CEASELESS EFFORT

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 114, 16 May 1931, Page 22

CEASELESS EFFORT

TOLSTOI REVELATIONS

One of the most interesting and vital memorials- to Leo Tolstoi, is the museum iv his name 'which is located in Moscow on a street named after another aristocratic rebel, tho anarchist Prince Peter Kropotkin, and which has existed, with one chango of location, since 1911. At the time of tho Tolstoi centenary, in 1928, the museum received cd an appropriation,of 100,000 roubles for renovation and for further additions to its memorial. At tho samo timo tho organisation of the museum was considerably altered, says tho Moscow correspondent of the "Observer.' Originally it had been predominantly .|jiographical,~a place of collection for family portraits, objects of Tolstoi's personal use, original manuscripts of his "works," photographs and paintings connected with his career, nowspapcr articles discussing his views, etc. Now, in harmony with contemporary Soviet ideology, tho emphasis has been shifted to a considerable extent from Tolstoi to his epoch, and tho arrangement of tho museum has become thematic rather than biographical. There are special rooms devoted to such subjects as' Tolstoi the literary creator, Tolstoi and his Age, Tolstoi and the Church, etc. One of the most interesting of these exhibits reveals Tolstoi's methods of literary creation. Hero ono can soo very clearly that the smooth T fiowing prose style of " Anna, Karcnina", and "War and Peace" was a product both of laborious research and of meticulous 1 care in the choice of words and phrases; The research carried out under,the auspices of the museum has established that there wero twelve manuscripts of "Tho Kreutzer Sonata,'.' and' .that

Early in 1018 Captain Kennedy was

"War and Peace" wa^ worked over ten times. Original pages trom Tolstoi manuscripts, with largo , iiunibers_ oi crossed out and changed" expressions, illustrate this research. . In writing "War and Peace" Tolstoi consulted about five hundred books, mostly French and Russian historical works. In'soino cases his,sources were simpler; 'the museum contains a, .list of things which his wife, Sofia Andrcevna, was supposed to buy in Moscow. This list was utilised as tho basis tor a passage in "Power of P^ess Whereas Tolstoi experienced little difficulty in creating characters of the landed gentry class, his peasant types, as has been discovered, cost him a vast amount of effort. Tho section of tho museum devoted to Tolstoi and the Church reflects the demand of the present time that antireligious propaganda should be pushed forward in all places and at all seasons. Besides reproducing Tolstoi's numerous criticisms of tho superstition and worldiness and subordination to the secular power in which he saw the great oyils of the Orthodox Church, this part of the museum contains a recentlyadded > feature in tho shape of criticisms of Tolstoi's teachings by Lenin, Plekhanov, tho present head of the Union of Militant Atheists, Jaroslavsky, and others. One finds in the museum a comparatively little known politico-literary judgment, pronounced on Tolstoi by Lenin, which reads as follows: "Tolstoi's writings revealed the strength and weakness, tho power and limitations of the peasant mass' movement — tho mood of primitivo peasant democracy.