The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

by Cathy Porter

  10th (St Petersburg). This morning Dora and I went to the Wanderers’ Exhibition. It was very weak in subject matter, and technique too; Repin’s The Duel, or rather Single Combat, isn’t nearly as good as his earlier works.

  11th. I returned to Yasnaya via Tula—a frosty, overcast day. I found Varya Nagornova here with her daughter Ada. My lodgers Bulgakov and Nina are very pleasant. This evening we read aloud ‘Lermontov and Tolstoy’.

  12th. I wrote a letter to the Tsar, asking for a government post for Andryusha. I find this most difficult and disagreeable, but Andryusha is so ill and anxious I was afraid to refuse him. I have sent him the letter to read through.

  18th. Slight frost, everything covered with a light layer of snow. Fine weather, dazzling stars, a bright moon. I coached the little girl, worked hard on my new chapter, and this evening we again read ‘Lermontov and Tolstoy’. A letter from Kuzminsky about the favourable outcome of my case in the Senate concerning the manuscripts.

  30th. Nina and I started fasting today and went to church. This great mass of peasants is still foreign to me, even though I have lived with them for almost 52 years. There’s something wild and incomprehensible about them.

  10th April. 25 visitors came to the house and the grave, then all our peasants arrived to invite me to the grave. But alas I was ill!

  16th. Nina and I read my daughter Tanya’s book about Maria Montessori,* the Italian who practises free educational methods.

  10th May. Visited the grave and took flowers. I met three village children there and took them home, where I gave them sweets and played them the gramophone, but they didn’t seem to enjoy themselves. I am reading the letters of the Prelate Feofan.

  15th (Ascension Day). We didn’t count the visitors, but I think there must have been about 150. Nina and I let them in. I copied the inventory of things in Lev Nik.’s rooms and felt so sad!

  18th. My son Andryusha came. There was an excursion of 62 young girls here and various other visitors, and I showed them round Lev Nik.’s rooms. Towards 8 this evening my son Lyova came with his two sons Kita and Petya.

  31st. I copied, visited the grave and went for a long walk. I was sad to hear my sons have started gambling again. Dora says Lyova has lost about 50 thousand. Poor, pregnant, considerate Dora! Lev Nik. was a thousand times right to give his money to the peasants rather than to his sons. It would only have gone on cards and carousing. It’s disgusting and pathetic! And it will be even worse after my death! A hot fine day. Nature is delightful, but my soul is depressed. I didn’t sleep all night.

  13th June. We all drove to the river for a swim, just like the old days, in two separate trips, with the children and governesses and Lyova’s three boys, who drove with their father. It was very hot—24° in the shade. They’ve started mowing the old orchard. When we got home I read Eugene Onegin to the boys.

  19th. I was engrossed all morning in Pushkin’s stories; I haven’t looked at them for a long time.

  2nd July. I read the newspapers and have neither the time nor inclination for any serious reading. They are all full of Rasputin’s murder.*

  16th. I read the papers with alarm—is it really war?

  19th. This ghastly war will lead to great misery in Russia. Everyone is despondent. People torn from their land and families are talking of a strike: “We won’t go to war!” they say. From here they’ve taken the bailiff, seven horses, the coachman and two workers! And Russia is starving! What will happen!

  20th. This morning I sat down to copy my letters. I copied up to December 1900, when Lyova’s son little Levushka died. Tanya gave birth to a dead baby girl and so on. And I was with them and wept with them all.

  21st. I have a heavy weight on my heart. My son Misha has enlisted and has been sent to Bryansk. They’ve also taken Karin, our bailiff, and our peasants and horses. Tears and terror on all sides—and all in the name of what?

  27th. I wandered around Yasnaya Polyana all day with an aching heart, waiting for Andryusha, who is ill. He wrote that Misha would be in Tula on Tuesday and that I should go there and give him 1,000 rubles. They are enlisting him in the active regiments, the cavalry—yet another blow for me. Sasha was here, and is going off to be a nurse. We tenderly said goodbye. It’s terrible! Here in the country it’s sunny, still and warm.

  28th. The news is all dreadful: Lyova has sent his family off to Sweden and is leaving with N.S. Guchkov for the Polish front with the Red Cross. Magnificent hot weather, a lot of mushrooms—and on all sides there are groans and tears. A group of 20 women visitors came to see the grave and the house.

  29th. So much suffering—yet we continue to live and endure it! I said goodbye today to Misha, who is off to war! I forced myself not to cry, but it was hard! Andryusha is no cause for joy either: he’s having difficulties with his wife, he has bad intestines and bronchitis, poor fellow, and is very thin. I am exhausted in body and soul!

  1st August. I didn’t sleep last night, and this morning I went to church with Nurse.* The church was filled with women—there were almost no men. The deacon shrieked some incomprehensible words, and it was all very sad! My alienation from the people is sad too; I am the only lady amidst this peasant population, and the children regard me as something strange and foreign.

  5th. This evening I was shocked by the sad news that Sukhotin had had a second stroke. My poor little Tanya.

  9th. I received a telegram announcing the death of Sukhotin. I packed hurriedly and prepared to leave for Kochety. My heart was filled with grief and despair, yet I had to see to everything at home before I left. Poor darling Tanya!

  10th. I went by coach to Kochety. They have brought Sukhotin’s body home from the Abrikosovs’. Tanya is trying to keep cheerful and is organizing everything, but it breaks my heart to see her so thin and anxious. God help her!

  11th. Tanya, little Tanya and I all went for a walk, then sat together. The four boys have arrived to bury their father. My Sasha is here too, and Liza Obolenskaya and our Seryozha. There will be a requiem service.

  13th. The Kochety house is empty now. Tanya is being very brave and isn’t letting herself go, but it’s very hard for her, for she loved her sick old man. Her life will be quite different now and it won’t be easy. We are all gripped with terror by the events of this ghastly war!

  14th. After our walk today Tanya read us her work Tanya Tolstaya’s Childhood. It’s excellent and most movingly written, and we shed a few tears as we listened to her reading it. She and little Tanya are planning to spend the winter with me. How good that will be. I can hardly believe it!

  15th. We went for another walk, and again listened to Tanya reading her memoirs. We saw Dorik and Seryozha Sukhotin off to their regiment—Dorik as a volunteer and Seryozha as an officer. The elder Sukhotin boy, Lev, is distraught, and we are all very sad. I have packed and shall leave tomorrow.

  22nd. My sister Tanya arrived this morning, and her husband came for dinner. Today is my birthday; I am 70.

  7th September. I wandered about aimlessly; I can’t do anything with this frightful war on, and my grief and worry for Tanya, my sons and Dora, who is due to give birth any day. I raked up piles of leaves for cattle bedding, gave the day-labourers their receipts and spent the evening doing accounts with Nina.

  27th. My sister is distraught because her son Mitya has also volunteered for the war, as an orderly. Incomprehensible hypnotism! We read aloud Makovitsky’s memoirs.

  30th. I did some typing for my sister. This evening Bulgakov read us his article protesting against the war.* It is very good.

  1st October. I showed various visitors around Lev Nik.’s rooms and the drawing room—some officers from the war, two army doctors and a lady. They were touchingly interested in everything.

  2nd. My sister Tanya has left. A beautiful still bright day. I went out and wandered around the estate. People have planted apple trees, gathered up brushwood, raked the dead leaves and swept them into four piles. We read the papers. There were 6 visitors today—some o
fficers and army doctors and two women. They looked round the drawing room and Lev Nik.’s rooms.

  4th. My daughter Tanya’s 50th birthday. I went to Tula with Nina, and saw my nephew Grisha, Sergei Nikolaevich’s son. He has received another post. On the way back I met an entire battery of soldiers and officers who had been to Yasnaya Polyana; I am very sorry I didn’t see them and receive them personally. I sent Lyova 1,000 rubles.

  18th. The American consulate has informed me that my grandson Misha has been taken prisoner in Milevi, in Bohemia.*

  21st. I received a letter from my brother-in-law Kuzminsky telling me I had won my case in the Senate and giving me some sad family news: Masha is ill, Mitya is off to war, three more sons are already at war and my grandson is wounded.

  26th. I drew pictures and played Mischief with Tanechka. A large number of policemen burst in during the night and arrested Bulgakov for his leaflet against the war.* I was extremely angry and wrote to Dzhunkovsky, Governor of Moscow.*

  28th. A sad date—it was four years ago today that Lev Nikolaevich left home.

  3rd November. I received a disagreeable telegram from Dzhunkovsky.* These gentlemen make me nervous—they find you guilty when you’ve done nothing wrong.

  7th. The anniversary of Lev Nikolaevich’s death. This morning, six members of the Tolstoy Museum came—what pathetic representatives of the Tolstoy Society they were! I was delighted by the arrival of my son Seryozha. Later on all the Yasnaya peasants came and we went to the grave with them and recited ‘Our Father’ and ‘Eternal Memory’. I went with Tanechka; Tanya came too, and my daughter-in-law Sonya with her son Kiryusha, and Seryozha, and it was so good. But the weather and the roads are terrible. It’s 2 degrees and there was a fall of wet snow. This evening Sonya sang and Seryozha played the piano.

  9th. Once again I spent the day revising Letters to His Wife for the second edition, and am reading Chopin and George Sand.

  13th. I went to Tula with Nina and visited Bulgakov at the police station. He is being very brave but has lost a lot of weight and evidently has no idea what to expect. This evening Tanya read us some verses by Fet.

  25th. I had an argument with Tanya about the Church. She repeats her father’s words and denounces the Church, forgetting that for more than two decades he was a passionate churchgoer. This evening Andryusha came. He always cheers us up.

  27th. Left for Moscow this morning. The train was packed. Austrian prisoners of war at Tula.

  28th (Moscow). All morning in the banks. Paid the Stupin warehouse until May 1915. Dined and spent the evening with Seryozha. The roads were mud, travelled by cab.

  2nd December. Saw Sasha in Moscow. On the 10th she is leaving with her detachment as a nurse.

  4th. Returned to Yasnaya Polyana. It’s most unpleasant, the gendarmes are drawing up a statement against Seryozha for saying the captain was wasting his time in the police force.*

  11th. Went to Tula with my daughter Tanya and made the Kuzminskys’ wing hers for life. Received my pension. Saw Bulgakov at the police station.

  12th. Life passes quietly. The war and Bulgakov’s foolishness are a great weight on my heart. Makovitsky, who signed his appeal, has also been summoned to Tula by the police.*

  19th. I keep myself busy, but cannot apply myself to anything while this war is on. Dreadful sadness in my soul. Of my children I know nothing, and it breaks my heart to see my daughter Tanya looking so ill.

  20th. Lyova came for dinner. A lot of talk. It’s all war, war, war.

  31st. Decorated the Christmas tree as usual. Seryozha came to dinner, and Tanya, Lyova, Andryusha, little Tanya, Antonina Tikhonovna, Dushan and I all saw in the New Year enjoyably together. My nerves are shattered. I want to weep all the time. I’m sad to have no news about Seryozha who promised to come, and I worry about Andryusha, who is ill.

  1915

  Russia driven out of Serbia. At the front, whole regiments are surrendering and there is open talk of revolution. Russian defeat seems beyond question. At home the economic situation deteriorates, with soaring living costs, declining wages, rampant speculation and administrative chaos. Strikes and demonstrations and women’s “food riots” sweep the country. September—Germans advance to gates of Riga, and civilians are ordered to evacuate war zones, and their homes and crops set on fire. Two and a half million registered refugees. Tsar Nicholas assumes supreme command of army.

  Summer—Sasha Tolstaya returns briefly to Yasnaya Polyana to recuperate from malaria. 6th June—Taneev dies; Sofia doesn’t attend his funeral.

  19th January. We’re all terribly upset—Dushan has been arrested and imprisoned for signing Bulgakov’s appeal.

  22nd (Moscow). Went to the State and Merchant banks, then on to the Rumyantsev Museum, where I had a long talk with the keeper of manuscripts, Georgievsky. They are giving me a good room for the manuscripts, but there is a dreadfully steep cast-iron spiral staircase up to it.

  23rd. I went to two exhibitions with Nina, the Union and the Wanderers’. Exhibitions are so bad nowadays, not at all what they used to be, there’s such a lot of decadent daubing. I saw Chertkov’s son Dima in the vegetarian canteen where we were dining.

  5th February. I corrected three proof pages of L.N. Tolstoy’s Letters to His Wife, coached the little girls and added up the income and expenses books. Tanya and Varya Nagornova went to Tula; they weren’t allowed into the prison to see either Bulgakov or Dushan.

  19th. I often think of poor Dushan. But it’s hard for me to protest—my health is poor, I have no energy and my strength has gone. I listened to a reading of Leskov’s No Way Out.

  17th March. My daughter Tanya has returned from Moscow and St Petersburg, where she visited 4 ministers and pleaded for Dushan. He will be tried in a civil court.

  3rd April. Everything is so sad, and I can do nothing. A letter from Misha about the death of his son; a letter from Sasha filled with youthful merriment—and she is at war! I simply can’t make her out.

  6th. Misha has come to say goodbye, for he is off to war again, this time in the staff of the Khan of Nakhichevan. It was painful to part with him yet again, and painful to hear of his son’s death.

  19th. Today I had visitors from Tula—the teachers and headmistress of the Arsenev High School. Sympathetic people. Some peasants came wanting money for their shop. I visited the grave with the two Tanyas and we decorated it with flowers.

  27th. Bad news from the war; they’re firing on Liepaja, the Germans have taken five provinces and sunk a private English steamer. I was overwhelmed with such sadness I could do nothing all day but wander about Yasnaya Polyana. I corrected the proofs of the Letters.

  30th. I showed Lev Nikolaev.’s rooms to a great many visitors, including some revolutionary workers. I went to the grave and planted flowers—violets, daisies and cowslips.

  1st May. A lot of visitors—some girls just out of secondary school and a lot of schoolboys and young people. I showed them round Lev Nikolaevich’s rooms and told them about him.

  10th. Andryusha came with Baranov, and they visited the grave. The public behaved outrageously; I have asked the police to come tomorrow. There were 55 visitors or more.

  15th. Nina and I went to Tula and managed to obtain permission from the Police General to visit Dushan and Bulgakov. They were touchingly pleased to see me and asked about everything. Police General Volsky gave us the permit. I sent 700 rubles to my son Andryusha and attended to business in Tula.

  7th June. I am deeply shaken by the sad news of Sergei Ivanovich Taneev’s death on the 6th.

  11th. More visitors. I worked on the index and went out to watch the hay being harvested. Very hot, with the threat of drought. I feel Taneev’s death more deeply and painfully than ever. I read about his magnificent, well-attended funeral. He was truly appreciated.

  9th July. We sat on the balcony this afternoon sewing respirator cases for the army and drinking tea. I am reading the Gospels all the way through. Every age in life has its own viewpoint.

/>   19th. I am losing interest in life. Bad news from the war. Life here is frightening, with no guards and no dogs.

  24th. The house has been plunged in gloom by news of the German capture of Warsaw. I never believed in a Russian victory from the start, and now things are going from bad to worse.

  8th August. Dreadful news from the war: Kovno, Novogeorgievsky and many other places have been taken. Riga is being evacuated and there’s fighting in the Gulf of Riga.

  23rd. My daughter Sasha has returned, cheerful and much thinner, full of experiences and stories.

  28th. Lev Nikolaevich’s birthday. A wet, overcast morning, then it brightened up. I went to the grave and prayed for the souls of Lev Nik. and the parents who bore him. It’s strange how quickly Tolstoy has been forgotten. There was no one here today, neither friends nor outsiders.

  14th September. I showed some Latvian refugees around Lev Nik.’s rooms. There were more than 40 of them.