Tolstoy's False Disciple

On the snowy morning of February 8, 1897, the Petersburg secret police were following Tolstoy's every move. At sixty-nine, Russia's most celebrated writer was being treated like a major criminal, and in these police reports, he is always in the company of a man named Chertkov. By this time, Tolstoy [...]
Visa längre beskrivning

On the snowy morning of February 8, 1897, the Petersburg secret police were following Tolstoy's every move. At sixty-nine, Russia's most celebrated writer was being treated like a major criminal, and in these police reports, he is always in the company of a man named Chertkov. By this time, Tolstoy had abandoned his literary pursuits and become a spiritual mystic. He had angered the powerful Orthodox church as well as the Tsar, and earned both the admiration and ire of his countrymen in the process. Tolstoy was recognizable enough, with his peasant garb and beard, but who was the man who towered over Tolstoy, twenty years younger, with a cold, impenetrable look on his face, who never left his side? This man, Vladimir Chertkov, was a relative to the Tsars and nephew to the chief of the secret police. He represented the very things Tolstoy had renounced class privilege, unlimited power, and wealth and yet Chertkov fascinated and attracted Tolstoy. He would become the writer's closest confidant, reading even his daily diary, and at the end of Tolstoy's life, Chertkov had him in his complete control, preventing him from even seeing his own wife on his deathbed. For the first time in more than a century, the government archives on Tolstoy, suppressed by both the Tsarist and Soviet regimes, have been opened. Through this groundbreaking research, Tolstoy's False Disciple promises to be a revelatory and fascinating portrait of these two men."