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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
1 Russkii zagranichnyi istoricheskii arkhiv pri Ministerstve inostrannykh del Chekhoslovatskoi Respubliki v 1936 godu (Prague, 1936), p. 20.
2 The story of the organization of the Russian Historical Archives Abroad and the transfer of the entire Document Section to Moscow is told by George Fischer in“Russian Archive in Prague,” American Slavic and East European Review, VIII, No. 4 (1949), 289-95.
3 Quoted by Shesterikov, S. P.,“Pis'ma N. S. Leskova,” Pis'ma Tol'stogo i k Tol'stomu: Iubileinyi sbornik (Moscow and Leningrad, 1928), p. Leningrad.Google Scholar
4 N. D. Bakhareva,“Nikolai Semenovich Leskov (Memuary vnuchki N. S. Leskova pisatel'nitsy Natal'i Dmitrievny Bakharevoi)” (1953), I, 15-16, supplemented by letters to the author.
5 The information about the postrevolutionary history of the Maksheevs is drawn from the unpublished memoirs of Nikolai Mikhailovich Bubnov, deposited in the library of the Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia.
6 N. S. Leskov, Sobranie sochinenii v odinnadtsati tomakh (Moscow, 1956-58). Hereafter cited as Sobranie.
7 Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (formerly Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi literaturnyi arkhiv), officially abbreviated as TsGALI.
8 Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii (TsGAOR).
9 Nikolai Khristianovich Bunge (1823-95)—professor at Kiev University, who left in 1880 and held various posts in the Ministry of Finance. Nothing further is known about the subject of his four letters to Leskov.
10 Some time between 4 February, when the issue of Noxf referred to in this letter came out, and 11 February, when this letter was written, Leskov evidently paid die visit to Goncharov that he had been invited to pay in Goncharov's letter of 3 February. During that visit Leskov gave Goncharov his own copy of Nov', No. 7, which contained“Sluchainye vstrechi s I. A. Goncharovym,” the article by Viktor Rusakov (pseudonym of Sigismund Librovich) that is mentioned here. Goncharov had said in his letter of 3 February that he wanted to give Leskov a copy of his new work“Na rodine,” and he probably did so at this meeting. Leskov's library contained a copy of this work with an inscription dated“February 1888” (I. A. Shliapkin,“K biografii N. S. Leskova,” Russkaia starina, LXXXIV, No. 12 [December 1895], 211). Leskov's reply to Goncharov's letter of n February, written on the same day, is published in Sobranie, XI, 364-65. Goncharov's reference here to a“legend about two merchants and the widow of one of them” (still unidentified) makes it clear that this does not refer to Leskov's“Legenda o sovestnom Danile,” as stated by the editors of Leskov's reply (Sobranie, XI, 716).
11 The“note” to which Goncharov refers here is a short article by Leskov criticizing Rusakov. Leskov proposed to publish it in the newspaper Novoe vremia, and he enclosed it in a letter on 12 February asking whether Goncharov approved of it. Leskov's letter is published in Sobranie, XI, 367-68.
12 Goncharov's reply to Leskov's letter of 13 February, published in Sobranie XI, 368, in which Leskov said he would not publish his note, since Goncharov did not wish it. In this letter Goncharov evidently returned Leskov's article, which is listed here as No. 5. Leskov had rushed into print with an anonymous article about Rusakov's reminiscences on 8 February (“Literatumyi grekh,” Peterburgskaia gazeta, No. 38, 1888), but apparently he never admitted this to Goncharov.
13 A reply to Leskov's letter of 17 May 1871, published in Sobranie, X, 320-21.
14 Pisemskii here refers to Leskov's Soboriane, the publication of which began in the April issue of Russkii vestnik. Leskov's reply to this letter, dated 3 March 1872, is published in Sobranie, X, 341-42.
15 This letter and the following one (21 December) concern Pisemskii's play“Podkopy,“ which by order of the censors was literally cut out of the Sbornik Grazhdanina, Vol. II (1872), before that publication was allowed to circulate. For the whole story of this see A. F. Pisemskii, Pis'ma (Moscow and Leningrad, 1936), pp. 250-54 and 697-701.
16 Pisemskii's play“Vaal” was published in Ritsskii vestnik, No. 4 (1873), pp. 482-567. The rumor he mentioned about the halting of Grazhdanin proved to be incorrect.
17 Leskov's letter of 23 December 1874 to I. S. Aksakov (Sobranie, X, 371-72) makes it clear that Pisemskii's reference here concerns Leskov's still unpublished manuscript“Iz glukhoi pory. Perepiska Dmitriia Petrovicha Zhuravskogo i dva pis'ma L'va Aleksandrovicha Naryshkina (1843-1847)” (TsGALI, fond 275, opis” 1, ed. khr. 56). Petr Ivanovich Bartenev (1829-1912) was the editor and publisher of Russkii arkhiv.
18 Petr Dmitrievich Boborykin (1836-1921)—editor and publisher of Biblioteka dlia chteniia from 1863 to 1865. The reference to promissory notes concerns money that Boborykin still owed Leskov for his contributions to Biblioteka dlia chteniia and for a loan of something over a thousand rubles that Leskov had made him before the journal ceased publication. In his account of these debts in his memoirs Boborykin says he managed to repay Leskov only after 1873 (P. D. Boborykin, Vospominaniia [Moscow, 1965], I, 358-59).
19 Pavel Ivanovich Biriukov (1860-1931)—a follower and biographer of Leo Tolstoi. Biriukov mistakenly dated this letter 1888. The correct date, 1889, is proved both by his reference to Leskov's“Zenon-zlatokuznets,” which was cut out of the issue of Russkaia mysl' for November 1888, and by Leskov's reply of 7 January 1889 (Sobranie, XI, 410-12). This story, renamed“Gora,” was first published in Zhivopisnoe obozrenie, Nos. 1-12, 1890.
20 Leskov's story“Kolyvanskii muzh” had just been published in Knizhki nedeli, No. 12 (December), 1888, pp. 1-77.
21 Viktor Aleksandrovich Gol'tsev (1850-1906)—editor of Russkaia mysl'. Leskov here refers to his difficulties with the censorship over the publication of“Zenon-zlatokuznets” in Russkaia mysl', which are related in detail in Sobranie, VIII, 600-7.
22 Aleksei Nikolaevich Pleshcheev (1825-93)—poet and translator. Kalinovskii remains unidentified.
23 This enigmatic note may refer to Apollon Nikolaevich Maikov (1821-97) or to Leonid Nikolaevich Maikov (1839-1900), with both of whom Leskov was acquainted.
24 Pavel Kishinevskii (Petr Lebedev, 1827-92)—religious writer, who was bishop of Vyborg, Ladoga, and Kishinev, exarch of Georgia, and archbishop of Kazan.
25 Bozhedomy—the original title of Leskov's Soboriane.
26 Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev (1827-1907)—the powerful Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod from 1880 to 1905, who was benevolently disposed toward Leskov in the 1870 s but was his leading persecutor during the last fifteen years of Leskov's life. A letter from Pobedonostsev to Alexander II dated 14 May 1876 (Pis'ma Pobedonostseva k Aleksandru III, I [Moscow, 1925], 44) shows that the books Leskov had sent were Na kraiu sveta, probably a copy each for the Tsar and Pobedonostsev.
27 Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich Golitsyn (1836-93)—bibliographer, who in the 1880s was editor of the official Russian newspaper in Warsaw, Varshavskii dnevnik. His name apparently is found nowhere else in records concerning Leskov.
28 According to Leskov's letter of 14 June 1886 to S. N. Shubinskii (Sobranie, XI, 317-18), he was once invited, on the recommendation of Pobedonostsev and Konstantin Karlovich Grot (1818-97), t o write a history of the numerous charitable and civic activities of the Grand Ducliess Elena Pavlovna, and he looked through many of her papers—which were no doubt the same papers he is asked here by Annenskii to return. This probably took place shortly after the death of Elena Pavlovna in 1873, when Leskov was still in the favor of Russian governmental circles. Consequently, the letter from Annenskii (who has not been further identified) presumably dates from the mid-1870s.
29 Leskov's“Monasheskie ostrova na ladozhskom ozere (Putevye zametki)” was published serially in the newspaper Russkii mir in August and September 1873. At that time Pavel Aleksandrovich Viskovatov (1842-1905), who used the pseudonyms“Viskovatyi” and“V… tyi,” was editor of Russkii mir, and Leskov and Vasilii Grigor'evich Avseenko (1842-1913) were regular contributors.
30 Evfimii Andreevich Ostromyslenskii (1803-87) was appreciatively mentioned by Leskov in a number of his works as the Orel priest from whom he had learned religion in his childhood. The work for which Ostromyslenskii here thanks Leskov is probably Vladychnyi sud, which was first published in the journal Strannik in 1877 and was reprinted in book form both that year and the next.
31 Ioann Stefanovich Belliustin (1820-90)—a priest in Kaliazin (Tver Province) and one of the most interesting, outspoken, and independent-minded liberals in the whole Russian Orthodox clergy of the nineteenth century. Belliustin's influence on Leskov's thought in the latter half of the 1870s has still not been studied, but it is probable that he had much to do with Leskov's writing of such works as Melochi arkhiereiskoi zhizni. The loss of these seventeen letters is especially unfortunate because no other correspondence between them is known to exist except for one remarkable letter of 5 November 1877 from Belliustin to Leskov, which is preserved in Pushkinskii Dom in Leningrad.
32 Belliustin here refers to Velikosvetskii raskol, Leskov's book about the English Protestant evangelist Lord Radstock, who had been conducting missionary work among the Petersburg aristocracy every winter since 1874. It was first published in the journal Pravoslavnoe obozrenie, III, Nos. 9 and 10 (September and October), 1876, and was twice reprinted in book form the following year.
33 Domashniaia beseda—a ludicrously reactionary journal published by V. I. Askochenskii, which was long a favorite target, as was its publisher, for the satire of liberal Russians, including Leskov.
34 From 1875 to 1877 Leskov showed a lively interest in the early Christian philosopher Origen. During this period Origen's name often came up in conversations and correspondence, and two letters are extant from friends to whom Leskov had lent Origen's works.
35 Ernest Renan (1823-92)—French historian, whose well-known Vie de JSsus (Paris, 1873) was not allowed to be published in Russian translation within Russia until after the 1905 Revolution.
36 On 29 July (10 August) 1875, at era summer in Western Europe that proved to be a turning point in his life, Leskov had written from Marienbad, in Bohemia, to P. K. Shchebal'skii:“I am itching now to write about a Russian heretic—an intelligent, well-read, and free-thinking Spiritual Christian, who has passed through all doubts for the sake of his search for Christian truth and has found it only within his own soul. I would call this story ‘Fornosov die Heretic, ’ and I would publish it—but where would I publish it? Oh, these ‘political tendencies'!” (Sobranie, X, 411-12).
37 The statement to which Belliustin alludes, in Chapter 1 of“Zheleznaia volia” (Sobranie, VI, 7), is attributed to an“Englishman” who was obviously Leskov's friend Artur Benni. In Zagadochnyi chelovek (Sobranie, III, 367-68) Leskov related in detail how Benni had first read Gogol's works while sitting in a Petersburg jail in 1865 and from them had drawn the conclusion that all his misfortunes had come from the fact that he had never taken the time to read Dead Souls. Otherwise he would have known, he says,“that there can never take place in Russia the kind of revolution Herzen dreams o f … because no noble principles can ever take root among these Chichikovs and Nozdrevs.“
38 Melochi arkhiereiskoi zhizni was first published serially in the newspaper Novosti from 14 September to 20 November 1878, and it first appeared in book form around 15 February 1879. This is the edition Belliustin has evidently just received from Leskov.
39 Belliustin may refer here to his manuscript“Ocherki istorii khristianstva,” which he had once lent to Leskov and then had begun revising in 1877. In his only surviving letter to Leskov, written on 5 November 1877, Belliustin spoke of this manuscript in the following poignant terms:“My revised manuscript will be even more impossible to print than before, because I tell the truth just as it is, without beating around the bush; and this truth turns out to be such that it will jolt the most indifferent person in matters of religion, to say nothing about the frenzied fanatics of Byzantine orthodoxy. But what is impossible to print today will perhaps be possible tomorrow; and if not tomorrow, then my sons will print it after my death; the goal will still be attained—the truth will come to light, and those who thirst for the truth will speak a good word in remembrance of those who labored for it” (Pushkinskii Dom, fond 220, No. 23). Belliustin's manuscript has never been published, and I have been unable to discover whether it still exists.
40 Mariia Grigor'evna Peiker and her daughter Aleksandra Ivanovna—followers of Lord Radstock and his principal Russian convert, Vasilii Aleksandrovich Pashkov (1831-1902), who was expelled from Russia in 1884 when he refused the government's demand that he give up his Protestant religious activity. At least twenty-five letters from Leskov to the Peikers and four from the Peikers to Leskov are preserved in TsGALI, which likewise has a long letter written by Pashkov to Leskov in 1884. Leskov's long and interesting reply, which was discovered a few years ago among Pashkov's papers in France, will soon be published in my article“Leskov, PaSkov, the Stundists, and a Newly Discovered Letter,“ Orbis Scriptus: Dmitrij Tschiiewskij zum jo. Geburtstag (Munich: Eidos Verlag, 1966?).
41 Grigorii Konstantinovich Gradovskii (1842-1915)—a writer and editor who, like Leskov, moved“against the current” from early associations with conservative literary figures to later associations with the liberals.
42 “Anafema“—an article by Leskov published in Novoe xrremia, No. 1446 (1880), which indicates the approximate date of this letter. The Glebov mentioned here is Stefan Glebov, whom Peter the Great ordered the Russian Orthodox Church to anathematize.
43 Nikolai Nikolaevich Voskoboinikov (1838-82)—an assistant to M. N. Katkov, the editor and publisher of Russkii vestnik and of the weekly Sovremennaia letopis', in which Leskov's“Smekh i gore“—evidently the subject of the first letter here—began appearing serially with No. 1 (1871).
44 On the previous 5 June 1871 Leskov had written to P. K. Shchebal'skii that he was planning another work of the same kind as“Smekh i gore,” which would be all about women and would bear the title“Chortovy kukly.” The work was never written, although Leskov did use the title many years later for an entirely different story, published in Russkaia mysV, No. 1, 1890. The“Leontiev” mentioned here is Pavel Mikhailovich Leont'ev (1822-75), professor of classical philology at Moscow University and a close associate of Katkov's on the editorial staff of Russkii vestnik. (The prerevolutionary Entsiklopedicheskii slovar” Brokgauza i Efrona, XVTI-A [XXXIV] [St. Petersburg, 1896], 564, erroneously listed Leont'ev's death date as 1874. This mistake has been repeated by the editors of a long line of literary works, including Dnevnik P. A. Valueva [Moscow, 1961], II, 556; Gertsen, A. I., Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh, XXVII [Moscow, 1963], 949 Google Scholar; Nikitenko, A. V., Dnevnik, III [Leningrad, 1965], 526 Google Scholar; Ogarev, N. P., Izbrannye proizvedeniia [Moscow, 1956], II, 472 Google Scholar; Turgenev, I. S., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati vos'mi tomakh: Pis'ma, II [Moscow and Leningrad, 1961], 674 Google Scholar; and N. S. Leskov, Sobranie, X, 573, where the death date of 1874 is given as an explanatory note to Leskov's letter of 8 May 1875 telling the news of Leont'ev's death to P. K. Shchebal'skii in Warsaw.)