Heroes of Modern Europe

by Alice Birkhead

Tolstoy set out for Germany in 1857, anxious to study social conditions that he might learn how to raise the hapless serfs of Russia, bound, patient and inarticulate, at the feet of landowners, longing for independence, perhaps, when they suffered any terrible act of injustice, but patient in the better times when there was food and warmth and a master of comparatively unexacting temper.

Tolstoy had already written Polikoushka, a peasant story which attracted some attention. He was in love with the words People and Progress, and spoke them continually, trampling upon conventions. A desire to be original had been strong within him when he followed the usual pursuits of Russians of fashion. He delighted in this wandering in unknown tracks where none had preceded him. He was sincere, but he had not yet taken up his life-work.

At Lucerne he was filled with bitterness against the rich visitors at a hotel who refused to give alms to a wandering musician. He took the man to his table and offered wine for his refreshment. The indignation of the other guests made him dwell still more fiercely upon the callousness of those who neglect their poorer neighbours. Yet the quixotic noble was still sumptuous in his dress and spent much time on the sports which had been the pastimes of his boyhood. He nearly lost his life attempting to shoot a she-bear in the forest. The beast drew his face into her mouth and got her teeth in the flesh near the left eye. The intrepid sportsman escaped, but he bore the marks for long afterwards.

In 1861 a new era began in Russia, and a new period in Tolstoy's life, which was henceforward bound up with the history of the country folk. Alexander II issued a decree of emancipation for the serf, and Tolstoy was one of the arbitrators appointed to supervise the distribution of the land, to arrange the taxes and decide conditions of purchase. For each peasant received an allotment of land, subject for sixty years to a special land-tax. In their ignorance, the serfs were likely to sell themselves into new slavery where the proprietors felt disposed to drive hard bargains. Many landlords tried to allot land with no pasture, so that the rearer of cattle had to hire at an exorbitant rate. There had been two ways of holding serfs before—the more primitive method of obliging them to work so many days a week for the master before they could provide for their own wants, and the more enlightened manner of exacting only obrók, or yearly tribute. Tolstoy had already allowed his serf to "go on obrók," but, according to himself, he did nothing very generous when the new act was passed providing for emancipation.

He defended the freed men as far as possible, however, from the tyranny of other landowners, who began to dislike him very thoroughly. He had won the poor from their distrust by an experiment in education which he tried at his native place of Yasnaya Polyana.

The school opened by Count Tolstoy was a "free"; school in every sense of the word, which was then becoming popular. The children paid no fees and were not obliged to attend regularly. They ran in and out as they pleased and had no fear of punishments. It was a firm belief of the master that compulsory learning was quite useless. He taught in the way that the pupils wished to learn, humbly accepting their views on the matter. Vivid narration delighted the eager peasant boys in their rough sheepskins and woollen scarves. They would cry "Go on, go on," when the lesson should have ended. Any who showed weariness were bidden to "go to the little ones." At first, the peasants were afraid of the school, hearing wonderful stories of what happened there. They gained confidence at length, and then the government became suspicious.

Tolstoy had given up his work with a feeling of dissatisfaction and retired to a wild life with the Bashkirs in the steppes, where he hoped to recover bodily health, when news came that the schools had been searched and the teachers arrested. The effect on the ignorant was to make Tolstoy seem a criminal.

Hatred of a government, where such a search could be conducted with impunity, was not much modified by the Emperor's expression of regret for what had happened. The pond on Tolstoy's estate had been dragged, and cupboards and boxes in his own house opened, while the floor of the stables was broken up with crowbars. Even the diary and letters of an intimate character which had been kept secret from the Count's own family were read aloud by gendarmes. In a fit of rage, the reformer wrote of giving up his house and leaving Russia "where one cannot know from moment to moment what awaits one."