[57.] Sergei Alexandrovich Rachinsky (1836–1902), a celebrated worker for popular education, who sacrificed his lectures in the Moscow University for his favourite occupation of teaching the peasant children in the village schools to write and read. A relative to Tolstoi on account of the first wife of his son, Sergei Lvovich, and personally acquainted with Tolstoi as early as the beginning of the Sixties.
[58.] Written originally in English.
[59.] The letter was called forth by the Italian-Abyssinian war, which was then going on. The rather extensive beginning of this letter has been preserved, but up to now has not been published anywhere.
[60.] Here follow words that have been crossed out. Note made by Prince N. L. Obolensky in the copy in possession of the editors.
[61.] Michail Petrovich Novikov, a peasant of the Province of Tula, who served a year as an army scribe in one of the regiments stationed in Moscow. After his acquaintance with Tolstoi he suffered much because of his endeavour to realise his beliefs in his life. A gifted writer.
[62.] Countess Tatiana Lvovna Tolstoi (born 1864), the eldest daughter of Tolstoi. In the year 1899 she married M. S. Sukhotin.
[63.] Maria Michailovna Kholevinsky, a woman doctor, living in Tula. By Administrative order, after the event mentioned in the Journal, she was exiled to Orenburg.
[64.] This letter, sent to both ministers (I. L. Goremykin and N. V. Muraviev) and to the same publishing house, was printed at first abroad in the paper The Free Press, No. 2, in 1902 (England), afterwards in Russia. (See Full Collected Works of Tolstoi, published by Sytin, 1913—popular edition, Volume XXII. It is known that the request of Tolstoi in this letter: To direct all the prosecutions for the spreading of his forbidden books in Russia to himself and not to his followers and friends, as well as a whole series of subsequent similar petitions to Governmental officials—was not granted.)
[65.] The second act of Wagner’s opera, Siegfried. For the impression produced on Tolstoi, see What Is Art? chapter XIII—in the letter to his brother, Count S. N. Tolstoi, on April 20, 1896, Tolstoi under the fresh impression of this opera wrote the following: “Last night I was at the theatre and heard the celebrated new music of Wagner’s opera, Siegfried. I could not sit through a single act and I fled from the place like mad, and now I cannot talk calmly about it. It is stupid, unfit for children above seven years of age, a Punch and Judy show, pretentious, feigned, entirely false and without any music whatever. And several thousand sat and pretended to be fascinated.”