Tolstoy, like so many other religious mystics, wished to yield up his property entirely and strip himself of all worldly goods. It was here that, as with others before him, he came into conflict with his own family.
Another, though a much less reformer of our own time, General Booth, was able to interest all the members of his own family, and to find in them his best and most willing helpers, but he had the advantage of a wife who was, from the beginning, on his side.
Tolstoy was in a different position: the Countess proved herself an admirable wife so long as he devoted himself to adding lustre and aggrandisement to his family; she helped him in the management of his estates, she understood his literary work and gloried in his renown, but further she could not go; she could not comprehend his moral and religious crisis, and her great terror was lest her children should be, in any degree, impoverished. It is painful to hear that at one time she contemplated appealing to the authorities to have her husband declared insane and incapable of managing his own property.
The truth was that Tolstoy's idealism had come in conflict with that maternal egoism which is the dark side of maternal altruism, and one of the strongest forces of the world. This experience helps us to understand the curious bias against maternity which occurs in much of Tolstoy's later work. With regard to this situation Tolstoy ultimately compromised and, in the year 1888, renounced his estates in favour of his family.
He continued to produce religious works: The Four Gospels Harmonised and Translated, 1881-2; My Religion, 1884; The Kingdom of God is Within You, 1893, &c.
Political events in Russia more and more grieved and distressed him. The Revolutionary Executive Committee condemned Alexander II to death, and carried out their sentence. This event shook the whole nation. Tolstoy was horrified by the crime but he profoundly pitied the criminals; he addressed an open letter to the new emperor, Alexander III, imploring him in the name of Christ to forgive the culprits, and declaring that the only way to Russia's salvation lay in following the precepts of Jesus; the other possible methods—cruel repression and liberal reforms—had both been tried and found wanting. No answer was made, and the regicides were put to death.
Throughout Tolstoy's later work we perceive a horror of violence in all its forms, whether legal or illegal: to him all violent death is murder, and, no matter whether it is inflicted by the sentence of revolutionary committees or by the sentence of the law, it is equally criminal.
Tolstoy went for a time to reside in Moscow, and was, more than ever, startled and dismayed by the great contrasts between the extremes of poverty and of wealth.
In 1882 a census was taken; Tolstoy volunteered his help, and was thus enabled to plumb to the very depths the miseries of Moscow. A full account of this census is given in the book entitled What to Do? It is a most clear, graphic, and ruthless study of the miseries of poverty and vice; Tolstoy shows with ironic completeness the total insufficiency of charity to compete with the evil, and asks what remedies are possible.
He arrives at the same conclusion as Mr. Bernard Shaw: "What is wrong with the rich is idleness; what is wrong with the poor is poverty."