"The Excommunication of Leo Tolstoy"
from the church

Publishing house "KNOWLEDGE", Moscow, 1964

The year 1901 arrived. The first year of the 20th century, the century of the triumph of steam and electricity, as heralded by the world press. New Year's newspapers predicted to their readers the flourishing of sciences, culture and industry in the new century, opening up broad prospects for dreams of new era entrepreneurial prosperity.

Russian newspapers were published with pessimistic reflections on the fate of Russia on the threshold of a new century.

“In place of the obsolete past,” Moskovskie Vedomosti noted gloomily, “is the new, 20th century with all its burning demands of the present and the unknowns of the future.”

The liberal "Russian Vedomosti" greeted the entry into New Year and the new century with ardent wishes for the strengthening of international peace, especially necessary for Russia, which in many ways has lagged behind the advanced states of the West and has retained a number of dark sides that unfavorably distinguish it from the general background of European culture: the material insecurity of the majority of the population, its legal humiliation, the dominance of illiteracy among its people and ignorance, a weak level of education and knowledge even in the wealthier classes, the lack of a strong law and order, excessive restrictions on public initiative and freedom of speech, which posed obstacles to the proper development of the country.

This laconic, deeply truthful socio-political characterization of Russia at the turn of the 20th century as a poor, backward country, oppressed by a stupid autocracy frozen in its inertia, should be supplemented with something that the newspaper could not say openly: an unprecedentedly broad revolutionary upsurge of the awakening popular forces was growing, ready to fight for the right to human life - without a tsar, landowners and capitalists.

Student unrest that began in 1900 continued in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kyiv and Kharkov. The alarming time of terrorist attacks has come again. With a shot from a revolver, a former student mortally wounded the Minister of Education Bogolepov...

This is how autocratic Russia entered the 20th century.

And suddenly, like a suddenly exploding bomb, a thunderclap on a clear cloudless day, the whole of Russia, the whole world, was stunned by the message of the Russian Telegraph Agency about the excommunication of the world famous writer of the Russian land - Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

“The Russian telegraph,” wrote V.G. Korolenko in this regard, “seems to be the first time since its existence that it has to transmit such news. “Excommunication” transmitted by telegraph wire, a paradox manufactured by history at the beginning of the 20th century.”

The Russian Orthodox Church throughout the world celebrated the beginning of a new century with a clumsy action borrowed from the arsenal of the Middle Ages.

It was impossible for the great denouncer of autocracy and the church - Leo Tolstoy - to avoid the bitter fate that befell the talented progressive people of Russia of the past: Radishchev, Novikov, Ryleev, Pushkin, Lermontov and many others.

The mournful list of heroes and martyrs of Russian progressive thought, classics of literature, would undoubtedly have been replenished with Leo Tolstoy, but the fact that he belonged not only to Russia, but to all of humanity, kept his crowned enemies and the “holy fathers” of the church from taking physical action against him .

Tolstoy was under the protection of all advanced humanity. He could not be challenged to a duel and killed by putting a pistol in the hands of some rogue, he could not be turned into a soldier, thrown into prison or a mental hospital, or any other “tested by experience” method of eliminating an objectionable person could be used.

The once famous reactionary journalist A.S. Suvorin wrote in his diary: “We have two kings: Nicholas II and Leo Tolstoy. Which one is stronger? Nicholas II cannot do anything with Tolstoy, cannot shake his throne, while Tolstoy undoubtedly shakes the throne of Nicholas and his dynasty. They curse him, the synod has its own determination against him. Tolstoy answers, the answer differs in the manuscript and in foreign newspapers. Try someone to touch Tolstoy. The whole world is screaming, and our administration is putting its tail between its legs.”

The excommunication of Tolstoy from the Orthodox Church, officially announced by the synod at the end of February 1901, excited not only the intelligentsia and the broad masses of workers, but also the peasantry, to whom the name of Leo Tolstoy was already known: in the village they read two-kopeck editions of The Mediator, which were sold in unprecedented quantities. This was a completely new, unexpected and undesirable literature for the ruling spheres, the taste for which, perhaps, was first instilled in the people by Tolstoy: he replaced traditional popular folk tales and “lives of saints” with his own fairy tales and his religious works, written with enormous power of analysis.

Tolstoy's excommunication, undoubtedly, was also resorted to in order to discredit his name in the eyes of the religiously educated masses, but the result was the opposite: the masses were definitely offended, offended in their feelings towards the outstanding thinker.

And not only the religiously educated masses, but also the non-religious intelligentsia, the advanced part of the urban proletariat and student youth - all took Tolstoy’s excommunication as a personal insult.

The official press tried to explain that in this excommunication of the non-believer Tolstoy from the church of believers, there was nothing hostile or unfair on the part of the latter, for Tolstoy himself “broke away”, and that therefore the church must unwittingly confirm the act of his own “schismaticism” committed by him, however The hypocritical “explanations” of the reactionary echoes did not achieve their goal and were met with a storm of protest, distrust and antipathy towards the explainers who tried to justify the persecution against Tolstoy. Soon the country was flooded with all sorts of publications, published illegally or printed abroad - with words of angry protest and caustic satire (fables, drawings, caricatures, etc.).

The church excommunicated Tolstoy. The resonance of this event spread throughout the world, and its echoes did not leave the pages of foreign newspapers and magazines for a long time, which showed great interest in this incredible event, which did not fit into the minds of contemporaries.

We emphasize foreign, because in Russia the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a circular ban on printing telegrams, news and articles expressing sympathy for the writer and condemning the definition of the synod.

What was the point of excommunication? Was this an act that completed the long struggle of the government and the church with Tolstoy, or just an episode in this struggle, which after excommunication was supposed to take on a more fierce character in order to finally break the will of the stubborn Tolstoy, bring him to his knees, forcing him to renounce everything he had written? and said in denunciation of the autocracy, government, religion and church, as was achieved in the fight against Gogol, who, under the influence of obscurantists and reactionaries who surrounded the writer in last years his life, showed cowardice and apostasy from his beliefs, trying to justify the existing system?

In order to answer this question, it is necessary, firstly, to become familiar with the history of the synod’s long preparation for Tolstoy’s excommunication.

The idea of ​​excommunicating Tolstoy from the Orthodox Church arose in the church world repeatedly and long before the synod adopted the “definition” of February 20–22, 1901* (* Back in the 80s, rumors about Tolstoy’s supposed excommunication from the church and his imprisonment in monastery). This is indicated in a number of letters and documents. For example, Kherson Archbishop Nikanor, close to the synod, said in a letter to N. Ya. Grot in 1888: “We are, without joking, going to proclaim a solemn anathema... Tolstoy.” By saying “we,” he meant the synod, which hatched a plan to anathematize Tolstoy. In this way, a rumor was spread about the intended (or desired) excommunication, in the hope of verifying the impression it would make, but the expected effect did not occur.

Three years later, Kharkov Archpriest Butkevich spoke more openly - and already publicly - and at a solemn liturgy on the anniversary of the accession to the throne of Alexander III, he delivered a sermon in the cathedral that Tolstoy “most of all worries the minds of educated and uneducated society with his works, which are distinguished by destructive strength and corrupting character, preaching unbelief and godlessness.”

The enraged priest immediately anathematized Tolstoy and expressed the hope that “the most pious sovereign will stop his destructive activities in a timely manner.” Thus, Tolstoy, although on a Kharkov scale, was already anathematized. The synod, of course, could not help but know about this incident, reported by the newspaper “Yuzhny Krai” on March 5, 1891, but it did not respond in any way, expecting responses. The progressive public approached this attack on Tolstoy as just another piece of foolishness characteristic of the overly zealous “loyal” ministers of the church of that time, and ignored it with disgust.

At the end of the same year, selecting incriminating materials for the synod, the Tula bishop sent two priests to the Epifansky district “to study the behavior” of Tolstoy.

Three months later - in March 1892 - Tolstoy was visited by the rector of the Moscow Theological Academy, Archimandrite Anthony Khrapovitsky, and a month later the writer's wife Sofya Andreevna wrote from Moscow to her husband about the message she had received that the Moscow Metropolitan wanted to solemnly excommunicate him from the church.

It seemed that everything was prepared by the synod for “severing the lost sheep from the church”; Chief Prosecutor of the Synod K.P. Pobedonostsev also leaned towards the side of the synodal majority. But all plans collapsed, shattered by the inflexibility of Alexander III, true to his promise “not to add a martyr’s crown to the glory of Tolstoy.” The cautious tsar, fearing an explosion of indignation abroad, opposed the open persecution of Tolstoy coming from above. The Synod was forced to retreat, postponing the church reprisal against Tolstoy until a favorable moment...

After the death of Alexander III, the synod again raised the issue of excommunicating Tolstoy: in 1896, in a letter to his friend and like-minded person S. A. Rachinsky, Pobedonostsev reported the need to excommunicate Tolstoy.

In September 1897, the Tula prison (!) priest Dmitry Troitsky was sent to Tolstoy with a special mission to persuade him to return to Orthodoxy.

As you know, Tolstoy’s visit to Troitsky did not give the desired results.

In November 1899, Kharkov Archbishop Ambrose drafted a synod resolution to excommunicate Tolstoy from the church, but the synod did not make a decision on this project. Soon - in March 1900 - the first member of the synod, Metropolitan Ioannikiy of Kiev, according to the definition of the synod, in a secret circular ordered all spiritual consistories to announce to the subordinate clergy “the prohibition of commemoration, memorial services and funeral liturgies for Count Leo Tolstoy in the event of his death without repentance.”

This definition of the synod, disgusting in its grave-digging cynicism and abuse of the writer who was ill at that time, whose name was the pride of all mankind, can be considered as the final act of the history of preparation for the excommunication of Leo Tolstoy.

The publication of the novel “Resurrection” in 1899 and its simultaneous publication abroad with the preservation of all texts seized by censorship in Russian publications led to indignation and confusion in the government and higher church spheres. The appointment in 1900 of the first presence in the synod of Metropolitan Anthony of St. Petersburg and Ladoga, who had repeatedly previously tried to speed up the church reprisal against Tolstoy, and finally, the extreme bitterness of Chief Prosecutor Pobedonostsev, presented in the novel as a repulsive reactionary person under the name Toporov - all this accelerated preparations for Tolstoy’s excommunication. By the end of February 1901, the many years of efforts of the “church fathers” culminated in a scandalous act, which for a long time became the subject of bewilderment and condemnation by everyone. thinking people of all countries, peoples and classes.

With excommunication, the first period of resistance by the government and church to Tolstoy’s educational and denunciatory activities ends, characterized by the absence of extreme measures of persecution of the writer. The autocracy and the church are moving on to an open attack on Tolstoy, placing him by church excommunication outside the protection of the force of religious dogmas and even, as it were, outside civil laws, which was extremely dangerous, taking into account the lack of culture, religious fanaticism and the Black Hundred leavened patriotism of the “true Russian” people, intensely fueled by the government and the church in the backward and reactionary-monarchist sections of the population.

The serious danger that excommunication threatened Tolstoy was made quite clear by him himself in his “Response to the Synod.”

So, the definition of the synod was not a harmless pastoral message, “a certificate of falling away from the church,” but was a disguised call from a dark crowd of fanatics and Black Hundreds for physical reprisal against Tolstoy. Like the evangelical Pontius Pilate, the synod handed Tolstoy over to a crowd of fanatics and “washed its hands of it.” Protected by all the regulations and laws of the Russian Empire aimed at establishing autocracy and Orthodoxy, the church was the stronghold and inspirer of the Black Hundred reaction, and the signal given by the “excommunication” to deal with Tolstoy represented an unambiguous and real threat.

The police-gendarmerie apparatus and tsarist censorship closed a ring around Tolstoy. Particularly careful surveillance was established over his every move. Newspapers and magazines are prohibited from publishing information and articles related to excommunication. Every effort was made to suppress any speeches about solidarity with Tolstoy.

However, all attempts to isolate Tolstoy from society were met with mass protest, and condemnation and sharp criticism of the “definition” caused such confusion among the highest hierarchs of the church that it forced the synod to speak out in defense and justification of this act.

Only a little more than a week had passed since Tolstoy's excommunication from the church when Russian public opinion was agitated and outraged by the new repressive act of the autocracy. On March 4, 1901, in St. Petersburg, on the square near the Kazan Cathedral, the police attacked a demonstration and brutally beat many of its participants. A wave of protest swept across the country.

Having learned about this event, Tolstoy immediately responded, sending a welcoming address to the committee of the Union of Mutual Assistance to Russian Writers, closed by the government because its members strongly protested against the police reprisal against the demonstrators, and a sympathetic letter to L. D. Vyazemsky, expelled from St. Petersburg by Nicholas II for trying to stop the beating of demonstrators. Impressed by this event and the police repression against students, Tolstoy writes his appeal “To the Tsar and His Assistants.”

Neither excommunication from the church, nor direct threats of violence, nor persecution of government bodies - nothing could silence the great writer: “Through his lips spoke the entire multimillion-dollar mass of the Russian people who already hate the masters of modern life, but who have not yet reached the point of conscious, consistent , going to the end, an irreconcilable struggle against them” * (*V.I. Lenin. Works, vol. 16, p. 323).

“The Holy Synod excommunicated Tolstoy from the church. All the better. This feat will be credited to him in the hour of popular reprisal against officials in robes, gendarmes in Christ, with dark inquisitors who supported Jewish pogroms and other exploits of the Black Hundred royal gang.”

V. I. Lenin. Soch., vol. 16, p. 296.

In the novel “Resurrection,” Tolstoy, with his characteristic ruthlessness and stunning power of depiction, carried out his long-planned denunciation of the church - the falsity of its dogmas and church rituals, designed to deceive the people, exposed the depravity of the system government controlled, its anti-national essence.

In response to this, the churchmen began to especially persistently demand reprisals against the writer. Pobedonostsev, using his influence on the tsar, as his teacher in the past, and then an adviser on church issues in connection with his position as chief prosecutor of the synod, obtained the consent of Nicholas II to this reprisal.

Nothing restrained the “holy fathers” of the Russian Orthodox Church anymore; the synod received freedom of action...

24 February. In 1901, “Church Gazette under the Holy Governing Synod” published the following definition of the Holy Synod of February 20–22, 1901 about Count Leo Tolstoy, immediately reprinted by all newspapers and many magazines:

DEFINITION OF THE HOLY SYNOD

WITH MESSAGE TO THE FAITHFUL CHILDREN

GREEK-RUSSIAN ORTHODOX

CHURCHES ABOUT COUNT LEV TOLSTOY

The Holy Synod, in its concern for the children of the Orthodox Church, for their protection from destructive temptation and for the salvation of the erring, having a judgment about Count Leo Tolstoy and his anti-Christian and anti-Church false teaching, recognized it as timely, in order to prevent a violation of the peace of the Church, to publish through publication in the “Church Gazette” "The following is your message:

BY GOD'S GRACE

The Holy All-Russian Synod to the Faithful Children Orthodox Catholic Greek-Russian Churches O Rejoice in the Lord.

“We pray, brethren, beware of those who create strife and strife, except for teaching, for which you are taught, and turn away from them” (Rom. 16:17). From the beginning, the Church of Christ suffered blasphemies and attacks from numerous heretics and false teachers who sought to overthrow it and shake its essential foundations, which are based on faith in Christ, the Son of the Living God. But all the forces of hell, according to the promise of the Lord, could not overcome the Holy Church, which will remain unconquered forever. And in our days, by God’s permission, a new false teacher, Count Leo Tolstoy, has appeared. A world-famous writer, Russian by birth, Orthodox by baptism and upbringing, Count Tolstoy, in the seduction of his proud mind, boldly rebelled against the Lord and against His Christ and against His holy property, clearly before everyone renounced the Mother who fed and raised him, the Church. Orthodox, And, dedicated his literary activity and the talent given to him by God to the dissemination among the people of teachings contrary to Christ and the Church, and to the destruction in the minds and hearts of people of the fatherly faith, the Orthodox faith, which established the universe, by which our ancestors lived and were saved, and by which they have hitherto held on. Holy Rus' was strong. In his writings and letters, in the many scattered by him and him students all over the world, especially same within the boundaries of our dear Fatherland, he preaches, With the jealousy of a fanatic, the overthrow of all dogmas Orthodox Church and the very essence of the Christian faith: it denies the personal Living God, glorified in the Holy Trinity, the Creator and Provider of the universe, denies the Lord Jesus Christ– God-man, Redeemer and Savior of the world, who suffered for us and for our salvation and rose from the dead; denies the seedless conception according to the humanity of Christ the Lord and virginity before and after the Nativity of the Most Pure Theotokos and the Ever-Virgin Mary, does not recognize afterlife and retribution, rejects all the sacraments of the Church and the grace-filled action of the Holy Spirit in them and, scolding the most sacred objects of faith of the Orthodox people, did not shudder to mock the greatest of the Sacraments, the Holy Eucharist. All this is preached by Count Leo Tolstoy continuously, in word and in writing, to the temptation and horror of all Orthodox world, and thus undisguisedly, but clearly before everyone, consciously and intentionally rejected himself from all communication with the Orthodox Church. The previous attempts, to his understanding, were not crowned with success. Therefore, the Church does not consider him its member and cannot count him until he repents And Not will restore his communication with her. Now he testifies to this before the entire Church for the strengthening of the righteous and for the admonition of the erring, especially for the new admonition of Count Tolstoy himself. Many of his neighbors who keep the faith with with sorrow they think that at the end of his days he remains without faith in God and the Lord our Savior, having rejected the blessings and prayers of the Church and from all communication with her.

Therefore, testifying to his falling away from the Church, we pray together that the Lord will give him repentance and the mind of truth (2 Tim. 2.25). We pray to you, merciful Lord, who do not want the death of sinners, hear and have mercy, and turn him to your holy Church. Amen.

Originally signed:

Humble Anthony, Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and Ladoga.

Humble Theognost, Metropolitan of Kyiv and Galicia.

Humble Vladimir, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna.

Humble Jerome, Archbishop of Kholmsk and Warsaw.

Humble Jacob, Bishop of Chisinau and Khotyn.

Humble Marcellus, Bishop.

Humble Boris, Bishop

The initiative to issue this act came from Metropolitan Anthony. The text of the definition was written directly by Pobedonostsev himself, and then edited by Anthony together with other members of the synod and approved by the tsar.

Although the definition ends with the words of a prayer for the return of Tolstoy to the bosom of the church, there remains no doubt about the true intentions of the synod - to raise against Tolstoy a dark mass of religious fanatics capable of committing the most inhuman and cruel crime “in the name of God.”

Subsequent events confirmed this provocative plan: immediately after the publication of the text of excommunication, with the blessing of the synod, a muddy stream of malicious and offensive epithets, shouts and threats against the writer poured from the church pulpits, and the higher the rank of the hierarchs, the more furiously they smashed “the one who boldly rebelled against the Lord.” , false teachers,” inciting the base instincts of a blindly fanatical crowd, calling all sorts of punishments and misfortunes on Tolstoy’s head.

And not only from pulpits, but also from the pages of reactionary church and Black Hundred newspapers and magazines, countless vile insinuations and monstrous inventions, incompatible with common sense, rained down on Tolstoy.

Let us dwell on at least one of these “writings”, published in the “Tula Diocesan Gazette” signed by Mikhail S-ko * (* M. A. Sopotsko (about him, see in the alphabetical index).

“A wonderful phenomenon with the portrait of Count L.N. Tolstoy.

Many people, including those writing these lines, noticed an amazing phenomenon with the portrait of L.N. Tolstoy. After Tolstoy was excommunicated from the church by the decree of the divinely established authorities, the expression on Count Tolstoy’s face took on a purely satanic appearance: it became not only angry, but fierce and gloomy...

The impression one gets from the portrait of gr. Tolstoy, can only be explained by the presence of his portraits evil spirits(demons and their leader the devil), whom the three-cursed count zealously served to the detriment of humanity.”

The Tolstoy family spent that winter in Moscow, in their house on Khamovnichesky Lane. The news of the excommunication was received along with the next issues of the newspapers. A stream of people immediately rushed into the quiet alley, stacks of letters and telegrams poured out.

“We experienced many events, not at home, but in public. On February 24, the excommunication of Lev Nikolaevich was published in all newspapers...

This paper caused indignation in society, bewilderment and discontent among the people. Lev Nikolaevich received standing ovations for three days in a row, they brought baskets of fresh flowers, and sent telegrams, letters, and addresses. These expressions of sympathy for L.N. and indignation at the Synod and the metropolitans continue to this day. I wrote on the same day and sent my letter to Pobedonostsev and the metropolitans... Some kind of festive mood has been going on in our house for several days; there are whole crowds of visitors from morning to evening”...

Thus, the first response to the definition of the synod was an indignant letter from S.A. Tolstoy to Metropolitan Anthony and Pobedonostsev.

The latter left the letter without an answer, but Anthony, whose signature was in the first place under the definition, found it difficult to remain silent, especially since, as will be seen later, Tolstoy’s letter became widely known.

Anthony hesitated for more than two weeks, hoping that the definition would find support in society, which would enable the synod, without losing prestige, to get out of the absurd situation in which blind malice towards the writer had placed it. However, these hopes were not realized. On the contrary, dissatisfaction with the synod in the country increased day by day, as evidenced by the letters it received from representatives different layers Russian society, strongly condemning excommunication.

Something unprecedented happened in the history of the synod. The first present member of the synod, Metropolitan Anthony, under the pressure of public opinion, was forced to speak on the pages of the official synodal body explaining the actions of the synod and justifying the “determination” and, in conclusion, ask Tolstoy’s wife for forgiveness for not immediately answering her.

On March 24, 1901, in the “Addendum to No. 12 of the unofficial part of the Church Gazette,” S. A. Tolstoy’s letter and Anthony’s response to it are given in full. We also reproduce this correspondence in full.

Letter from Countess S.A. Tolstoy to Metropolitan Anthony

YOUR EMPLOYMENT

Having read yesterday in the newspapers the cruel order of the Synod to excommunicate the husband A mine, Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, and seeing your signature among the signatures of the church pastors, I could not remain completely indifferent to this. There are no limits to my bitter indignation. And not from the point of view that my husband will die spiritually from this paper: this is not the work of people, but the work of God. The life of the human soul, from a religious point of view– unknown to anyone except God and, fortunately, Not subject to But from the point of view of the Church to which I belong and from which I will never depart,– which was created by Christ to bless in the name of God all the most significant moments of human life: births, marriages, deaths, human sorrows and joys...– which must loudly proclaim the law of love, forgiveness, love for enemies, for those who hate us, pray for everyone,- with this From my point of view, the order of the Synod is incomprehensible to me.

It will not cause sympathy (except Mosk. Vedomosti) (* Daily newspaper published 1756–1917; from 1863, led by M. N. Katkov, became an organ of extreme reaction, and from 1905 - one of the main organs of the Black Hundreds ), but indignation in people and great love and sympathy for Lev Nikolaevich. We are already receiving such statements, and there will be no end to them until the whole world.

I cannot help but mention the grief I experienced from the nonsense that I had heard about before, namely: about the secret order of the Synod for priests not to perform a funeral service in the church of Lev Nikolaevich in the event of his death.

Who do they want to punish? –a dead person who no longer feels anything, or those around him, believers and people close to him? If this is a threat, then to whom and to what?

Is it really possible that I won’t find the funeral service for my husband and pray for him in church?– or such a decent priest who will not be afraid of people before the real God of love, or an dishonest one, whom I will bribe with a lot of money for this purpose?

But I don't need that. For me, the church is an abstract concept, and I recognize as its ministers only those who truly understand the meaning of the church.

If we recognize as the church people who dare to violate the highest law with their malice– the love of Christ, then all of us, true believers and churchgoers, would have left it long ago.

And guilty of sinful apostasy from the church– not lost people, but those who proudly recognized themselves at the head of it, and, instead of love, humility, and forgiveness, became the spiritual executioners of those whom God would most likely forgive for their humble life, full of renunciation of earthly goods, love and help to people , although outside the church, than wearing diamond miters and stars, but punishing and excommunicating– her shepherds.

Refute my words with hypocritical arguments– easily. But a deep understanding of the truth and the real intentions of people will not deceive anyone.

COUNTESS SOFIA TOLSTAY

Answer from Metropolitan Anthony

DEAR MADAME, COUNTESS SOFIA ANDREEVNA!

It’s not cruel what the Synod did when it announced your husband’s fall from the Church, but cruel what he did to himself when he renounced faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, our Redeemer and Savior. It is this renunciation that should have given vent to your woeful indignation long ago. And not from a scrap, of course, printed paper your husband perishes because he has turned away from the Source of eternal life. For a Christian, life without Christ is inconceivable, according to Whom “he who believes in He has eternal life, and passes from death to life, but he who does not believe will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him" (JohnIII, 1. 16.36U, 24), and therefore one thing can only be said about one who renounces Christ, that he has passed from life to death. This is the death of your husband, but only he himself is to blame for this death, and not anyone else.

The Church to which you consider yourself to belong consists of believers in Christ, and for believers, for its members, this Church blesses in the name of God all the most significant moments of human life: births, marriages, deaths, human sorrows and joys, but it never does this and cannot do it for unbelievers, for pagans, for those who blaspheme the name of God, for those who have renounced it and do not want to receive prayers or blessings from it, and in general for all those who are not members of it. And therefore, from the point of view of this Church, the order of the Synod is understandable, understandable and clear as God's day. And the law of love and forgiveness is not violated in the least. God's love is infinite, but She does not forgive everyone and not for everything. Hula on Spirit A saint is not forgiven, neither in this life nor in the next (Matt.XII, 32). The Lord always seeks man with his love, but man Sometimes doesn't want to go towards this love and flees from the Face of God, and therefore perishes. Christ prayed on the cross for His enemies, but in His high priestly prayer He also spoke a word bitter for His love, that the son of destruction was lost (John,XVII, 12). About your husband, while he is alive, it cannot yet be said that he is dead, but the absolute truth is said about him that he fell away from the Church and is not a member of it until he repents and reunites with it.

In its message, speaking about this, the Synod testified only to an existing fact, and therefore only those who do not understand what they are doing can be indignant at it. You receive expressions of sympathy from all over the world. I’m not surprised by this, but I think that you have nothing to console yourself with here. There is the glory of man and there is the glory of God. "Human glory is like a color on grass: the grass is withered, and its flower is fallen, but the word of the Lord endures forever" (IPeter 1, 24, 25).

When last year the newspapers spread the news of the count's illness, the clergyoils the question arose with all its force: should whether it who has fallen away from the faith and the Church, to be honored with Christian burial and prayers? Appeals followed to the Synod, and it led to clergy secretly gave and could only give one answer: he shouldn’t, if he dies, without restoring of his communication with the Church, there is no threat to anyone here, and there could be no other answer. And I don’t think that there was any priest, not even a decent one, who would dare to perform a Christian burial over the count, and if he did, such a burial over an unbeliever would be a criminal profanation of a sacred rite. And why commit violence against your husband? After all, without a doubt, he himself does not want a Christian burial to be performed over him? Since you– living person– If you want to consider yourself a member of the Church, and it really is a union of living rational beings in the name of the living God, then your statement that the Church for you is an abstract concept falls by itself. And in vain do you reproach the ministers of the Church for malice and violation of the highest law of love commanded by Christ. There is no violation of this law in the synodal act. On the contrary, this is an act of love, an act of calling your husband to return to the Church and believers to pray for him.

The Lord appoints the shepherds of the Church, and not they themselves, as you say, proudly recognized themselves at its head. They wear diamond miters and stars, but this is not at all significant in their service. They remained shepherds, dressed in rags, persecuted and persecuted, and will always remain so, even if they had to wear rags again.dress like no matter how they are blasphemed, and no matter what contemptuous words they call them.

In conclusion, I apologize for not answering you right away. I waited for the first sharp outburst of your grief to pass.

God bless you and keep you and your count husband– have mercy!

ANTONIN, METROPOLITAN

S. PETERSBURG

1901. March 16.

Calling the “definition” cruel, S. A. Tolstaya especially emphasized in her letter that it was adopted by the synod contrary to the divine laws of love and forgiveness, to which Anthony, not without cunning, replies that God’s love forgives, but not everyone and for everything. The synodal act, he further says, does not violate Christ’s law of love, but is an act of love, an act of calling to return to the church, and believers to pray for Tolstoy.

At the same time, Anthony diplomatically keeps silent about the fact that, along with the “call” to prayer for Tolstoy, he blessed the vile campaign of persecution of the writer by the clergy.

Anthony's hypocritical response was intended to be widely publicized to justify the actions of the synod and as an attempt to calm public opinion outraged by Tolstoy's excommunication and persecution.

Archpriest F.N. Ornatsky, close to the synod, spoke about this in detail in the press:

“The publication of the letter from Countess S. Tolstoy and the response to it from His Eminence Metropolitan Anthony had its own compelling and more than justifiable reasons, since the countess’ letter began to be very widely disseminated in the public - and not only in foreign newspapers and handwritten translations circulating from hand to hand, which is not would be so widespread. Even before the appearance in the foreign press, hectographic copies and not translations, but the original letter, i.e. its draft, were distributed, and were distributed in a huge number of copies. One copy of such a copy was also received from us in the Expedition for the Procurement of State Papers. I went with him to his Eminence. Vladyka checked the copy of the letter with the original, it turned out to be identical. It was then that it was decided, in order to counter the spread of one-sided opinions, to publish both the countess’s letter and the bishop’s answer. First, both of these documents were prepared on a hectograph and distributed in the Synod, and then it was decided to print them in an addition to the “Church Gazette” *(* Petersburg newspaper. No. 84 of March 27, 1901).

Ornatsky openly expressed in the newspaper the real reason for Anthony's appearance in the press: it was necessary to save the situation and the face of the synod. The consequences of the excommunication were so unfavorable for its initiators that Pobedonostsev, in a letter to the editor-in-chief of the Church Gazette magazine, Archpriest P. A. Smirnov, was bitterly forced to admit that the “message” of the synod about Tolstoy caused a whole “cloud of bitterness” against the leaders of the church and states.

Of undoubted interest are the diary entries of S. A. Tolstoy about the impression made by her letter to Anthony:

26 March. “I really regret that I didn’t write events, conversations, etc. consistently. The most interesting things for me were the letters, mainly from abroad, sympathetic to my letter to Pobedonostsev and the three metropolitans. No manuscript of L.N. had such a rapid and widespread distribution as this letter of mine. It has been translated into all foreign languages.”

March 27. “The other day I received Metropolitan Anthony’s response to my letter. He didn't touch me at all. Everything is correct and everything is soulless. And I wrote my letter with one impulse of my heart - and it went around the whole world and simply infected people with sincerity.”

Anthony's polemic with S.A. Tolstoy caused a new stream of condemning letters to the Synod. It is impossible to dwell on all of them due to their abundance, however, the correspondence with Anthony of the head of the Kazan Rodionov Institute M.L. Kazambek and the letter to Pobedonostsev from the former captain of the Caucasian army I.K. Diterikhs so expressively characterizes these statesmen - the inspirers and organizers of that Black Hundred direction of the Russian church, which it accepted during the reign of Nicholas II in the highest church and synodal spheres, which we will quote from them.

“What a pity that Tolstoy’s excommunication has happened,” M. L. Kazambek wrote to Metropolitan Anthony. – The message of the synod was written both softly and even sympathetically, but still untimely. Why resort to measures that lead to the opposite results and, instead of “strengthening the church, weaken it?”

The answer came from Metropolitan Anthony: “I do not agree with you that the synodal act on Tolstoy could serve to destroy the Church. On the contrary, I think that it will serve to strengthen it. With the end of Lent, I think all the talk about this matter will cease, and society will eventually thank the synod for giving him a topic that occupied him throughout the boring time of Lent. We started an underground polemic with the Tolstoyans. They hit us with satires and fables, and we also have our own satirists, although not entirely successful ones. We are not prepared to fight in this field. War will create or call forth talent. The initial tragedy has been replaced, perhaps, by comedy, but victory will still be on the side of the church.”

M. L. Kazambek, outraged by the playful cynicism of Anthony’s answer, wrote to him again: “I’m not at all a fan of Tolstoy’s ideas, but I’ll tell you only two things: 1) I was told by a fairly reliable source the following: 12-15 years ago, when Tolstoy first publicly renounced Orthodoxy, faith in Christ God and the church; in the circle of the late sovereign, someone said that, in essence, Tolstoy was subject to excommunication. To this Alexander III replied: “Well, no; I will not put a martyr’s crown on my bliss.” 2) In your letter there is a mockery of “society”, which has made a pastime out of the synodal act for itself during the “boring time of Lenten”

The fact that there was not a single house in St. Petersburg where heated debates on this topic did not take place, you apparently think is funny I even comical. Coming from you, this surprises me... Therefore, “society” and “the whole of St. Petersburg (and all of Russia) are not worthy of attention... These are not people, not souls...”

Anthony’s answer is truly striking in its unprincipledness, an attempt to laugh it off, to show Tolstoy’s excommunication as a farce, a comedy, which supposedly was supposed to entertain a bored society during Lent, when all theaters and shows are closed.

Apparently, in the arsenal of the Synod theologians there was not a single convincing argument that they could put forward to justify the “definition.” Anthony’s self-confident statement that “victory will still be on the side of the church” turned out to be empty boasting. As you know, Leo Tolstoy won, and the Russian Church suffered a defeat the like of which it had never had in the entire history of its existence.

Of exceptional interest is the letter from I.K. Diterichs, a like-minded person and follower of L.N. Tolstoy, remarkable for its boldness and brightness:

To Mr. Chief Prosecutor of the Synod

Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev

YOUR MAJESTY,

You are the head of a caste that calls itself the Russian Orthodox clergy, and you perform all the so-called “religious affairs.”

One of the last acts of your activity was the excommunication of L.N. Tolstoy, which caused so much unflattering noise for you both in Russia and abroad.

Based on the understanding of the service of the church, which is expressed by the entire legislative code of the Orthodox Synod, you act quite consistently, although by doing this you not only did not harm L.N. Tolstoy, but did him a significant service and attracted the sympathy of all sincere people to him. In addition, every sincere and free-thinking person can only wish that you perform the same manipulation on him and free him from those obligations during life and until death that the state church imposes on its flock.

But, at the same time, with this decree about Tolstoy, you once again revealed the rude, blasphemous attitude towards the idea of ​​Christianity, hypocrisy and the greatest hypocrisy inherent in you and your synclite, for it is no secret to anyone that in this way you wanted to undermine the trust of the masses in the authoritative to the words of Leo Tolstoy.

In the letter you know from Mr. S.A. Tolstaya perfectly presented the act in its true light, and I have nothing to add to her words. She expressed the feelings that excite her, as the person closest to Lev Nikolaevich, and, moreover, a sincere believer. Being one of those people close to him who are mentioned in the decree of the Synod, I considered it my moral duty to declare frankly that I would not offer prayers jointly with metropolitans and bishops for the salvation of L.N.’s soul, but together with him I renounce all solidarity with fanatics like you and I will strive with all my might to expose in front of the people the gross deception of which you are all– church ministers– hold it and with the help of which you rule over it.

The people of your caste are so accustomed to this power that you don’t even think that horses will come to your kingdom...

But all the oppressors of the freedom of spirit of all peoples, about whom history now tells with horror and disgust, thought the same. You carefully hide your role as a prompter, acting everywhere under the guise of the royal name, and therefore your identity is not clear to everyone; but the number of sighted people both in society and among the people is growing, thank God, and I am one of those who had the opportunity to see with my own eyes the fruits of your activity and appreciate them.”

Further, the author speaks about the disasters known to him from his service in the Caucasus, suffered by sectarians exiled there, subjected to severe persecution at the direction of Pobedonostsev, about the forced introduction of Orthodoxy among the Muslim population of the Caucasus, the deceit and pharisaism of Pobedonostsev, to which he resorts, defending himself from fair accusations of inhumanity and wanting prove your humanity.

“You lied,” Diterichs further wrote, “to another close person, trying to dissuade” him that the Synod did not issue a secret order to prevent the funeral of L. Tolstoy’s body in the event of his death, and yet at that time in all dioceses there were already decrees dated April 5, 1900 were sent out prohibiting the clergy from serving requiem services on it...

I could give good reasonsproof of everything that has been said and to present your activities in my homeland in the present light, if I knew that this letter could lead you to think about the moral correctness of your actions; but, knowing your self-confident lack of conscience, and the fact that you are too absorbed in concerns about protecting the state from sedition looming from everywhere, I consider this unnecessary.

And the main purpose of my letter is not to exposeyou, but the desire to publicly declare your departure from Orthodoxy, remainin which, even nominally, it became unbearable for me. (Despite my German surname, I belong to a purely Russian family and was raised in a strict Orthodox spirit). I have felt the desire to renounce Orthodoxy for several years now, and especially since I was expelled from the Caucasus for the participation I showed in the fate of the Doukhobors persecuted by you, but cowardice got in the way.

The aforementioned decree of the Synod on L.N. Tolstoy helped me understand my personal attitude towards Orthodoxy as a statereligion, and I am sincerely glad that I can now openly declare in front of everyone that I have ceased to be Orthodox.

I also don’t think about it. whether there will be more similar statements from the Russian people or not: if there are, so much the better; if not, then it is all the more necessary for at least someone to state frankly what the majority of consciously living people think.

I consider it my duty to bring this to your attention only because, not being an emigrant and having a passport of a Russian citizen, according to which I am considered Orthodox, I thereby enjoy the privileges associated with this, and which, according to existing Russian laws, I will have to lose, about which you can convey where it should be.

By doing this, I am acting completelyindependently, without any instigation from anyone, and I consciously bear full responsibility for it.

England, March 1901."

Dieterichs' letter, exposing the gloomy figure of Pobedonostsev, was published in the foreign press and became widely known.

He responded with great approval to this letter from L.N. Tolstoy, who read it in the French newspaper “Aurore”.

It is safe to say that before Dieterichs’ letter there had not been a more frank accusatory speech against Pobedonostsev in the press, political activity who, throughout his twenty-five-year tenure as Chief Prosecutor of the Synod (1880–1905), was distinguished by his extreme reactionary and intolerant attitude.

“A convinced fanatic” and “grand inquisitor” of the official Russian church, Pobednostsev associated his name with the darkest currents of Russian reaction,” this is how V. G. Korolenko characterized him in his obituary (1907).

On the other hand, Dieterichs’ letter marked the beginning of a series of open, demonstrative statements about leaving the discredited Orthodoxy; it was followed by similar statements to the synod with a request for excommunication from various individuals, both from among Tolstoy’s like-minded people and from representatives of the Russian non-religious intelligentsia.

Dieterichs' letter was left unanswered by Pobedonostsev.

How did L.N. Tolstoy himself react to his excommunication? On this occasion, S.A. Tolstaya said the following.

Lev Nikolaevich... “was going out for his usual walk when they brought letters and newspapers from the post office. They were placed on a table in the hallway. Tolstoy, tearing up the parcel, read in the first newspaper about the resolution of the synod excommunicating him from the church. After reading, I put on my hat and went for a walk. There was no impression at all."

M. O. Gershenzon wrote to his brother on March 1, 1901: “Tolstoy said about this resolution: “If I were young, I would be flattered that such formidable measures are being taken against a little man; and now that I’m old, I only regret that such people are in charge.”

Let's turn to Tolstoy's diary. An entry for March 9, 1901 states: “During this time there have been strange excommunications and expressions of sympathy resulting from them.”

However, Tolstoy’s initial indifference to excommunication soon gave way to the need to make an open protest against the “determination” of the synod: “I did not want to first respond to the synod’s resolution about me...”, Tolstoy begins his “Response to the Synod.”

The reason for this speech by the writer was the fact that in connection with his excommunication from the church he received not only greetings with expressions of sympathy, but also a significant number of admonishing and abusive words - for the most part anonymous letters.

In a letter to V.G. Chertkov dated March 30, 1901, Tolstoy reported: “Letters of admonition to me from people who consider me an atheist, caused me to write a response to the resolution of the synod”... Therefore, initially - in a draft - a response to the synod was entitled: “To my accusing correspondents who hide their names.”

The “Response to the Synod,” which was soon published, was published with significant omissions and only in church publications published under the control of spiritual censorship, with a prohibition on reprinting. The censor’s note noted that the article omitted approximately one hundred lines in which “Count Tolstoy attacks the sacraments of the Christian faith and church, icons, worship, prayer, etc.”, and that it was found impossible to print this place without offending the religious feelings of believers people” (“Church Bulletin” No. 27).

The full text of the “Response to the Synod” was first published in England, in Free Word Sheets, No. 22, 1901.

In his “Response to the Synod,” which was received with great sympathy by Russian society, Tolstoy showed that he was not afraid of the “anathema” and did not repent of his “heresy.” He used his response to the excommunication to further denounce the institutional church. We present it with a slight abbreviation.

RESPONSE TO THE DEFINITION OF THE SYNOD

AND ON THE THINGS I RECEIVED FROM THIS

CASE OF LETTERS

At first I did not want to respond to the resolution of the synod about me, but this resolution caused a lot of letters in which correspondents unknown to me– some scold me for rejecting what I do not reject, others exhort me to believe in what I have never ceased to believe, and still others express with me a like-mindedness that hardly exists in reality, and sympathy for which I I hardly have the right; and I decided to respond to the resolution itself, pointing out what was unfair in it, and to the appeals to me from my unknown correspondents.

The resolution of the synod generally has many shortcomings. It is illegal or deliberately ambiguous; it is arbitrary, unfounded, untruthful and, in addition, contains slander and incitement to bad feelings and actions.

Is it illegal or intentionally ambiguous?– because if it wants to be excommunication, then it does not satisfy the church rules according to which such excommunication can be pronounced; if this is a statement that anyone who does not believe in the church and its dogmas does not belong to it, then this goes without saying, and such a statement cannot have any other purpose than that, without being in essence of excommunication, it would seem to be such, which is what actually happened, because that is how it was understood.

It is arbitrary because it accuses me alone of disbelief in all the points written out in the resolution, while not only many, but almost all educated people in Russia share such disbelief and have constantly expressed and are expressing it in conversations, and in reading, and in brochures and books.

It is unfounded, because the main reason for its appearance is the wide spread of my false teaching seducing people, while I am well aware that there are hardly a hundred people who share my views, and the spread of my writings on religion, thanks to censorship, is so insignificant that most people, Those who have read the resolution of the synod do not have the slightest idea of ​​what I have written about religion, as can be seen from the letters I receive.

It contains an obvious untruth, claiming that the church made unsuccessful attempts at admonition towards me, whereas nothing of the kind ever happened.

It constitutes what in legal language is called slander, since it contains statements that are obviously unfair and tend to harm me.

It is, finally, an incitement to bad feelings and actions, since it aroused, as it should have been expected, in people who are unenlightened and unreasoning, bitterness and hatred towards me, reaching the point of threats of murder and expressed in the letters I receive. “Now you are anathema and after death you will go into eternal torment and die like a dog... you are anathema. old devil... be damned"– writes alone. Another reproaches the government for the fact that I have not yet been imprisoned in a monastery, and fills the letter with curses. A third writes: “If the government doesn't remove you,– We ourselves will silence you”; the letter ends with curses: “To destroy you scoundrel,– writes the fourth,– I will find the means...” Indecent curses follow.

I notice signs of the same bitterness after the resolution of the synod during meetings With by some people. On the very day of February 25, when the decree was published, I, walking through the square,heard the words addressed to me: “Here is the devil in the form of a man,” and if the crowd had been composed differently, it is very possible that they would have beaten me, as they beat the man at the Panteleimon Chapel several years ago.

So the resolution of the synod is generally very bad; the fact that at the end of the decree it is said that the persons who signed it pray that I become sobeing the same as them doesn't make it better.

This is true in general, but in particular the ruling is unfair in the following ways. The resolution says: “The world-famous writer, Russian by birth, Orthodox by baptism and upbringing, Count Tolstoy, in the seduction of his proud mind, boldly rebelled against the Lord and against His Christ and against His holy property, clearly before everyone renounced the one who had nurtured and raised his Mother the Orthodox Church."

The fact that I renounced the church that calls itself Orthodox is completely fair.

But I renounced it not because I rebelled against the Lord, but on the contrary, only because I wanted to serve him with all the strength of my soul.

Before you renounce the church and unity With people, which was inexpressibly dear to me, I, having some signs of doubting the correctness of the church, devoted several years to theoretically and practically studying the teachings of the church: theoretically- I read everything I could about the teachings of the church, studied and critically examined dogmatic theology; practically– strictly followed, for more than a year, all the instructions of the church, observing all fasts and attending all church services. And I became convinced that the teaching of the church is theoretically an insidious and harmful lie, but practically a collection of the grossest superstitions and witchcraft, completely hiding the entire meaning of Christian teaching.

One has only to read the breviary and follow those rituals that are continually performed by the Orthodox clergy and are considered Christian worship to see that all these rituals are nothing more than various techniques of witchcraft, adapted to all possible cases of life. In order for a child, if he dies, to go to heaven, you need to have time to anoint him with oil and bathe him while pronouncing certain words; in order for a woman in labor to cease being unclean, well-known spells must be cast; so that there is success in business or a quiet life in new home, in order for bread to be born well, for the drought to end, for the journey to be safe, for recovery from illness, for the situation of the deceased to be alleviated in the next world, for all this and a thousand other circumstances there are known spells that famous place and for certain offerings the priest pronounces.

And I really renounced the church, stopped performing its rituals and wrote in my will to my loved ones that when I die, they would not allow church ministers to see me; and my dead body would have been removed as quickly as possible, without any spells or prayers over it, just as they remove any nasty and unnecessary thing so that it does not interfere with the living.

Same as what is said I “dedicated my literary activity and the talent given to me by God to spreading it among the people exercises, contrary to Christ and the church,” etc., and that I “in my writings and letters, scattered in multitudes by me, as well as by my disciples, all over the world, especially within the borders of our dear fatherland, preaching with the zeal of a fanatic the overthrow of all the dogmas of the Orthodox Church and the very essence of the Christian faith,”– th it's unfair. I have never cared about spreading my teachings. True, I myself expressed in my writings my understanding of the teachings of Christ and did not hide these writings from people who wanted With get to know them, but never printed them myself; told people O how I I understand the teachings of Christ only when I was asked about it. I told such people what I thought and gave them, if I had them, my books.

Then it is said that I “reject God, the glorious Creator and Provider of the universe in the Holy Trinity, I deny the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man, Redeemer and Savior of the world, who suffered for us for the sake of man and for our salvation and rose from the dead, I deny the seedless conception of Christ the Lord for humanity and virginity before and after the Nativity of the Most Pure Mother of God.” The fact that I reject the incomprehensible Trinity and the fable about the fall of the first man, which has no meaning in our time, the blasphemous story about a God born of a virgin who redeems the human race, is absolutely fair...

It is also said: “does not recognize the afterlife and retribution.” If we understand the afterlife in the sense of the second coming, hell with eternal torment, devils, and heaven– permanent bliss, then it is absolutely fair that I do not recognize any afterlife...

It is also said that I I reject all sacraments. This is completely fair. Allsacraments I I consider witchcraft base, rude, inconsistent with the concept of God and Christian teaching, and, moreover, a violation of the most direct instructions of the gospel.

In infant baptism I see a clear perversion of the entire meaning that baptism could have for adults who consciously accept Christianity; in performing the sacrament of marriage over people who had obviously been united before, and in allowing divorces and in sanctifying the marriages of divorced people, I see a direct violation of both the meaning and the letter of the Gospel teaching. In the periodic forgiveness of sins in confession, I see a harmful deception that only encourages immorality and destroys the fear of sin. In the consecration of oil, just as in the anointing, I see methods of crude witchcraft, as in the veneration of icons and relics, and in all those rituals, prayers, and spells with which the missal is filled. In communion I see the deification of the flesh and the perversion of Christian teaching...

It is saidfinally, like the last one andhighest degree my guilt that I, “cursing the most sacred objects of faith, did not shuddered to mock the most sacred of sacraments– Eucharist." The fact that I did not shudder to describe simply and objectively what the priest does to prepare this so-called sacrament is completely fair; but the fact that this so-called sacrament is something sacred and that to describe it simply as it is done is blasphemy,– ego completely unfair. It is not sacrilege to call the partition– a partition, not an iconostasis, and a cup– a cup, not a chalice, etc., but the most terrible, never-ending, outrageous blasphemy– is that people, using all possible means of deception and hypnotization,– they assure children and simple-minded people that if you cut in a known way and when you pronounce certain words, pieces of bread and put them in wine, then God enters into these pieces; and that the one in whose name a living piece is taken out will be healthy; In the name of whomever has died such a piece is taken out, it will be better for him in the next world; and that whoever eats this piece, God himself will enter into him.

After all, this is terrible!..

The terrible thing, the main thing, is that people who benefit from this deceive not only adults, but, having the power to do so, also children, the very ones about whom Christ said that woe to the one who

will deceive. It's terrible that these people do such terrible things for their own little gain. evil, which is not balanced even in a thousandth by the benefit they receive from it. They act like that robber who kills a whole family, 5-b person to take away the old jacket and 40 kopecks. money. They would willingly give him all the clothes and all the money, as long as he didn’t kill them. But he cannot do otherwise.

It's the same with religious deceivers. One could agree to support them 10 times better, in the greatest luxury, if only they did not destroy people with their deception. But they cannot do otherwise.

This is what is terrible.

And therefore it is not only possible, but must, to expose their deceptions. If there is anything sacred, then it is not what they call a sacrament, but precisely this duty to expose their religious deception when you see it.

...When people, no matter how many there are, no matter how old their superstition is and no matter how powerful they are, preach crude witchcraft, I cannot see it calmly. And if I call by name what they do, then I am doing only what I must, which I cannot help but do if I believe in God and the Christian teaching. If instead of to be horrified at their blasphemy, call the denunciation of their deception blasphemy, then this only proves the strength of their deception, and should only increase the efforts of people in order to destroy this deception...

So this is what is fair and what is unfair in the synod’s resolution about me. I really don't believe what they say they believe. But I believe a lot of things that they want people to believe that I don't believe.

I believe in the following: I believe in God, whom I understand as Spirit, as love, as the beginning of everything. I believe that the true good of man... is for people to love each other and, as a result, to do to others as they want to be done to them.

They insult, upset or seduce someone, interfere with something or someone, or do not like these beliefs of mine,- I just I can’t change them as much as I can change my body.

I'm not saying that my faith is the only one that is undoubtedly true at all times, but I don't see another– simpler, clearer and meeting all the requirements of my mind and heart; if I recognize one, I will accept her right away... I can no longer return to what I just came from with such suffering, just as a flying bird cannot enter the shell of the egg from which it came.

I began by loving my Orthodox faith more than my peace of mind, then I loved Christianity more than my church, and now I love the truth more than anything in the world... April 4, 1901 Moscow.

LEV TOLSTOY

"The Answer" summarizes three main themes:

First: protest against the definition of the synod, which Tolstoy considers as “slander and incitement to bad feelings and actions.”

Second: confirming his renunciation of the church, Tolstoy with particular force again opposes the teachings of the church, which he characterizes as “an insidious and harmful lie, a collection of the grossest superstitions and witchcraft,” the methods of which are various rituals adapted to all occasions of life, for why priests cast “well-known spells” for offerings from believers.

Third: “rejecting the incomprehensible trinity, the fable about the fall of the first man, the blasphemous story about a god born of a virgin,” Tolstoy speaks with summary his recognition of God and declares that he sees the whole meaning of life only in fulfilling the will of God, expressed in Christian teaching. “His will is that people love each other.”

“Response to the Synod” is undoubtedly one of Tolstoy’s most profound and powerful speeches against the church - on the one hand, and a statement of Tolstoy’s own “creed” on the other. It caused many polemical speeches by the clergy on the pages of church publications. There is no need to dwell on the rhetorical exercises of theologians in their polemics with Tolstoy, since all of them, referring to the Gospel texts, tried to prove the unprovable about the existence of God and the infallibility of the church.

To determine the degree of zeal shown by the hierarchs in the heat of defense of the shattered foundations of the church, it is enough to refer to the luxuriously published, gold-embossed, collection of articles from the spiritual magazine “Missionary Review” - “On the fall from the Orthodox Church of Count L.N. Tolstoy,” in which 569 pages of excellent paper contain all the articles published in this magazine since 1901.

Tolstoy was not an atheist. Opposing the church, he believed in the existence of God, but only his path to understanding God diverged from the Orthodox Church and represented something of his own, isolated, Tolstoyan, generated by his complex and contradictory attitude to religion.

For him, as V.I. Lenin pointed out, “the fight against the state-owned church was combined with the preaching of a new, purified religion, that is, a new, purified, refined poison for the oppressed masses.”

Tolstoy's mistake was rooted in his conviction that only through the paths of purified religion, only through religious education is it possible to achieve an ideal society.

In the article “On the Existing System” (1896), Tolstoy stated that “the competitive system must be destroyed and replaced by a communist one; The capitalist system must be destroyed and replaced by a socialist one; The system of militarism must be destroyed and replaced by disarmament and arbitration... in one word, violence must be destroyed and replaced by the free and loving unity of people.”

But to implement these essentially socialist ideals, Tolstoy proposed naive means: “not to participate in the violent system that we deny,” “think only about yourself and your life,” “oppressors and rapists must repent, voluntarily renounce the exploitation of the people and get off from his neck."

Exposing the inconsistency and reactionary nature of Tolstoy’s doctrine of non-resistance to evil through violence, seeing in Tolstoyism a “brake on the revolution,” V.I. Lenin at the same time paid tribute to the merits of the great writer in his struggle with “bureaucrats in robes” and “gendarmes in Christ.”

In the article “Leo Tolstoy, as a mirror of the Russian revolution,” V. I. Lenin wrote: “The contradictions in the works, views, teachings, in Tolstoy’s school are truly glaring. On the one hand, a brilliant artist who gave not only incomparable pictures of Russian life, but also first-class works of world literature. On the other hand, there is a landowner, a fool for Christ... On the one hand, a merciless criticism of capitalist exploitation, exposure of government violence, the comedy of court and public administration, revealing the full depth of the contradictions between the growth of wealth and the gains of civilization and the growth of poverty, savagery and torment of the working masses; on the other hand, the holy fool’s preaching of “non-resistance to evil” through violence. On the one hand, the most sober realism, tearing off all kinds of masks; - on the other hand, the preaching of one of the most vile things in the world, namely: religion, the desire to put priests of moral conviction in place of priests in official positions, i.e., the cultivation of the most refined and therefore especially disgusting priesthood.”

Unexpectedly for the synod and, of course, contrary to the plans of the “church fathers” and reactionary circles headed by Pobedonostsev, excommunication contributed to the extraordinary spread of Tolstoy’s popularity, the growth of which they intended to stop. The writer's name became even more widely known in the country and abroad. The consequence of this act, in addition to the warm sympathy for Tolstoy on the part of many thousands of people, was to attract the attention of the reading masses to everything that came out or came out again from his pen.

This event evoked a warm response everywhere.

V. G. Korolenko writes in his diary: “An unparalleled act in modern Russian history! True, the power and importance of a writer who, remaining on Russian soil, protected only by the charm of a great name and genius, would so mercilessly and boldly smash the “whales” of the Russian system: the autocratic order and the ruling church, are also unparalleled. The gloomy anathema of the seven Russian “hierarchs”, resounding with echoes of the dark centuries of persecution, rushes towards an undoubtedly new phenomenon, marking the enormous growth of free Russian thought.”

A.P. Chekhov writes to N.P. Kondakov: “The public reacted to Tolstoy’s excommunication with laughter. It was in vain that the bishops inserted a Slavic text into their appeal! It's very insincere."

M. Gorky and 32 other names under the letter to Tolstoy “From Nizhny Novgorod residents”: “... we send you, great person, warm wishes for many more years to live for the sake of the triumph of truth on earth and just as tirelessly to denounce lies, hypocrisy and malice with your mighty word”...

On March 18, Tolstoy received a telegram from Ohio, USA, about his election as an honorary member of the Heidelberg Literary Society.

Expressions of sympathy were manifested not only in those received from all over Russia and from different countries addresses, letters, telegrams, deputations, flowers, but also in the noisy ovation given to Tolstoy by large crowds on the streets of Moscow, near his house in Khamovniki, in public demonstrations in St. Petersburg and other cities.

Among the countless responses we see greetings from the workers of the Prokhorov factory, from a group of political exiles from Arkhangelsk, from workers from the city of Kovrov, from Spanish journalists and many others.

The workers of the Maltsevsky plant sent Tolstoy a block of green glass with the inscription on it: “You shared the fate of many great people who are ahead of their century... The Russian people will always be proud, considering you their great, dear, beloved.”

To the sympathetic telegrams and letters regarding the excommunication, Tolstoy sent the following response of gratitude to the newspapers, in which he could not resist the temptation to once again laugh at the resolution of the synod, which had so contributed to the growth of his popularity:

"G. Editor!

Without being able to personally thank all those persons, from dignitaries before ordinary workers who expressed to me both personally and by mail and telegraph their sympathy regarding the decree of St. synod from 20–22 February, I humbly ask your respected newspaper to thank all these persons, and I attribute the sympathy expressed to me not so much to the significance of my activities as to the wit and timing of the resolution of St. synod.

LEV TOLSTOY".

Translated from Greek word“Anathema” means an offering, gift, dedication to God of any object, which, due to this, became sacred, inviolable, alienated in the Greek cult.

In the sense of excommunication, exclusion from the community of believers and damnation, anathema began to be applied Christian Church from the 4th century by councils and popes. Its essence was alienation from the “body of the church,” and since salvation was not conceivable outside the church, anathema was tantamount to condemnation to eternal torment if the sinner did not renounce his errors. In the Middle Ages, anathema meant great excommunication, as opposed to excommunication, or minor excommunication, that is, temporary, for a limited period.

Anathema is a weapon of religious terror, used by clergy of many faiths to intimidate believers and incite religious fanaticism, to achieve certain political goals, to combat science and advanced social thought.

Anathema is especially widely practiced Catholic Church. For example, at the Vatican Council of 1870, materialism, rationalism, atheism were condemned and all those who did not recognize the dogma of papal infallibility were anathematized. Communism was condemned by the Vatican back in 1846, and since then this condemnation has been renewed several times. After the Second World War, the papacy resorted to anathema to cause confusion among the believers affiliated with international movement for peace, actively building socialism in people's democracies. In July 1949, Pope Pius XII excommunicated all communists and their sympathizers in the Catholic world, i.e. hundreds of millions of Catholics.

More than a thousand years ago - in 942 - in the Byzantine Empire at the Council of Constantinople, a rite was established called the “rite of triumph of Orthodoxy”, initially in memory of the restoration of icon veneration, which had previously been rejected for 216 years of iconoclasts. The Byzantine Emperor Leo III and his followers, who initiated the fight against icon veneration, were cursed.

Later, this “rite” acquired a broader meaning, since it was not limited to the curse of iconoclasts only, but was extended to other heresies and delusions.

From Byzantium, the “rite of the triumph of Orthodoxy” came to the Russian church along with other rituals and spread to Russian heretics, schism teachers and state criminals, such as Archpriest Avvakum, “the new heretic Grishka Otrepiev,” who “like a dog jumped up to the royal throne of Great Russia,” “thief and traitor and perjurer and murderer Stenka Razin with his like-minded people”; former hetman Ivan Mazepa, leaders of the popular uprising Ivan Bolotnikov and Emelyan Pugachev and many other freethinkers who dared to encroach on the inviolability of the dogmas of the ruling church and the foundations of royal power.

Subsequently, the rite of anathematization began to be looked at as a relic of antiquity, as an action acceptable due to its certain theatricality, but in 1918, Patriarch Tikhon again resorted to anathema, trying with its help to restore backward layers of the population against Soviet power.

The “Rite of the Triumph of Orthodoxy” is performed on the first Sunday of Lent during the “Week of Orthodoxy” in cathedral churches. After the prayer service, the protodeacon reads the “Creed” from an elevated place, then proclaims an anathema, repeated by a choir of singers.

In the old days, this ritual was performed with emphasized solemnity. Tsars Mikhail Fedorovich and Alexei Mikhailovich listened to the “rite” in the Moscow Assumption Cathedral in full royal attire, with all the regalia...

Tolstoy, who did not recognize and condemned ritualism, was not interested in the question of whether he was betrayed by the church curse until the last year of his life. Only once, as evidenced by the dialogue below with his secretary Bulgakov, did he accidentally, by association, touch upon this topic.

“Lev Nikolaevich, who entered the Remington room * (* One of the rooms in the Yasnaya Polyana house was set aside specifically for retyping manuscripts on a Remington typewriter. Hence the name of the room), began looking through the brochure lying on the table, his “Response to the Synod.” When I returned, he asked:

What, they proclaimed “anathema” to me?

It seems not.

Why not? It was necessary to proclaim... After all, as if this was necessary?

It is possible that they proclaimed it. Don't know. Did you feel it, Lev Nikolaevich?

“No,” he answered and laughed.”

For reasons beyond the control of the initiators of excommunication, Tolstoy was not anathematized : as already mentioned, anathematization was carried out once a year - on the first Sunday of Lent; in 1901, this day fell on February 18, and the definition of the synod was published by the Church Gazette on February 24 and therefore simply could not be received by the dioceses before Monday the 26th.

Naturally, neither the synod nor Pobedonostsev could decide to perform this ritual over Tolstoy a year later, in 1902, after such a violent reaction from society to his excommunication.

In this regard, it can be said that A. I. Kuprin’s story “Anathema” is not a documentary narrative, but a politically pointed literary fiction of the author, directed against the autocracy and the church. Tolstoy's death shocked Kuprin, who had great respect for the writer and reverence for his great talent. And so, in February 1913, his story “Anathema” appeared in the Argus magazine, in which the deacon, instead of “anathema,” proclaimed: “Many years to the boyar Lev!”

Despite the fact that the plot of the story was not true, the government, realizing how strongly it would resonate in the minds and hearts of the people who had recently buried Tolstoy, took measures to prevent the publication of this work.

The entire circulation of the Argus magazine was confiscated and burned. The second version of the story, written by the writer later, was also destroyed.

TOLSTOY–EXPOSER OF THE AUTOCRACY AND THE CHURCH

About Tolstoy as a fighter against the vices of modern society, V.I. Lenin wrote in 1910: “Tolstoy with great strength and sincerity castigated the ruling classes, with great clarity exposed the internal lies of all those institutions with the help of which modern society is held together: the church, the court , militarism, “legal” marriage, bourgeois science.”

Tolstoy's accusatory struggle against the vices and atrocities of the ruling elite required from him the greatest effort, perseverance and courage, since any open speech condemning the government and the church inevitably entailed the most unequivocal threat of reprisals.

However, Tolstoy did not retreat and, despite neither exhortations nor threats, boldly and energetically denounced everything that he considered the cause of the people’s plight. In his letters to Alexander III and then Nicholas II, Tolstoy resolutely and fearlessly protested against all manifestations of arbitrariness and violence that characterized the autocratic regime.

Tolstoy's spiritual growth was complex and contradictory. Belonging by birth and upbringing to the titled nobility of the nobility, he - not without hesitation and doubt - gradually came to the realization of the social uselessness of the existence of his class and autocracy, as a social and political support for the existence of the nobility.

The needs and aspirations of the peasantry were close to Tolstoy from the very youth living in communion with the peasantry. Later, in the 1980s, he drew attention to the intolerable living conditions of urban workers. However, the basis for the formation of Tolstoy’s worldview was still his excellent knowledge of rural Russia, the life of a landowner and a peasant.

At the beginning of 1856 - 5 years earlier than the tsar's manifesto - Tolstoy took steps to free his Yasnaya Polyana peasants from serfdom and thereby alienated the neighboring landowners and the provincial bureaucracy.

In 1861, trying to help peasants who had just been freed from serfdom, Tolstoy accepted the position of peace mediator, but a year later had to leave it due to extreme hostility nobles came to him, who were indignant at him because in his activities he was guided only by the interests of the peasantry.

In the 90s, Tolstoy, taking an active part in helping starving peasants, wrote articles on ways to combat hunger, in which he placed severe national disasters in close connection with the entire state and social system of his contemporary Russia and severely condemned this system.

The newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti wrote about these articles by Tolstoy: “The letters of Count Tolstoy ... are open propaganda for the overthrow of the entire social and economic system existing throughout the world. The Count’s propaganda is the propaganda of the most extreme, most unbridled socialism, before which even our underground propaganda pales.”

Intransigence with the existing political system, indignant protest against the violence committed by tsarism, runs like a red thread through all of Tolstoy’s work, as well as deep respect and love for the people humiliated and downtrodden by tsarism.

“His ardent, passionate, often mercilessly sharp protest against the state and the police-official church,” wrote V.I. Lenin, “conveys the mood of primitive peasant democracy, in which centuries of serfdom, bureaucratic arbitrariness and robbery, church Jesuitism, deception and fraud has accumulated mountains of anger and hatred.”

Even in his early youth, Tolstoy lost faith in God and from the age of sixteen he stopped going to church and performing religious ceremonies. During the period of his spiritual crisis (1877–1879), Tolstoy again turned to religion in search of an answer to the question “how to live” and again broke with the church completely, having become convinced of its reactionary essence.

By the 80s of the last century, Tolstoy had fully matured that change in his views on life, on its moral foundations, on religion, on social relations, which later only deepened, being reflected in everything that Tolstoy wrote at that time.

In the 80s, such works as “Confession”, “What is my faith?”, “So what should we do?”; in the 90s - “The Kingdom of God is within you.”

In “A Study of Dogmatic Theology” (1880-1884), Tolstoy wrote: “Orthodox Church! Now I can no longer connect with this word any other concept than several unshorn people, very self-confident, lost and poorly educated, in silk and velvet, with diamond panagias, called bishops and metropolitans, and thousands of other unshorn people who are in the wildest, slavish obedience among these dozens, who are busy deceiving and robbing the people under the guise of performing some sacraments.”

In all his writings, he revised his own moral, religious and social views and everything that lived in his contemporary society and that he diligently protected the social and political system of Tsarist Russia.

Having started with a denial of the church faith, Tolstoy became increasingly imbued with a negative attitude towards the official Orthodox Church and the state system of his day. He was deeply disgusted by the hypocrisy of the ruling church elite and especially by the gloomy figure of Pobedonostsev, who represented the interests of the “ruling house” in the synod; This inspirer of political reaction and religious obscurantism, during his twenty-five years of service as Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, made a lot of efforts to ensure that even the illusory liberal reforms of the reign of Alexander II would soon disappear.

Tolstoy wrote about him with anger and contempt in a letter to the Tsar in early December 1900: “Of all these criminal deeds, the most disgusting and disturbing to the soul of every honest person are those committed by your disgusting, heartless, unscrupulous adviser on religious matters, the villain, the name who, as an exemplary villain, will go down in history - Pobedonostsev.”

The novel “Resurrection” was a passionate protest against the foundations of autocracy. The accusatory power of the novel was so great that its text, published in the St. Petersburg magazine “Niva” by A. F. Marx for 1899, was subjected to a large number censorship corrections.

This is a large, topical work that showed modern Russian reality in all its ugliness - the impoverished peasantry, prison stages, the criminal world, sectarianism, Siberian exile, containing a merciless denunciation of the court, the church, the administration, the aristocratic elite of Russian society and the entire state and public building tsarist Russia.

Tolstoy widely depicted the glaring social contradictions of Russian life, using many of the novel’s characters as prototypes. real persons from among high-ranking dignitaries.

Tolstoy connects the hypocrisy and lies of church rituals with the lies and hypocrisy of the entire way of life in autocratic Russia.

“Resurrection” is a new novel in Tolstoy’s work, extremely rich in journalism. It reveals with all its force one of the main features of the works last period creativity of Tolstoy, in which he “attacked with passionate criticism on all modern state, church, social, economic orders based on the enslavement of the masses, on their poverty, on the ruin of peasants and small owners in general, on violence and hypocrisy, which permeate all modern life" * (* V.I. Lenin. Works, vol. 16, p. 301).

The appearance of the novel caused a huge public outcry. Liberal-bourgeois critics sought to weaken its significance, smooth over, and obscure its social significance, assigning social pictures only the role of a background against which the story of Nekhlyudov and Maslova unfolds. The reactionary press saw in the novel “something like a caricature of the existing order and society.”

In the drama “The Living Corpse” (1900), published after Tolstoy’s death, the writer, portraying representatives of the bourgeois-noble society, tore off their masks, and they appeared before the reader with all their falsehood, pharisaism, and selfishness. The hero of the drama, Fyodor Protasov, definitely says that there is only one way out of the impasse: “destroy this dirty trick” - destroy the possessive, unjust social system that dooms people to unbearable torment and grief. Depicting the tragic fate of Protasov, Tolstoy objectively called not for reconciliation, but for the destruction of the bourgeois police state with its laws, morality, religion - all the falseness of social and family relations. With anger and passion through the lips of Fedya Protasov, in the scene of interrogation by a judicial investigator, Tolstoy exposes the vileness and insignificance of soulless tsarist officials.

The accusatory power of the drama enraged reactionary critics, who saw in The Living Corpse a “subversion of the foundations” of the state.

Both the tsarist government, which protected the inviolability of the religious dogmas of the church, and the church, which asserted autocracy, armed themselves against Tolstoy, setting themselves common goal- to break his stubbornness and at any cost, without hesitation in the choice of means, to achieve at least the appearance of Tolstoy’s consent to return to the “bosom of the church”, to abandon the “delusions” of his entire life. The churchmen and tsarist officials unsuccessfully spent nine years on this, which followed from the publication of the “definition” of the synod until the death of the writer, but did not break the will of the great elder.

RESPONSE TO TOLSTOY'S EXCLUSION

People's love for their brilliant writer and tribune was the stronghold against which the attempts of the synod and its inspirers to discredit and belittle the name of Tolstoy were broken. The people did not allow Tolstoy to be abused and in a single impulse came to his defense.

Following the excommunication, demonstrations began in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kyiv and many other cities expressing sympathy for Tolstoy.

In Moscow, on Lubyanka Square, a crowd of demonstrators gave him a thunderous ovation.

In St. Petersburg, at the XXIV Traveling Exhibition, near Repin’s portrait of Lev Nikolaevich (purchased by the then Alexander III Museum), two demonstrations took place: “... for the first time, a small group of people laid flowers to the portrait; on Sunday 25 March at great hall The exhibition attracted many visitors. The student stood on a chair and covered the entire frame surrounding the portrait of Lev Nikolaevich with bouquets. Then he began to give a laudatory speech, then shouts of “hurray” rose, a rain of flowers fell from the chorus, and the consequence of all this was that the portrait was removed from the exhibition and it will not be in Moscow, much less in the provinces”... (from the diary of S. A . Tolstoy, entry March 30, 1901, - from the words of I. E. Repin).

Those present at the exhibition sent Tolstoy a welcoming telegram with 398 signatures, which, due to the previously introduced ban on sending sympathetic telegrams to Tolstoy regarding the excommunication, was not delivered to him. Tolstoy received the text later - by mail.

The people of Kiev sent Tolstoy an address with an expression of love for “the greatest and noblest writer of our time.” The address collected more than 1000 signatures. The same addresses were sent from other cities.

In Poltava, in a crowded theater where Tolstoy's play was being performed, the audience gave the writer a noisy ovation.

On February 26, V. G. Korolenko, on behalf of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy’s many admirers, telegraphed to S. A. Tolstoy their request to express “feelings of deep sympathy and respect” to Tolstoy...

The Black Hundred pack of “true Russian people” reacted in their own way to the synod’s definition, seeing in it a call to persecute the apostate. As if on cue, threats of physical harm, abuse and insults rained down on Tolstoy.

The Moscow Temperance Society excluded Tolstoy from among its honorary members, motivating the exclusion by paragraph four of the society's charter, according to which persons of the Orthodox faith can be its members, but Tolstoy, due to the definition of the synod, cannot be considered such.

All sorts of “patriots” and obscurantists, organized by the reactionary press, angrily attacked the writer, but the pitiful attempts of the fosterlings of the police-autocratic regime and obscurantists from the host of numerous “loyal subjects” of the church pastors, obliged by the nature of their service to vilify the name of the great writer, were drowned in popular respect for the writer.

Unable to openly speak out in print in defense of Tolstoy, since this was prohibited, many authors of cartoons, fables and poems began to publish them illegally. In lists and prints they circulated from hand to hand and enjoyed great success. Here are some of them.

Victorious pigeons

I don’t remember how it started, for the life of me,

But only seven "humble" doves,

Having learned that Leo does not want to observe their custom,

And he dares - what audacity! –

Live like a Leo

They decided to separate him from the flock of birds.

It's no longer a secret to anyone.

That such a decree was sent to Leo,

So that he does not dare to fly like pigeons until

He will not learn to coo like a dove

And peck bread crumbs.

The doves rejoice: we won! Miracle!

We brought justice to Lev.

Being able to unite in his face

And the meekness of the dove and the wisdom of the serpent!

But perhaps we will be asked a question:

Yes - where is the victory here?

But so, if you believe the rumor.

Those doves are akin to the Holy Spirit,

Then everyone has goals,

Of course, people will refrain from asking such questions

And he will glorify the cause of the victorious doves.

Seven “humble” doves – 7 hierarchs who signed the “definition” of the synod. “The Case of the Victorious Pigeons” is an allusion to the author of the definition, Pobedonostsev.

Lion and Donkeys(Fable)

In one country where Donkeys ruled,

The lion started up and began to move left and right

To judge about this; and here in all corners

The fame of the lion's speeches has gone far.

What strength and courage are hidden in them;

And this one was the first among the lion countries,

And he considered it good for everyone to speak loudly.

And since Lions are not at all like Donkeys,

And everything in their habits and their speeches is different,

That's the whole reign of those donkey heads

I lost my peace from the lion's audacity.

"How! Nearby for many years natural Donkeys

We instilled our custom and character into the people.

And the impudent Leo growls his blasphemies at us

And under our noses he is breeding a breed of lions!

Unfortunately, our people are not deaf,

And a tongue was given to him, no matter how sad it is;

One will listen, the other will listen.

Look, they will spread that heresy halfway around the world.

Judge Leo immediately! And seven Donkeys

We gathered to sit down: what to do with the shaggy enemy?

And the most dignified donkeys have seven heads

This is how they are resolved with a florid message:

The lion is called the disastrous servant of the country,

Those who boldly broke with the wisdom of the Donkey,

That's why Satan's slingshots are waiting for him,

Licking of frying pans and whistling, and the thorn of a snake.

Donkeys would be ready to eat, but everyone is afraid of the Lion,

And only from a distance they kicked him,

And their words even sounded clear:

“Is it possible for you, furious Leo, to repent?

Forget the lion's habits and blasphemies,

Repent, it will be for you, go to Donkeys,

Who knows? Maybe they would have received ranks”...

When they read the ominous race to Leo.

Then he said, waving his tail contemptuously:

“Everything here is written in donkey language,

But I only know how to understand like a lion.”

“Seven donkeys” are the same 7 hierarchs who signed the definition of the synod.

It is interesting that the clergy, for their part, also tried to defend themselves with the weapon of satire, however, they did not achieve success in this field either. It is enough to get acquainted with at least one of these poetic works, published in the Missionary Review (June 1901), in which mediocrity is mixed with rudeness, to get an idea of ​​the poetic claims of the “Church Fathers.”

Wolf in a collar

(New fable)

My story is about a fat wolf.

One day an old wolf climbed into the sheepfold

(Of course, putting on sheep's clothing first)

And he began to beckon the sheep

Get out of the sheepfold:

The sheepfold is dirty

The sheepfold is cramped,

And the shepherds only see their own benefit in the sheep,

And if there is a need, they will offend everyone:

In the forest, in the fields it’s much more free to live -

So, of course, you have to go there!

Skillful in the gray word!

Lo and behold, the sheep are leaving the yard one by one.

However, the shepherds do not sleep,

They talk about the gray friend.

How to stop the infection in the sheepfold?

What is there to be clever about, drive away the wolf right away

And the gray one did not sleep

And he brought fear to the shepherds:

They are afraid to poke their noses in, afraid of wolf revenge

(That wolf was held in special honor).

And that's why

The shepherds decided to give him

A collar with the inscription that it is a wolf.

They put it on quietly... They are waiting to see what use it will make.

But oh my god

there was such a noise!

All the wolves almost tore the shepherds apart

And they threw mud at me;

They shout: violence and shame!

This is your shepherd's verdict.

What meekness! And they still blamed us

That we have always been cruel!

And who would take it down -

A seasoned friend, like a dirty dog,

By your grace he wears a collar!

No, our fat wolf won’t ask for a pardon;

If necessary, the collar will break

And he will come to your sheepfold again.

Where there is less judgment, there is more condemnation.

“Collar” is the definition of the synod; “like a dirty dog” – emphasized in the original; the last line, with the words “trial” and “condemnation” also underlined in the original, expresses regret that Tolstoy was not judged strictly enough, and therefore the actions of the synod were condemned.

Unrest in society in connection with Tolstoy's excommunication caused concern among the ruling elite and the institution that was entrusted with monitoring the fluctuations of his moods - the police department.

Not content with the usual surveillance of Tolstoy and those in direct contact with him, the police department carried out perlustration (secret reading) of many letters from the private correspondence of individuals who had nothing to do with Tolstoy, in order to identify their attitude to the act of excommunication of the writer.

In the summary of the results of the inspection compiled by the police department, we find many reviews about the synodal act and about the “holy fathers” who excommunicated Tolstoy, their inspirer - Pobedonostsev, and about Tolstoy in general. Despite the fact that the authors of the letters for the most part were not followers of Tolstoy and did not share his views on religion and the church, almost all the letters condemn the synod and the act of excommunication is regarded as something untimely, unnecessary, stupid and harmful to the prestige of the church.

Thus, in the letter of Count N.P. Ignatiev there are the following lines: “No, this public statement of the synod is hardly timely, and in the eyes of frivolous and misguided people it will only increase, perhaps, the importance of Tolstoy and hostility towards the structure of the Orthodox Church.”

Legal Adviser to His Majesty's Cabinet N.A. Lebedev wrote: “I have just read the decree of the synod on Tolstoy. What nonsense. What a satisfaction of personal vengeance. After all, it is clear that this is the work of Pobedonostsev, and that he is taking revenge on Tolstoy...

Now what? Maybe tens of thousands read Tolstoy’s banned works in Russia, and now hundreds of thousands will read them. Previously they did not understand his false teachings, but the synod emphasized them. Upon death, Tolstoy will be buried as a martyr for the idea, with special pomp. People will go to his grave to worship.

What saddens me is the lack of a spirit of love and application of the truths of Christianity among bishops. Tolstoy has been writing for more than 10 years in the spirit of denouncing the church’s deviation from the commandments of Christ. Why didn’t they admonish him? Why didn’t they talk to him and try to turn him to the path of truth through exhortation? They dress up in rich clothes, get drunk and overeat, make money as monks, and forget about the poor and needy; they are heretics, not observing the teachings of Christ in their deeds... They... withdrew from the people, built palaces, forgot the cells in which Anthony and Theodosius and other saints lived. They serve as a temptation with their debauchery, gluttony and drunkenness. “My house will be called a house of prayer,” but they made it a den of thieves. born new type a priest-official who views the matter as a service, and only cares about receiving money for the services. All this is bitter and regrettable...”

“Excommunication gr. Tolstoy turned out to be a shot at sparrows. The upper classes laugh, but the lower classes do not understand and are not aware of it,” wrote V. A. Popov from St. Petersburg to Kyiv to the director of the gymnasium A. A. Popov. - In response to the excommunication of gr. Tolstoy drew up a will in which he orders himself to be buried without any rites. Thus, a place for pilgrimage is created. In Moscow, the grand exit from Tolstoy’s house is accompanied by a crowd that shows him signs of respect and reverence.”

The director of the Moscow Savings Bank P.P. Kolomnin wrote to E.P. Kolomnina in St. Petersburg: “... this is the message (of the synod. - G.P.) will only do that now all the bureaucrats will rush to get foreign editions of Tolstoy, because the forbidden fruit is always sweet, and others will begin to say that we are returning almost to the Inquisition. But the peasants may kill Tolstoy* (*Peasants (French), so this will probably happen. This message, of course, will reach them, but in a distorted form and, instead of praying for him, they will probably mix in that he is against Tsar-father. And even without this, they will come and ask: “What do you think, your Excellency, there is no God?” I’ll give them that they’ll strangle you. Didn’t Pobedonostsev come up with this?”

A friend of hers wrote to a certain A.A. Gromek from Moscow in Geneva: “I heard from one rural teacher near Moscow that the men explain this excommunication like this: “It’s all for us; he stands up for us and stands up for us, and the priests are angry with him.”

Let us confine ourselves to these few excerpts, which sufficiently convincingly confirm that the excommunication was condemned even in bureaucratic circles, who logically assessed this step of the synod as a reason for what was, in their opinion, an extremely undesirable increase in the popularity of Tolstoy and his works.

“THE CANNOT BE SPEAKING ABOUT RECONCILIATION”

Following the excommunication, which caused such violent indignation in Russian society, came new stage persecution of Tolstoy by reactionary forces. This period (1901 - 1910) is characterized by police activity, cynicism of government bodies and the hypocrisy of churchmen, who lost a fair amount of authority in the eyes of society due to the failure of their venture.

The Synod was forced, on the one hand, to maintain the appearance of the effectiveness of excommunication and, therefore, to take measures arising from this position, and on the other, to resort to all sorts of tricks in order to wrest from Tolstoy at least a hint that he agreed to reconcile with the church, and have even an insignificant reason to declare your “definition” no longer in force.

At a time when in church teachings and sermons, in articles from the pages of spiritual magazines and Black Hundred newspapers, a stream of abuse and curses is constantly pouring out on the head of the “Yasnaya Polyana heresiarch and false evangelist,” calls from churchmen for reconciliation with the church are coming to Yasnaya Polyana.

This is what we find in the diary entries of S. A. Tolstoy.

On February 15, 1902, Sofya Andreevna received a letter from Metropolitan Anthony exhorting her to convince Lev Nikolaevich to return to the church, reconcile with the church and help him die as a Christian. Regarding this letter, Tolstoy said: “There can be no talk of reconciliation. I die without any enmity or evil, and what is the church: “What reconciliation can there be with such an uncertain subject?”* (* L. Tolstoy. Collected works, vol. 54. Notes, : tr. 489)

On February 25, S. A. Tolstaya noted in her diary that Tolstoy also received two letters urging him to “return to church and take communion,” and she (that is, Sofya Andreevna) received a letter from Princess M. M. Dondukova-Korsakova, advising , so that she “converts Lev Nikolaevich to the church and gives him communion” (ibid.).

On August 9, S.A. Tolstaya wrote in her diary: “The priests send me all the books of spiritual content with abuse of Lev Nikolaevich” (ibid., p. 492).

On October 31, 1902, a priest came to Yasnaya Polyana from Tula to see Tolstoy, who took upon himself “the work of being Count L. Tolstoy’s exhorter.” Usually before, this priest visited Yasnaya Polyana twice a year. Tolstoy received him, sometimes invited him to the table, but refused to talk about issues of faith (ibid., p. 651).

Government authorities were constantly afraid of the possibility of “unrest” associated with the name of Tolstoy.

Directives not to allow any demonstrative speeches, actions and manifestations became typical for police codes that went in various directions in connection with any of Tolstoy’s departures from Yasnaya Polyana, with his anniversaries, with illness:

Particularly cynical is the kind of dress rehearsal held by the government in 1901–1902 in the event of Tolstoy’s death. The beginning of this rehearsal dates back to the time when the writer, while in Crimea, fell ill. In July 1901, a telegram from the Ministry of Internal Affairs was sent to all corners of Russia with instructions to exercise the strictest vigilance in the event of Tolstoy’s death. When it was feared that the disease was threatening his life in December 1901–January 1902, government authorities launched a frantic activity. The contents of the secret letter prepared in advance from the Minister of Internal Affairs to the Chief Prosecutor of St. Synod to K.P. Pobedonostsev (in which space was left for the date, since Tolstoy was alive): “I have the honor to inform Your Excellency for information that on this date I have authorized the Tauride governor to issue a certificate for the transportation of Count Tolstoy’s body from Yalta to Yasnaya Polyana.” .

A directive to a number of governors was also prepared, signed by the director of the police department: “The body of Count Tolstoy is being transported from Yalta to Yasnaya Polyana. Departure…- (free space left for date) date. Please take all possible measures to prevent any demonstrations along the way. Director Zvolyansky... (vacant seat) January 1902.”

The measures to prevent public demonstrations were developed with Jesuitical forethought. According to the plan of the Ministry of Railways, approved by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, according to one option, a mail train with a funeral carriage was supposed to arrive in Kharkov with a delay of up to forty minutes, and was sent from Kharkov “on time,” despite the delay in mail.” According to the second option, if a different route had been chosen, the train would also have arrived in Kharkov deliberately late. This was how they planned to prevent “public statements” regarding Tolstoy’s death along the route of the coffin with his body.

At the same time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs gave an order not to serve memorial services for Tolstoy, not to allow the printing of announcements about memorial services, “and also to take measures to eliminate any demonstrative demands for serving memorial services.”

Everything possible was done to stage Tolstoy’s imaginary repentance before his death.

Tolstoy spent the autumn of 1901 on the southern coast of Crimea - in Gaspra, on the estate of Countess S.V. Panina, who put at his disposal a two-story house located high above the sea, with a park, wide verandas open to the sea and a house church, which, of course, , could be visited by the clergy to perform divine services. When Tolstoy fell so seriously ill at the end of January 1902 that they feared for his life, Pobedonostsev, having learned about the possibility near death Tolstoy, made the most unexpected and incredible decision - stage Tolstoy's repentance . To do this, he gave orders to the local clergy so that as soon as it became known about Tolstoy’s death, the priest, taking advantage of the right to visit the house church, entered the house, and then, leaving there, announced to those around him and those waiting at the gate that Count Tolstoy was about to die repented, returned to the bosom of the Orthodox Church, confessed and received communion, and that the clergy and church rejoice at the return of the prodigal son.

The monstrous lie was supposed to accomplish the job that decades of persecution and persecution of Tolstoy by the government and church could not do. The writer's recovery prevented the implementation of this outrageous plan.

The calculation of the initiators of the excommunication on the extreme anger of the dark forces, artificially fueled by religious fanaticism, turned out to be correct. It is not difficult to imagine that in those years when the influence of the church had not yet been undermined among the broad masses, the words of the “definition” proclaimed to the whole world that “Count Tolstoy, in the deception of his proud mind, boldly rebelled against the Lord, and against his Christ and on his sacred property”... posed a terrible threat. Tolstoy was opposed by a countless crowd of fanatics, Black Hundreds, ready to commit any crime.

Tolstoy showed fearlessness, perseverance and courage in the years when, in connection with his excommunication, an unprecedented wave of persecution arose against him, accompanied by arrogant and rude threats, especially since even before the excommunication Tolstoy had already received letters threatening to kill him. For example, in December 1897, he was sent an anonymous letter from “a member of the underground society of the second crusaders” with a threat to kill him as a “legislator” of a sect that insulted “our Lord Jesus Christ” and as “an enemy of our king and fatherland.”

With particular frenzy and voluptuousness, the clergy joined in the persecution of Tolstoy, of course, with the knowledge and instigation of the synod.

So, for example, Tolstoy’s biographer P.I. Biryukov cites the following letter published in the newspaper “Our Days”:

“12 versts from Glukhov is the Glinskaya Hermitage Monastery, which for the third year now has attracted general attention with a topical picture painted in oil paints on the monastery wall and depicting Count L.N. Tolstoy surrounded by numerous sinners, among whom, judging by the signature, Herod can be found , Agrippa, Nero, Trojan and other “tormentors”, heretics and sectarians.

The painting is called “The Church Militant”: in the middle of the sea there is a high rock and on it a church and the righteous; below are restless sinful souls; on the right side, the enemies of the church, who have already retreated to better world, and on the left - our contemporaries in frock coats, blouses and undershirts throw stones and fire from guns at the rock on top of which the temple stands. Under each character there is a number, and on the side there is an explanation: runners, Molokans, Doukhobors, Skoptsy, Khlysty, Netovtsy, etc.

In a prominent place in the painting is an old man in a blouse and hat, above him is number thirty-four, and on the side there is a comment: “The Eradicator of Religion and Marriages.” Previously, the hat of the “eradicator of religion and marriage” had the inscription: “L. Tolstoy."

Every now and then pilgrims crowd around the topical picture, and one of the brethren with pathos gives them the appropriate explanations:

- He is a heretic and a hater of God! And where are they looking? Is that really necessary? I would load it into a cannon - and bang! Fly to the infidels, abroad, you scanty little graphic!..

And the sermon is a success. From the neighboring village of Shalygina, a peasant butcher came to the abbot and asked for blessings for a great feat:

“I’ll go to that old man, the destroyer of marriages,” the peasant told his plan, “as if for advice, and then I’ll snatch a knife from behind my boot, and it’s over!”

“Your zeal pleases God,” the abbot answered, “but I won’t give a blessing, so, after all, you will have to answer...

The reactionary press, obsequiously striving to make its “continuous contribution” to the persecution of the great writer organized by the government and the church, appealed to the authorities on behalf of the so-called “true Russian” people with a demand to bring Tolstoy to trial. This press campaign continued until his death. So, in February 1910, an article was published in one of the Black Hundred newspapers that ended with such an unequivocal sentence: “The government should finally think about this, get to Yasnaya Polyana and destroy this enemy nest of the Antichrist’s minions, before the Russian people themselves encroach for this"* (*"Ivanovo leaflet", February 4, 1910).

Tolstoy treated all the numerous threats calmly. N. N. Gusev talks about one episode that happened in 1907:

“Recently there was a threatening telegram from Podolsk: “Wait. Goncharov." This is already the second from the same stranger; the first was: “Wait for the guest. Goncharov."

Sofya Andreevna is worried, and L.N. is completely indifferent to this threat.”

A few years earlier, Tolstoy wrote in his diary on the same occasion: “Letters threatening death have been received. It’s a pity that there are people who hate me, but I’m of little interest and don’t care at all.”

However, Tolstoy, of course, understood that behind the promises of reprisals against him, behind the letters threatening his life that he constantly received, there were very real forces of reaction.

All of advanced Russia, all of progressive humanity celebrated the eightieth anniversary of the birth of L.N. Tolstoy in 1908. Countless letters and telegrams of greetings went to the hero of the day in Yasnaya Polyana from all corners of the country, from all corners of the globe. The reactionary press “in its own way” commemorated this date, showering Tolstoy with unbridled abuse, calling at the same time for reprisals against “foreigners” and “all enemies of the throne.” The great writer was reviled for his calls for the abolition of private property, for the “complete collapse of the state” and “the destruction of faith in an omnipotent God.” In preparation for the anniversary, on March 18, 1908, the police department sent out a circular to governors, mayors, heads of gendarmerie departments and security departments to ensure that the honoring of Tolstoy “is not accompanied by a violation of existing laws and orders of government authorities.” Similar instructions were given by Stolypin to all governors. Everything was in motion.

Censorship attacked the press, not allowing any “praise of the enemy of the Orthodox Church and the existing state system in the empire,” and the police were put on full alert in many cities.

The famous Black Hundred and obscurantist John of Kronstadt “responded” to the anniversary, composing a prayer for the speedy death of the hero of the day: “Lord, pacify Russia for the sake of Your Church, for the sake of Your poor people, stop the rebellion and revolution, take from the earth Your blasphemer, the most evil and unrepentant Leo Tolstoy and all his ardent followers..." * (* Newspaper "News of the Day". Moscow, July 14, 1908).

The apotheosis of this entire campaign was the publication on August 24 in the Saratov “Brotherly List” of the “archpastoral address” of Bishop Hermogenes “regarding the morally lawless undertaking of a certain part of society ... to celebrate the anniversary of the anathematized atheist and anarchist revolutionary Leo Tolstoy.” The “appeal,” reprinted by all Black Hundred newspapers, was filled with outright abuse, demagoguery, such as that Tolstoy is a “killer of youth,” and other inventions of the divergent archpastor.

This issue of the “Brotherly List”, as well as various Black Hundred proclamations directed against honoring Tolstoy, were distributed, of course, without hindrance.

But, despite complete freedom and encouragement of oral and printed slander and slander, reactionary forces could not isolate the venerable writer from his people. Thousands of letters and telegrams with greetings on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, received by Tolstoy in those days, speak of deep respect and love for him:

“...We, Russian workers, are proud of you as a national treasure (from a letter from the workers of the Baltic plant).

“...We send greetings... to the defender of the oppressed proletarians, who, with the power of great talent, fought against the power of darkness.” (from a letter from St. Petersburg workers at the Meltzer factory).

“...Bow to the ground to the great apostle of truth... the immortal mourner for the working people and the disadvantaged” (from a letter from the workers of the Elvorti plant).

“...God grant that your life may be prolonged, great sower of love and truth” (from the greetings of the peasants).

After the appearance of Tolstoy’s article “I Can’t Be Silent!” with a passionate appeal to stop capital punishment (July 1908), new accusations and death threats rained down on him. The government newspaper "Russia" on July 30, 1908, in the article "Point" above I, stated that Tolstoy ... "in all fairness, should, of course, be imprisoned in a Russian prison." And this was not an empty phrase, for such an intention was discussed in government spheres. In the Council of Ministers, in particular, the proposal of the Minister of Justice Shcheglovitov to bring Tolstoy to severe judicial responsibility for the article “I cannot remain silent!” was debated.

Although the government did not dare to take repressive measures against the writer, the campaign launched by the reaction still yielded results: “The gallows have been waiting for you for a long time,” “Death is at hand,” “Repent, sinner,” “Heretics must be killed,” - the brutal “defenders of the throne” wrote to Tolstoy.

A certain O.A. Markova from Moscow sent a parcel with a rope and a letter signed “Russian Mother”: “Without bothering the government, you can do it yourself, it’s not difficult. By doing this, you will bring good to our homeland and our youth.” Tolstoy answered her with a calm and even warm letter, which, however, did not reach its intended destination, since the return address indicated on the parcel turned out to be fictitious.

This, of course, does not mean that he did not attach any importance to the threats. A. B. Goldenweiser wrote down in his diary on August 10, 1908 the words of Tolstoy: “... it is possible that the Black Hundreds will kill me.”

Article “I Can’t Be Silent!” evoked enthusiastic responses from leading people of Russian society. Here are excerpts from some letters to Tolstoy:

“May you live and be awake for the good of humanity! Neither our Russian prison nor the gallows will swallow you or strangle you; how great you are, they are so insignificant for this. You have grown beyond their reach.”

“Your words rang out like bells in the stuffiness of shameful silence. People were dozing and no one woke them up.”

“In the days of shameful silence of society, in the midst of complete selfishness and cynical abuse of power over everything that is dear and sacred to humanity, the voice of one person was finally heard, who loudly protested against the fanaticism being committed.”

All this supported Tolstoy and deeply pleased him.

Many years of persecution, of course, could not help but cause pain and grief to the writer. However, the most difficult thing for him was the persecution by the authorities of his friends, followers and associates who printed, distributed or stored his banned works or followed his calls to disobey the government. Many of these people were imprisoned, fortresses, died premature deaths from beatings and illnesses, their families were reduced to poverty. Tolstoy's employees and friends V.G. Chertkov, P.I. Biryukov, N.N. Gusev and many others were persecuted and exiled.

Tolstoy exposed the purpose of these provocative tactics in one of his articles, in which he wrote that the government, by acting in this way, wanted to force him to stop his accusatory activities. Back in 1896, Tolstoy sent a letter to the ministers of justice and internal affairs, where he argued that this technique did not achieve the goal, and demanded that all measures taken against persons sympathizing with him or distributing his works should also be taken against himself.

The writer more than once appealed to the Tsar, Stolypin, governors and other persons on whom this depended to alleviate the plight of people persecuted for their sympathy.

Of particular interest is Tolstoy's petition about Novoselov.

The young philologist M.A. Novoselov, who often visited the writer in Moscow, reproduced his forbidden story “Nikolai Palkin” on a hectograph and distributed reprints to those who wished. He and several acquaintances were arrested for distributing illegal literature. Having learned about this, Tolstoy went to the Moscow Gendarmerie Department demanding the release of those arrested. He argued that their arrest was illegal, because he, Tolstoy, the author of the story and the main culprit remains at large.

The head of the gendarme department, General Slezkine, answered Tolstoy with a kind smile: “Count, your glory is too great for our prisons to accommodate it”...

Nevertheless, Novoselov and his comrades were soon released and got off with a year of public police supervision.

“It would seem clear,” wrote Tolstoy, “that the only reasonable way to stop what you don’t like in my activity is to stop me. Leave me and seize and torture the distributors (meaning Tolstoy’s illegal works. - G.P.) It's not only outrageously unfair, but also amazingly stupid. If it is true... that by torturing people close to me, force me to stop my activities, then this method does not achieve the goal... because no matter how painful the suffering of my friends is to me, I cannot, while I am alive, stop this activity of mine.” *(* Article “Concerning the conclusion of V. A. Molochnikov” (1908).

ILLNESS AND DEATH OF TOLSTOY

“...How will we justify ourselves in our new crime?.. They ruined Pushkin and Lermontov, deprived Gogol of his mind, rotted Dostoevsky in hard labor, drove Turgenev to the wrong side, and finally dumped 82-year-old Tolstoy on a wooden bench in a provincial station!.. Our life - some kind of continuous descent into a bottomless, dim pit, at the bottom of which oblivion, spiritual death awaits us.”

For almost ten long years that passed after his excommunication from the church, the sick, elderly writer resisted the onslaught of dark forces that entangled the country and his native people in a web of autocratic oppression and church obscurantism.

The autumn of 1910 approached.

“At the end of one stormy night, the writer Leo Tolstoy left his Yasnaya Polyana estate into the unknown. Except for a few trusted persons, no one in Russia knew either the address or the true reason that forced him to leave his nest.

A four-day wandering, sometimes in pouring rain, brings the great old man to an unknown stop. Illness, someone else's bed, publicity... and now visiting figures, clergy, men, cinematographers, gendarmes crowd at a distance from the log building. There, behind the wall, Leo Tolstoy is alone with death. Everyone is in a hurry to do what they are supposed to do in times of trouble. Elder Barsanuphius is eager to bless the excommunicated thinker before he sets off on a long, irrevocable journey: from Moscow, by train No. 3 of the Ryazan-Ural Railway, six pounds of medicine are sent as an urgent cargo to Astapovo for the sick writer. The confusion of the church and civilization he had rejected. Then the fateful night, black darkness in the windows. Morphine, camphor, oxygen. Last sip of water, on the road. At a quarter to six, Goldenweiser will whisper through the window sad news that will sweep the world by dawn. It has set..." * (*Leonid Leonov. A Word about Tolstoy).

The authorities watched Tolstoy's every move with anxiety and fear. The government and the church were interested in such interpretations of the reasons for Tolstoy's departure that would present him as reconciled with the state and church and renounced his errors. Printing was used for this; newspapers of that time, one after another, published all sorts of versions on the topic of his departure from home: “...neither the state nor the church did anything to disturb the silence of the brilliant life”; Tolstoy fled “from the spirit of revolutionary excitement”, from “the anti-state and anti-church intelligentsia.” “It is clear from everything that Count L.N. Tolstoy is on the path of reconciliation with the church.”

Speculation was put into play that Tolstoy left to renounce the vanity of the world and go to a monastery * (* Newspapers “New Time”, November 4, “Bell”, November 5, 1910).

“Leo Tolstoy did not leave the world, but went into the world,” the writer Skitalets responded to these fabrications of the reactionary press. – Leo Tolstoy went into the world because he belongs to the world. His home is not Yasnaya Polyana and his family is all people... And he went to all people - strong and bright. Don’t stand in his way with a small, narrow bourgeois arshin...

Make way for the bright wanderer. Let him go wherever he wants... and may Russia be wide for him... * (* Newspaper "Early Morning", November 4, 1910).

When hopes for “repentance” were not justified, the reactionary newspapers replaced saccharine language with unbridled abuse, calling the dying writer a “heretic,” “molester of two generations,” and “feeble-minded.”

In government circles, despite the failure of Tolstoy’s appeal to the church, to calm the masses, attempts were made to continue disseminating in the press a version interpreting Tolstoy’s departure as an act of religious humility. This was written in many official newspapers even after Tolstoy’s death.

While the sick Tolstoy was forced to interrupt his trip and stop at the Astapovo station, the government, which had long expected his death, took urgent measures in order to prevent manifestations of popular love for the writer and to more successfully carry out the planned staging of “repentance.”

A system of police surveillance was organized along the entire route of the writer and in Astapov. Secretly from Tolstoy, the assistant head of the Tula detective department, Zhemchuzhnikov, was traveling on the same train with him. Tolstoy's entire route was under the supervision of gendarmes.

An hour and eight minutes after Tolstoy landed in Astapov, the station gendarme had already telegraphed to his superior: “Elets, captain Savitsky. The writer Count Tolstoy fell ill while passing through point 12. The station chief, Mr. Ozolin, received him into his apartment. Non-commissioned officer Filippov."

Soon Astapovo was flooded with armed policemen, gendarmes and authorities: the head of the Yeletsk gendarme department, Savitsky, the head of the Ryazan provincial gendarme department, Major General Globa, and the vice-director of the police department, Kharlamov, gathered here. Encrypted telegrams were systematically sent to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Moscow Gendarmerie Directorate of Railways about Tolstoy's health and the state of affairs at the station.

Fearing publicity and incidents due to the arrival of a large number of newspaper correspondents, the authorities tried in every possible way to make it difficult for them to stay at the station; they tried to take Tolstoy to a medical institution or to Yasnaya Polyana, but to no avail.

“The latest news of L. N. Tolstoy’s illness caused a great stir both in the highest circles and among the members of the Holy Synod,” reported “ Russian word" – Chairman of the Council of Ministers P.A. Stolypin turned to the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, S.N. Lukyanov with a request for how the highest church authorities believe they should react in the event of a fatal outcome.

At an emergency secret meeting of the Synod, convened on the occasion of the illness of L. N. Tolstoy, on the initiative of Chief Prosecutor Lukyanov, the question was raised about the attitude of the church in the event of a sad outcome of Lev Nikolaevich’s illness.

This issue caused a long and heated debate. The hierarchs pointed out that L.N. Tolstoy was excommunicated by the Synod from the church, and in order for the church to again accept him into its fold, it is necessary that he repent before it. Meanwhile, repentance is still not visible; There are not even more or less sufficient external motives that would speak in favor of Tolstoy’s repentance.

In view of such an unclear position of the issue, the Synod did not make any definite decision and decided to send a telegram to the Kaluga diocesan authorities with an order to try to exhort Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy to repent before the Orthodox Church.

The telegram has already been officially sent on behalf of the Holy Synod, signed by Metropolitan Anthony.

As we are informed, in high circles the issue of L. N. Tolstoy’s illness is given great attention important. In the event of a sad outcome of L. N. Tolstoy’s illness, high circles fear that awkward position, in which the church may find itself, due to Tolstoy’s excommunication and the impossibility of burying him according to Christian rites.

According to rumors, it was even pointed out to the Synod that it was desirable, one way or another, to resolve the issue of excommunication of L.N. Tolstoy from the church in a favorable direction” * (*Newspaper “Russian Word”, November 5, 1910, No. 255.).

The version of Tolstoy’s “repentance” outlined and developed by the synod and the Ministry of Internal Affairs was preceded by a number of materials from the synod and individual representatives of the clergy, prepared for publication.

On November 3, newspapers published an interview with Parthenius, Bishop of Tula, who stated that “Tolstoy is undoubtedly seeking rapprochement with the church,” and with the former Tula vicar Mitrofan, who said that he views Tolstoy’s departure as “an act of conversion, a return to the church.” . Some newspapers published interviews with Parthenius, emphasizing that he has a “secret.”

A sensational message about the “secret of Bishop Parthenius” appeared in the press, in which the following statement of his to the correspondent was given: “I am deprived of the opportunity to tell you the content of my conversation with Tolstoy, and I cannot tell this to anyone in Orthodox Rus'. I was in Yasnaya Polyana, had a long conversation with Lev Nikolaevich, the elder asked me not to tell anyone about our conversation. “I’m talking to you,” Tolstoy told me, “like every Christian speaks to the pastor of the church in confession.” Therefore, our conversation must be kept secret."

Parthenius’ lie is revealed when his words are compared with the note that Tolstoy made on January 22, 1909 after a meeting with him: “Yesterday the bishop was there, I spoke to him from the heart, but too carefully, I did not express the whole sin of his deed. But it was necessary... He, obviously, would like to convert me, if not convert, then destroy me, reduce my, according to them, harmful influence on the faith and the church. It was especially unpleasant that he asked me to let him know when I was dying. No matter how they come up with something to assure people that I “repented” before death. And therefore I declare, it seems, I repeat, that I can no more return to church or take communion before death, just as I cannot say obscene words or look at obscene pictures before death, and therefore everything that will be said about my dying repentance and communion–lie… * (* Emphasized by L.N. Tolstoy. 112 ).

In this case, I repeat that I also ask that you bury me without a so-called divine service.”

Considering that Metropolitan Anthony asked S.A. Tolstoy to persuade her husband to return to the church, and also remembering other similar attempts, Tolstoy emphasized several times in his diaries that he would never repent and that he warned against deception that the authorities might resort to after his death.

On November 4, Metropolitan Anthony exhorted Tolstoy in a telegram to “make peace with the church and the Orthodox Russian people.” In order not to cause unnecessary anxiety to the patient, this telegram was not shown to him.

The deterioration of the patient’s condition on November 5 caused a surge of energy among the authorities and the clergy, who joined forces in an effort to present Tolstoy as repentant at any cost.

On the same day, Varsanuphius, abbot of the Optina Pustyn monastery, arrived in Astapovo, accompanied by a subdeacon.

Barsanuphius made attempts to penetrate to the patient. The Saratovsky Vestnik correspondent telegraphed to the editor on the morning of November 6: “The monks arrived with gifts, consulted with the road priest, and secretly made their way to the house at night. Tolstoy was not penetrated.”

At first, Barsanuphius tried to assure the correspondents that he had stopped in Astapovo on his way to a pilgrimage, that he had no instructions from the synod; It was only thanks to his talkative companion Panteleimon that it became known that Barsanuphius had an official commission from the synod.

No matter how hard Barsanuphius tried to fulfill this order of the synod, nothing helped, and he was not allowed to see Tolstoy. Neither the vice-director of the police department Kharlamov nor the Ryazan governor Obolensky could help him.

The fact that the entire organization of “repentance” took place through government agencies is evidenced by Kharlamov’s telegram to Comrade Minister of Internal Affairs Kurlov dated November 5 with information and requests for instructions. The next day, in a telegram to Kurlov, Kharlamov said that “the whole family absolutely does not find it possible to allow monks to see the patient, fearing that excitement will speed up the outcome. The governor's negotiations were unsuccessful."

On the evening of November 6, Barsanuphius telegraphed Bishop Benjamin: “The count’s health is cause for concern. The council of doctors expects a final crisis in two days. I try to see the patient through relatives, but there is no success. The doctors won't let anyone in. I plan to wait until the count's illness ends. I ask for the saint's prayers, the archpastoral blessing of my difficult mission. Astapov is the governor, many senior officials of St. Petersburg. They also don’t have access to the graph. Sinful abbot Barsanuphius."

Reinforcements from the synod rush to the aid of Barsanuphius.

“On Sunday evening or Monday morning,” the newspaper “Russkoe Slovo” reports, “the following clergy will be near L.N. Tolstoy: Bishop Parthenius, His Eminence Kirill of Tambov, rector of the Optina Hermitage O. Barsanuphius, disciple of Elder Joseph Anatoly, it is assumed that the Ryazan bishop will come.”

However, the newly arrived hierarchs no longer found Tolstoy alive. On November 7 at 6:05 am he was gone...

A new, final stage of persecution of Tolstoy by the government and the church began - posthumous.

An eyewitness, an Astapovka railway worker, talking about the scenes of farewell to Tolstoy on the night of November 8, recreates the atmosphere of deep popular grief, blasphemously insulted by the gendarmes:

“it’s quiet in the room, twilight from a kerosene lamp, full of people, the atmosphere is oppressive, suddenly somewhere in the corner one hears timidly and nervously: “Eternal Memory”, those standing take up the singing, the doors to the room creak against the wall, and the gendarmes burst into the room with checkers they command in a sharp voice: “Stop singing!” Everyone immediately falls silent. Again there is a short silence. Then the same one, just as timidly, again sings “eternal memory”, and again everyone standing pulls up, but immediately two gendarmes appear, again the order “be silent!”, and so until the morning some left, others came - all night long.”

When the coffin was carried out, the choir sang: “Eternal memory,” but immediately fell silent, obeying the prohibition of the gendarmerie captain Savitsky. The coffin was silently transferred to a carriage marked “Baggage”, the train quietly moved off, those present took off their hats; the mournful silence that followed was broken by the gendarmes, who provocatively shouted “hurray”... *(*S. Ovchinnikov. The last days of Tolstoy’s life. Manuscript, l. 10–12.)

Along the route, crowds of people with wreaths stood waiting at each station, but the funeral train was driven non-stop, in a hurry, similar to the one with which once, at the order of Nicholas I, gendarmes escorted the remains of the untimely death of Pushkin to his final resting place.

Meanwhile, the clergy did not lose hope even after Tolstoy’s death to create a myth about his “repentance.” Thus, Bishop Parfeny of Tula, who arrived in Astapovo on the day of the writer’s death, confidentially said in a conversation with Captain Savitsky that “at the personal request of the Emperor, I was sent by the synod in order to find out whether there were any circumstances during Tolstoy’s stay in Astapovo.” indicating the desire of the late Count Tolstoy to repent of his mistakes... I would like to receive information about all this... * (* From the report of General Lvov to the headquarters of a separate corps of gendarmes).

However, the gendarme could not satisfy the bishop’s wishes and Parthenius had to turn to members of Tolstoy’s family. In this regard, the vice-director of the police department, Kharlamov, who secretly arrived in Astapovo two days before Tolstoy’s death, reported to Kurlov: “The mission of His Eminence Parthenius was not successful: none of the family members found it possible to verify that the deceased expressed any desire to reconcile with the church."

On the same day, Barsanuphius tried to talk on the same topic with Sofia Andreevna, but, having learned that she had not seen Tolstoy in a conscious state, and finding her greatly shocked by the death of her husband, he limited himself to sympathetic phrases and, saying “my mission is over,” left.

Black crows in hoods - Parthenius and Barsanuphius - left Astapov without fulfilling the “will of those who sent them.” Former soldier Colonel Barsanuphius remained true to himself and, in order to justify himself before his spiritual superiors, took with him “just in case” the following certificate:

“I hereby testify that the rector of the monastery of Optina Monastery, Kozelsky district, Kaluga province, Abbot Barsanuphius, despite urgent requests addressed to members of the family of Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy and the doctors who were with him, was not allowed to see Count Tolstoy and his two-day stay at The Astapovo station was not reported to the deceased. Acting governor of Ryazan, Prince Obolensky. Art. Astapovo, November 7, 1910" *(* Case No. 331 for 1910. Archive of the Synod "Concerning the information received about the serious illness of L.N. Tolstoy").

An attempt to insult the memory of the deceased writer by attributing to him a refusal in fear of death from the convictions of his entire life and reconciliation with the church failed, and the synod immediately forbade the Orthodox clergy to perform memorial services for Tolstoy: “The dean of St. Petersburg received today an order not to allow the service of memorial services for L. N. Tolstoy. If you declare a desire to serve a memorial service for the servant of God Leo, you should inquire about the last name, and if they say Tolstoy, do not serve a memorial service* (* “Russian Word”, November 8/21, 1910 No. 257), or: “The Synod decided not to allow commemoration and memorial services for Count Tolstoy,” Metropolitan Anthony telegraphed Bishop Veniamin in Kaluga after the death of the writer.

It seemed that Tolstoy’s death would put an end to the persecution, but the given instructions of the synod undoubtedly had the goal of warming up the feelings of embitterment that could have died down, at one time awakened by excommunication, and of reminding the living of the “sinfulness of the unrepentantly deceased.”

Embittered by the scandalous failure of many years of attempts to force Tolstoy to repent, the church fathers - preachers of mercy and all-forgiving love after his death threw off their unctuous masks and, taking revenge on the rebellious fighter against obscurantism and thinker, organized a whole system of systematic outrage against the memory of the late writer, reinforced by a series of synod circulars, messages and sermons smashing the “Antichrist and blasphemer” - Tolstoy.

“Everything possible was done to deprive Tolstoy’s funeral of its all-Russian significance,” wrote Valery Bryusov.

“On the day of the funeral, all the police and gendarmerie guards were raised to their feet. Surveillance was established over wreath shops to prevent the production of ribbons with revolutionary inscriptions and to prevent the decoration of buildings in mourning.

Along the entire path of the funeral procession from Zaseka station to Yasnaya Polyana (four miles) there were foot and horse gendarmes and guards; armed detachments were stationed nearby “just in case.” To the grave, Tolstoy's body followed the vigilant surveillance of the police and gendarmes. All the way, a huge choir, divided into three parts, took turns singing “eternal memory.” The police and gendarmes behaved with restraint” * (* N. Lane. Tolstoy’s funeral. Manuscript. State Museum of L. N. Tolstoy. Moscow).

“After Tolstoy’s burial, the Moscow Security Department established secret surveillance of persons coming to the grave. A secret police officer reported to his superiors that visitors, kneeling down, were singing “eternal memory”, then revolutionary speeches were being made” * (* “The Past”. 1917 No. 3/25, pp. 197 and 200 (from the Notes of a secret employee of the Moscow security department "Blonde").

Tolstoy's death resonated with deep sorrow not only in the hearts of Russian people, but throughout the world. Student and worker demonstrations and strikes, which were a response to the death of the great writer, expressed the feelings of protest of the advanced strata of society against the reactionary policies of the tsarist government, of which Tolstoy was a passionate denouncer.

Many people wanted to take part in Tolstoy’s funeral - the first civil public funeral in the history of Russia, a funeral without church rites, without a funeral service, but the government created all sorts of obstacles to this, and thousands of those who wanted could not fulfill their intentions, so Yasnaya Polyana was literally bombarded with condolence telegrams from individuals and groups whose dispatch has brought many authors their considerable troubles.

The government terrorized the people. People were persecuted for the slightest attempts at organized commemoration of Tolstoy's memory. Persons guilty of publicly expressing grief over the death of the writer were arrested and sent “to distant places.”

Trying in every possible way to downplay the significance of Tolstoy’s loss for Russia and all humanity, the government mobilized all forces in all directions. Despite the measures taken and mass repressions, the autocracy failed to thwart the protest movements against the vile policies of the government and the hypocrisy of the “holy fathers” who tried to commit a nationwide deception in order to prove that Tolstoy’s will was broken, he “repented, was ashamed of his errors and returned into the bosom of the church."

Russia responded with a wave of protest, outraged by the criminal tactics of the government, which for many years persecuted Tolstoy, banned his works, attempts to stage his “repentance” and, finally, obstacles to honoring his memory.

“The death of Tolstoy,” wrote V. I. Lenin, “causes – for the first time after a long break – street demonstrations with the participation of mainly students, but partly also workers.”

Leo Tolstoy won. He defeated the centuries-old monolithic organization of religious dope and obscurantism, branched out throughout the world, establishing and blessing the power, the wealth of some, the lack of rights and poverty of others.

The greatness of Tolstoy lies in the simplicity and steadfastness with which he, like a hundred-year-old oak rooted deep into the ground, met the fierce resistance of the rotten autocracy and the Black Hundred Orthodox Church.

Neither threats of damnation nor death threats could force the great elder to turn away from his path of struggle against tsarism and the church.

More than six decades have passed since Tolstoy’s excommunication from the church, filled with events of unprecedented significance in the history of mankind, but this epic in the biography of the great writer will never be erased from the memory of posterity.

Criticizing and rejecting everything that in Tolstoy’s legacy constitutes the “historical sin of Tolstoyism” (V.I. Lenin), we highly value and love the writer Tolstoy, a powerful accuser, a great critic of capitalism, a fearless accuser of autocracy, a fighter against all oppression, all exploitation man by man, a brilliant artist, next to whom, according to V.I. Lenin’s definition, “there is no one to put in Europe.”

Anthony (in the world Vadkovsky A.V., 1846–1912) – Doctor of Theology, since 1898 Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and Ladoga. Since 1900, the first present member of the synod.

Biryukov P.I. (1860–1931) – friend and first biographer of L.N. Tolstoy.

Bogolepov N.P. – Minister of Public Education (1898–1901), one of the authors of the “Rules” on the recruitment of students who took part in the revolutionary movement as soldiers.

Bryusov V. Ya. (1873–1924) – poet.

Bulgakov V.F. (b. 1886) – in 1910, Tolstoy’s secretary.

Vyazemsky L.D., prince (1848–1909) – lieutenant general, member of the State Council.

Gershenzon M. O. (1869–1925) – historian of Russian literature.

Goldenweiser A. B. (1875–1961) – pianist, professor at the Moscow Conservatory, friend of Tolstoy.

Grot N. Ya. (1852–1899) idealist philosopher, professor at Moscow University, friend of Tolstoy.

Gusev N. N. (b. 1882) – Tolstoy’s secretary in 1907–1909, author of a number of biographical works about Tolstoy.

Ignatiev N.P., Count (1832–1908) – Adjutant General. Famous statesman during the reigns of Alexander II and Alexander III.

“True Russian” people were called supporters and members of the Black Hundred organizations created in 1905 to fight the revolution. The largest of them was the so-called “Union of the Russian People”. It included rabid reactionaries from feudal landowners, officials, merchants, large landowners, clergy, and shopkeepers. From among small traders, criminals and tramps, the Union recruited “Black Hundreds” - armed gangs engaged in committing terrorist acts and pogroms. The leadership of the Union included governors of a number of cities. The Tsar did not hide his connections with the Union, which was generously subsidized by the government.

Kazambek S. L. (born Tolstaya, b. 1855) – head of the Kazan Rodionov Institute (1899–1904), then head of the St. Petersburg Elizabethan Institute.

Kondakov N.P. (1844–1925) – archaeologist and historian of Byzantine art, academician. He has been in correspondence with Chekhov since 1899.

John of Kronstadt (I.I. Sergiev 1829–1908) – archpriest, rector of St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Kronstadt, obscurantist and pogromist.

KurlovP. G. - Comrade of the Minister of Internal Affairs and commander of a separate corps of gendarmes (1909–1911).

Lukyanov S.M. – Chief Prosecutor of the Synod (1909-1911).

Marx A. F. (1838–1904) - a major St. Petersburg publisher, who became widely known for publishing the weekly illustrated magazine “Niva” (1870-1918), in the appendices of which were published collected works of Russian and foreign classic writers, which sold in large editions throughout all over Russia (since 1904 the publisher is the widow of A.F. Marx).

Ozolin I.I. (d. 1913) – head of the Astapovo railway station of the Ryazan-Ural railway. d., who sheltered the sick Tolstoy in his apartment at the station, where the writer died.

Ornatsky F.N. – archpriest, rector of the church at the Expedition for the procurement of state papers in St. Petersburg.

Pobedonostsev K.P. (1827–1907) – member of the State Council and Committee of Ministers, senator, chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod, actual privy councilor, secretary of state of His Majesty. Inspirer and active leader of the reaction. An ardent pursuer of Tolstoy.

Pontius Pilate (years of birth and death unknown) - Roman procurator (governor) of Judea in 26–36. ad. The period of his reign was marked by increased political and tax oppression. Popular dissatisfaction with the policies of Pontius Pilate resulted in a series of popular uprisings, as a result of which he was removed. According to Christian legend, Pontius Pilate approved the death sentence of the mythical Jesus Christ and at the same time symbolically washed his hands and declared that it was not he, but the Jewish priests who wanted this death. Hence he “washed his hands of it like Pontius Pilate.” His name became synonymous with hypocrisy and cruelty.

“Posrednik” is a book publishing house founded in 1885 by V. G. Chertkov and L. N. Tolstoy, which set itself the goal of fighting popular literature and distributing useful books among the people.

Rachinsky S. A. - Professor of Botany at Moscow University. From a young age, he exchanged professorship for teaching in a rural school and his family estate Tateve, Velsky district, Smolensk province. Thanks to friendly relations with Pobedonostsev, Rachinsky played a big role in planting church schools and the spread of temperance societies.

Rozanov V.V. (1856–1919) – idealist philosopher, publicist and critic. Employee of the reactionary newspaper “Novoe Vremya” (1899–1918).

Synod – supreme body management of the Orthodox Church in Russia. Established by Peter I in 1721 in connection with the liquidation of the patriarchate. The Synod consisted of representatives of the highest clergy, was a spiritual collegium and bore the title of “the most holy governing Synod.” Its activities were subordinated to the control of secular authorities and were directed by the chief prosecutor appointed by the king from among secular persons.

Sipyagin D.S. (1853 - killed 1902) - Minister of Internal Affairs and chief of gendarmes (1899–1902).

The Wanderer (1868-1941) is the pseudonym of the writer S. G. Petrov.

Sopotsko M. A. (born 1869) - former student, expelled from Moscow University as “unreliable”, became a follower of Tolstoy. Subsequently, he sharply changed his views and became a detractor of Tolstoy, collaborated in the reactionary press and joined the Black Hundred “Union of the Russian People.” Since 1911 a doctor, after 1917 an emigrant.

Stolypin P. A. (1862 - killed 1911) - Chairman of the Council of Ministers (1906-1911), extreme reactionary.

Suvorin A. S. (1834–1912) – reactionary journalist, publisher of the St. Petersburg newspaper “Novoye Vremya”. Tolstaya S. A. (born Bers, 1844–1919) - wife of L. N. Tolstoy (since September 1862).

Chertkov V. G. (1854–1936) - one of Tolstoy’s closest friends and publisher of his works.

Shcheglovitov I. G. – senator, member of the State Council, Minister of Justice (1906-1915).

Illustrations from the collections of the State Museum of L. N. Tolstoy. Moscow.

REFERENCES

V. I. Lenin. Articles about Tolstoy, GIHL, I., 1955.

V. F. Bulgakov. L. N. Tolstoy in the last year of his life, GIHL, 1960.

B. S. Meilakh. The departure and death of Leo Tolstoy, GIHL, M.-L., 1960.^

N.K. Gudziy. Lev Tolstoy. Critical-biographical essay, GIHL, M., 1960.

N.K. Verbitsky. Meeting with A.I. Kuprin. Penza, 1961.

K. Lomunov. Drama by L. N. Tolstoy. "Art", M., 1956.

K. Lomunov. Preface to volume 34 of the Complete Collection. op. L. N. Tolstoy.

A. M. Korasnousov. Russian writers in the struggle against religion and the church. Uchpedgiz. M., 1960.

A. S. Zhuravin. Classics of Russian literature about religion, Leningrad, 1957.

L. N. Tolstoy in the memoirs of his contemporaries, vols. 1 and 2. Goslitizdat, ed. 2. M., 1960.

Georgy Ivanovich Petrov

EXCLUSION OF LEO TOLSTOY Editor V. F. Reut Design by K. A. Pavlinova Artist. editor E. E. Sokolova Tech. editor A. S. Nazarova Proofreader 3. S. Paterevskaya Submitted on November 24, 1964. Signed for publication on May 16, 1964. Ed. No. 19. Paper format. 60 X 90’/32. Boom, l. 2.0. Pech. l. 4.0. Academician-zd. l. 3,9. A 02991. Price 12 kopecks. Circulation 75,000 copies. Order 763. Publishing house "Knowledge". Moscow, Center, Novaya sq., 3/4. Printing house of the publishing house "Znanie". Moscow, Center, Novaya sq., no. 3/4. Printed in printing house No. 24 of Glavpolygrafprom.

At one time Lev Nikolaevich tried to be exemplary Orthodox Christian. He attended services, fasted and even sometimes confessed and received communion. He strictly adhered to the food restrictions imposed by fasting. But some of the writer's guests and family members did not fast. And one day Lev Nikolaevich could not stand it. Tolstoy’s son recalls how it all began: “I also remember his rapid disappointment in Orthodoxy. Once at lunch (during Lent) everyone ate delicious beef cutlets. The father looked sideways at them for a long time, then suddenly said to his brother Ilya: “Come on, Ilyusha, give me the cutlets.” Ilyusha jumped up from his chair, took a dish of cutlets from the windowsill and served it to his father. From that day on, neither fasting nor Orthodoxy was observed by the father, but the writing of the “Critique of Dogmatic Theology” began. According to Tolstoy, the Church could not be good and correct if it forbids him, the great writer, to eat such delicious and beloved veal cutlets during Lent. This, of course, is a personal matter for the writer whether to observe fasts or not, and how he relates to food restrictions during fasting. But the main thing is that after the incident with the cutlets, Lev Nikolaevich not only stopped following Orthodox customs, he also began to actively fight the cruel and incorrect, in his opinion, Orthodox Church.

In connection with this, one can recall how some literary historians show Lev Nikolaevich as a kind, gentle and very calm old man. But when you read the memoirs of people close to him about Lev Nikolaevich’s attitude towards Orthodoxy, the image of the “good Tolstoy” changes somewhat. Countess Alexandra Andreevna, daughter of brother Lev Nikolaevich, a sincerely believing Orthodox woman, describes the writer’s reaction when she mentioned Orthodoxy in a conversation: “Suddenly, without any challenge on my part, he showered me like hail with his unimaginable views on religion and at the Church, mocking everything that is dear and sacred to us... It seemed to me that I was hearing the ravings of a madman... finally... he himself was tired of his frenzied paroxysm.” It should also be noted that Tolstoy had a special hatred for the Mother of God and her icons. Famous critic and novelist of the second half of the 19th century E.L. Markov said that once, while walking around Moscow, Tolstoy saw the Iveron Icon Mother of God, pointed at her and said: “She is despicable.” And Professor S.N. Bulgakov recalled the writer’s surprising reaction to positive mentions of the Mother of God during conversations on spiritual topics: “... this mention alone was enough to cause an attack of choking, blasphemous malice, bordering on obsession. His eyes lit up with an evil fire, and he began, gasping for breath, to blaspheme.” Just three examples out of a huge number show Lev Nikolayevich not quite a “quiet and calm old man” in those cases when the conversations concerned Orthodoxy.

Everyone has read about the “spiritual quest of the great writer” after leaving Orthodoxy. Proof of Leo Tolstoy’s “limitless religious tolerance” during this period are quotes from his book “The Reading Circle.” And in fact, in Tolstoy’s works one cannot find unkind words about world religions or about any sectarianism. But as soon as the conversation turns to Orthodoxy, the writer changes dramatically. Not a trace remains of his religious tolerance and complacency. Tolstoy attacks the Orthodox Church with a hail of various accusations and reproaches, not at all embarrassed in his choice of words. In his book “Criticism of Dogmatic Theology,” which was published in huge numbers and influenced many minds of that time, Tolstoy openly mocks the Orthodox Church, its Teachings and Rites. He portrays Orthodox theology as a supposed accumulation of contradictions and stupid, pathetic compromises. Starting with a denial of the dogma of the Trinity, he ends with a mocking mockery of the Sacraments, calling baptism “bathing in water,” and communion “simply eating a piece of bread with wine.” In his numerous interviews with newspaper correspondents, the writer constantly asserts regarding the Orthodox Sacraments: “... they have no meaning, they are the essence of witchcraft.” In personal conversations and during meetings with admirers, he proves: “It is also said that I reject all sacraments... I consider all sacraments base, rude, not consistent with the concept of God and Christian teaching, witchcraft and, moreover, a violation the most direct instructions of the Gospel. In infant baptism I see a clear perversion of all the meaning that baptism could have for adults who consciously understand Christianity; in performing the sacrament of marriage over people who had obviously been united before... I see a direct violation of both the meaning and the letter of the Gospel teaching. In the periodic forgiveness of sins in confession I see a harmful deception... In the consecration of oil, just as in anointing, I see methods of crude witchcraft, as in the veneration of icons and relics, and, as in all rituals, prayers, spells with which the missal is filled " Soon all this migrated into his novels and stories. For example, in “The Resurrection” he describes the priest’s exit from the Royal Doors with the Holy Cup: “Taking a golden cup in his hand, the priest went out with it through the middle doors and invited those who wanted to eat the body and blood of God, who was in the cup.” All this was read by many admirers of Tolstoy’s talent. And all these people, carried away by his works, began to mock the Church Sacraments in the same way. Thus, Tolstoy openly worked to instill in many people hatred and contempt for the Orthodox Church and its rituals.

Tolstoy acted against the Church not only with letters, novels and newspaper articles, but also with deeds. For many years he taught his peasants not to honor church holidays. So the parish clergy of the village of Kolchakovo complained that Tolstoy tried to carry out agricultural work on the days of officially accepted church holidays when working was considered a sin. Not only on the Great Holidays, but even during Easter week, Tolstoy defiantly worked and challenged the Church. During these same days, he in every possible way encouraged the peasants to work in the field and, going around the peasant households, helped the poor peasants roof their huts and perform other household work. Soon, Lev Nikolaevich managed to captivate many peasants, who had previously strictly followed Orthodoxy, with his anti-Orthodox thinking and attitude towards the Church. Moreover, he openly and rudely incited the peasants to reject the rites of the Orthodox Church. Bishop of Tula and Belevsky Pitirim reported: “On August 1, the priest of the village of Trasny arrived with a religious procession to the Yasenki station and here... in front of a large crowd of people, he expected the holy Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God from the village of Gretsova, Bogorodnitsky district. When the said icon appeared on the highway, the priest and the people surrounding him saw that to the right of the icon, breaking through the people, was riding someone on a gray horse with a hat on his head. A minute later it became obvious to everyone that it was Count Leo Tolstoy. As it turned out, Leo Tolstoy rode near the icon in a hat from the village of Konchakov 4-5 versts and from time to time made a suggestion to the people that they should not gather and do honor to the icon at all, because it was very stupid, and generally spoke insultingly about the holy icon. .. Riding around on a horse and wearing a hat near the icon of the Mother of God, he allowed himself at the same time to sarcastically blaspheme Her.” This was not the first and not the last attempt by Tolstoy to rouse the people against the Orthodox Church. One can recall many other similar open statements of the writer against the Church.

Tolstoy remained an implacable enemy of Orthodoxy until the end of his life. In 1901, he proclaimed: “The teaching of the Church is theoretically an insidious and harmful lie, but practically a collection of the grossest superstitions and witchcraft.” One can also recall his statement about his unauthorized renunciation of the Church: “I really renounced the Church, stopped performing its rituals and wrote in my will to my loved ones so that when I die, they would not allow church ministers to see me and my dead body would be removed according to “Quickly, without any spells or prayers over him.” Even on the verge of death, Leo Tolstoy did not stop blaspheming and blaspheming the Church. On January 22, 1909, he said: “... I can’t return to the Church, take communion before death, just as I can’t speak obscene words or look at obscene pictures before death, and therefore everything that will be said about my dying repentance and communion , - lie".

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is one of the most outstanding Russian writers, known far beyond the borders of his native country. This fact is known to everyone. But few people know that the famous writer was once persecuted for his views on religion and faith. But why was Tolstoy excommunicated from the church? Why didn’t the great Russian writer please her?

On Tolstoy's attitude to Christianity

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church, and until a certain time he did not show his attitude towards religion in any way. However, then his views changed, which can be seen in some of his works, for example, in the novel “Resurrection”: here the writer reflects his reluctance to accept the laws of the church. He denied the existence of the Holy Trinity, did not believe in the virgin birth of the Virgin Mary, and believed that the resurrection of Jesus was just a myth. In other words, the fundamental basis of Orthodoxy was denied, for which Tolstoy was excommunicated from the church. But first things first.

"It's all fiction"

The writer sincerely did not understand how one could be cleansed of sins simply by coming to confession. It was difficult for him to accept the teaching that there is hell, there is heaven, that you can get to heaven after death either through eternal fear for your every step, or through repentance, while living a godless life. All this seemed to Tolstoy to be heresy, having nothing to do with true faith and good existence. “All the religions of the world are an obstacle to real morality,” said Lev Nikolaevich. “But a person cannot be a servant of God, for such a thing would seem vile to God.” The writer also believed that each person is responsible for his own actions, be they good or evil. The person himself, and not the Lord, bears responsibility for them.

Letter to Nobleman

In his correspondence with teacher A.I. To the nobles, Tolstoy writes about how false the teachings of the church are and how wrong we are in instilling these teachings in children. As Lev Nikolaevich says, children are still pure and innocent, they do not yet know how to deceive and, being deceived, they absorb false Christian rules. Small man still vaguely understands that there is a right path, but his ideas are, as a rule, correct. Tolstoy writes that children see the goal of life as happiness, achieved by the loving treatment of people.

What do adults do about this? They teach children that the meaning of life lies in blindly fulfilling the whims of God, in endless prayers and going to church. They explain that their personal needs for happiness and well-being should be supplanted for the sake of what the church ordered to do.

Young children often ask questions about the structure of the world, to which there are quite logical answers, but adults convince him that the world was created by someone, that people descended from two people who were expelled from heaven, that we are all obviously sinners and must repent.

Moreover, Leo Tolstoy not only denied all this, but also carried his idea to the masses like Martin Luther.

Thus, in the 19th century, a new movement was born - “Tolstoyism”.

About new ideas

Why was Tolstoy excommunicated from the church? What were the contradictions? "Tolstovism", or, as it is commonly called officially, "Tolstoyism", arose in Russia in the late XIX century thanks to the Russian writer and his religious and philosophical teachings. He describes the main ideas of Tolstoyism in his works “Confession”, “What is my faith?”, “On Life”, “The Kreutzer Sonata”:

• forgiveness;
• non-resistance to evil through violence;
• renunciation of hostility with other nations;
• love for one's neighbor;
• moral improvement;
• minimalism as a way of life.

Followers of this movement did not support the need to pay taxes, opposed military service and organized agricultural colonies where all workers were equal. Here it was believed that a person, in order to form a full-fledged personality, needed physical labor on the earth.

“Tolstoyism” also found its followers outside of Russia: Western Europe (in particular, England), Japan, India, South Africa. By the way, Mhatma Gandhi himself was a supporter of the ideas of Leo Tolstoy.

Meals in "tolstoy"

All followers of the new movement adhered to vegetarian views. They believed that a person who wants to live an honest and kind life must first give up meat. Since eating meat requires killing an animal for the sake of greed and the desire to feast. However, the Tolstoyans generally had a special attitude towards animals: despite the fact that a person is obliged to work hard in agriculture, he must not resort to the exploitation of animals.

Criticism of Tolstoyism and excommunication

In 1897, public figure and church publicist V.M. Skvortsov raised the question of defining a new trend, under the leadership of L.N. Tolstoy, as a religious and social sect, whose teachings may be harmful not only for the church, but also for politics.

In 1899, the novel “Resurrection” was published, in which the author’s thoughts about the harm of the Christian religion are clearly visible, which leads to serious confusion both in the Russian Church and in the highest political spheres. Soon, Metropolitan Anthony, who had previously thought about ecclesiastical punishment of Tolstoy, was appointed first present at the synod. And already in 1901 an act was drawn up, according to which L.N. Tolstoy was excommunicated as a heretic.

Later, the writer was asked to repent of his sin. Simply put, he was asked to renounce his anti-Christian ideas, for which Tolstoy was excommunicated from the church. But the writer never did this. Thus, the Definition of the Holy Synod about Count Leo Tolstoy states: the latter is no longer a member of the Orthodox Church, since his views contradict the teachings of the church. To this day, Tolstoy is still considered excommunicated.

With the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, Tolstoy's agricultural communes were destroyed, and Tolstoy's followers were repressed. Some of the farms were able to survive, but they did not last long: with the advent of the war, they also disappeared.

Our days

But Tolstoyanism did not disappear completely. Those ideas and views for which Tolstoy was excommunicated from the church have not sunk into oblivion and continue to exist in our time. And today there are people who share the views of the great Russian writer on faith not only in Russia, but also beyond its borders. There are followers of Tolstoyanism in Western Europe and Eastern Europe (for example, Bulgaria), also in India, Japan and North America.

Of course, there are “Tolstyans” in Russia, the homeland of this movement. Their organization is registered as “Novotolstoy”; it exists relatively recently and numbers about 500 people. The views of the “new Tolstoyans” are quite seriously at odds with the views of the original Tolstoyans.

And yet, is it worth condemning Leo Tolstoy for his views? After all, he simply did not want to intertwine the moral with the supernatural. He believed that Jesus was conceived naturally, and God exists, but he does not live in heaven, but in the personal qualities of a person: in love and kindness, in conscience and honor, in hard work, responsibility and dignity.

On this day, November 20, 1910, the great seeker of truth Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy left us, remaining forever in our hearts. Leo Tolstoy’s last words were: “...truth... I love a lot, I love everyone...”
In September 2006, on Leo Tolstoy’s birthday, I visited the Yasnaya Polyana estate, where I met the count’s great-grandson, Vladimir Tolstoy, now the manager of the great writer’s museum-estate.
I learned that my great-grandson sent a letter to Patriarch Alexy II with a request to reconsider the synodal definition. In response to the letter, the Moscow Patriarchate stated that the decision to excommunicate Leo Tolstoy from the Church, made exactly 105 years ago, cannot be revised.
I gave Tolstoy my true-life novel “The Wanderer” (mystery), in which I described my communication with the great writer. I invite you to watch my video of a visit to Yasnaya Polyana.

“In our time, the life of the world goes on as usual, completely independent of the teachings of the church. This teaching has remained so far back that the people of the world no longer hear the voices of the teachers of the church. And there is nothing to listen to, because the church only gives explanations for the structure of life from which the world has already grown and which either no longer exists at all, or which is uncontrollably collapsing.”

“Our life has moved away from the teachings of Christ to such an extent that this very removal now becomes the main obstacle to understanding it.”

“The Church, while recognizing the teachings of Christ in words, directly denied it in life. Instead of guiding the world in its life, the church, for the sake of the world, reinterpreted the metaphysical teaching of Christ so that no requirements for life followed from it, so that it did not prevent people from living as they lived. The Church once gave in to the world, and once she gave in to the world, she followed it.”

“And I became convinced that church teaching, despite the fact that it called itself Christian, is the very darkness against which Christ fought and ordered his disciples to fight.”

“The entire structure of our life, the entire complex mechanism of our institutions aimed at violence, testifies to the extent to which violence is contrary to human nature.”

“For a Christian, the demand of the government is the demand of people who do not know the truth. And therefore, a Christian who knows her cannot help but testify about her to people who do not know her.”

“What seemed good and lofty to me - love for the fatherland, for one’s people, for one’s state, serving them at the expense of the good of other people, the military exploits of people - all this seemed disgusting and pathetic to me.”

“Even if I can now, in a moment of oblivion, help the Russian more than the foreign, wish success for the Russian state or people, then I cannot, in a calm moment, serve the temptation that destroys me and the people. I cannot recognize any states or peoples, I cannot participate in any disputes between peoples and states, neither in conversations, nor in writings, much less in the service of any state.”

“If only people would stop destroying themselves and expecting that someone will come and help them: Christ on the clouds with a trumpet voice, or the historical law, or the law of differentiation and integration of forces. No one will help if they don't help themselves. And there is nothing to help ourselves. Just don’t expect anything from heaven or earth, but stop ruining yourself.”

“I believe in the teachings of Christ and that is where my faith lies.
I believe that my life according to the teachings of the world was painful and that only life according to the teachings of Christ gives me in this world the good that the Father of life intended for me.
I believe that this teaching brings benefit to all humanity, saves me from inevitable destruction and gives me the greatest benefit here. That’s why I can’t help but fulfill it.”

After his birth, Leo Tolstoy was baptized into Orthodoxy. In his youth and youth he was indifferent to religious issues. But in the mid-70s, Tolstoy read everything he could about the teachings of the Orthodox Church, strictly followed all the instructions of the church for more than a year, observing all fasts and attending all church services. But as a result I was completely disappointed in church faith. In the novel “Resurrection,” he critically portrayed the clergy mechanically and hastily performing rituals.

Since the late 1880s, a number of church hierarchs appealed to the Synod and the emperor with a call to punish Leo Tolstoy and excommunicate him from the Church. However, the emperor replied that he “does not want to add a martyr’s crown to Tolstoy’s glory.”

When the count became seriously ill in the winter of 1899, the Holy Synod issued a secret circular in which it was recognized that Tolstoy had decisively fallen away from communion with the Church and could not, in the event of death, be buried according to the Orthodox rite unless he restored communion with her through the sacraments before his death.

Finally, on February 24, 1901, a Determination was published with the message of the Holy Synod No. 557 of February 20-22 of the same year about the fall of Count Leo Tolstoy from the Church.
“And in our days, by God’s permission, a new false teacher, Count Leo Tolstoy, has appeared. A world-famous writer, Russian by birth, Orthodox by baptism and upbringing, Count Tolstoy, in the seduction of his proud mind, boldly rebelled against the Lord and against His Christ and against His holy property, clearly before everyone renounced the Mother who fed and raised him, the Church. Orthodox, and devoted his literary activity and the talent given to him from God to the dissemination among the people of teachings contrary to Christ and the Church, and to the destruction in the minds and hearts of people of the fatherly faith, the Orthodox faith, which established the universe, by which our ancestors lived and were saved, and by which Until now, Holy Rus' has held out and been strong.”

The synodal act stated that Tolstoy could return to the Church if he repented. Anathema to Tolstoy was not proclaimed in any of the churches of the Russian Empire.
The Synod's definition was published the next day in all major newspapers in Russia.

On April 4, 1901, Leo Tolstoy wrote “Answer to the Synod,” in which he confirmed his break with the church. “The fact that I renounced the church that calls itself Orthodox is completely fair. But I renounced it not because I rebelled against the Lord, but on the contrary, only because I wanted to serve him with all the strength of my soul.”
“I believe in the following: I believe in God, whom I understand as spirit, as love, as the beginning of everything. I believe that he is in me and I am in him. I believe that the will of God is clearest and most understandably expressed in the teaching of the man Christ, whom I consider to be the greatest blasphemy to understand as God and to whom to pray.”
“If He came now and saw what is being done in His name in the church, then with even greater and more legitimate anger, He would probably throw out all these terrible antimensions, and spears, and crosses, and bowls, and candles, and icons, and all that by means of which they, through sorcery, hide God and His teaching from people.”

In 2009, a forensic examination was carried out, which concluded with a quote from Leo Tolstoy’s “Response to the Synod”: “I am convinced that the teaching of the [Russian Orthodox] Church is theoretically an insidious and harmful lie, practically a collection of the grossest superstitions and witchcraft, hiding absolutely the whole meaning of Christian teaching.”
This phrase was characterized by experts as “forming a negative attitude towards the Russian Orthodox Church”; Leo Tolstoy himself was called “an opponent of Russian Orthodoxy.”

Leo Tolstoy received many letters that contained curses, exhortations, calls to repent and reconcile with the church, and even threats.
The famous archpriest John of Kronstadt wrote in 1902: “Tolstoy’s hand rose to write such a vile slander against Russia, against its government!.. An impudent, notorious atheist, like Judas the traitor... Tolstoy perverted his moral personality to the point of ugliness, to the point of disgust... oh, how you are terrible, Leo Tolstoy, spawn of vipers..."

Fresco: TOLSTOY IN HELL

Famous Orthodox philosopher V.V. Rozanov, without challenging the Synod’s Definition on the merits, expressed the opinion that the Synod, as a body more bureaucratic than religious, does not have the right to judge Tolstoy: “But an oak tree that has grown crookedly is, however, an oak tree, and it is not for him to judge mechanically formal “institution”... This act shook the Russian faith more than the teachings of Tolstoy.”

In Russia then they said that we had two kings: Nicholas II and Leo Tolstoy.

Philosopher D.S. Merezhkovsky stated: “I do not share the religious teachings of L. Tolstoy... Still, we say: if you excommunicated L. Tolstoy from the church, then excommunicate us all, because we are with him, and we are with him because that we believe that Christ is with him.”

On February 26, 1901, Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya sent a letter to the leading member of the Synod regarding the publication of the Definition in newspapers:
“The life of the human soul, from a religious point of view, is unknown to anyone except God and, fortunately, not subject to... For me, the church is an abstract concept, and I recognize as its ministers only those who truly understand the meaning of the church. If we recognize as the church people who, with their malice, dare to violate the highest law of love of Christ, then all of us, true believers and churchgoers, would have left it long ago.”

Metropolitan Anthony soon wrote her a response; both texts were published on March 24, 1901 in the Church Gazette:
“And it is not, of course, because of a piece of printed paper that your husband perishes, but because he has turned away from the Source of eternal life. For a Christian, life is inconceivable without Christ, according to Whose words “he who believes in Him has eternal life, and passes from death to life, but he who does not believe will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John III, 1. 16.36U, 24) , and therefore only one thing can be said about someone who renounces Christ is that he has passed from life to death. This is the death of your husband, but only he himself is to blame for this death, and not anyone else.”

But Tolstoy did not renounce Christ! He believed in Christ even more than anyone else - because he fulfilled the commandments not in words, but in deeds!

And in his thoughts and even in his appearance, Leo Tolstoy was in many ways like an old man. Eldership in those days was very popular in Russian society. The elders carried out a living search for truth in conditions of strict bureaucratization and nationalization of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Like many elders and schismatics, Tolstoy was perceived by the Russian Orthodox Church as a false teacher and heretic.
But Tolstoy simply spoke the truth about the church, the truth about power and the rulers. For this he was excommunicated!

Leo Tolstoy warned about the disastrous state of Russian society, and in this sense he was truly a “mirror of the Russian revolution,” in the words of V.I. Lenin. Lenin wrote that Tolstoy was ridiculous, like a prophet who discovered new recipes for the salvation of mankind. And also that Tolstoy is original, since his views express the characteristics of the revolution as a peasant bourgeois revolution.

In the Russian Empire, the Synod and the Russian Orthodox Church performed the functions of an ideological ministry, controlling the mood in the minds. Priests were obliged to report to the police about an impending or committed crime told in confession. Many knew about this, and therefore were critical of the priests.

At school we were told about Leo Tolstoy’s excommunication from the church and about his treatise “What is My Faith.” I remember how Tolstoy’s “Confession” struck me. For the rest of my life, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy became a spiritual authority for me, and I decided to follow his path.
I visited Optina Pustyn, visited Seraphim of Sarov in Diveevo, and made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. When we were in Optina, we lived with a compassionate woman. There, among other books, I saw the diaries of Leo Tolstoy.

Leo Tolstoy came to Optina six times. The meeting between Tolstoy and Elder Ambrose took place in 1890. Entering the elder, Tolstoy accepted the blessing and kissed his hand, and on leaving he kissed him on the cheek to avoid the blessing. The conversation between them was so sharp and difficult that the elder found himself completely exhausted and could barely breathe. “He is extremely proud,” Elder Ambrose said of Tolstoy.

When L.N. Tolstoy came to Optina Pustyn before his death, when asked why he did not go to the elders, he replied that he could not go because he was excommunicated. The abbot of the monastery and the head of the monastery was Elder Barsanuphius. Tolstoy did not dare to enter the monastery, and the elder followed him to the Astapovo station to give him the opportunity to reconcile with the Church. But he was not allowed to see the writer. Tolstoy showed no desire to call a priest to confess and receive communion.

In November 2010, the President of the Russian Book Union S.V. Stepashin sent a letter to Patriarch Kirill asking him to show compassion for Tolstoy. In response to Stepashin’s letter, Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov) stated that “since the reconciliation of the writer with the Church never happened (L.N. Tolstoy did not publicly renounce his tragic spiritual errors), the excommunication by which he rejected himself from the Church has been lifted it can not be".

The writer’s great-grandson Vladimir Tolstoy said this: “And I had the feeling that this act gave a signal for a total split in Russian society. The reigning family, the highest aristocracy, the local nobility, the intelligentsia, the common strata, and the common people split. A crack has passed through the body of the entire Russian, Russian people.”

Relations between Russian society and the Russian Orthodox Church have always been difficult. The state tried to rely on the church, using Orthodoxy as the official ideology and national idea. During the most difficult periods of Russian history, both rulers and people turned to the Orthodox faith. This happened before the battle with Khan Mamai, when Dmitry Donskoy asked for blessings from Sergius of Radonezh, and this happened in 1612, and in 1812, and in 1914, and in 1941.

Recently in St. Petersburg, after a 95-year break, a Procession from the Kazan Cathedral to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Some looked at the gathered people with surprise, some said “finally, we’ve waited,” some were indignant. And I was wondering what the faith of these people who came to the procession was.
What is our faith today?

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P.S. I dedicate this post to the memory of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

WHAT IS YOUR FAITH?

Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is a famous philosopher and writer. During his life, he published 90 volumes with artistic and journalistic works, notes from his diary and letters. The most famous novels of L. N. Tolstoy: “War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina”, “Resurrection”.

Each work of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy teaches the reader kindness and compassion. Knowing about the count’s contribution to literature, his reverent attitude towards his family, and the opening of schools for peasant children on the estate, the question arises: why was Tolstoy excommunicated from the church? To understand what the conflict between Leo Tolstoy and the church was, it is worth recalling the writer’s biography.

Count L.N. Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy's birthday

L.N. Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 into a noble family on the Yasnaya Polyana estate. In 1830 he lost his mother, and in 1837 his father. His aunt took custody of L.N. Tolstoy, to whom he moved to Kazan. Lev Nikolaevich received his primary education at home.

In 1843, Tolstoy entered the Imperial Kazan University at the Faculty of Oriental Languages, and then, due to poor academic performance, transferred to the Faculty of Law. In 1847 he was expelled from the University without an academic degree.

From 1847 to 1851, the young count improved matters on the estate, opened schools for peasant children and studied music. Throughout his adult life, Lev Nikolaevich kept a diary. This hobby would inspire Tolstoy to create literary works in the future.

In 1851 to 1855, L. N. Tolstoy devoted himself military service: takes part in battles with the highlanders and in the Crimean War.

During his service, Tolstoy wrote the story “Childhood,” in which he describes childhood memories. In 1852, the then-famous Sovremennik magazine accepted the story, critics positively assessed “Childhood” and put Tolstoy on a par with the popular writers of that time.

In 1854, Lev Nikolaevich published “Adolescence” - a continuation of “Childhood”.

During the Crimean War, the trilogy “Sevastopol Stories” was published, where Tolstoy writes about the contradictions of the war. In 1857, Lev Nikolaevich published the story “Youth”, which completes the stories “Childhood” and “Adolescence”. In literary circles, Tolstoy gained great popularity.

this year the count will marry S.A. Beers, who would later become the mother of his 13 children

In 1865, the first chapter of the novel “War and Peace” was published in the Russian Messenger, and in 1869 the entire work was published. From 1873 to 1877, the novel Anna Karenina was published in parts. Lev Nikolayevich's novels receive high marks from the public, and the fees significantly enrich the writer.

“All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” - the first lines of one of the most popular Russian novels abroad. "Anna Karenina" was staged in almost all theaters around the world. There are 34 film adaptations of this novel.

The completion of the novel “Anna Karenina” leads the writer to a spiritual crisis; Tolstoy loses inspiration. The Count begins to think about existence. In his spiritual search, Lev Nikolaevich turns to the Orthodox Church, but does not find answers to his questions and, instead of continuing the search, begins to promote his own beliefs.

Mediator

In 1883, Tolstoy created the publication Posrednik, where he describes his religious views

The count’s next successful work was the story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” published in 1886. In 1898, Tolstoy wrote the story “Father Sergius,” where he criticized his own spiritual beliefs.

In 1899, the writer's last major novel, Resurrection, was published. In this novel, Tolstoy criticizes power structures, society and the state as a whole. In the future, V.I. Lenin will call Lev Nikolaevich “the mirror of the revolution.”

The count's later works included essays on art, satirical plays and short stories.

Leo Tolstoy's death day

In October 1910, Tolstoy went on pilgrimage and in November of the same year, Lev Nikolaevich died. There is an opinion: in the last years of his life, the count realized the imperfection of his spiritual beliefs and went to Optina Pustyn for a conversation with Elder Joseph, which never took place due to the elder’s illness.

Until the end of his days, Leo Tolstoy and the church were unable to find a compromise, despite the fact that anathema to the writer was not proclaimed in any church.

Why was L.N. Tolstoy excommunicated from the Orthodox Church?

Why was L.N. Tolstoy anathematized? During a creative and spiritual crisis, Tolstoy spoke of the church as a corrupt institution in which the personal beliefs of officials were promoted. In “The Mediator,” Leo Tolstoy wrote about Orthodoxy:

Lev Tolstoy

Writer

“... I renounced the church that calls itself Orthodox, this is absolutely fair. But I renounced the church not because I rebelled against the Lord, but on the contrary, only because I wanted to serve him with all the strength of my soul.

Before renouncing the church and unity with the people, which was inexpressibly dear to me, I, having some signs of doubting the correctness of the church, devoted several years to theoretically and practically studying the teachings of the church: theoretically - I re-read everything I could about the teachings of the church, studied and critically examined dogmatic theology; in practice, he strictly followed, for more than a year, all the instructions of the church, observing all fasts and attending all church services.

And I became convinced that the teaching of the church is theoretically an insidious and harmful lie, but practically a collection of the grossest superstitions and witchcraft, completely hiding the entire meaning of Christian teaching. One has only to read the breviary and follow those rituals that are continually performed by the Orthodox clergy and are considered Christian worship to see that all these rituals are nothing more than various techniques of witchcraft, adapted to all possible situations in life...

... I reject God, in the Holy Trinity the glorious creator and provider of the universe, I deny the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man, the redeemer and savior of the world, who suffered for us for the sake of people and ours for the sake of salvation and rose from the dead, I deny the seedless conception according to humanity of Christ the Lord and virginity before Christmas and on the Nativity of the Most Pure Mother of God.

The fact that I reject the incomprehensible trinity and the fable of the fall of the first man, which has no meaning in our time, the blasphemous story of a god born of a virgin redeeming the human race, is absolutely fair...”

Tolstoyism is a religious and ethical movement that was created by L. N. Tolstoy

To replace Orthodoxy, Count Tolstoy created his own religious movement- Tolstoyism, the foundations of which were outlined in the works “Confession”, “What is my faith?”, “On Life”, “Christian Doctrine”.

Toast

Christian commandments with a complete absence of traditions, rituals and mysticism

In short: Tolstoyism is Christian commandments with a complete absence of traditions, rituals and mysticism. Tolstoy takes as the basis of his movement the words from the Gospel: “Do not resist evil.” The writer rejects and condemns personal immortality, the authority of the church, state support for the church, and existing forms of coercion.

The opinion that Leo Tolstoy expressed about religion quickly spread among his compatriots, and Tolstoyism gained followers.

Excommunication of the Count from the Church

"By the grace of God

The Holy All-Russian Synod, the faithful children of the Orthodox Catholic Greek-Russian Church rejoice in the Lord.

We pray you, brothers, beware of those who create strife and strife, except for doctrine, which you will learn, and turn away from them (Rom. 16:17).

From the beginning, the Church of Christ suffered blasphemies and attacks from numerous heretics and false teachers who sought to overthrow it and shake its essential foundations, which were based on faith in Christ, the Son of the Living God.

But all the forces of hell, according to the promise of the Lord, could not overcome the Holy Church, which will remain unconquered forever. And today, by God’s permission, a new false teacher, Count Leo Tolstoy, has appeared.

A world-famous writer, Russian by birth, Orthodox by baptism and upbringing, Count Tolstoy, in the seduction of his proud mind, boldly rebelled against the Lord and against His Christ and against His holy property, clearly before everyone renounced the mother who fed and raised him, the Church. Orthodox, and dedicated his literary activity and the talent given to him from God to the dissemination among the people of teachings contrary to Christ and the Church, and to the destruction in the minds and hearts of people of the fatherly faith, the Orthodox faith, which established the universe, by which our ancestors lived and were saved, and by which Until now, Holy Rus' has held out and been strong.

In his writings and letters, scattered in large numbers by him and his disciples all over the world, especially within our dear Fatherland, he preaches with the zeal of a fanatic the overthrow of all the dogmas of the Orthodox Church and the very essence of the Christian faith; rejects the personal Living God, glorified in the Holy Trinity, the creator and provider of the Universe, denies the Lord Jesus Christ - the God-man, Redeemer and Savior of the world, who suffered for us and for our salvation and rose from the dead, denies the divine conception of Christ the Lord after humanity and virginity before Nativity and after the Nativity of the Most Pure Mother of God, the Ever-Virgin Mary, does not recognize the afterlife and retribution, rejects all the sacraments of the Church and the grace-filled action of the Holy Spirit in them and, swearing at the most sacred objects of faith of the Orthodox people, did not shudder to mock the greatest of the sacraments, the Holy Eucharist.

Count Tolstoy preaches all this continuously, in word and in writing, to the temptation and horror of the entire Orthodox world, and thus undisguisedly, but clearly before everyone, he consciously and intentionally rejected himself from all communication with the Orthodox Church.

The previous attempts, to his understanding, were not crowned with success. Therefore, the Church does not consider him a member and cannot consider him until he repents and restores his communion with her. Now we testify to this before the whole Church for the confirmation of those who are right and for the admonition of those who are in error, especially for the new admonition of Count Tolstoy himself.

Many of his neighbors who keep the faith think with sorrow that he, at the end of his days, remains without faith in God and the Lord our Savior, having rejected the blessings and prayers of the Church and from all communication with her.

Therefore, testifying to his falling away from the Church, we pray together that the Lord will grant him repentance into the mind of truth (2 Tim. 2:25). We pray, merciful Lord, that you do not want the death of sinners, hear and have mercy and turn him to Your holy Church. Amen.

Originally signed:

Humble ANTONY, Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and Ladoga.
Humble THEOGNOST, Metropolitan of Kyiv and Galicia.
Humble VLADIMIR, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna.
Humble JEROME, Archbishop of Kholm and Warsaw.
Humble JAKOV, Bishop of Chisinau and Khotyn.
Humble JACOB, Bishop.
Humble BORIS, Bishop.
Humble MARKEL, Bishop.
February 2, 1901"

Leo Tolstoy's response to the Holy Synod

Tolstoy’s response to the Holy Synod soon followed:

Lev Tolstoy

Writer

“...The fact that I renounced the Church that calls itself Orthodox is completely fair.

...And I became convinced that the teaching of the Church is theoretically an insidious and harmful lie, but in practice it is a collection of the grossest superstitions and witchcraft, completely hiding the entire meaning of Christian teaching.

... I really renounced the Church, stopped performing its rituals and wrote in my will to my loved ones that when I die, they would not allow church ministers to see me and my dead body would be removed as quickly as possible, without any spells and prayers over it, as they remove any nasty and unnecessary thing so that it does not disturb the living.

…The fact that I reject the incomprehensible Trinity and the fable of the fall of the first man, the story of God born of the Virgin, redeeming the human race, is absolutely fair

...It is also said: “Does not recognize the afterlife and retribution.” If they understand the afterlife in the sense of the second coming, hell with eternal torment/devils and heaven - constant bliss, then it is absolutely fair that I do not recognize such an afterlife...

...It is also said that I reject all sacraments... This is absolutely fair, since I consider all sacraments to be base, rude, witchcraft inconsistent with the concept of God and Christian teaching and, moreover, a violation of the most direct instructions of the Gospel...”

Tolstoy’s letter to the Synod made a great impression on the writer’s entourage; Tolstoy’s wife will subsequently ask to lift the anathema, but the definition of the Synod will remain unchanged.

Anathema

Who is excommunicated from the church and for what?

1. Those who deny the existence of God and those who assert that this world is original and everything in it happens without the Providence of God and happens by chance: anathema.
2. Speaking to God not to be Spirit, but flesh; or not to be His Righteous, Merciful, All-Wise, Omniscient and similar blasphemy to those who pronounce: anathema.
3. Say to those who dare, since the Son of God is not Consubstantial and not Equal to the Father, so is the Holy Spirit, and those who confess the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are not the One being of God: anathema.
4. Crazy talkers, as it is not necessary for our salvation and for the cleansing of sins to come into the world of the Son of God in the flesh, and His free suffering, death and resurrection: anathema.
5. To those who do not accept the grace of redemption by the gospel preached, as our only means of justification before God: anathema.
6. Say to those who dare, as the Most Pure Virgin Mary did not exist before the Nativity, in the Nativity and after the Nativity of the Virgin: anathema.
7. Non-believers, for the Holy Spirit made wise the prophets and apostles and through them showed us the true path to eternal salvation, and confirm this with miracles, and now it dwells in the hearts of faithful and true Christians and instructs them in all truth: anathema.
8. Those who abolish the immortality of the soul, the end of the century, future judgment and eternal reward for virtues in heaven, and condemnation for sins: anathema.
9. To those who take away all the Holy Sacraments Contained by the Church of Christ: anathema.
10. To those who reject the councils of the holy Fathers and their traditions, in agreement with Divine Revelation, and piously preserved by the Orthodox-Catholic Church: anathema.
11. Thinking, as in Orthodoxy, Sovereigns are not elevated to thrones by God’s special favor for them, and when they are anointed to the kingdom, the gift of the Holy Spirit for the passage of this great title is not poured out on them; and so to those who dare to rebel and treason against them: anathema.
12. Those who scold and blaspheme the holy icons, and the Holy Church to the remembrance of the works of God and His saints, for the sake of arousing those who look at them to piety, and accepts their imitation, and to those who say they are idols: anathema.

The behavior of Count Tolstoy forced the church to excommunicate the great writer. After the death of the classic, Tolstoyism quickly ceased to attract people’s attention, and Lev Nikolaevich’s family continued to profess Orthodoxy.