Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich in military service. Military service of Leo Tolstoy. Lev Tolstoy. Writer Officer

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy in military service .

Prepared by Shteba Vladislav .

• 1) Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. 2) The family of Count Tolstoy. 3) Tolstoy in the Caucasus. 4) Tolstoy in Sevastopol.

• Date of birth: September 9, 1828 Place of birth: Yasnaya Polyana, Tula province, Russian Empire
• Date of death: November 20, 1910 (aged 82)
• Place of death: Astapova station, Ryazan province, Russian Empire
• Citizenship (citizenship): Russian Empire
• Occupation: prose writer, publicist, philosopher
• Years of creation: 1847-1910
• Direction: realism
• Genre: short story, short story, romance, drama

• The noble family of Tolstoy comes from an ancient Germanic surname. Their ancestor was Indris, who left Germany in the middle of the 14th century and settled in Chernigov together with his two sons. Here he was baptized and received the name Leonty. The ancestor of the Tolstoy was the great-grandson of Indris, Andrey Kharitonovich, who moved from Chernigov to Moscow and here already from Vasily the Dark received the nickname Tolstoy, which later began to be passed on to his descendants. The first of the representatives of this family were military. This tradition was preserved by all generations of the Tolstoys, however, subsequently, many Tolstoys glorified their family both as prominent government officials and as figures of art and literature.

• Literary pursuits increasingly attracted Tolstoy, he conceived a story "from gypsy life", but scattered secular life interferes with concentrated work. Dissatisfaction with himself, the desire to drastically change his life, to change the empty chatter of secular living rooms for a real business led him to a sudden decision to leave for the Caucasus.

• In 1853 the Crimean War began. Tolstoy, at his personal request, was transferred from the Caucasus, first to the Danube army, and then to the besieged Sevastopol. As an artillery officer, he participated in the fighting of the Russian army against the Anglo-French and Turkish invaders. In April - May 1855 Tolstoy with his battery was at the very dangerous place Sevastopol defense - on the famous fourth bastion.

Defenders of Sevastopol

The relatively late beginning of the career is very characteristic of Tolstoy: he never considered himself a professional writer, understanding professionalism not in the sense of a profession that provides a livelihood, but in the sense of the predominance of literary interests. He did not take the interests of literary parties to heart, he was reluctant to talk about literature, preferring to talk about issues of faith, morality, and social relations.

Military service

As a cadet, Lev Nikolaevich remained for two years in the Caucasus, where he participated in many skirmishes with the mountaineers and was exposed to the dangers of military life in the Caucasus. He had the right to the St. George Cross, however, in accordance with his convictions, he "conceded" his fellow soldier, considering that a significant simplification of the conditions of service of a colleague is higher than personal vanity. Since the beginning Crimean War Tolstoy transferred to the Danube army, participated in the battle of Oltenitsa and in the siege of Silistria, and from November 1854 to the end of August 1855 was in Sevastopol.

For a long time he lived on the 4th bastion, which was often attacked, commanded a battery in the battle of Chernaya, was bombarded during the assault on Malakhov Kurgan. Tolstoy, despite all the hardships of life and the horrors of the siege, at that time wrote the story "Cutting the Forest", which reflected Caucasian impressions, and the first of the three "Sevastopol stories" - "Sevastopol in December 1854". He sent this story to Sovremennik. It was quickly published and read with interest throughout Russia, making a stunning impression of the horrors that befell the defenders of Sevastopol. The story has been seen Russian emperor Alexander II2002; he ordered to take care of the gifted officer.

Even during the life of Emperor Nicholas I, Tolstoy intended to publish together with artillery officers " cheap and popular"The magazine" Military List ", however, Tolstoy failed to implement the project of the magazine:" For the project, my Sovereign, the Emperor, most mercifully deigned to allow our articles to be printed in Invalid", - Tolstoy bitterly sneered about this in 2002.

For being at the time of the bombardment on the Yazonovsky redoubt of the fourth bastion, composure and diligence.

For the defense of Sevastopol, Tolstoy was awarded the Order of St. Anna 4th degree with the inscription "For Courage", medals "For the Defense of Sevastopol 1854-1855" and "In Memory of the War of 1853-1856". Subsequently, he was awarded two medals "In memory of the 50th anniversary of the defense of Sevastopol": silver as a participant in the defense of Sevastopol and bronze as the author of Sevastopol Tales.

Tolstoy, enjoying the reputation of a brave officer and surrounded by the splendor of fame, had every chance of a career. However, his career was blighted by writing several satirical songs stylized as soldiers. One of these songs was dedicated to the failure of the military operation for 4 years, when General Read, having misunderstood the order of the commander in chief, attacked the Fedyukhin Heights. A song called “Like the fourth number, it was not easy to take the mountains to take us away,” which touched on a number of important generals, was a huge success. For her, Lev Nikolaevich had to answer to the assistant chief of staff A. A. Yakimakh. Immediately after the assault on August 27 (September 8), Tolstoy was sent by courier to St. Petersburg, where he completed Sevastopol in May 1855. and wrote "Sevastopol in August 1855", published in the first issue of Sovremennik for 1856, already with the full signature of the author. "Sevastopol Tales" finally strengthened his reputation as a representative of a new literary generation, and in November 1856 the writer left military service forever.

Chapter Ten

IN THE DANUBE ARMY

Having left Starogladkovskaya on January 19, 1854, Tolstoy the next day, January 20, arrived in Stary Yurt. He still had some hope of receiving the St. George Cross, but here he found out that he was not nominated for this award. This news at first greatly upset him; “but strangely,” he writes in his diary, “after an hour I calmed down.”

A diary, even a "Franklinian journal" is kept on the way, although not as regularly as in the village.

Tolstoy wanted to get to the place as soon as possible, and therefore he rode without stopping for the night.

On the night of January 24, near the Belotserkovskaya station, 90 versts from Novocherkassk, Tolstoy fell into a snowstorm and got lost all night. Then he had the idea to write the story "Snowstorm".

Having been on the road for exactly two weeks, Tolstoy, tired and unhealthy, arrived at Yasnaya Polyana on February 1st.

Having just entered the front hall of the large Yasnaya Polyana house, in which he had not been for about three years and with every corner of which he had so many memories, Tolstoy "suddenly felt the caress of this dear old house." “The question involuntarily presented itself to me,” says the hero of Yunost: “how could we, me and the house, be without each other for so long?”1

After examining the farm, Tolstoy found it in better order than he expected, and compared to what he was almost three years before, he found himself "lagging behind" (apparently from the farm), "corrected and outdated," as he wrote he is in the diary on February 6th.

A few days after his arrival, Tolstoy arrived in Tula and here from the official newspaper "Russian Disabled" he learned that "for the difference in cases against the highlanders" he was "highest order" from

In February, Tolstoy went to his sister at her Pokrovskoye estate, where he stayed for three days and wrote a will in case of his death. This will, unfortunately, has not survived. Returning to Yasnaya Polyana on February 11, Tolstoy found all three brothers there, who had gathered upon learning of his arrival. Tolstoy retained a pleasant recollection of this meeting and of the simplicity of the atmosphere that distinguished life in those days. Yasnaya Polyana: all four brothers slept on the floor2.

On February 13, Tolstoy received a letter from Nekrasov dated February 6 and written in response to a letter that Tolstoy sent to the editor of Sovremennik on January 13, 1854, inquiring about the fate of those sent by him for four months prior to this "Marker Notes". In his letter, Nekrasov expressed dissatisfaction with Tolstoy's story. He wrote that Marker Notes is "very good in thought and very weak in execution. This wine is the form you have chosen.” The language of the marker, according to Nekrasov, "has nothing characteristic - it is a routine language that has been used a thousand times in our stories, when the author takes people out of a simple title." And because "the story came out rude, and the best things in it were lost." Nekrasov made the reservation that he had not published Tolstoy's story so far only because his first things "promised too much to print something somewhat doubtful after that." However, even now he does not refuse to publish Marker's Notes if Tolstoy insists on it. “We print many things and weaker than this,” wrote Nekrasov3.

In the Caucasus, this letter from Nekrasov would have upset Tolstoy very much; now, preoccupied with thoughts of leaving and the forthcoming great change in his life, Tolstoy, judging by the diary, was not particularly saddened by this failure, especially since he himself, as mentioned above, was not entirely satisfied with the form of the story.

On February 18, Tolstoy, along with all the brothers and with the Perfilievs, arrived in Moscow. On writing this date, the diary is interrupted for almost a month, which was due to the fact that during this time Tolstoy "experienced, re-felt so much" that he "did not have time to think and write even less" (diary, March 14)4. Little is known about Tolstoy's life during this short stay in Moscow. The daguerreotype group of all four brothers dates back to this time5; Apparently, a daguerreotype portrait of Tolstoy alone was taken at the same time. On it is Tolstoy in a smart military overcoat with a standing beaver collar, with a harness thrown over his shoulders over his uniform; look lively, serious, penetrating, energetic, bold6. Finally, at the same time, a group of all the Tolstoy brothers, except for Lev, was filmed together with their husband and wife, the Perfilievs.

From Moscow, Tolstoy went to the Pokrovskoye estate, where he said goodbye to his brother Sergei Nikolaevich, his sister and her husband and aunt Pelageya Ilyinichnaya. Farewell to his sister and brother was, as Tolstoy recalled in his diary on March 14, "one of the happiest minutes" of his life. From Pokrovsky, Tolstoy went to his brother Dmitry Nikolayevich at his estate, Shcherbachevka, Kursk province. Meeting with relatives was very joyful to Tolstoy. “I was happy all this time,” he wrote in his diary on March 14.

March 3 Tolstoy went to the place of his new service. From Kursk through Poltava and Balta to the Kherson province, he rode easily along a good sledge track; further through Chisinau to the very border we had to go through terrible mud. In the town of Skulyany, Bessarabian province, Tolstoy crossed the border of Moldova. The ride in a bad little jogging cart from the border to Bucharest was also very hard.

He appeared to the commander of the Danube army, Prince M. D. Gorchakov, who, as Tolstoy wrote to T. A. Ergolskaya, received him “directly in a kindred way”: he kissed him, invited him to come to dinner every day and said that he wanted to keep him , although he cannot promise him this for sure.

Moldova was very interested in Tolstoy. “The local land,” he wrote to his brother Dmitry Nikolayevich on March 17, “is much more interesting than I expected. In the village, the game is terrible, and in the cities civilization is at least external, such as I imagined in Paris or Vienna. In Bucharest Tolstoy visited the Italian opera and the French theater9.

First assigned to the 11th artillery brigade, Tolstoy was transferred on March 22 to the 12th artillery brigade, stationed in the village of Oltenitsa in Wallachia, near the Danube, southeast of Bucharest.

On April 13, Tolstoy (probably with the assistance of Prince Gorchakov) was appointed to be "on special assignments" under the command of the chief of artillery of the troops of the 3rd, 4th and 5th corps, General Serzhputovsky. The office was in Bucharest, where Tolstoy arrived on April 19. The secondment to the headquarters, which meant a promotion, "flattered the vanity" of Tolstoy, as he wrote in his diary on June 15.

The performance of official duties left Tolstoy leisure for studying literature, and he is taken to the final finishing of Boyhood. On April 27, the manuscript was sent to Nekrasov in Sovremennik along with a letter that has not reached us.

Tolstoy worked on the story "Boyhood" with long breaks for about a year and a half. The first draft of the first chapter of the story, entitled "The French Teacher", was written, judging by the diary, in the Caucasus on November 29, 1852. Tolstoy began the story with one of the most memorable episodes of his adolescent life. The intention to continue "Boyhood" is stated in the entry of the next day - November 30th. Probably, on this day, another beginning of the story was written, describing the life of the whole family after moving to Moscow. Then work on the story was interrupted for almost half a year and resumed only on May 15, 1853. A new beginning of the story is being written, and work on it, with some interruptions, continues until July 21, when the first edition was completed.

On July 23, the second edition of Boyhood was started. As usual, Tolstoy began to rewrite the whole story from the first chapter with his own hand, making very significant corrections and additions. The second edition was completed on 24 October. The manuscript of the first edition of Boyhood has been preserved in its entirety; the manuscript of the second edition has been preserved incompletely.

On October 25, 1853, work began on the third edition, which ended only in Bucharest in April 1854. In working on this edition, Tolstoy sometimes used the services of scribes - fellow officers. In this third edition, the story was sent to Nekrasov in Sovremennik. This manuscript has not survived.

"Boyhood" is basically written in the same literary manner as "Childhood". The story, which is told in the first person, serves as a natural continuation of the story begun in Childhood. Here, in the same way, the autobiographical element is combined with the creative fiction of the author; as before, the autobiographical element is especially noticeable not so much in the image external events how much in describing the thoughts, feelings and moods of the boy.

Just as in "Childhood" the psychology is subtly revealed childhood, in "Boyhood" the psychology of adolescence is also subtly and penetratingly revealed. The author considers adolescence a transitional age and therefore fraught with special dangers inherent in this particular age (Chapter XIV)10. At the same time, the story depicts typical living conditions and methods of raising children, characteristic of a certain group of noble landowners who were medium in their property status in a certain era - the thirties and forties of the last century. The story begins with a description of the expansion of the mental horizons, which made in the mind of the boy moving from a quiet landowner's estate, where his life was spent in a close family circle, to a crowded and noisy Moscow.

Just like in "Childhood", the author's attention is especially focused on revealing the "dialectics of the soul", primarily the protagonist of the story - Nikolenka Irtenyev. Although the narrator sometimes speaks of himself in a light ironic tone, it is still quite obvious that in "Boyhood", as in "Childhood", an extremely gifted boy is depicted, distinguished by a developed intellect and subtlety of feelings. He is already preoccupied with complex philosophical questions, and an unusually developed sense of his own dignity makes the thought of corporal punishment threatening him terrible for him.

Of the new faces that appeared in the story, two persons play a big role in the boy's life: the new tutor, the Frenchman Saint-Jerome, plays a negative role, and Dmitry Nekhlyudov, Nikolenka's new friend, plays a positive role. Although fragmentary, the psychology of the boys' uncle Nikolai Dmitrievich depicted in "Childhood" is revealed in more detail. His favorite sayings: "when it grinds - there will be flour" and "what will be, it will not be avoided" - allow us to see in him, to some extent, the predecessor of Platon Karataev.

In revealing the "dialectics of the soul" of his characters, Tolstoy, as in Childhood, pays great attention to the depiction of spiritual movements through their external manifestations: through general expression face, smile, intonation of voice, look, gestures. It should be noted the predominance of good-natured humor in the chapters outlining the history of Karl Ivanovich. Tolstoy himself later spoke approvingly of the element of humor in the chapters of Boyhood entitled "The History of Karl Ivanovich." He said that Chekhov's story "Darling" has a strong effect on the reader precisely because "it is written with humor, like Karl Ivanovich"11.

As for the landscapes in the first chapters of the story, and especially in the chapter "Thunderstorm", Nekrasov immediately appreciated them when he wrote to the author on July 10, 1854, that these chapters, like others, would give Tolstoy's story "a long life in our literature "12.

The author's own views are only partly reflected in the story. In Boyhood, as in Childhood, there is still no fundamental rejection of serfdom. We find here only a recognition of the equality of people from the people and people of the privileged classes in relation to the capacity for deep and strong feelings. The author prefaces his story about the love of the courtyard Vasily for the maid Masha with the following appeal to the reader: “Do not disdain, reader, the society into which I introduce you. If the strings of love and sympathy have not weakened in your soul, then in a girl's soul there will be sounds to which they will respond. As you can see, Tolstoy repeats here the maxim expressed by Karamzin in 1792 in "Poor Lisa" with the words: "Even peasant women know how to love." This appeal to the reader shows at what low level mental development there were those "imaginary readers" for whom Tolstoy wrote his story, if they needed to be inspired with such elementary truths.

Very characteristic is the regret expressed by the hero of "Adolescence" and, obviously, shared by the author, about the loss of children's religious beliefs destroyed by the mind. “My weak mind,” recalls Nikolenka, “could not penetrate the impenetrable, and overwork lost one by one convictions which, for the happiness of my life, I should never have dared to touch. Distrust of the effective power of reason is immediately expressed, a distrust subsequently expressed with even greater certainty in War and Peace: “The miserable, insignificant spring of moral activity is the human mind!” Questions “about the purpose of man, about the future life, about the immortality of the soul” are recognized by the author as insoluble - such, “the proposal of which is the highest level to which the mind of a man can reach, but the resolution of which is not given to him. (In one of the diary entries of the same year when Boyhood was completed, Tolstoy also expresses doubts about the cognitive power of reason. “All truths,” he writes on August 24, 1854, are paradoxes. Direct conclusions of reason are erroneous, absurd conclusions of experience are unmistakable ".)

The story ends with a recollection of the first time of Nikolenka's enthusiastic friendship with Dmitry Nekhlyudov. Nikolenka talks about those noble and naive dreams that at that time he indulged in with his friend. “Then to fix all of humanity, to destroy all human vices and misfortunes, it seemed a feasible thing - it seemed very easy and simple to fix oneself, to learn all the virtues and be happy. ... But by the way, the hero of Boyhood admits, God alone knows whether these noble dreams of youth were really funny and who is to blame for the fact that they did not come true. ?.. "15. With these reflections Tolstoy ends his story; and it is felt that the author himself in this case adheres to the same views as Nikolenka Irteniev, depicted by him.

Chernyshevsky, in his article on Tolstoy in 1856, pointing to the "purity of moral feeling" as one of the "very special virtues" of Tolstoy's talent, wrote that "only with this immediate freshness of the heart could one tell "Childhood" and "Boyhood" with with that extremely true color, with that tender gracefulness that gives true life these stories ... Without the integrity of the moral sense, it would be impossible not only to fulfill these stories, but also to conceive them.

Even before the formal declaration of war on Russia by Turkey, Marx defined the general causes of the Eastern War as follows:

“As soon as the revolutionary hurricane subsides for a while, it can be said with certainty that the eternal “Eastern question” will again surface. ... And now, when the ruling pygmies short-sightedly boast that they have happily delivered Europe from the dangers of "anarchy and revolution", the same insoluble question, the same never-ending source of difficulties, emerges on the scene again: what to do with Turkey?

In Russia, the attitude to the war of different strata of society was different.

Circles close to the government dreamed of a significant expansion of Russian possessions at the expense of Turkey. There were individuals in these circles who were Francophile and wished for the victory of Turkey. So, in November 1853, Princess Masalskaya, at a dinner at the French ambassador, proclaimed a toast to the successes of Turkish weapons. But the overwhelming majority of official Russia dreamed of the victory of the Russian troops, in which it was quite sure. Numerous poets and publicists of the government camp expressed their expectations of high-profile victories of Russian weapons in poems and articles. Fyodor Glinka, in a poem entitled "Hurrah!", triumphantly exclaimed:

"Hooray !.. Let's hit three at once!
No wonder the triangular bayonet.
Hurray will break out over the Caucasus,
The same clique will strike Europe.

Vyazemsky ended his poem "The Song of the Russian Warrior", written in the first months of the war, with the following stanza:

"We will punish the proud,
Stay away from the wicked
Our desecrated altar!
Boil, holy slaughter!
Cry out our cry, forerunner of victories:
Russian god and Russian tsar"20.

Official Russia and its ideology were blindly followed by a huge mass of inhabitants who failed to critically understand the policies of Nicholas I. In 1862, N. G. Chernyshevsky, in one of his articles published in Sovremennik, recalling the first years of the Crimean War, wrote: “ At the beginning of the Eastern War, out of a hundred so-called educated people, ninety-nine rejoiced at the thought that we would soon capture Constantinople.

The Slavophils dreamed of uniting all the Slavs under the leadership of Russia and of once again erecting an Orthodox cross over the Church of St. Sophia in Constantinople, which the Turks had turned into a mosque. S. N. Shevyrev, in an awkward poem entitled “Christ is risen!”, Written in 1854, appealed to the Western Slavs in this way:

“Brothers, brothers! Where are you? Where are you?
Where is Tsargrad, Jerusalem?
Children, elders, wives, virgins,
Husbands, young men - let's fly!

The progressive circles of Russian society were imbued with a different mood. Many in these circles most definitely desired the defeat of the tsarist government, a defeat which, they hoped, would awaken Russian society and put an end to the reaction of Nicholas I. Subsequently, D. A. Milyutin, Minister of War under Alexander II, recalling this time, wrote in his notes: order, saw no other means to save Russia, except for the revolution, who even looked at our then disasters with gloating, speaking of them cynically: the worse, the better. Milyutin, unfortunately, does not name names, and we do not know who exactly those “young heads” were from whom he heard the judgments he cited; but it is known that during the war he often visited the editors of Sovremennik and talked with Chernyshevsky.

Opinions similar to those recorded by Milyutin are found in the articles of revolutionary democrats—Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky, and Herzen.

Dobrolyubov, while still a student, shortly after receiving the news of the fall of Sevastopol, in one of his notes in the handwritten newspaper Rumors, cited the opinion of "one smart officer" who said: "Chaque homme qui aime la Russie doit absolument désirer que nous soyons le plus souvent battus"

(“Anyone who loves Russia should definitely wish that we were beaten as often as possible”). “One cannot but agree with this,” Dobrolyubov added on his own behalf.

In the works of N. G. Chernyshevsky we do not find quite definite indications of his attitude to the Crimean War, but expressive allusions to his opinion on this issue are scattered in several of his articles. In his review of G. Kolb's Guide to Comparative Statistics, published in Sovremennik in 1862, Chernyshevsky wrote that "until recently, Russia's policy was most focused on expanding borders"25.

In Kinglek's Tale of the Crimean War, Chernyshevsky argued that during the Eastern War, neither the Russians nor the Turkish soldiers had religious fanaticism, about which the newspapers of both warring parties wrote so much at that time. There we also find the following reflection of the author on the mood of the soldiers of the belligerents: “Out of the thousands of soldiers who fought, Turkish or Russian, were there at least two people who voluntarily took up arms? Was there at least one person in every thousand soldiers who would not gladly put his weapons aside and go somewhere away from the war to work or at least to peaceful idleness?

In 1859, during the war of France and Italy with Austria, Chernyshevsky, in one of his monthly reviews of political events, cited an English newspaper report that the inhabitants of Vienna expected the victory of the Austrian army, but that this expected victory did not please many of them, since they "think that it would be bad for the state" if the Austrian army "won a decisive victory." Citing this excerpt from an English newspaper, Chernyshevsky adds on his own: “In Western Europe it will seem unnatural and incredible that even the Austrian Germans should consider it a misfortune for the state that their government should be victorious, and hope for good only from the defeats of their army. But we totally understand this feeling.”27

Herzen took a completely definite defeatist position in relation to the Eastern War.

He believed that for Nicholas I, the war that had begun “would serve as a means to postpone everything for a while. internal matters and quench the wild thirst for battle and increase.

“The tsar called for war on Rus',” Herzen wrote in his address to the Russian Army in Poland. - Fearing his peoples more than any enemy, he asked for war ... He does not feel sorry for Russian blood.

But not only revolutionary democrats, even some representatives of the liberal intelligentsia during the war of 1854-1855 preferred the defeat of Russia to victory, believing that the result of the defeat would be reforms in the government of the country, and the consequence of victory would be an increase in reaction. Renowned historian S. M. Solovyov in his Notes says: “At that very time ... when Russia began to suffer the unaccustomed shame of military failures, when the enemy appeared near Sevastopol, we were in a difficult situation: on the one hand, our patriotic feeling was terribly offended by the humiliation of Russia; on the other hand, we were convinced that only a disaster, and precisely an unfortunate war, could produce a saving revolution, stop further decay; we were convinced that the success of the war would tighten our ties more tightly, would finally establish the barracks system; we were tormented by the news of failures, knowing that the opposite news would have made us tremble.

The publicist of the sixties N. V. Shelgunov writes in his memoirs: “When it became known in St. Petersburg that we were defeated near Chernaya32, I met ... 33 Pekarsky walked with his head down, looking out from under his brows and with suppressed and thinly concealed contentment; in general, he had the air of a conspirator, confident of success, but in his eyes shone a poorly concealed joy. Noticing me, Pekarsky walked longer, shook my hand, and whispered mysteriously in my ear: "We've been beaten." Pekarsky began his career in the 1950s as a small official in a specific office and belonged to people of a new formation.

The sixties writer M. K. Tsebrikova recalls the attitude to the military failures of the Russian army of her uncle, the Decembrist N. R. Tsebrikov, in the following words: “I heard amazing, incredible words from my uncle: “I am glad that we were beaten, glad,” uncle, and right next to him tears fell like peas on his gray mustache. - We wake up now. This thunder will wake up Russia. We will go ahead. You will see great steps." To my objection that he himself was crying, my uncle replied: “Well, what is it? Mind and heart are not in harmony. It went into flesh and blood. Pity for Sevastopol, pity for the blood, and that's for the best - your eyes will open"35.

Tolstoy during the Eastern War belonged neither to the chauvinists of the government camp, nor to the Slavophiles, nor to the defeatists. He did not believe in the crushing blows of the Russian army against its opponents, he did not dream of uniting all the Slavs under the leadership of Russia, but, on the other hand, he did not feel the oppression of Nicholas Russia so keenly that he wanted to destroy it at least at the cost of defeating the Russian troops. That war, in which he now had to take part, in his mind was completely different from the one in which he had been a participant in the Caucasus. Here, Russian troops fought with the Turks, who, by tradition, were considered long-standing enemies of Russia. In Tolstoy's mind, his participation in the war with the Turks was even more justified by the news of the cruelties committed by the Turks in this war. Probably, even in the Caucasus, Tolstoy heard about how, on October 16, 1853, a five thousandth detachment of Turks attacked two companies of Russian soldiers defending the post of St. Nicholas on east coast Black Sea near the Turkish border, bashi-bazouks (irregular Turkish troops) crucified a customs official, sawed off the head of a priest, slaughtered women and children, ripped open the stomachs of pregnant women36. Being in the Danube army, Tolstoy himself could be convinced of the veracity of the rumors about the cruelties committed by the Turks against the Slavic population. In a letter to T. A. Ergolskaya dated July 5, 1854, Tolstoy says that as the Russian army left Bulgarian villages, Turks appeared in them and, “except for young women fit for harems, exterminated all the inhabitants.” “I went,” Tolstoy wrote, “from the camp to one village for milk and fruit, and the entire population was slaughtered there.”

Such facts largely determined Tolstoy's attitude towards the war in which he now had to take part.

On April 27, 1854, on the orders of General Serzhputovsky, Tolstoy went on a business trip to Moldavia, Wallachia and Bessarabia. The trip lasted a week.

At the end of May, Tolstoy left for the Russian camp, located under the Turkish fortress of Silistria, besieged by Russian troops, and arrived there on May 28.

The siege of the Silistria fortress, located on the right bank of the Danube, was launched by Russian troops on March 24, 1854. The capture of Silistria would have had a great impact on the further course of the war: Silistria was an excellent bridgehead on the Danube. Not owning Silistria, the Russian troops could not move on; on the contrary, the mastery of Silistria would ensure the possession of all Wallachia by the Russians. "Attack of Silistria ... — not only a bold, but also a most correctly calculated movement,” wrote Marx and Engels in one of their correspondence37.

Tolstoy repeatedly had to be in the trenches of the troops besieging Silistria, with orders from the chief of artillery, which was a great danger. Exactly fifty years later, recalling this time, Tolstoy said: “The orderly is constantly exposed to great danger, and he himself rarely participates in shooting. I ... I was an orderly in the Danube army and, it seems, I never had to shoot. At the same time, Tolstoy told one of the episodes of this war. He was sent with orders to the battery, which stood on the right bank of the Danube, not far from the Turkish positions. “The commander of that battery, Shube, when he saw me, decided that “here is a young graph, I’ll play with him,” and drove me along the entire line under the shots and deliberately murderously slowly. I passed this exam outwardly well, but the feeling was very bad.

Tolstoy near Silistria was more often a spectator than a participant in the war. “I saw so much interesting, poetic and touching that the time I spent there will never be erased from my memory,” Tolstoy wrote to Aunt Yergolskaya already after the siege was lifted on July 5, 1854. The Russian camp was located on the right bank of the Danube in the gardens that belonged to the governor of Silistria, Mustafa Pasha. From here the Danube was visible with both banks of it and the islands located on it, Silistria and its forts were visible, one could even distinguish Turkish soldiers through a telescope; cannon and rifle fire was heard unceasing day or night. “True,” Tolstoy wrote in the same letter, “it is a strange pleasure to watch people kill each other. In the meantime, every evening and every morning I sat on my wagon and watched for hours. And I wasn't the only one doing this. The spectacle was really magnificent, especially at night.

On the night of June 8-9, an assault on the fortress was scheduled. Artillery preparation began in the afternoon; about five hundred guns fired at Silistria. The shooting continued all night. “We were all there,” says Tolstoy in the same letter, “and, as always, on the eve of the battle, we pretended that we were thinking about tomorrow no more than about anything else. But I’m sure that in fact everyone’s heart sank a little (and not even a little, but very much) at the thought of an assault ... By morning, as the moment of action approached, the fear weakened, and by three o'clock, when they expected a rocket as a signal to attack, I was in such good mood that if the news came that there would be no assault, I would be very upset.

But what Tolstoy did not want so much happened.

An hour before the agreed time for the start of the assault, a courier galloped up to Gorchakov with a letter from Field Marshal Paskevich. The field marshal informed that the king "deigned to allow the siege of Silistria to be lifted if, before receiving the letter, Silistria was not yet taken or it would be completely impossible to determine when it would be taken." Having received this notice, Gorchakov immediately ordered the troops, who had already taken up positions for the assault, to return to the camp.

“I can say without fear of making a mistake,” Tolstoy wrote in the same letter, “that this news was accepted by everyone—soldiers, officers, generals—as a real misfortune. Moreover, it was known from spies who very often came to us from Silistria and with whom I myself very often had the opportunity to talk that after mastering the fort (and no one doubted this), Silistria would not be able to hold out for more than two or three days. .

This story of Tolstoy about the mood of the Russian troops after the cancellation of the assault on Silistria is fully confirmed by the testimonies of other contemporaries39.

On June 4, Austria, with the support of Prussia, demanded that Nicholas I withdraw troops from the Danubian principalities. Nicholas had to give in and thereby nullify the entire Danube campaign, which lasted more than a year. Soon the troops were ordered not only to lift the siege of Silistria, but also to cross back to the left bank of the Danube.

This news made a painful impression on the entire society adjoining government circles, especially on the Slavophiles, whose dreams of the reunification of all the Slavs under the leadership of Russia collapsed so unexpectedly. K. S. Aksakov wrote in his draft notes: “We received news that the siege of Silistria has been lifted and that our troops are moving to the left bank of the Danube. What to say? This news struck all the Russians like a thunderbolt and covered them with shame. So, we are going back for the Orthodox faith.”40

On July 8, Russian troops completed the crossing to the left bank of the Danube and headed further to the borders of Russia. With this, the first half of the launched campaign was actually already lost.

The Bulgarians made a very pleasant impression on Tolstoy. More than fifty years later, recalling this time in a conversation with the Bulgarian Hristo Dosev, Tolstoy said: “But your people ... so high, fresh, beautiful people. I will never forget them. Until then, I had not met such people. The Romanians also made a favorable impression on Tolstoy. “The people there are like the Russians, the good Russian people,” Tolstoy said many years later, recalling his stay in Romania42. In his diary on July 11, Tolstoy wrote that under the influence of a conversation with the Romanian doctor who treated him, he “disappeared stupid and unfair look” at the Vlachs (as the Russians at that time called the Romanians), “the look,” says Tolstoy, “is common to the whole army and borrowed by me from the fools with whom I hitherto hung out. The fate of this people is sweet and sad.”

Tolstoy's official position as a staff officer was now higher than his position in the Caucasus, but he lacked that silence and solitude in which he had lived before and which so favored his studies. Now he rarely takes up the pen and only in order to continue the "Notes of a Fireworker" begun in the Caucasus. On July 9, the story was finished, but on the same day it received from the author such a harsh assessment, which until then had not fallen to the lot of any work written by him. Tolstoy is so dissatisfied with his new story that, as he writes, he “almost will not have to redo everything anew or give up altogether, but give up not only the Fireworks Notes, but give up all literature, because if a thing that seemed excellent in thought turns out to be insignificant in practice, then the one who undertook it has no talent.

Despite such a low assessment of the written story, Tolstoy the very next day, July 10, begins to rewrite it “cleanly” from the very beginning, making many corrections and additions as usual.

While working on Notes of a Fireworker, Tolstoy, in addition, for two days "attempted", as he put it in his diary, "to compose poetry." Manuscripts of these poems have not survived.

In addition to the general unfavorable living conditions for work, ill health also interfered with work. The nature of Tolstoy's illness is not clear from the diary, but in any case the illness was so serious that Tolstoy was twice operated on under chloroform.

Tolstoy devoted more time to reading than to his own creative work. He rereads Pushkin and Lermontov, among foreign writers he reads Berenger, Schiller ("The Fiesco Conspiracy"), Goethe, Dickens ("Bleak House"), Lafontaine, Alphonse Carr, Eugene Sue ("Gilbert et Gilberte"). In Pushkin and Lermontov, Tolstoy “discovered poetic things”: in Pushkin, the poem “Yanko Marnavich” (from Songs of the Western Slavs), in Lermontov, the poem “The Dying Gladiator”, about which Tolstoy remarks: “This dying dream of a house is amazing good." Perhaps the dream of “a home” came to him himself during the danger that threatened him more than once in those years. Of Pushkin's works, in addition, Tolstoy was struck by the Gypsies, "which, strangely," he writes, "I have not understood until now" (diary, July 9). It is quite clear why Tolstoy especially liked the Gypsies: the idea of ​​this poem was close to him, the opposition of simple, whole, living natural common life people to the broken egoist Aleko, spoiled by a false civilization.

After reading Lermontov's drama Masquerade, Tolstoy found in it "a lot of new, good things." Also, the beginning of Lermontov's poem "Izmail Bey" seemed to him "quite good", reminding him of his Caucasian impressions.

The struggle with his personal shortcomings still greatly occupies Tolstoy. In the diary, he repeatedly reproaches himself for indecision, inconstancy, inconsistency, irritability (once for "stupid rage against Alyoshka" - a servant), the habit of idleness, lack of tolerance, excessive pride, lack of modesty.

The courageous enduring of physical suffering has long been one of the requirements that Tolstoy made of himself. So, in one of the entries in the Caucasian diary, he notes with a sense of satisfaction that although his “teeth all ached,” he nevertheless went to Zheleznovodsk and, “despite terrible suffering, did not moan and did not get angry” (diary, July 6 1852). On another occasion, on the contrary, he expresses dissatisfaction with himself for having “impatiently endured suffering” (diary, August 13, 1852). So now Tolstoy is terribly indignant with himself because, having turned to the doctor with a request to perform an operation on him, he was “frightened” and asked to be postponed until the next day. He doesn't find enough strong expressions to scold myself for such cowardice. This is “meanness” that “is worth sticks, whips,” he writes indignantly on July 13.

Now his constant striving for fame inspires him with some apprehension in terms of the moral value of this striving. “I love good,” he writes on July 7, “I have made a habit of loving it, and when I deviate from it, I am dissatisfied with myself and return to it with pleasure, but there are things that I love more than good - glory. I am so ambitious, and this feeling was so little satisfied that often, I am afraid, I can choose between glory and virtue first, if I had to choose from them.

July 6, 1854 in Tolstoy's diary we find a characteristic entry. He writes: “It was unpleasant for me to learn today that Osip Serzhputovsky was shell-shocked, and the sovereign was informed about him.” (We are talking about the son of the chief of artillery, lieutenant Serzhputovsky.) “Envy! Tolstoy scolds himself for this fleeting feeling. “And because of what vulgarity, and what rubbish.” It is extremely characteristic that already at that time "royal mercy" seemed to Tolstoy "vulgarity."

Social issues in Tolstoy's Bucharest diary are touched upon only once. On June 24, it was written: “I chatted until night with Shubin about our Russian slavery. It is true that slavery is evil, but evil is exceedingly sweet.”

In order to understand the meaning of this, at first glance very strange, entry, one must first of all pay attention to the word “talked”, which, as it were, indicates the insufficiently serious nature of the whole conversation. Further, in order to explain this entry, it can be assumed that, being far from his homeland and relatives, suffering from loneliness, Tolstoy with a pleasurable feeling went over in his memory the memories of his distant childhood, dear to him, in which serf servants played such an important role. Before his imagination floated lovely images of the old woman Praskovya Isaevna, who had long since descended into the grave, the bartender Vasily, uncle Nikolai Dmitrievich, the butler Foka, the coachman Nikolai Filippovich ... About the crooked coachman's assistant Kuzma, whipped by the clerk Andrei Ilyin, about the cook, given by Temyashev to the soldiers because he ate fast food - he did not want to remember these and similar gloomy episodes of serf life that evening.

Summing up the general review of Tolstoy's Bucharest diary, one should pay attention to two of its features. Firstly, the diary does not contain long discussions on abstract topics, which are so numerous in the Caucasian diary. Secondly, and this is especially striking, in the entire diary, with the exception of a few minor references, we do not find any entries related to the war at all. From the content of the diary, it is impossible to guess that it is being kept by a staff officer of the army in the field. Obviously, the sincere interests of the author of the diary were in completely different areas of life, not related to his service.

On July 19, 1854, the headquarters of the chief of artillery, leaving the Danubian principalities, left Bucharest in the direction of the Russian border. The move took over a month. On September 3, Tolstoy crossed the border near the town of Skulyany in the Bessarabian province and on September 9 arrived in Chisinau, where the army headquarters was transferred.

The nature of Tolstoy's diary during this journey is exactly the same as in Bucharest. Tolstoy still keeps a close eye on himself, reads a lot, even continues to work on Notes of a Fireworker, despite the unfavorable conditions of camp life. Increased ill health also interfered with concentrated mental work. At times, with his suspiciousness, it even seemed to Tolstoy that he was starting to develop consumption.

On August 20, Tolstoy marks the end of work on the new edition of the Fireworks Notes. “Schwach” (weak), he pronounces a peremptory sentence over his new story.

Tolstoy was very pleased and encouraged by the letter he received from Nekrasov with a review of Boyhood. “If I say,” Nekrasov wrote in a letter dated July 10, “that I can’t tidy up the expressions of how to praise your last thing enough, then it seems that this will be the most correct thing I can say, and it’s not quite clever to say in a letter more to you. The pen, like the tongue, has the property of shyness - I understood this at that moment, because I can’t do it at all, although I try to say something of everything that I think; I will only choose that the talent of the author of Boyhood is original and sympathetic in the highest degree, and that such things as the description of a summer road and a thunderstorm, or sitting in a casemate, and much, much, will give this story a long life in our literature.

Tolstoy noted the receipt of Nekrasov’s letter in his diary on August 24 with the following words: “I received a flattering letter about Boyhood from Nekrasov, which, as always, lifted my spirit and encouraged me to continue my studies.” But the conditions of camp life and ill health led to the fact that, although Tolstoy wrote in his diary on the day of his birth, August 28, that he "thought a lot" and even "wrote something" (perhaps on that day he began something new), his further work “did not go”.

As before, Tolstoy devotes a lot of time to reading. For the first time he gets acquainted with Ostrovsky's comedies “Own people - let's get along” and “Poverty is not a vice”, of which he calls the first “beautiful”, and the second “wonderful” (recordings dated August 13 and 17); reads Schiller's drama The Robbers and his poems, of which he especially likes The Count of Habsburg and petty philosophical poems44, some "beautiful" novel by George Sand (it is not named), Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in German translation etc. 45.

Just as persistently as before, Tolstoy continues to struggle with his personal shortcomings, which he is trying to get rid of. On August 16, he writes in his diary that the main shortcomings from which he suffers are laziness, spinelessness and irritability, and that it is most important for him in life to get rid of these three shortcomings. “With this phrase,” writes Tolstoy, “from now on I will conclude my diary every day. And indeed, from August 17 to October 21 - the last entry before leaving for Sevastopol - Tolstoy's diary inevitably, with the exception of two accidental omissions, ends with the same phrase: "The most important thing for me in life is the correction from laziness, irritability and spinelessness."

Let us try to figure out what Tolstoy meant by the three shortcomings he indicated and what grounds he had to reproach himself for them.

By that time, Tolstoy had already realized quite definitely that his vocation was literary work, and not military service, which, moreover, did not take much of his time then. Therefore, reproaches of laziness and idleness can only be attributed to an insufficiently diligent, in his opinion, occupation. literary work. In this regard, Tolstoy was so strict with himself that he considered even a short rest during work to be a manifestation of “laziness”. On August 19, he writes: “I am satisfied with the whole day, except for a little laziness during class. I could do even less and be content; but I am dissatisfied with the fact that during work I allowed myself to rest.

Of course, Tolstoy had not yet developed in himself at that time the habit of sitting down to work every day at certain hours under all conditions - a habit that became a necessity for him in the last period of his life; but already at that time, when reading one of Schiller's philosophical poems, he "recorded in his soul ... the idea that in order to do something great, you need to direct all the forces of the soul to one point ”(diary, July 21). But the conditions in which Tolstoy was in the Danube army did not give him the opportunity to properly and regularly engage in literary work. In addition to the performance of albeit simple official duties, daily inevitable relations with big amount people distracted him and prevented him from concentrating. His extreme susceptibility also mattered in this case. The hero of "Childhood" tells about himself: "When I used to be interfered with in my studies ... , not so much interfere with the fact that they tear me away from my studies, but since I am very impressionable, they upset the mood of the spirit "46. In addition, ongoing travels constantly distracted him, providing many new and interesting impressions and materials for his sophisticated powers of observation. These circumstances, it would seem, should have somewhat softened the constant harsh reproaches to oneself for "laziness" and "idleness."

Even more often Tolstoy reproaches himself for the shortcoming which he calls irritability. “I spoke bitterly,” “scolded,” “I reproach myself for being harsh,” “for slandering,” “I got mad twice” (at fellow officers), “shouted at Nikita,” “argued passionately,” “shouted at Alyoshka,” “was too harsh”, “condemned”, “was angry with Alyoshka”, “was angry twice with Nikita”, “cursed the adviser” and even “hit Nikita”, and “just before the border he sinned - he beat Davydenka” (obviously, a batman) . The concreteness of all these notes makes us think that at that time Tolstoy really had reason to reproach himself for those shortcomings, which he generally combined with the term "irritability", although, perhaps, in some cases his reproaches to himself due to the constant tendency to self-accusation were somewhat exaggerated.

Finally, the third main shortcoming, for which Tolstoy reproached himself at that time, is spinelessness. Judging by the diary, Tolstoy saw a concrete manifestation of this shortcoming, firstly, in his “indecisiveness” in various cases of life and, secondly, in deviations from the rules and decisions he had adopted. These retreats were sometimes caused by influences environment to which Tolstoy was very susceptible. He was well aware of this quality in himself. “How much society and books mean,” Tolstoy writes in his diary on August 4, 1853. “With good and bad, I am a completely different person.” This extreme susceptibility led Tolstoy to the fact that, while in society, he sometimes took part in such pastimes that did not correspond to the decisions and rules he had made. First of all, this refers to his long-standing passion - playing cards, which he succumbed to from time to time, despite the fact that he probably got very excited in the game and therefore was mostly at a loss and sometimes lost very significant sums for his modest fortune.

Based on the fact that he was not always able to implement in his life the rules he had developed for himself and deliberate decisions, Tolstoy sometimes began to doubt whether the decisions of the will, based on the conclusions of reason, could be effective alone without the participation of feelings. As early as November 1, 1853, he wrote in his diary: “It is impossible to follow the definitions of a reasonable will only as a result of its expression ... Reason, acting directly, is powerless against passion, it must try to act on one another. But doubts passed, and Tolstoy worked out rules for himself again and again and made decisions regarding his way of life and his actions and tried to enforce them.

These are some character traits personality of Tolstoy at that time.

In order to complete a general overview of this period of Tolstoy's life, one should dwell on his relations with colleagues and superiors. Service at the headquarters brought Tolstoy many new acquaintances. Among his new acquaintances was Alexei Arkadyevich Stolypin, nicknamed Mongo, Lermontov's cousin, who was present at his duel. "Mongo" made an unfavorable impression on Tolstoy (diary, August 2, 1854).

At first, some tension was felt in Tolstoy's relationship with his new colleagues at the headquarters. “The so-called aristocrats arouse envy in me,” Tolstoy wrote in his diary on July 25. And then a harsh rebuke to himself: "I am incorrigibly petty and envious."

At first, Tolstoy tried to behave with those whom he called aristocrats with exaggerated pride and arrogance. Then this artificial manner of treatment disappeared and “modesty and ease” appeared, and ended with the fact that already on July 31 he could write in his diary: “My relations with my comrades are becoming so pleasant that I feel sorry for leaving the headquarters.”

Tolstoy's relations with his closest superiors were different. In his diary, Tolstoy notes that the adjutants of Field Marshal Paskevich, who arrived at the headquarters, "go wild" about him as "disgracié" (fallen out of favor; diary, July 27). Over time, Tolstoy's relationship with his immediate superiors changed not for the better, but for the worse. When he was already near Sevastopol, on January 26, 1855, his colleague K. N. Boborykin wrote to him from the main army apartment in Chisinau: “Serzhputovsky, as you know, does not like you very much”47.

During the Eastern War, a sharp turning point was brewing.

England set itself the goal of ousting Russia from the Caucasus, the Crimean coast, the coasts of the Baltic and White Seas, from Kamchatka and from the nearby regions of Central Asia. During the summer of 1854, the Allies undertook military operations against Kronstadt, Sveaborg, Odessa, the Solovetsky Islands, and Petropavlovsk-on-Kamchatka. However, the successes achieved by the allies at sea were very small: they managed to capture only one minor fortress of Bomarsund on the Baltic Sea.

Supporters of the war in England and France expressed dissatisfaction with the slowness of hostilities. It was decided to start decisive action against Russia in the Black Sea. Allied corps were formed, destined for departure to the Crimea. The total composition of these corps reached 62-64 thousand people, of which the French were 27-29 thousand, the British - 28 thousand, the Turks - 7 thousand. The British, in addition, had a siege park consisting of 65 guns.

On September 1, the allied fleet approached Evpatoria, on September 2, the allied troops landed on the seashore between Evpatoria and the Alma River.

On September 7, the allied army, after a four-day stay at the landing site, moved towards Sevastopol. The next day, September 8, the first meeting of the allied army with Russian troops took place on the Alma River. The allied army had at its disposal 55 thousand people, the Russian - no more than 35 thousand. Commander-in-Chief Prince A. S. Menshikov commanded the Russian troops.

Despite the extraordinary courage and stamina of the Russian troops, the battle was lost due to both the numerical superiority of the allied army and the superiority of its weapons and the complete lack of leadership from the Russian command. Having lost more than 5,600 people (allied losses were about 4,500 people), the Russian troops retreated towards Sevastopol.

The news of the landing of the allies and the unsuccessful battle on the Alma River quickly reached the headquarters of the Russian army in Chisinau and made a depressing impression here (as later in St. Petersburg).

Immediately upon arrival in Chisinau, Tolstoy went on a long (200 verst, according to his record) official trip to the city of Letichev, Podolsk province. The trip, during which Tolstoy, as he wrote, saw "a lot of new and interesting things," lasted a week. Returning on September 16, Tolstoy writes in his diary the same day: "The landing near Sevastopol torments me." This is Tolstoy's first deeply felt response to the war in which he himself took part. Immediately he writes down that, in his opinion, the Russian army suffers from two main shortcomings - "self-confidence and effeminacy." Of course, Tolstoy could only find these shortcomings in command staff, in relation to which Tolstoy's remark should be recognized as quite fair.

Not only Tolstoy, but also other patriotic officers were having a hard time with the enemy's invasion of their native country and the first unsuccessful battle with him. Under the influence of this feeling, among the most intelligent officers of the staff of the chief of artillery, a project arose for the founding of a society to promote enlightenment and education among the troops. The circle in which this project arose and was supported consisted of the following seven persons: Captain A. Ya. Friede, Captain A. D. Stolypin, Staff Captain I. K. Komstadius, Staff Captain L. F. Balyuzek, Lieutenant Shubin , lieutenant K. N. Boborykin, lieutenant Count Tolstoy (the rank of lieutenant Tolstoy received on September 6, 1854).

Of all the members of this circle, Tolstoy was the youngest in rank, but one of the most active. On September 17, he writes that the plan for the founding of the society "preoccupies" him greatly. The next day, he is already drafting the charter of the society, which, unfortunately, has not been preserved.

But after some time, the members of the circle, for some reason, abandoned the idea of ​​founding a society and decided instead of the society to organize a magazine for soldiers. Tolstoy at first continued to defend the plan of founding the society, but then he also joined the plan for publishing a magazine.

The magazine was first supposed to be called "Soldier's Bulletin", and then - "Military List". Tolstoy and the former editor of the newspaper "Kavkaz" O. I. Konstantinov were chosen as editors of the proposed journal. The journal was supposed to be published from January 1, 1855 weekly, the size of one printed sheet, and made publicly available at a price of 3 rubles per year. Funds for the publication were advanced by Tolstoy and Stolypin.

Tolstoy wrote to his son-in-law, Valeryan Petrovich, in Yasnaya Polyana, asking him to send him 1,500 rubles from the proceeds from the just completed sale of the large Yasnaya Polyana house. Tolstoy expressed his consent to the sale of the large Yasnaya Polyana house at a personal meeting with his son-in-law in Pyatigorsk: in the summer of 1853. It was not easy for Tolstoy to decide on this sale, since the house was dear to him due to the memories of childhood, youth and early youth spent by him in this house, and therefore he asked to make this sale in his absence. The house was sold in the fall of 1854 to the neighboring landowner Gorokhov, who moved it to his estate Dolgoe, eighteen miles from Yasnaya Polyana48. The proceeds from the sale of the house were put into the Order of Public Charity for safety in case of emergency household expenses. The letter in which Tolstoy asked his son-in-law to send him money has not survived, but a letter from V.P. Tolstoy to T.A. Ergolskaya with a message from Lev Nikolayevich about this letter to him has been preserved.

Lev Nikolaevich wrote to V.P. Tolstoy that he had started an important enterprise, which he would report in detail when he was sure of it, and asked him to immediately send him 1,500 silver rubles, "without upsetting" him with "no objections." V.P. Tolstoy reluctantly fulfilled the request of his brother-in-law. “God forbid,” he wrote to T. A. Yergolskaya, “that this enterprise of Leva turns out to be more successful than others, but I am very afraid that this money, the last resources of Yasny, will not disappear without bringing him the slightest benefit.”49

Permission to publish the magazine depended on the king according to the report of the Minister of War. A detailed prospectus of the proposed journal was collectively drawn up, a draft of which, transcribed by the clerk and edited by Tolstoy, has been preserved in Tolstoy's archive50. According to the program outlined in this prospectus, the tasks of the journal were defined as follows: “1) spreading among the soldiers the rules of military virtues: devotion to the throne and fatherland and holy fulfillment military duties; 2) dissemination between officers and lower ranks of information about contemporary military events, ignorance of which gives rise to false and even harmful rumors among the troops, about feats of courage and valiant deeds of detachments and individuals in all theaters of a real war; 3) dissemination among the military of all ranks and branches of service of knowledge about special subjects of military art; 4) dissemination of critical information about the dignity of military writings, new inventions and projects; 5) delivering entertaining, accessible51 and useful reading to all ranks of the army; 6) improving the poetry of the soldier, which is his only literature, by placing in the magazine songs written in a clear and sonorous language, inspiring the soldier with the correct concepts of things and more than others filled with feelings of love for the monarch and the fatherland.

In a letter to his brother Sergei Nikolaevich dated November 20, 1854, Tolstoy spoke more frankly about the planned tasks of the proposed journal. He wrote that the intended journal was intended to "keep up the good spirits of the army." “The journal,” Tolstoy wrote, “will contain descriptions of battles — not as dry and false as in other journals, feats of courage, biographies and obituaries. good people and mostly from the dark ones; military stories, soldiers' songs, popular articles about engineering and artillery, etc.

Thus, according to Tolstoy's letter, the tasks of the planned journal were as follows: to promote the strengthening of patriotic feelings in soldiers and officers; report truthful information about ongoing battles (Tolstoy had already managed to make sure that official reports about battles are usually false); to increase the level of military knowledge of soldiers and officers; talk about the exploits of courage and courage, mainly soldiers ("dark ones"); improve the quality of the fiction, available at that time to the Russian soldier, - soldier's songs (here Tolstoy's participation in the preparation of the program affected). Not a single word is said here about the strengthening in the soldiers of "loyalty to the throne", "love for the monarch", from which we can conclude that this item was included in the program of the journal only out of necessity. It is impossible not to admit that a military journal that set itself such tasks would have been a progressive phenomenon in feudal Russia during the reign of Nicholas I.

The prospectus of the journal was submitted for approval by the commander of the Crimean army, Prince M. D. Gorchakov. Gorchakov reacted sympathetically to the project of founding the journal and on October 16 sent it to St. Petersburg for consideration by the Minister of War with a subsequent report to the Tsar.

A trial issue of the magazine was also compiled, which included some small work by Tolstoy. In his diary, Tolstoy refers to this work as an "article"; but, probably, it was not an article in the usual sense of the word, since Tolstoy in letters to Nekrasov called "articles" even such small ones of his works of art, like "Marker Notes", "Sevastopol in December" and "Sevastopol in May". Probably in the test sheet was placed short story Tolstoy on military theme. Tolstoy's archives contain two artistic sketches he wrote for the proposed magazine: "How Russian Soldiers Die" and "Uncle Zhdanov and Chevalier Chernov"52.

The short story "How Russian Soldiers Die" was written by Tolstoy based on his memories of the Caucasus. While working on this story, Tolstoy felt himself transported into an element that was once close and dear to him. Having told about how the company commander, setting off with his company against a party of mountaineers who raided Russian possessions in order to capture artillery horses, “looked forward with a worried expression, and his eyes shone more than usual,” the author adds on his own: “It is gratifying to see a man boldly looking into the eyes of death; and here hundreds of people every hour, every minute are ready not only to accept it without fear, but, what is much more important, without boasting, without the desire to be misled, calmly and simply go towards it.

In a battle with the highlanders, the soldier Bondarchuk, who enjoyed an excellent reputation in his unit, was wounded (“the whole company held on to them,” the company commander said about him). The wound was severe, and very soon "the thought of the proximity of death had already managed to lay its beautiful, calmly majestic features on this simple face." The soldier dies with complete calmness, without complaints, without superfluous words, concentrating in himself, and such a death arouses admiration in the author. “Great are the fates of the Slavic people! No wonder he was given this calm strength of the soul, this great simplicity and unconsciousness of strength. !.. With these words, the author ends his story. (By the words “unconsciousness of force,” Tolstoy meant that people like the Bondarchuk depicted by him are themselves unaware of the moral forces lurking in them and therefore are devoid of any conceit and any pride, which in Tolstoy’s eyes was also a great moral dignity.)

The story is written in a lively, simple language; folk words and turns of speech are introduced into the conversations of soldiers without undue overload. Small but expressive landscapes of Caucasian nature enliven the story.

How Russian Soldiers Die is Tolstoy's first attempt at writing stories for the people. And although the story remained unfinished, Tolstoy's experience should be recognized as quite successful.

The second story, intended by the author for a military magazine, entitled "Uncle Zhdanov and Chevalier Chernov", remained unfinished. In the written beginning of the story, Zhdanov is not yet an "uncle", but a newly arrived recruit. The story that has begun gives a vivid picture of the hard slavery of soldiers under Nicholas I. The very turns of speech accepted at that time both among the people and in military circles and used by Tolstoy in his story speak enough about this slavery: the recruits were “driven”; non-commissioned officer "chased the party"; soldiers were "expelled for training", "expelled to work". Beating is the main and most common method of recruit training. “Zhdanov had a lot of beatings,” says the author, and Zhdanov “had only one thing to do - to endure.” The author explains that Zhdanov was beaten not because he was guilty, and not in order for him to improve: “he was beaten not so that he could do better, “because he is a soldier, and a soldier needs to be beaten.” And it ended up that Zhdanov was so used to being beaten by everyone that when a senior soldier used to come up to him and raise his hand to scratch his head, Zhdanov already “expected that they would beat him, screwed up his eyes and grimaced.”

Having written up to this point, Tolstoy obviously saw quite clearly that the story, which paints such a truthful and bleak picture of the soldier's life of that time, would in no case be passed by censorship, especially for a military magazine. And he left work on the story.

After the landing of the allies in the Crimea, the main object of their military operations was Sevastopol. The Allies set themselves the task of destroying the Russian Black Sea Fleet, seize Sevastopol, occupy the Crimean peninsula and cut it off from Russia53.

News of the military events in the Crimea reached Chisinau relatively quickly. The landing of the Allies hit Tolstoy hard and changed his attitude towards the war. The war has now become for him a native, vital, exciting affair. “Things in Sevastopol are still hanging by a thread,” he writes with concern in his diary on October 21. He has a desire to take part in the defense of Sevastopol himself.

Tolstoy's life in Kishinev was furnished with some comforts. As he wrote to Aunt Yergolskaya on October 17, he had a good apartment, a piano, regular classes, pleasant acquaintances. “But I,” Tolstoy wrote, “again dream of a campaign.” Upon learning that the 12th artillery brigade, to which he was temporarily assigned, took part in the battle of Balaklava, and therefore could also participate in this battle, Tolstoy, as he writes in the same letter, experienced a "feeling of envy." He was outraged that while the army was retreating and serious battles were taking place in the Crimea, balls54 were given in Chisinau in honor of the arrived Grand Dukes Nicholas and Michael55. At one of these balls, Tolstoy announced his desire to transfer to Sevastopol.

The last days of his stay in Kishinev remained so memorable to Tolstoy that later he even wanted to write memoirs about this time for his biographer P. I. Biryukov56.

In a letter to his brother Sergei Nikolaevich dated July 3, 1855, Tolstoy listed the reasons that prompted him to seek a transfer to the Crimean army. He wrote that he asked for this transfer "partly in order to see this war, partly in order to escape from Serzhputovsky's headquarters," which he did not like, "and most of all," Tolstoy wrote, "out of patriotism, which at that time time, I confess, found a lot on me.

To all this was added another reason, of a very special nature. Tolstoy learned that in the battle under

Inkerman killed his close friend I.K. Komstadius, one of the members of the circle for the publication of a military magazine. “His death,” Tolstoy wrote on November 2, “most of all prompted me to ask for Sevastopol. I felt ashamed of him."

Notes

1 "Youth", ch. XXVIII.

2 D.P. Makovitsky. Yasnaya Polyana notes, ed. "Zadruga", vol. I, M., 1922, p. 52, entry dated December 26, 1904.

3 N.A. Nekrasov. complete collection works and letters, vol. X, M., 1952, p. 201.

4 All quotations from Tolstoy's diaries for 1854-1855 are taken from the Complete Works, vol. 47, 1937.

5 Stored in the State. Museum of Tolstoy; reproduced in print several times.

6 The location of the original of this daguerreotype is unknown; reproduced in print several times.

7 Reproduced in the publication by N. G. Molostov and P. A. Sergeenko “Leo Tolstoy. Life and work”, p. 101.

8 See annex LXIII.

9 “I have a poetic impression of Bucharest and Iasi,” Tolstoy recalled on June 6, 1905. - In Iasi, elegant corso, white acacias. After camp life, the mud was very nice. The cab drivers have magnificent horses, and at that time they were all Russian eunuchs. ... "(Unpublished" Yasnaya Polyana notes "by D. P. Makovitsky).

10 The writer E. D. Khvoshchinskaya credited Tolstoy with the fact that while many described childhood and youth, he alone touched on the transitional age in his Boyhood (S. Perechnikov[E. D. Khvoshchinskaya]. Provincial Letters in Our Literature, Notes of the Fatherland, 1863, 4, p. 186).

11 D.P. Makovitsky. Yasnaya Polyana Notes, no. 1, ed. "Zadruga", M., 1922, p. 78, entry dated January 9, 1905.

12 N.A. Nekrasov. Complete collection of works and letters, vol. X, 1952, p. 205.

13 "Boyhood", ch. XVIII ("Maiden").

14 "Boyhood", ch. XIX.

15 "Boyhood", ch. XXVII.

16 N.G. Chernyshevsky. Complete works, vol. III, Goslitizdat, M., 1947, p. 428.

17 K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. IX, pp. 371-372. — See Appendix LXIV.

18 This is reported by Tyutchev in a letter to his wife dated November 23, 1853 ( Historical collection"Old and New", vol. XVIII, pp. 59-60).

19 "Reading for Soldiers", 1854, I, p. 72. This poem, along with many others like it, was reprinted in a collection published in Moscow in 1854, bearing the loud title: "God is with us! Forward !.. Hooray !.. »

20 P.A. Vyazemsky. Complete collection of works, vol. XI, St. Petersburg, 1887, p. 41.

21 Review of the book by G. Kolb "A Guide to Comparative Statistics" - N. G. Chernyshevsky. Complete collection of works, vol. X, M., 1951, p. 488.

22 Quoted in the book of Academician E. V. Tarle "Crimean War", vol. II, M., 1943, p. 466.

23 A. Ya. Panaeva. Memoirs, ed. "Academia", M., 1928, pp. 308-310

24 N.A. Dobrolyubov. Complete Works, edited by P. I. Lebedev-Polyansky, vol. IV, Goslitizdat, M., 1937, p. 436.

25 N.G. Chernyshevsky. Complete collection of works, vol. X, M., 1951, p. 487.

26 Ibid., p. 360.

27 "Politics" ("Contemporary", 1859, No. 7). — N. G. Chernyshevsky. Complete collected works, vol. VI, M., 1949, pp. 321-322.

28 See I. Elsberg. Herzen, Goslitizdat, M., 1951, pp. 326-323, chapter " Eastern War and the defeatist position of Herzen, a patriot and revolutionary.

29 A.I. Herzen. The Old World and Russia, Complete Collected Works and Letters, vol. VIII, St. Petersburg, 1919, p. 57.

30 Ibid., p. 67.

31 S. M. Solovyov. Notes, ed. "Prometheus", St. Petersburg, p. 150.

33 Pyotr Petrovich Pekarsky (1828-1872) - a favorite student of the Kazan professor D. I. Meyer (see pp. 659-660), later an academician.

34 N.V. Shelgunov. Memoirs, Guise, 1923, p. 24.

35 M. Tsebrikova. 1950s, Vestnik world history", 1901, 12, p. 11.

36 Academician E.V. Tarle. Crimean War, vol. I, M., 1944, p. 244.

37 K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. X, pp. 68-69.

38 A. B. Goldenweiser. Near Tolstoy, vol. I, M., 1922, p. 130, entry dated June 20, 1904.

39 See Appendix LXV.

40 Academician E.V. Tarle. Crimean War, vol. I, p. 454.

41 Christo Finishing seeding. Near Yasnaya Polyana, ed. "Intermediary", M., p. 8.

43 N.A. Nekrasov. Complete collection of works and letters, vol. X, M., 1952, p. 205.

44 A copy of Schiller's Collected Works, read by Tolstoy in 1854 (ed. Cotta, 1840), has been preserved in the Yasnaya Polyana Library; it contains Tolstoy's notes. According to Tolstoy, this book was given to him by a Romanian doctor, who at that time treated him “and fell in love” (Unpublished Yasnaya Polyana Notes by D.P. Makovitsky, entry dated April 5, 1905).

45 The initialed title of the work remains undisclosed, which Tolstoy mentions in the following entry dated August 24, 1854: “Today I experienced two strong, pleasant and useful impressions ... 2) I read Z.T.

46 "Childhood" (first edition; Complete Works, vol. 1, 1928, p. 156).

48 N. N. Tolstoy wrote to Leo Nikolayevich in November 1854: “You surely know that the house in Yasnaya Polyana has been sold, broken down and taken away. I recently visited Yasnaya Polyana. The absence of the house struck me less than I thought; the view of Yasnaya is not at all spoiled by this ”(the letter was not published; it is kept in the Department of Manuscripts of the State Museum of Tolstoy).

50 Published in the Complete Collected Works, vol. 4, 1932, pp. 281-283.

51 The word "accessible" was inserted into the manuscript by Tolstoy's hand.

52 First draft published in Complete Collected Works, vol. 5, 1931, pp. 232-236; the second is in the same place, vol. 3, 1932, pp. 271-273.

53 See annex LXVI.

54 The feeling of indignation that court balls evoked in Tolstoy during the war was reflected in the following text from the draft edition of War and Peace: . He was struck by their calm, luxurious life, with secular Viennese interests, which had nothing to do with the upcoming war, which was the main business of life for Prince Andrei. (Complete Works, vol. 13, 1949, p. 315).

55 According to Tolstoy's later recollection, the Grand Dukes came to him to get acquainted with him as a writer (Unpublished "Yasnopolyanskie Zapiski" by D.P. Makovitsky, entry dated October 8, 1906).

57 In a letter to his brother Sergei Nikolaevich dated July 3, 1855, Tolstoy wrote that he "asked from Kishinev on November 1 to go to the Crimea." If this is not a typo (“asked” instead of “left”), then these words can only be understood in the sense that on November 1 his transfer to the Crimean army was finalized. November 2, as the date of departure to the Crimea, is named in Tolstoy's letter to T. A. Ergolskaya dated March 13, 1855; but the accuracy of this date is doubtful, since according to Tolstoy's diary entry, he was already in Odessa on November 2.

There are pages in the life of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy that are little known to a wide circle of readers. One of these pages is the years that the writer spent in military service, and this time is one of the most important in his development as a writer and patriot.
Tolstoy devoted about five years to military service, of which he spent two years and seven months in the Caucasus. Leaving Yasnaya Polyana at the invitation of his elder brother Nikolai Nikolayevich Tolstoy, who served as an artilleryman, Lev Nikolayevich did not think about a military career.
May 30, 1851 Tolstoy arrives in the village of Starogladkovskaya, located on the left bank of the Terek. Lev Nikolaevich was a little over twenty years old, and, being in the center of hostilities, he cannot help but take part in the "case" - a raid on a mountain village. The young man behaved with dignity and earned not only praise for his courage from Major General Prince A.I. Baryatinsky, but also an offer to enter military service. For official enrollment, papers about the noble origin of Lev Nikolayevich and about his dismissal from the civil service are needed, but they were lost somewhere in the bowels of the bureaucratic machine of St. Petersburg. This deprives Tolstoy of the opportunity to receive an award - the soldier's St. George's Cross, which the young man secretly dreamed of and which he considered an award for bravery on the battlefield.
In a letter to Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy writes: “During the campaign, I had the opportunity to be presented twice to the St. George Cross and could not receive it due to a delay of several days of the same damned paper. The honors list was submitted on the 19th, and the paper was received on the 20th. I frankly admit that of all the military distinctions, I most of all wanted to receive this cross, and that this failure caused me great annoyance. Somewhat later, in 1853, it happened that Lev Nikolayevich himself refused to be awarded. On February 17, 1853, the battery, in which Tolstoy served, took part in the attack on the village of Mazlagash, and then covered the withdrawal of the detachment. The actions of artillery were rated very highly and two St. George's crosses were allocated to the unit. According to the authorities, Lev Nikolaevich was worthy of the award, but he refused in favor of the elderly soldier Andreev. The award gave him a number of benefits, including the right to a lifetime pension.
Service for Tolstoy was not burdensome, campaigns were rare, exercises and duty did not take much time. He travels a lot: Kislovodsk, Mozdok, Kizlyar, Vladikavkaz, communicates with the Terek Cossacks, freedom-loving and whole people. From a letter home: “I feel that I have become better here, I am firmly convinced that no matter what happens to me here, everything is for my good.”
While still in Moscow, Tolstoy conceived the novel Four Epochs of Development, which, according to the author's intention, consisted of four parts: Childhood, Adolescence, Youth, and Youth. But only in the Caucasus the idea gets a real embodiment. Lev Nikolaevich completely rewrote the first part of "Childhood" three times and, not hoping for success, sent the manuscript to the editors of the Sovremennik magazine. The story was published in September 1852 and was very warmly received by both readers and critics. In his diary, Tolstoy writes: “We must work mentally. I know that I would be happier not knowing this job. But God set me on this path, I have to follow it.”
The Raid is out of print, work is underway on Boyhood. Literature fascinates Tolstoy so much that he decides to retire, but his plans are not destined to come true. The war with Turkey begins, vacations and resignations are prohibited. Lev Nikolayevich makes a choice - he is transferred to the active army. January 19, 1854 Tolstoy leaves Starogladkovskaya. There are two more years of service ahead in the most dangerous areas of active hostilities: the defense of Sevastopol, the battle on the Black River. On August 27, 1855, on the last day of the assault on Sevastopol by enemy troops, Tolstoy commanded five battery guns and, covering the withdrawal of troops, was one of the last to leave the city.
For participation in the defense of Sevastopol, Lev Nikolaevich was awarded the order St. Anne 4th degree with the inscription "For courage" and medals "In memory of the war of 1853-1856." and "For the Defense of Sevastopol".
The Caucasus forever remained in the life and work of the writer. Recalling the past tense, Tolstoy writes: “This land of the wild is really good, in which the two most opposite things are so strangely and poetically combined - war and freedom.”

10:57 — REGNUM

What kind of officer was Tolstoy? The question is not idle. Obviously, if he had not served in the Caucasus and Sevastopol behind him, neither the Cossacks nor the Sevastopol Tales would have appeared, and we would hardly have had the pleasure of reading War and Peace. Meanwhile, the luggage of personal psychological experiences, constant and deep moral and ethical introspection, as well as close observations of the behavior of people around in the war, attempts to unravel them and their own internal motivation formed the basis of bright psychological images that still amaze the grateful reader.

It seems to us that with regard to Tolstoy's military service (especially her Sevastopol period), mass literature is dominated by some hagiographic character, which is characteristic of the description of the biographies of famous people in general. In these descriptions, the undoubted greatness of Tolstoy the writer is automatically transferred to other, in this case non-writer's, circumstances of his life: the great Tolstoy was on the 4th bastion ergo The 4th bastion is "great" because Tolstoy was on it.

Such semantic constructions are undoubtedly spectacular, easy for ordinary perception, thanks to them, mutual enrichment with fame occurs between the writer and the circumstance of his biography, but these constructions are unlikely to contribute to a better understanding of the life of the writer, and in the end they in no way cloud the understanding of his work. In addition, the smoothing of corners inherent in hagiography, the incantation of uncomfortable moments, caused by the fear of incurring accusations of shortcomings and even more so vices on a celebrity, hides the obvious idea that a celebrity, no matter how great she may be, remains a person with all his inherent passions, mistakes and experiences.

Without trying to describe Tolstoy's entire long and rich non-writing life, we decided to confine ourselves to the time of his service in officer ranks, more specifically, the period of the Crimean War, guided by the fact that it was during this relatively short period that Tolstoy made the final choice in favor of literature as his main life. field.

We have at our disposal a lot of materials that are sources of information on this topic. First of all, these are materials written by Tolstoy himself - his correspondence, diaries, notes of those years and, of course, his artistic and journalistic works of that time. Secondly, these are official documents - reports, official correspondence regarding Tolstoy's service. Thirdly, these are the memories of his acquaintances, including direct colleagues, as well as relatives. In addition, the memoirs and letters of officers of the Sevastopol garrison (mainly artillerymen) were involved, although they did not mention Tolstoy, but were with him in almost similar circumstances of service. The last group of materials is of particular value when comparing the behavior, impressions and thoughts of these officers with the behavior and thoughts of Tolstoy himself.

It is not our task to describe Tolstoy's two-year service in the Caucasus. We confine ourselves to pointing out that even then he showed those properties of his nature that accompanied him throughout his military career. On the one hand, this is the unconditional courage shown by him in battle, for which the cadet Tolstoy was repeatedly presented to the soldier's St. George's Cross. On the other hand, this is a disregard for discipline, for the performance of official duties, which prevented him from receiving an award, including those vital in war conditions. So, for example, Junker Tolstoy was even arrested for leaving his post during the guard. And finally, even in the Caucasus, such a trait of Tolstoy's character as a weak ability to get along in established teams manifested itself. (This last quality is especially important for an officer, whose circle of official contacts is determined not by his own choice, but by the will of his superiors and the requirements of the service.)

In January 1854, having passed the exam for an officer's rank, Tolstoy left the Caucasus and was transferred to the Danube army, acting against the Turks. Tolstoy learns about promotion to officers from newspapers on his way to the army.

The Danube campaign began in June 1853, when the Russian army under the command of Prince M. D. Gorchakov entered the territory of the Danube principalities. During the summer-autumn, the Russian army occupied almost the entire territory of Moldova and Wallachia on the left bank of the Danube. Bucharest was also occupied, where the headquarters of the Russian army was located.

Ensign Tolstoy joined the army on March 12, just as the crossing of the Danube began, and was assigned to Light Battery No. 8 of the 12th Artillery Brigade. But he did not stay there for long - less than a month later he became an orderly under the head of the Headquarters of the artillery of the Southern Army, General A. O. Serzhputovsky. In his diary on this occasion, Tolstoy writes retrospectively on June 15, 1854:

“Three months of idleness and a life that I cannot be satisfied with. I spent three weeks at Scheidemann's, and I regret not staying. I would get along with the officers, and I would be able to get along with the battery commander. On the other hand, bad company and hidden malice from my unsplendid position would have had a good effect on me ... I was seconded to the Headquarters at the very time when I quarreled with the battery commander, and flattered my vanity.

The conflict with the battery authorities had its consequences. Firstly, battery commander K.F. Scheidemann immediately announced a penalty to Tolstoy:

“At present, the service is difficult, and the officers must be at their places, I reprimand you severely for your unauthorized stay in Bucarest for more than a certain period, I order you to immediately arrive at the battery after receiving this.”

And secondly, Tolstoy and Scheidemann crossed paths a year later, when the latter became the head of artillery in Sevastopol. And their relationship, spoiled even at the first meeting, was tense almost until the end of the war, sometimes it came to public scenes.

Thus, Tolstoy's first experience as an officer in integrating into the service team should be recognized as unsuccessful. This episode, in addition to the conflict with the authorities, is also notable for the fact that Tolstoy calls army officers like himself "bad society." Such snobbery, which unflatteringly characterizes Tolstoy as a comrade, is hardly explainable, especially considering the fact that gunners (along with military engineers and sailors), due to the circumstances of the service, which requires large volume special and scientific knowledge, belonged to the most educated part of Russian society. And it is unlikely that the officers of the Danube army could be very different from their colleagues who fought in the Caucasus and were familiar to Tolstoy from several years of joint service.

The very transfer to the headquarters of yesterday's junker with a complete lack of officer experience is explained by the fact that Tolstoy initially sought to avoid serving in the ranks and, visiting relatives and friends on the way to the Danube army, managed to obtain the necessary recommendations.

So, immediately upon arrival in the army, Tolstoy paid a visit to the commander, Prince M. D. Gorchakov. On March 17, 1854, in a letter to his aunt T. A. Ergolskaya, Tolstoy writes:

“He received me better than I expected, just like a relative. He kissed me, invited me to dinner every day, he wants to keep me with him, although this has not yet been completely decided.

“Thank God you are at the pier; I was sure that the prince would receive you in a kindred way, based on his friendly disposition towards your father, and it can be hoped that he would not refuse you his patronage. If he does not leave you with him, then he has good reasons for this and recommends you to someone who has weight in his eyes; this is how he always treats relatives in whom he is interested.

The strength of the patronage, however, was only enough to appoint Tolstoy to the "secondary" Artillery Headquarters, but it was not enough to be transferred to the main Headquarters. Tolstoy was actually "imposed" on the commander of artillery, General Serzhputovsky, as orderlies, which created tensions between them. The general was clearly a burden to the inexperienced orderly, whom he could not send back to the unit, and Tolstoy felt dissatisfied with the status in which he resides. Obviously he expected more. Tension, turning into hostility, arose almost immediately, and already at the beginning of July 1854 Tolstoy reflects on the reasons:

“It was as if I allowed my general too much ... Having thought it over carefully, it turns out, on the contrary, that I allowed myself too much with him.”

Be that as it may, relations between the general and his orderly deteriorated so much that Serzhputovsky even stopped greeting Tolstoy in public. Tolstoy writes about this with irritation in his diary on July 21, 1854:

“The silly old man irritated me again with his manner of not bowing. I'll have to give him a chic."

It is not known whether Tolstoy gave the "chic" to his general, but a week later a new entry: "The old man still does not bow to me."

As a result, reconciliation did not come, and even when Tolstoy was near Sevastopol, his colleague K. N. Boborykin wrote to him on January 26, 1855 from the Main Apartment in Chisinau: “Serzhputovsky, as you know, does not like you very much.”

It cannot be said that Tolstoy was heavily burdened with official duties during the Danube campaign. There was a lot of free time, and Tolstoy generously spent it on reading, revelry and entertainment, sometimes not always decent (see, for example, an entry dated July 29, 1854: “Walking from dinner, Tyshk[evich] and I stopped at a bardeli, and we were covered by Kryzhanovsky"), as well as literature classes. It was during his stay in the Danube army that Tolstoy completed Boyhood and Woodcutting. Junker's story.

Service at the headquarters was generally comfortable and easy, although, perhaps, monotonous. In a letter to T. A. Ergolskaya on May 24, 1854, Tolstoy writes:

“I am ashamed that you think that I have been exposed to all the dangers of war, and I have not yet smelled Turkish gunpowder, but I live quietly in Bucharest, walk, play music and eat ice cream. In addition to the two weeks that I spent in Oltenitsa, seconded to the battery, and one week spent traveling through Moldavia, Wallachia and Bessarabia on the orders of General Serzhputovsky, I am with him "on special assignments", I lived in Bucharest; I frankly admit that this somewhat absent-minded way of life, completely idle and expensive, is terribly not to my liking.

But, I think, in this case, Tolstoy was cunning, not wanting, perhaps, to annoy his dear aunt. He also had to make dangerous business trips, sometimes lasting several days, in units and subunits of the Danube army.

Half a century later, in a conversation with A. B. Goldenweiser, Tolstoy recalled:

“The orderly is constantly exposed to great danger, and he himself rarely participates in shooting ... I was an orderly in the Danube army, and it seems that I never had to shoot. I remember once on the Danube at Silistria we stood on our bank of the Danube, and there was a battery on the other side, and I was sent there with some kind of order. The commander of that battery, Shube, seeing me, decided that here is a young graph, I'll play with him! And he drove me along the entire line under the shots, and deliberately murderously slowly. I passed this exam outwardly well, but the feeling was very bad.

If you briefly characterize Tolstoy's attitude to the war at that time, then it can be called contemplative and a little detached. He observes, remembers impressions. At that time, Tolstoy does not even have a hint of pacifism, there is no appeal to the humanistic ideals that have become integral part his later image. On the contrary, he likes the aesthetic side of war. Being present together with the headquarters during the siege of Silistria, on July 5, 1854, Tolstoy wrote in a letter to his aunt:

“To tell the truth, it is a strange pleasure to watch people kill each other, and between that morning and evening I watched it for hours from my wagon. And I'm not alone. The spectacle was truly remarkable, and especially at night. Usually at night, our soldiers worked in the trenches, the Turks attacked to prevent this work, and you should have seen and heard this shooting!

In this letter, Tolstoy describes the culminating episode of the Danube campaign - the siege of Silistria. Back in May 1854, the Russian army laid siege to this large port city on the banks of the Danube. An assault was scheduled for June 20, the success of which no one doubted, but a few hours before the attack an order was received to retreat. The reason was the aggravation of the international situation, and in particular the threat of Austria to enter the war on the side of Turkey. The Russian army began the evacuation of the Danubian principalities.

Tolstoy, even during the retreat, does not stop fussing about being transferred to Gorchakov's headquarters. In this sense, the already cited letter to T. A. Ergolskaya dated July 5, 1854 is very significant. It contains such undisguised flattery to the commander, obviously too detailed in a private letter, that suspicion involuntarily creeps in: the letter was written with the expectation of transferring its contents to the prince himself - either through an aunt, or through censorship of military censorship (personal letters sent to Russia from the current armies, as a rule, were perused at the border). Thus, speaking of Gorchakov, Tolstoy writes:

“I am becoming an admirer of the prince (however, one must listen to how officers and soldiers talk about him - not only I have never heard of him bad word, but everyone adores him) ... It is clear that he is so immersed in the general course of affairs that neither bullets nor bombs exist for him, he is exposed to danger with such simplicity, as if he is not aware of it, and involuntarily becomes more terrible for him than for myself; gives orders clear, precise and at the same time always friendly with everyone and everyone. This great person, that is, capable and honest, as I understand this word, a person who devoted his whole life to serving the fatherland, and not out of ambition, but out of duty ... Dear aunt, I would like your prediction to come true. My strongest desire is to be the adjutant of a man like him, whom I love and revere from the depths of my soul.

However, all the efforts were in vain - the transfer to the Main Apartment did not happen.

Tolstoy's position was aggravated by the fact that at first, in addition to tense relations with his immediate superiors, he failed to build equal relations with his colleagues - other adjutants. So, for example, on July 25, 1854, he writes in his diary: “I went to the old man and found him with a company of field marshal’s adjutants, in which it was unbearably hard for me,” and a day later he again mentions “adjutants, who, it seems to me, , savage me like disgracie". And this despite the fact that Tolstoy really wanted to get into the circle of these “aristocrats”, “bashi-bouzouks” (this is how the staff youth, especially adjutants, were called mockingly and contemptuously in the army). He openly admits this: “The so-called aristocrats arouse envy in me. I am incorrigibly petty and envious." But it was not easy for Tolstoy to get close to them.

There were several reasons. These young people are Tolstoy's peers. But they, for the most part, went through St. Petersburg military schools together or served together in the guards (or both), they, compared with Tolstoy, had much more army and administrative experience. Finally, they were old comrades bound by close ties of common Petersburg acquaintances, interests, and memories. And the provincial Tolstoy, with his two years of secluded Caucasian junkers, of course, was not easy for them to become their own.

But there was another reason - the main one. From the very beginning, Tolstoy chose the wrong tone in his communication with his comrades.

“I am too honest to deal with these people. It is strange that only now I noticed one of my important shortcomings: insulting and arousing envy in others - a tendency to show off all my advantages.

he writes on July 24, 1854 in his diary. Realizing the abnormality and injustice of his behavior, he, as if hiding envy, treated his comrades deliberately arrogantly, condescendingly. He got irritated when there seemed to be no reason:

“Bashi-bouzouki - as if on purpose, agreed to be especially nice, but I had too much bile. And again he insulted Tyshkevich. In general, I rarely remember that I, in all respects, was in such a terrible position as now. Sick, irritated, completely alone, I managed to disgust everyone, in the most indecisive and bad official position and without money. We need to get out of this situation. To be treated more closely, to endure the unpleasantness of a new rapprochement with comrades ”(record dated July 26, 1854).

To all appearances, Tolstoy managed to “endure the unpleasantness of getting close to his comrades,” and already on July 31, 1854, he writes: “My relations with my comrades are becoming so pleasant that I feel sorry for leaving the headquarters.”

Moreover, an informal group of young officers and adjutants of the Headquarters of the Southern Army is gradually taking shape, who, in addition to service and entertainment, find time to discuss serious socio-political, moral and ethical issues (see, for example, the entry dated June 24, 1854: “Chatted until the night with Shubin about our Russian slavery. It is true that slavery is evil, but extremely sweet evil.")

This circle included Tolstoy himself, captains A. D. Stolypin and A. Ya. Fride, staff captains L. F. Balyuzek and I. K. Komstadius, lieutenants Shubin and K. N. Boborykin. It is worth noting that these were outstanding and active people - four will reach the ranks of generals, three will become governors (and A. D. Stolypin, the father of the future Chairman of the Council of Ministers P. A. Stolypin, will even become governor general). In the late summer and early autumn of 1854, the idea arose in the circle to create a society with the aim of "distributing enlightenment and knowledge among the military in general and soldiers in particular." Pretty quickly, the idea evolved into a magazine project.

No opposition direction, which was later hinted at by some admirers of the image of Tolstoy the rebel, was not supposed. On the contrary, the founders planned a well-intentioned educational publication with elements of propaganda. Here is how Tolstoy himself outlined the goals of the Soldier's Bulletin (later renamed the Military List):

"1. distribution between the soldiers of the rules of military virtues: devotion to the Throne and the Fatherland and the holy performance of military duties;

2. distribution between officers and lower ranks of information about modern military events, ignorance of which gives rise to false and even harmful rumors among the troops, about feats of courage and valiant deeds of detachments and individuals in all theaters of a real war;

3. dissemination among the military of all ranks and branches of service of knowledge about special subjects of military art;

4. distribution of critical information about the dignity of military writings, new inventions and projects;

5. delivering entertaining, accessible and useful reading to all ranks of the army;

6. improvement of the soldier’s poetry, which is his only literature, by placing in the Journal of songs written in a clear and sonorous language, inspiring the soldier with the correct concepts of things and more than others filled with feelings of love for the Monarch and the Fatherland.

The publication, in which Tolstoy was assigned the role of editor, was supposed to be financed from the funds of the founders and subscriptions. In fact, the investors were to be Tolstoy and Stolypin, who then became very close and were on friendly terms throughout the Crimean War. It is noteworthy that, unlike the really wealthy Stolypin, who had estates in several provinces, Tolstoy was a landowner of an average hand, if not poor. The state was also greatly upset by Tolstoy's huge gambling debts. To finance the proposed publication, Tolstoy even had to sell his family nest - manor house in Yasnaya Polyana. (And even then, immediately after receiving these funds, Tolstoy lost cards and “magazine” money, and several thousand more in debt, which caused him to become depressed).

The army command reacted favorably to the idea, the plan for publishing the journal was approved by Gorchakov, and moreover, several generals agreed to take part as authors of articles. On October 16, 1854, Gorchakov sent an attitude on this issue to the Minister of War for a report to Nicholas I. A trial issue was even prepared, the authors of the articles in which were Tolstoy and the headquarters captain N. Ya. Rostovtsev who joined the circle (later also the general and governor) . But the answer of the Minister of War, received at the headquarters of the Southern Army on November 21, 1854, when Tolstoy was already in Sevastopol, completely destroyed these plans:

“His Majesty, doing full justice to the well-intentioned purpose with which it was supposed to publish the said journal, deigned to admit it was inconvenient to allow the publication of it, since all articles relating to the military operations of our troops, previously placed in magazines and newspapers, are initially published in the newspaper Russky Disabled” and from it are already being borrowed into other periodicals.

We are not inclined, like some accusers of Nicholas I, to see in this decision of the emperor a desire for censorship and some kind of "fear of the living word." Just in time for the unofficial, creative part of the planned publication, the authorities had no questions. The objection was caused by the official part, namely, the proposed publication of orders, reports, decisions of military courts, etc. The fact is that it was the Russian Invalid, which was a charitable publication, that had a monopoly on the exclusive publication of this information, all the profits from which went to the Committee on August 18, 1814 (later the Alexander Committee on the Wounded), which was engaged in helping the wounded, sick and elderly veterans and their families. In addition, on the eve of the war, the Committee suffered serious losses due to large-scale theft, and Nicholas I, who painfully perceived this whole scandalous story, zealously followed the replenishment of the Committee's fund. The publication of official documents not in the "Russian Invalid", but on the pages of other publications, undermined the competitive advantages of the publication and ultimately deprived it (and, consequently, the "Committee of the Wounded") of income.

The collapse of the idea of ​​the "Military Herald", oddly enough, had colossal consequences for the fate of Tolstoy and all Russian literature. Firstly, after the rejection of the magazine, Tolstoy agreed with N. A. Nekrasov on the publication of stories and essays by failed publishers in Sovremennik. Tolstoy himself became, in fact, a military correspondent for a literary magazine, and the Sevastopol Tales he later wrote were the direct result of his correspondent duties. Secondly, the story "Sevastopol in December" was published not only in Sovremennik, but also reprinted (in abbreviation) in the same official Russian Invalid, which made Tolstoy even more famous in Russia. And, thirdly, by order of the emperor, "Sevastopol in December" was transferred to French and published in a number of foreign publications that were under the control of the Russian government (in particular, in the Belgian magazine LeNord). And, if the initial interest of the European public was caused undeniable relevance topics in the conditions of the Crimean War, then, having satisfied their curiosity, readers could not help but draw conclusions about the literary merits of the story and the talent of the author. In such a bizarre way, the collapse of the "Military List" and the related actions of the government contributed to Tolstoy's world fame.

With the end of the siege of Silistria and the retreat of the Southern Army to Russia, active operations in the Danube theater actually ceased. Back in July 1854, during the period of aggravation of the conflict with his boss Serzhputovsky, Tolstoy filed his first report on transfer to Sevastopol. Then the petition had no effect. But after the Anglo-French-Turkish landing near Evpatoria in September, the center of the war finally shifted to the Crimea. It no longer made sense to detain Tolstoy in the Southern Army, and the report was given a go. But Tolstoy stayed at the Headquarters himself - it was necessary to complete the draft "Military leaflet" for transmission through Gorchakov to the emperor. And only after the completion of the project in the last days of October Tolstoy goes to Sevastopol, where he arrives on November 7, 1854.

In a letter to his brother S. N. Tolstoy dated November 20, 1854, he summarizes his participation in the Danube campaign:

“In general, my entire stay in the army is divided into two periods, a bad one abroad - I was sick, and poor, and lonely, - pleasant within the borders: I am healthy, I have good friends, but still poor, - the money keeps climbing ... For Silistria, as it should be, I was not represented, but I received a second lieutenant along the line, which I am very pleased with, otherwise I had too old a distinction for an ensign, I was ashamed.

On September 6, 1854, Tolstoy, according to the text of the official list, was "promoted to the vacancy as a second lieutenant." It is possible that his short secondment to the light battery No. 6 of the 12th artillery brigade in late September - early October 1854 is connected with this production. Subsequently, Tolstoy went through almost the entire war with the rank of second lieutenant, unlike his comrades, who mostly ended it as colonels and lieutenant colonels.

Tolstoy himself reported different things about the motives for asking for a transfer to Sevastopol. So, in a letter to S. N. Tolstoy dated July 5, 1855, he writes:

“From Chisinau on November 1, I asked to go to the Crimea, partly in order to see this war, partly in order to break out of the Serzhputovsky Headquarters, which I did not like, but most of all out of patriotism, which at that time, I confess, strongly found on me".

And in his diary, in an entry dated November 2, made on the way to Sevastopol, he says something else about the reasons for the transfer:

“Among the useless victims of this unfortunate affair, Soimonov and Comstadius were killed. They say about the first that he was one of the few honest and thinking generals of the Russian army; the second one I knew quite intimately: he was a member of our society and the future publisher of the Journal. His death most of all prompted me to ask for Sevastopol. I felt ashamed of him."