Clashes over his inheritance

Leo Tolstoy receives 1,700 messages from well wishers on his 80th birthday but one person not celebrating much is his wife Sophia. Relations between them are at are an all-time low. She has largely been displaced as her husband’s secretary by her youngest daughter Sasha and she can’t deal with being usurped. (At first it is Tanya and Masha who are his professional collaborators but both of them take their leave though marriage. Masha subsequently dies of pneumonia aged 35 years. In the main Tolstoy is very disappointed by his sons.) What makes matters worse is the return from exile of Tolstoy’s key disciple, Vladimir Chertkov, and the way he and Sasha pair up in a united front against her.

At various times over the next two years she claims she is being poisoned by her husband’s personal physician, tries to poison herself with morphine then opium, alleges that her husband and Tolstoy are having a homosexual affair, sends for a priest to exorcise Chertkov’s spirit from Tolstoy’s study and, when she reads in the paper that Chertkov is being allowed to settle back at Tula, brandishes a cap gun. At one stage she issues a media release saying that after 48 years of devoting her entire life to Tolstoy she has left home because he has fallen under the pernicious influence of “Mr C ...” who speaks to her in crude and vulgar terms. She also admits to suffering from a nervous illness necessitating the consultation of two specialists from Moscow.

Interesting guests call daily to talk with Tolstoy about every subject imaginable including art, the revolution and inventions. He wishes he could give them his full attention rather than being embroiled in a tedious, relentless battle of wills. He feels he would worry himself to death if he left Sophia but that she will be the death of him with her constant spying. He is having regular attacks of ill health, including strokes, and begins a new diary Diary For Myself.

Disagreements continually flare up between the couple, usually when he is off meeting Chertkov or when Sophia allows Chertkov to visit Yasnaya Polyana but then can’t deal with his presence. There is a particular bout of nastiness over who should hold Tolstoy’s diaries prompting their author to deposit them in a bank in Tula in an attempt to keep the peace. He promises his current diary to Sophia and writes a letter to her for opening only after her death. Sophia is looking after the financial interests of the family while Chertkov is concerned with securing the future of the Tolstoyan movement. Sophia has a one million ruble offer from the Prozveshenye publishing company for the right to exclusively publish Tolstoy’s complete works after he dies.

Little does Sophia know that when Tolstoy signs a new will, he does not have the courage to tell her. The will makes Sasha (Alexandra Lvovna) Tolstoy the sole owner of the copyright of everything upon his death, whether it was written before or after 1881. This way Sasha can pass the work into the public domain and use the earnings to buy Yasnaya Polyana and give the land to the peasants. When Sasha becomes ill, the will is redrafted to make Tanya the heir if Sasha’s death precedes her father’s. This final version is signed during a secret assignation in the forest. “We look like conspirators,” Tolstoy says upon arriving on his beloved mare Délire. He appends a letter to the will giving Chertkov sole authority to revise and publish his work after his death.

About five years later, after Tolstoy’s death, his youngest daughter Sasha inherits 120,000 roubles for the publication of her father’s work and buys Yasnaya Polyana from Sophia and her siblings. In accordance with the wishes of her father, she gives all the land except the house and orchard to the peasants. The city buys the house in Moscow and it is opened as a museum in 1920.

Death