This chapter traces the complex and tense relationship between Tolstoy and the Russian Orthodox Church. It provides basic background information on the role of the Church in Russian history and in Tolstoy’s time. It reveals that even as Tolstoy rebelled fiercely against the Church, it was the rebellion of a man who was deeply immersed in Orthodox thought and practice; as such, his rebellion itself was colored by the Church. Similarly, representatives of the Orthodox Church found it necessary to publicly respond to Tolstoy’s challenges to Orthodoxy in order to demonstrate the importance of the Church in modern times. Thus, Tolstoy and Church representatives shaped their systems of thought in discussion (and conflict) with each other.

The final chapter in the saga of the Russian Church and its relationship to Tolstoi came with the prolonged polemics over his burial in 1910. This controversy started immediately after the promulgation of the Circular Letter, which laid down a ban on burial with Church rites. The chapter contains a wealth of new material: Probably the most important concerns the solution eventually agreed by the Church leadership in an attempt to extricate itself from the predicament in which it had placed itself with the requiem ban: While Tolstoi was drawing his last breath at the Astapovo railway station, the prelates finally decided to grant him burial in consecrated soil – with non-Orthodox, non-confessional but still Christian rites. However, this decision was not put into effect, or published, due to opposition from Tolstoi’s family. In that way, Tolstoi’s wish not to have any priests at the graveside during the burial was respected. However, the story did not end here, as an anonymous priest three years after his death turned up at Iasnaia Poliana and asked permission from the widow, Sof’ia Andreeva, to perform a requiem at the grave. When this was granted and became public, a new round of polemics ensued.

For most people today, in Russia and elsewhere, all they know about Tolstoi’s relationship to the Orthodox Church is the Circular Letter that the Holy Synod issued against him in February 1901, usually referred to as his “excommunication.” The promulgation of this document was perhaps the most egregious miscalculation made by the Russian Church leadership in its struggle against Tolstoi, and repercussions of this “scandal” continue to reverberate even today. The background and intentions underlying this spectacular act have been widely misunderstood, primarily for two reasons. Firstly, Soviet researchers – who for a long time were the only ones with access to Soviet archives – systematically misrepresented their findings, attempting to prove that the initiative to this public announcement had been taken by tsarist state authorities, not by the church leaders. However, the archival documents they referred to and selectively quoted clearly show that the decision was taken in the offices of the Holy Synod itself. Secondly, the Church was trying to do two things at once: to warn the faithful against Tolstoi’s pernicious teachings, and to lure him back into the fold. As a result, they tried to present their Circular as being both an excommunication, and not an excommunication.