CHIEF AUTHORITIES FOR CHAPTER IV
Birukof.
Behrs.
Bitovt.
Nekrasof's letters to Tolstoy, Niva, February 1898.
Also, Tolstoy's Sevastopol, and his
Preface to Ershof's Recollections of Sevastopol.
Kropotkin, Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature: London, 1905.
CHAPTER V
PETERSBURG; LOVE AFFAIR; DROUZHÍNIN
Petersburg. Tourgénef. The Contemporary. Death of his brother Demetrius. Drouzhínin. The Behrs. Love affairs. Engagement with V.V.A. Illness. Leaves the army. Engagement broken off. Correspondence with Tourgénef. Writings. Drouzhínin's criticism of Youth and of Tolstoy's style. Books that influenced him. Emancipation of serfs. Poúshkin. Self-condemnation in his Confession.
A number of distinguished writers have recorded their opinions of the talented young officer who appeared in Petersburg before the war was quite over, and immediately entered the fraternity then supporting the Contemporary. From their memoirs one sees what Tolstoy was like at this, perhaps the stormiest and least satisfactory period of his life.
The Contemporary was a monthly review founded by Poúshkin and Pletnéf in 1836. It passed in 1847 to Panáef and the poet Nekrásof, and when Tolstoy began to write, was recognised as the leading and most progressive Russian literary periodical. Its chief contributors formed an intimate group, united by close personal acquaintance, by sympathy with the Emancipation movement then making itself felt, and also by a common agreement (not it is true very strictly or very permanently observed) to write exclusively for the Contemporary. The point to be noticed is that the circle Tolstoy entered consisted of a friendly, sociable group of people who considered themselves ardent reformers; and that though Tolstoy's talent and his wish to have his works published, threw him and them together, he never appears to have had the least inclination to co-operate on that footing of mutual give-and-take toleration which is so essential in public life. Certainly he never became friendly with the more advanced men, Tchernyshévsky, Miháylof, and the ultra-democratic Dobrolúbof, who were intent on spreading democratic and socialistic ideas in Russia.
It has been suggested that this was due to the fact that he was an aristocrat and that they were democrats; but one has to go deeper than that for the explanation, which lies, to a considerable extent, in the fact that the advanced Russian Radicals were, for the most part, admirers of Governmental Jacobinism, whereas Tolstoy has from the very start tended to be a No-Government man, an Anarchist, and has objected to linking himself closely with any group, since such alliance always implies some amount of compromise, and some subordination of one's own opinions.
The poet Fet, himself a young officer, made Tolstoy's acquaintance at this time. A couple of years later he purchased an estate at no very great distance from Yásnaya Polyána, and became a friend of Tolstoy's—one in fact of the very few people, not of his own family, with whom the latter ever formed a close personal friendship.