Tolstoy: still not a favourite with the authorities

The centenary of the death of the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was marked on Saturday with a discussion on the Today programme.

Count Tolstoy's great great great grand-daughter Anastasia said that despite coverage of the anniversary in the Russian media, the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church had been "conspicuous in their silence". And Tolstoy's biographer Rosamund Bartlett said the Russians "haven't exactly pushed boat out" compared to, for instance, the official marking of the 150th anniversary of Chekhov's birth.

But why? Could it be because of uncomfortable parallels between the official disapproval of Tolstoy's ideas in his day, and constraints on journalism in Russia now? 

Next year is the 150th anniversary of a more local Tolstoy event: his visit to London in 1861, when he was 33 years old - and not yet the celebrity he was to become in Russia or the world. War and Peace began publication four years later, and Anna Karenina eleven years after that.

Tolstoy was interested in education, and wanted to see how English schools were run. It was Matthew Arnold, the great Victorian literary figure, then an official in the Education Department, who provided Tolstoy with introductions (describing him as "a Russian gentleman interested in public education"). Armed with his letter from Arnold, Tolstoy toured half a dozen London schools. 

At some of them, the children had been asked to write accounts of themselves for Tolstoy. In Victor Lucas' Tolstoy in London (1979), these missives are photographed, and provide a vivid picture of the lives of London's children at the time. The schools were typical Victorian establishments, enforcing discipline and rote learning.

Far from being impressed, Tolstoy returned home, determined to make Russian education more liberal. He opened a school near his home to put his ideas into practice. In place of authoritarianism, there would be partnership between teachers and pupils. The words "Come and Go Freely" were written above the door. 

It was the first of many schools run under his guidance. Tolstoy further promoted his ideas with a periodical, Yasnaya Polyana (named after his home and the first school) to encourage debate about education.

None of this was popular with the authorities. They were nervous of what they saw as a subversive and increasingly influential figure, with his hare-brained ideas about how children should decide what they wanted to learn. 

Tolstoy received a number of threatening letters, but matters came to a head when he was away from home for a few weeks. There was a raid on his home and the local school. Police were apparently searching for a printing press they believed had been used by revolutionary groups in St Petersberg.

A friend was called to the house by the family, and wrote an account of what he found: 

"The poor ladies were almost fainting ...Everything was opened, thrown about, turned upside down - tables, drawers, wardrobes, chests of drawers, boxes, caskets etc. Crowbars were used in the stables to lift the floors ...the unfortunate school had been turned upside down."

Seventeen schools were raided like this, with books and papers taken away for examination. 

It sounds like the nineteenth century equivalent of police seizing someone's hard drive to search for plots. The heavy-handed response of the authorities perhaps rings some unwelcome bells today. 

Stephen Ennis from BBC Monitoring has written here about the serious dangers for Russian journalists if they work on stories that don't find favour in high places. 

Tolstoy's ideas challenged the state and the church. For all his towering literary achievements, that makes him a poor candidate as an official role model - both then and now.

Above: Claire Bloom as Anna Karenina and Sean Connery as Count Alexis Vronsky in a 1961 BBC adaptation of the novel.