Tolstoy полностью

Tolstoy was greatly moved by the fighting spirit of the troops, but he now could not help seeing why the Russian army was faring so badly. A week after leaving Sebastopol on 15 November and moving north to the Tatar village outside Simferopol where his battery was stationed, he noted in his diary that he had become more convinced than ever before that Russia either needed fundamental reform, or would collapse.⁷⁴ He had talked to allied prisoners of war in Sebastopol, and was struck by their high self-esteem, and their pride in the contribution they were making to the war effort, confident it was valued. There was none of that in the Russian army, where the military leadership clearly regarded its seemingly inexhaustible supply of infantry as cannon-fodder. Tolstoy also noticed that the artillery used by his brigade was outdated compared to that deployed by the allies, and he started putting together a plan in which he set out a number of detailed reforms.⁷⁵ Tolstoy had come to see that Russia’s military tactics were woefully out of date. He could not fail to be aware that communications between Russia and the Crimea were abysmal, with primitive roads which were often impassable because of mud, and a minuscule railway network. Conditions for rank and file soldiers were also appalling, with military service still set at twenty years and five years in the reserves. Nicholas I’s emphasis on drills and parades had meant his troops were not even properly trained.

The Tsar turned down the proposal for a forces newspaper in late November, on the grounds that it was not in the government’s interests.⁷⁶ He suggested instead that Tolstoy and his comrades publish articles in Russian Veteran, the official newspaper patronised by the Ministry of War, which of course they already were entitled to do. The news angered Tolstoy when it reached him, but after collecting more raw impressions from a sortie to Sebastopol in early December with his platoon, he began sketching out an article with which he hoped to respond. This was the first draft of ‘Sebastopol in December’, his first piece of war reportage, which would bring him national celebrity. On 11 January Tolstoy wrote to Nekrasov with the proposal that he send him articles on the war which he promised would be of a quality not inferior to anything else published in The Contemporary. Nekrasov wrote back by return of post giving Tolstoy carte blanche. It was now that Tolstoy learned that his story ‘Notes of a Billiard Marker’ had been published in the January issue for 1855, and that Boyhood had appeared in the journal back in October. The censor had once again objected to several passages, such as the one where the narrator regrets that some people are poor while his family are rich, and all references to the Church and its rituals, which were at that time prohibited in secular publications (they include the passage about the boy’s father making the sign of the cross over the window of the carriage his family is to travel in, and the horse’s nickname of ‘Deacon’).⁷⁷

Tolstoy was stationed in the quiet Tatar village of Eski-Orda for one and a half months, so he had plenty of time again at his disposal, and enjoyed hunting wild goats, playing duets and dancing with young ladies.⁷⁸ But in the middle of January 1855 he was transferred to the 3rd Battery of the 11th Artillery Brigade, which was stationed on the Balbek river, six miles outside Sebastopol. On the way, he stopped in the city and picked up money sent him by his brother-in-law from the sale of his house at Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy earned a reputation amongst his new battalion for his physical strength – one day he impressed his comrades by lying on the floor and lifting a twelve-stone man with his bare hands. The officers in his battalion did not impress him, however; he felt very alienated in this new posting. He was miserable during that cold winter. He had no books, and no one to talk to. It was not a situation conducive to writing either, and the torpor made him vulnerable to his vices. On 3 February he steeled himself to write a difficult letter to his brother Nikolay. He had succumbed once again to his gambling addiction, and over the course of two days and two nights had lost the 1,500 roubles he had just received as seed money for the forces newspaper. Confessing this lapse to Nikolay was Tolstoy’s way of doing penance.⁷⁹