Author: Gertjan Cobelens
Last saved by: Joseph

Editor’s note

Thoughts on Life, Death, Love, Non-Resistance, Religion, Revolution, Socialism, Communism, etc.etc. is a compilation of Tolstoy’s ideas taken from his diaries from 1907 and 1908. The selection has been made by Vladimir Tchertkoff (1854-1936), Tolstoy’s literary agent and the publisher of his collected works. 
	The typescript is undated and the translator remains unmentioned. There is however an accompanying note, ‘How to translate Tolstoy’, written by Tchertkoff for his secretary Alexander Sirnis (who, together with Charles James Hogarth, was also responsible for the translation of The Diaries of Leo Tolstoy: Youth 1847 to 1852, Dutton, 1917), so it is likely that he was responsible for the translation. If that is the case, the typescript can be dated to between 1908 and 1918 (the death of Sirnis). The note also mentions Mrs. Mayo as corrector. Isabella Fyvie Mayo was an author who had both been acquainted with Tolstoy and Gandhi, and had worked together with Sirnis on several translations. If she was indeed responsible for the editing of the translation, the typescript must date from 1914 at the latest, as that was the year of her death.
	In his ‘How to translate Tolstoy’ Tchertkoff insisted that the translation was to be as literal as possible and had to preserve the style and peculiarities of Tolstoy’s composition and vocabulary. That is why the phrasing is often quaint and differs radically from later translations of Tolstoy’s diaries, such as R.F. Christian’s Tolstoy’s Diaries (The Athlone Press, 1985). 
	It is not clear whether Tchertkoff intended the ‘Thoughts’ as a ‘doctrine’ for the flourishing Tolstoyan movement or as a ‘reworking’ of his The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), in which Tolstoy had argued that Christians had not sufficiently recognized that having a love for everyone required that evil should not be resisted by violence, particularly in the form of war or legalized state coercion. The insistence on the notion that God is love and the overriding importance of non-resistance are certainly two key elements of the ‘Thoughts’.
	Although Tchertkoff did publish two volumes of Tolstoy’s diaries, The Diaries of Leo Tolstoy: Youth, 1847 to 1852 (Dutton, 1917. Translated by C.J. Hogarth and A. Sirnis) and The Journal of Leo Tolstoj: First Volume, 1895 to 1899 (Knopf, 1917. Translated by Rose Strunsky) – this document has never been published.
	The document is part of a larger collection of Tchertkoff and Tolstoy related materials that was donated in the early seventies to the War Resisters’ International by the daughter of Ludvig Perno, a Tolstoy scholar and translator. The collection presently resides in the WRI archive at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Note on the text

The typescript consist of 45 pages, p. 1-8, 15-53. It is impossible to determine the length of the original typescript, as 8 pages are missing and the last page ends in mid-sentence. 
	Although the ‘Thoughts’ are not related to specific diary entries, it is possible to trace the origin of some of them. Comparing the ‘Thoughts’ with R. F. Christian’s Tolstoy’s Diaries Volume II, 1895-1910 (The Athlone Press, 1985) we detected twelve matches (entry 54 on p. 16 matches with diary entry 22 August 1907; entry 59 on p. 17 matches with 8 August 1907; entry 67 on p. 17 matches with 15 September 1907; entry 71 on p. 19 matches with 10 October 1907; entry 76 on p. 21 matches with 20 October 1907; entry 78 on p. 22 matches with 8 November 1907; entry 101 on p. 27 matches with 31 January 1908; entry 122 on p. 31/32 matches with 12 May 1908; entry 138 on p. 35 matches with 21 May 1908; entry 143 on p. 37 matches with 3 June 1908; entry 168 on p. 43 matches with 15 November 1908; and entry 272 on p. 46 matches with 17 March 1907). 
	From an earlier version of the ‘Thoughts’ from the same collection, ‘Unpublished sections of Leo Tolstoy’s diary’, we could deduce that the first 8 pages are all derived from diary entries dating from 14 January 1907, 16 January 1907 and 2 February 1907.

Note on the photographs

The photo’s are derived from the Charles William Daniel Company Archive (Box 157-172, folder 164) at the IISG, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Three of the photographs are part of the ‘Free Age Press Series of Tolstoy Portraits’, two of them made on September 9^th, 1903 (Tolstoy’s 75^th anniversary). The third one is undated and the maker’s name is unreadable. ‘Tolstoy in the woods’ dates from 1905 and is by Tchertkoff.