ABSTRACT
"GOETIIE'S words were all recorded but Tolstoy's thoughts are all being lost in the air. That, my dear fellow, is intolerably Russian. After his death they will bestir themselves, will begin to write reminiscences, and will lie." 77 So Chekov complained one day to Gorki, evidently unaware of the fact that in his last years Tolstoy was to be surrounded with people all feverishly committing to paper minute records of every action, every word, that was spoken at Yasnaya Polyana. And while it is fortunate for posterity that such records make it possible to come very near to the truth of a complicated and painful drama which otherwise never could have been understood, such a situation was scarcely conducive to the comfort of the family. "We were deprived of the common human satisfaction of living unobserved by outsiders, of talking nonsense, joking, singing, being ourselves, since we knew that every word and act was immediately fixed on paper." So wrote later Tolstoy's daughter Alexandra, herself one of the most reliable authorities for the events of these last years.
