it is probable that during the last