The Autobiography of Countess Sophie Tolstoi/Appendix II
APPENDIX II
nikolai nikolaevich strakhov
N. N. Strakhov was born October 16, 1828, and died January 24, 1896. He studied at the ecclesiastical seminary of Kostroma and completed his course in 1845. He then passed to the Faculty of Mathematics in the Petersburg University and took his degree in 1848. He later entered the Faculty of Natural Science and Mathematics in the Teachers' Training Institute and completed his course in 1851, after which he became a teacher of physics and mathematics. In 1857 he received the degree of Master of Zoology. In 1861 he gave up teaching and became the principal collaborator with the brothers Dostoevskii on the monthly magazine, Vremya. His chief writings were polemical. Under the nom-de-plume of "N. Kossiza," he wrote a series of articles which had a great success and were chiefly directed against the "westerners," Radicals, and Socialists, e.g. Chernisherskii, Pisarev. Vremya, which had a large circulation, was suppressed by the authorities because of an article by Strakhov, called The Fatal Problem, which dealt with Russian Polish relations in a spirit of opposition to the Government. Being without work, Strakhov began translating books into Russian, chiefly on philosophical, scientific, and literary subjects.
Tolstoi's friendship with Strakhov began in 1871. When some one asked him about the friendship, Strakhov sent him the following autobiographical note: "The origin of my acquaintance with L. N. Tolstoi in 1871, was as follows:—After my articles on War and Peace, I decided to write him a letter, asking him to let the Sarya have some of his work. He replied that he had nothing at present, but added a pressing invitation to come and see him at Yasnaya Polyana whenever an opportunity should present itself. In 1871 I received 400 roubles from the Sarya, and in June I went to stay with my people in Poltava. On my way back to Petersburg I stopped at Tula for the night, and in the morning took a cab and drove out to Yasnaya Polyana. After that we used to see each other every year, that is, I used to stay a month or six weeks with him every summer. At times we quarrelled and grew cool to each other, but good feeling always won the day; his family got to like me, and now they see in me an old, faithful friend, which indeed I am."
With Strakhov, Tolstoi was on very friendly terms, which allowed complete frankness between them. Tolstoi himself wrote of his correspondence with Strakhov (in a letter of February 6, 1906, to P. A. Sergeenko): "In addition to Alexandra Andreevna Tolstoi, I had two persons to whom I have written many letters, which, as far as I can remember, might interest people interested in my personality. They are Strakhov and Prince Serge S. Urusov," (Letters, Vol. II. page 227.)
The friendship of Tolstoi and Strakhov lasted for twenty-five years, and on Strakhov's part there was thirty years' adoration of Tolstoi's genius, and of his great spiritual and intellectual qualities. V. V, Rosanov wrote the following after Strakhov's death: "Strakhov's attachment to Tolstoi was most deep and mystical: he loved him as the incarnation of the best and most profound aspirations of the human soul, as a special nerve in the huge body of mankind in which we others form parts less understanding and significant; he loved him for what was indefinite and incomplete in him. He loved in him the dark abyss, the bottom of which no one could see, from the depths of which still rise numbers of treasures; and there is no doubt that Tolstoi never lost a better friend."
Strakhov's works included: From the History of Russian Nihilism, 1890; Essays on Pushkin and Other Poets, 1888; Biography of Dostoevskii; The Struggle of the West with Our Literature, three volumes, 1882-86; and some scientific works.