[300] In his letter to V. G. Chertkov, Tolstoi wrote: “... This happened: In the morning they told me that two men came from the Caucasus. They were the Dukhobors, P. V. Planidin, an acquaintance of yours, and Chernov. They came, naturally, without passports to give me information and to find out everything pertaining to their affair. After talking with these dear friends and finding out everything, I decided to send them to Petersburg.... They went, spent the day there, and returned.... They are touchingly instructive.” “The principal reason for Planidin’s and Chernov’s coming,” Tolstoi wrote April 6th, “was to ask some one of our friends to go to visit Verigin in Obdorsk.” [301] Ivan Petrovich Brashnin, a typical old-fashioned Moscow merchant, a dealer in raw silks; his family consisted of his wife and two sons. A. N. Dunaev introduced him to Tolstoi in the eighties. He was then over 60. He had wanted to make his acquaintance, because the views of Tolstoi were near to his soul; in spite of his former strict orthodoxy he warmly accepted the views of Tolstoi. Being sincere and straight-forward, he rejected the ... teaching and became a convinced follower of the pure Christian teaching. He spoke with great pleasure and emotion about his visits and talks with Tolstoi, which gave him the greatest joy. A few years prior to his death he became a strict vegetarian. Before his death he refused the viaticon of the priest and the rites of confession and the sacrament. In his letter to A. C. Chertkov of March 30, 1898, Tolstoi wrote him about his last visit to Brashnin: “You know there is an old man, a rich merchant, Brashnin, who is near to us in spirit. I have already known him for about fifteen years. He has cancer of the liver, so the doctors have found out. I visited him once in the winter. He was very weak, thin, yellow, but on his feet. One morning about a week ago A. N. Dunaiev came to me with the news that Brashnin is dying and that he had sent a boy to ask that I take leave of him. We went and found him dying. My first words were: ‘Is he calm?’ Absolutely. He was in full possession of his memory, had a clear mind, thanked me, and took leave of me and I of him, as people do before going on a journey. With sadness we spoke about the ... I said that we will see each other again. He calmly answered, ‘No more.’ He took leave and thanked us for our visit. Everything was so simple, peaceful and earnest.” [302] The article on war and on military service was called forth by the request of two foreign papers to the representatives of political and social workers, and the representatives of science and art, to express themselves on whether war was necessary in our time, what were the consequences of militarism and what were the means that led the quickest way to a realisation of universal peace.