[233.] Protestant ministers of various localities in Holland: L. A. Beller, A. De-Kuh and I-Kh. Klein, at a meeting in Grevenhagen, definitely expressed themselves against war and military service.
[234.] N took an adverse attitude to Chertkov’s social work among Englishmen. Chertkov fell ill with pneumonia.
[235.] To Moscow to be copied.
[236.] V. D. Liapunov (1873–1905), peasant-poet of Tula. Working in Tula, Liapunov in the autumn of 1897 came to Tolstoi that he judge his poetry. Tolstoi was very much pleased with the poems, contrary to his custom, for in general he did not like poetry. Tolstoi proposed that Liapunov stay in his house to help copy his manuscripts.
[237.] Afanasi Aggeev, a free-thinking peasant from the village of Kaznacheevka, 4 versts from Yasnaya Polyana. In 1903 he was sentenced by the Tula District Court to exile in Siberia for life for the public utterance of words insulting to the Orthodox Faith. He died in 1908.
[238.] N. Y. Grot (1852–1899), professor at the Moscow University, author of numerous articles on philosophic questions and editor of the magazine, Problems of Philosophy and Psychology. Tolstoi submitted his work, What Is Art? to Grot to be printed in his magazine. Shortly before his death, at the request of Grot’s brother, Tolstoi wrote his recollections about him, which were printed, together with his letter to Grot, in the compilation, N. Y. Grot, in Sketches, Recollections and Letters by Comrades and Pupils, Friends and Admirers, Petrograd, 1911, and in the Full Collected Works of L. N. Tolstoi, issued by Sytin, subscribed edition, Volume XV; Popular Edition, Volume XXIV.
[239.] A. P. Ivanov (died 1912), ex-officer and old scribe, with whom Tolstoi became acquainted at the time of the census of 1862, having found him among the Moscow tramps. He led a vagabond life, coming or tramping from time to time to Yasnaya Polyana to help Tolstoi copy his manuscripts.
[240.] Prince D. A. Khilkov (1858–1915), who at this time was in accord with Tolstoi in several questions of a more external nature, formerly an officer of the Hussars and afterwards of the Cossacks, a landlord in the district of Sumsk, province of Kharkov. In the eighties, he resigned from military service and sold for a trifle his 400 dessiatines of land, the only personal property he had at the time, to the peasants of the village of Pavlovok; in 1889, on account of his propaganda against religion, he was exiled by administrative order to Zakavkaz. In 1893 Khilkov and his wife suffered a great sorrow: their children were taken away from them by order of the government (following the manipulations of Khilkov’s mother), and they were given over to this lady for bringing up, she having absolutely no sympathy with the opinions of her son. Afterwards, when a strong movement among the Dukhobors began in the Caucasus, Khilkov was sent over to the Baltic Provinces, where he lived up to 1899, at which time it was decided that he be sent abroad. In his sojourn abroad, his convictions underwent a change to the side of the violent revolutionaries. But when Khilkov returned to Russia in 1905, he absolutely abstained from every political activity. In the beginning of the Russian-German War, Khilkov entered the army as a volunteer and in October, 1914, was killed at Lvov (Lemberg).
[241.] A peasant from Yasnaya Polyana, now dead, who was well-lettered and loved to read.
[242.] The clergy who came carried the icon to the churches, in the parish of which stood Yasnaya Polyana. According to the order of the clergy, the elder of Yasnaya Polyana called a village meeting and ordered every one to go to church and meet the icon which was afterwards carried from house to house in all the households of the village. Concerning Tolstoi and the icon, see his letter to Countess S. A. Tolstoi, which evidently by mistake is dated 1898 (Letters of Count L. N. Tolstoi to his Wife, Moscow, 1913, page 558).