corporal punishment and shortened their sentence. Let a thousand
letters pass in vain: if but one has such a result, then one ought
to write unceasingly.” The fate of P. V. Olkhovich was as follows:
From the disciplinary battalion he was exiled for eighteen years to
the district of Yakutsk, where he lived together with the exiled
Dukhobors until 1905, when together with them he went to America.
At the present moment he is living in California.
[135] Edward Carpenter, a noted contemporary English thinker, some of
whose works Tolstoi valued highly. Carpenter’s article, “Contemporary
Science,” was later translated into Russian by Countess Tolstoi and
printed with a preface by Tolstoi in the magazine _Sieverni Viestnik_
(1898, No. 3), later it was issued separately (_Posrednik_, Moscow,
1911).
[136] Count Sergei Lvovich Tolstoi (born, 1863), eldest son of
Tolstoi.
[137] To the Ekaterinograd disciplinary battalion were sentenced the
Dukhobors (41 in number) who had refused military service, while being
in actual military service ... See _The Dukhobors in the Disciplinary
Regiment_, published by _The Free Press_, 1902, England, where was
printed also the letter of Tolstoi to the commanding officer of the
regiment. Stating those religious convictions of the Dukhobors for
which they suffered persecutions and calling their acts ..., Tolstoi
asked the commanding officer to do all that he could to lighten
their fate. The letter of Tolstoi produced a softening effect on
the commanding officer.
[138] Vladimir Vasilevich Stasov (1824–1906), a critic of art and
music and the librarian of the Imperial Public Library in Petrograd, a
friend of the Tolstoi family. When, after Stasov’s death, his friend,
the sculptor, I. Y. Ginzburg, asked Tolstoi to write his recollections
of him, in the compilation, “To The Memory of V. V. Stasov,” Tolstoi
in his letter of November 7, 1907, replied that it was difficult
for him to write about Stasov on account of “the misunderstanding”
which had taken place between them: “the misunderstanding consisted
in that Vladimir Vasilevich Stasov loved and valued prejudicially
in me that which I did not value and could not value in myself, and
in his goodness forgave me that which I valued and value in myself
above everything else,--that by which I lived and live. With every
other man such a misunderstanding would lead, if not to hostility
then to a coolness, but the gentle, kind, spontaneous, warm nature
of Vladimir Vasilevich and at the same time, his childlike clarity,
was such, that I could not help succumbing to his influence and
loving him without any thought of the difference of our points of
view. I shall always remember our good friendly relationship with
emotion.”
[139] Nicholai Nicholaievich Gay, the son of the old friend of
Tolstoi, N. N. Gay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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