Youth in the Caucasus
In the summer of 1851, Nikolenka comes on vacation from officer service in the Caucasus and decides to save his brother from mental confusion at once, dramatically changing his life. He takes Tolstoy with him to the Caucasus.
The brothers arrived at the village of Starogladkovskaya, where Tolstoy first encountered the world of free Cossacks, which fascinated and conquered him. The Cossack village, which did not know serfdom, lived a full-blooded communal life.
He admired the proud and independent characters of the Cossacks, and became close friends with one of them - Epishka, a passionate hunter and a wise peasant man. At times, he was seized by the desire to drop everything and live, like them, a simple, natural life. But some obstacle stood in the way of this unity. The Cossacks looked at the young cadet as a person from a world of "masters" alien to them and were wary of him. Epishka condescendingly listened to Tolstoy's arguments about moral self-improvement, seeing in them a master's whim and "intelligence" unnecessary for a simple life. About how difficult it is for a man of civilization to return back to patriarchal simplicity, Tolstoy later told his readers in the story "Cossacks", the idea of which arose and matured in the Caucasus.
The second birth of Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy's conscious life - if we assume that it began at the age of 18 - is divided into two equal halves of 32 years, of which the second differs from the first as day from night. We are talking about a change that is at the same time spiritual enlightenment - a radical change in the moral foundations of life. In the essay “What Is My Faith?” Tolstoy writes: “That which before seemed good to me seemed bad, and that which before seemed bad seemed good. What happened to me is what happens to a person who goes out to do business and suddenly decides on the way that he does not need this business at all - and turned back home. And everything that was on the right became on the left, and everything that was on the left became on the right.
Although novels and stories brought fame to Tolstoy, and large fees strengthened his fortune, nevertheless, his writing faith began to be undermined. He saw that writers do not play their own role: they teach without knowing what to teach, and constantly argue among themselves about whose truth is higher, in their work they are driven by selfish motives to a greater extent than ordinary people who do not pretend to the role of mentors of society. Nothing brought Tolstoy complete satisfaction. The disappointments that accompanied his every activity became the source of a growing inner turmoil from which nothing could save. The growing spiritual crisis led to a sharp and irreversible upheaval in Tolstoy's worldview. This revolution was the beginning of the second half of life.
The second half of Leo Tolstoy's conscious life was a denial of the first. He came to the conclusion that he, like most people, lived a life devoid of meaning - he lived for himself. Everything that he valued - pleasure, fame, wealth - is subject to decay and oblivion. “I,” writes Tolstoy, “as if I lived and lived, walked and walked and came to an abyss and clearly saw that there was nothing ahead but death.” It is not certain steps in life that are false, but its very direction, that faith, or rather the unbelief, which lies at its foundation. And what is not a lie, what is not vanity? Tolstoy found the answer to this question in the teachings of Christ. It teaches that a person should serve the one who sent him into this world - God, and in his simple commandments shows how to do this.
Tolstoy awakened to a new life. With heart, mind and will, he accepted the program of Christ and devoted himself entirely to following it, justifying and preaching it.
The spiritual renewal of the individual is one of the central themes of Tolstoy's last novel, The Resurrection (1899), written by him at a time when he had fully become a Christian and non-resistance. The protagonist, Prince Nekhlyudov, turns out to be a juror in the case of a girl accused of murder, in which he recognizes Katyusha Maslova, the maid of her aunts, once seduced by him and abandoned. This fact turned Nekhlyudov's life upside down. He saw his personal guilt in the fall of Katyusha Maslova and the guilt of his class in the fall of millions of such Katyushas. “The God who lived in him woke up in his mind,” and Nekhlyudov acquired that point of view, which allowed him to take a fresh look at his life and those around him and reveal its complete internal falsity. Shocked, Nekhlyudov broke with his environment and followed Maslova to hard labor. The abrupt transformation of Nekhlyudov from a gentleman, a frivolous life-breaker into a sincere Christian, began in the form of deep repentance, an awakened conscience and was accompanied by intense mental work. In addition, in the personality of Nekhlyudov, Tolstoy identifies at least two prerequisites that favored such a transformation - a sharp, inquisitive mind that sensitively fixed lies and hypocrisy in human relations, as well as a pronounced tendency to change. The second is especially important: “Each person bears in himself the rudiments of all human qualities and sometimes manifests one, sometimes others, and is often not at all like himself, remaining all the same and himself. For some people, these changes are especially abrupt. And Nekhlyudov belonged to such people.”
If we transfer Tolstoy's analysis of Nekhlyudov's spiritual revolution to Tolstoy himself, we see a lot of similarities. Tolstoy was also highly prone to drastic changes, he tried himself in different fields. In his own life, he experienced all the basic motives associated with worldly ideas of happiness, and came to the conclusion that they do not bring peace to the soul. It was this fullness of experience, which left no illusions that something new could give meaning to life, that became an important prerequisite for a spiritual upheaval.
In order for a life choice to receive a worthy status, in the eyes of Tolstoy, it had to be justified before reason. With such a constant vigilance of the mind, there were few loopholes for deceit and self-deception, covering up the original immorality, inhumanity of the so-called civilized forms of life. In exposing them, Tolstoy was merciless.
Also, the 50-year milestone of life could serve as an external impetus to the spiritual transformation of Tolstoy. The 50th anniversary is a special age in the life of every person, a reminder that life has an end. And it reminded Tolstoy of the same thing. The problem of death worried Tolstoy before. Tolstoy was always baffled by death, especially death in the form of legal murders. Previously, it was a side theme, now it has become the main one, now death was perceived as a quick and inevitable end. Faced with the need to find out his personal attitude to death, Tolstoy discovered that his life, his values do not withstand the test of death. “I could not give any reasonable meaning to any act, nor to my whole life. I was only surprised how I could not understand this at the very beginning. All this has been known to everyone for so long. Not today, tomorrow, illnesses, death (and have already come) will come to loved ones, to me, and nothing will be left but stench and worms. My deeds, whatever they may be, will all be forgotten - sooner, later, and I will not be. So why bother?" These words of Tolstoy from the "Confession" reveal both the nature and the immediate source of his spiritual illness, which could be described as a panic before death. He clearly understood that only such a life can be considered meaningful, which is able to assert itself in the face of inevitable death, withstand the test of the question: “What is the trouble, for what is there to live at all, if everything is swallowed up by death?” Tolstoy set himself the goal of finding that which is not subject to death.
In 1841, village solitudes alternated with periods of noisy, as Tolstoy himself defined "disorderly" life in the capital - in Moscow, in St. Petersburg. The young man was received in high society, attended balls, musical evenings, and performances. Everywhere he was received affectionately, as the son of worthy parents, of whom a good memory has been preserved. In Moscow, Lev Nikolaevich visited the family of the Decembrists P.I. Koloshin, whose daughter Sonechka he was in love with in childhood. By the name of Sonechka Valakhina, she is depicted in the story "Childhood".
Literary pursuits are increasingly attracted to Tolstoy, he conceives a story "from gypsy life", but scattered secular life interferes with concentrated work. Dissatisfaction with himself, the desire to drastically change his life, to change the empty chatter of secular living rooms for a real business led him to a sudden decision to leave for the Caucasus.
Nikolai Nikolaevich, returning to the regiment, invited his brother to go with him, and they set off. Tolstoy recalled this trip as "one of the best days of my life." From Saratov to Astrakhan, they sailed along the Volga: “... they took a kosovushka (large boat), put a tarantass into it and, with the help of a pilot and two rowers, went somewhere by sail, where by oars downstream the water.”
For the first time he observed the nature of the southern steppes and their inhabitants - the Kirghiz, read a lot on the road. On May 30, 1851, the Toslts arrived at the Cossack village on the left bank of the Terek River - Starogladkovskaya. An artillery brigade was located here, in which Nikolai Nikolayevich served. Here began the military service of Lev Nikolaevich. By this time, the daguerreotype (a photographic image on a silver platinum), depicting the Tolstoy brothers, dates back.
Tolstoy first participated in the hostilities of volunteers (volunteers), then successfully passed the fireworks exam and was enlisted as an ensign, that is, a junior artillery officer, for military service ..
Military service in the Caucasus in those days was dangerous: there was a war with the detachments of the highlanders, united under the leadership of Shamil. Once (this was in 1853) Tolstoy was almost captured by the Chechens when their detachment was moving towards their fortress Vozdvizhenskaya in Grozny. Under Tolstoy there was a very frisky horse, and he could easily gallop away. But he did not leave his friend Sado Miserbiev, a peaceful Chechen whose horse lagged behind. They fought back successfully and rode to Grozny for reinforcements.
Military service could not occupy Tolstoy completely. A feeling of confusion, dissatisfaction with himself does not leave him in the Caucasus either. On his birthday, August 28, 1852, Tolstoy writes in his diary: “I am 24 years old, and I have not done anything yet. I feel that it is not for nothing that for eight years now I have been struggling with doubt and passions. But what am I assigned to? It will open the future." It so happened that the next day he received a letter from N.A. Nekrasov from St. Petersburg, containing praise for the manuscript of his first completed story “Childhood”.
In the Caucasus, Tolstoy made his most important choice in life - he became a writer. “... Remember, kind aunt, that you once advised me to write novels; so I listened to your advice - my studies, which I tell you about, are literary. I don’t know if what I am writing will ever appear, but this work amuses me,” Tolstoy wrote from the Caucasus to Yasnaya Polyana to Tatyana Alexandrovna Yergolskaya. He conceived the novel “Four Ages of Development”, in which he wanted to depict the process of a person’s spiritual growth, “to sharply outline the characteristic features of each era of life: in childhood, warmth and fidelity of feeling; in adolescence skepticism, in youth the beauty of feelings, the development of vanity and self-doubt.
In the Caucasus, the first part of the planned novel, Childhood, was written; later Boyhood (1854) and Youth (1856) were created; the fourth part - "Youth" - remained unwritten.
Stories about the everyday life of the army were also written - “Raid”, “Cutting down the forest”. In them, truthfully, with great warmth, the writer described the images of Russian soldiers, their unostentatious courage, devotion to military duty.
When in 1853 the war began between Russia and the combined military forces of England, France and Turkey, Tolstoy filed a petition to be transferred to the active army, as he himself later explained, "out of patriotism." He was transferred to the Danube army, and he participated in the siege of the Turkish fortress of Silistria.
November 7, 1854 Tolstoy arrived in Sevastopol. Strongly impressed by what he saw, Lev Nikolaevich wrote a letter to his brother Sergei. The accuracy of the description, the depth of patriotic feeling make the modern reader perceive this piece of family correspondence as a wonderful documentary monument of the era “The spirit in the troops is beyond any description,” writes Tolstoy. -In the days of ancient Greece, there was not so much heroism. Kornilov, circling the troops, instead of: “Great, guys!” - said: “You need to reproach, guys, will you die?” - and the troops shouted: “We will die, your excellency! Hurrah!..” and already 22,000 have fulfilled this promise. A company of sailors almost rebelled because they wanted to be removed from the battery, on which they stood for thirty days under bombs. Soldiers pull out of the bombs. Women carry water to the bastions for the soldiers ... A wonderful time ... I did not manage to be in action a single time, but I thank God that I saw these people and live in this glorious time.
Soon Tolstoy was assigned to the 3rd light battery of the 11th artillery brigade on the 4th bastion, which covered access to the city center - one of the most dangerous and critical sectors of the Sevastopol defense, which was constantly under enemy fire.
On the 4th bastion, Tolstoy studied the character of the Russian soldier well. He liked the soldier's gaiety and daring, when, for example, rejoicing in the spring, the soldiers built a flying kite and launched it over enemy trenches, causing rifle fire on themselves. What he saw and understood, he described in the story "Sevastopol day and night."
Following the first story, "Sevastopol in May" and "Sevastopol in August 1855" were written. The stories shocked contemporaries with the harsh truth about the war.
In "Sevastopol Tales" the writer for the first time formulated the principle to which he remained true throughout his entire career: "The hero of my story is the truth."
During the Great Patriotic War, the exploits of the heroes of the Sevastopol stories inspired Soviet soldiers. In the besieged Sevastopol, Tolstoy comprehended the truth that the main driving force of history is the people. The hero of the epic of Sevastopol was for him the Russian people. Together with the people, soldiers, sailors, he experienced the joy of struggle and the bitterness of defeat. What he experienced in the days of the fall of Sevastopol left an indelible mark on his soul forever. In 1902, during his serious illness in the Crimea, Tolstoy in his delirium repeated: “Sevastopol is on fire! Sevastopol is burning...” The military and historical experience of Sevastopol helped Tolstoy to create in War and Peace such realistic pictures of the war that world literature had not yet known.
Count Tolstoy in the Caucasus
The young Leo Tolstoy lived in St. Petersburg the ordinary life of offspring of noble families. He preferred revelry and dizzying novels to boring studies at universities, which he never graduated from. He dreamed of becoming comme il faut(comme il faut), but he lacked looseness and external gloss. He was looking for luck in cards - the Tolstoy family passion, but almost lost his family estate. A catastrophic loss forced him to leave an expensive light to improve things with a modest life in the provinces.
He wanted to retire to Yasnaya Polyana, the estate of his mother, nee Princess Volkonskaya, but his brother Nikolai, who served in the Caucasus, persuaded him to come to him.
Tolstoy came to the Caucasus in 1851, when the drama of Hadji Murad was approaching a tragic denouement. “It is difficult for people who have not been to the Caucasus during our war with Shamil to imagine the significance that Hadji Murad had in the eyes of all Caucasians,” Tolstoy wrote in his diary. “And his exploits were the most extraordinary ... Wherever there was a hot deal ... Hadji Murad was everywhere. He appeared where he was not expected, and left in such a way that it was impossible to surround him with a regiment.
In Kizlyar Tolstoy plunged into a new life. Raids were always expected here, prisoners were exchanged, they were proud of exotic trophies and waited for well-deserved rewards. Heroic-looking veterans shook the imagination with stories about the battles with Shamil, and the troubled Cossack women turned their heads with their semi-Asian beauty.
The war unchained people, exposed their main qualities. And the constant proximity to death and the eternity that waited for it cleansed from hypocrisy and falsehood. Tolstoy's idea of "simplification" found the most fertile ground here.
Fascinated by the Caucasus, Tolstoy decided to enlist in the military. Having passed the exam, the count entered the artillery brigade as a cadet, which was stationed near Kizlyar. He showed himself to be a brave soldier, was presented for awards, but never received one. But the experience and impressions gained in the Caucasus formed the basis of his future works.
Tolstoy made many new friends. One of them was the daring Chechen Sado, who was considered peaceful. They became kunak and were often together. In the summer of 1853, on their way from the village of Vozdvizhenskaya to Groznaya, they broke away from the main detachment, and then a detachment of highlanders attacked them. It was not far to the fortress, and Tolstoy and Sado rushed forward. Tolstoy's horse was clearly lagging behind and captivity would have been inevitable if Sado had not given his horse to the count and persuaded the highlanders to stop the pursuit. “I almost got captured,” Tolstoy wrote in his diary on June 23, 1853, “but in this case he behaved well, although too sensitively.” This case, together with a report published in the Kavkaz newspaper about how officer P. Gotovnitsky and soldier I. Dudatiev were captured by the highlanders and then fled, formed the basis of the story “Prisoner of the Caucasus”, where a mountain girl tries to help those who were captured by Russian officers. And in "The Raid" Tolstoy already wrote about how a Russian officer saves a wounded Chechen.
The Chechen Sado, who saved the great writer for the world, did not stop there. Later, he managed to win back from the officer to whom Tolstoy owed all his loss. Brother Nikolai wrote to Leo about this: “Sado came, brought money. Will my brother be pleased? - asks.
Service in the Caucasus made Tolstoy a different person. He freed himself from the romantic charm of the heroes of Marlinsky and Lermontov. He was more interested in the life and consciousness of a simple man, who was not willingly plunged into the horror of universal fratricide. Later, in The Raid, he would express it this way: “Is it possible for people to live closely in this beautiful world under this immeasurable starry sky? Can a feeling of malice, vengeance, or the passion to exterminate one's own kind be retained in the soul of a person in the midst of this charming nature? .. "
But first, "Childhood" was written. Tolstoy dared to send his essay to N. Nekrasov in Sovremennik. The story (7) was printed. The success was resounding. Tolstoy's name became famous and popular. In the intervals between military affairs, he continued to write.
Tolstoy served in the Caucasus for two years. Arriving here as a little-known private person, he left him in the rank of an officer and in the glory of a new literary talent.
In 1853, when the Crimean War began, Tolstoy had already fought in the Danube army, and then participated in the heavy defense of Sevastopol.
Under the cannonballs of the enemy, the 26-year-old Tolstoy wrote "Cutting the Forest." Together with the merciless truth about the barbaric destruction of the nature of the Caucasus and the war against the highlanders, the story depicts images of officers who dream of exchanging the "romantic" Caucasus "for a life of the most vulgar and poor, only without dangers and service."
“I begin to love the Caucasus, even posthumously, but with a strong love,” he wrote in his diary on July 9, 1854. “This wild land is really good, in which two most opposite things are so strangely and poetically combined - war and freedom.”
In the hell of the blockade, Tolstoy began to write "Sevastopol Tales", which attracted the attention of the sovereign himself.
Already in his declining years, in the world fame of a literary genius, Tolstoy returned to his old plan. "Hadji Murad" was his last major work.
After Tolstoy, the literary Caucasus became different. The focus of his stories focused on the essence of human existence, destroyed by alien political ambitions and "state interests".
In the Caucasus, and while working on Hadji Murad, Tolstoy studied Islam with particular interest, seeing in it a special stage in the moral development of mankind.
This was reflected in his letter to the Vekilov family, who asked for advice on the choice of religion for their sons, while their father was a Muslim and their mother was a Christian, and their marriage was legalized only by the will of the emperor due to the considerable merits of the cartographer Vekilov. “However strange it may be to say this,” wrote Tolstoy, “for me, who puts above all Christian ideals and Christian teaching in its true sense, for me there can be no doubt that Mohammedanism in its external forms is incomparably higher than Church Orthodoxy. . So, if a person is given only two choices: to adhere to Church Orthodoxy or Mohammedanism, for any reasonable person there can be no doubt about the choice, and everyone will prefer Mohammedanism with signs of one dogma, one God and His prophet, instead of that complex and incomprehensible theology - the Trinity , atonement, sacraments, the Virgin, saints and their images and complex services.
When humanity hoped for progress and enjoyed technical inventions, Tolstoy thought about the eternal, about universal love and the need for universal enlightenment.
The Holy Synod, not sharing the impulses of a great soul, excommunicated the writer from the church: “... Count Tolstoy, in the temptation of his proud mind, boldly rebelled against the Lord and His Christ and His holy property, clearly renouncing before everyone the mother who nursed and raised him, Orthodox Church, and devoted his literary activity and the talent given to him by God to the dissemination among the people of teachings that are contrary to Christ and the Church.
God-seeking did not satisfy him, Optina Hermitage did not heal his spiritual confusion, and world fame did not bring consolation.
It seemed to him that real life remained there, in the mountains of the Caucasus.
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In the spring of 1851, 22-year-old Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy decided to end his “careless, aimless and serviceless” life in the circle of high-society youth and, together with his brother Nikolai Nikolayevich, an artillery officer, left for the Caucasus. On May 30, 1851, they arrived at the village of Starogladkovskaya.
The majestic nature of the Caucasus shocked Lev Nikolaevich. “Suddenly he saw, about twenty paces from him, as it seemed to him at first, pure white masses with their snowy outlines and a bizarre, distinct aerial line of their peaks and the distant sky. And when he understood all the distance between him and the mountains and the sky, all the immensity of the mountains, and when he felt all the infinity of this beauty, he was afraid that this was a ghost, a dream. He shook himself to wake up. The mountains were still the same.
Tolstoy shares his first impressions of what he saw in the Caucasus with his Moscow relatives: “There are wonderful views here, starting from the area where the springs are; a huge stone mountain, the stones are piled on top of each other; others, torn off, form, as it were, grottoes, others hang at a great height, crossed by streams of hot water, which break off with a roar in other places and cover, especially in the morning, the upper part of the mountain with white steam, which continuously rises from this boiling water. The water is so hot that eggs are boiled (hard boiled) in three minutes.
The women are mostly beautiful and well built. Their oriental attire is charming, although poor. The picturesque groups of women and the wild beauty of the area is a truly charming picture, and I often admire it.
In his diaries and notebooks, Tolstoy wrote down everything he saw around him. These records were the sources of his future works, became a real encyclopedia about the Caucasus of those years. The historical value of Tolstoy's numerous notes about what he saw in the Caucasus lies in the fact that they were made by a person who directly observed the events he described. This is precisely the special significance of the works of Tolstoy, who gave us, his descendants, invaluable information about the events of the “days past” as a precious heritage. Even then, the writer, as it were, warned his descendants about the peculiarities of the Caucasus and the peoples living there, drew attention to the problems of relationships between them. Even then, Tolstoy seemed to warn us that without a fair resolution of these problems it would be impossible to ensure a stable and prosperous life for the peoples living in the Caucasus.
During his stay in the Caucasus, Tolstoy lived for a number of years in the village of Starogladkovskaya. It was there that his special, "Tolstoy" view of the world was formed, which then allowed him to create literary masterpieces recognized throughout the world. The village went down in history also because it was a fortification of the Grebensky Cossacks.
“The village was surrounded by an earthen rampart and thorny thorn bushes,” Tolstoy wrote, “They leave the village and enter it with gates high on pillars with a small lid covered with reeds, near which there is a cannon on a wooden carriage, ugly, not fired for a hundred years, once then beaten off by the Cossacks. A Cossack in uniform, in a saber and a gun, sometimes stands, sometimes does not stand on the clock at the gate, sometimes does, sometimes does not make a passing officer.
Reading the road between the villages described in detail, you involuntarily feel that you yourself are driving along this road, examining the cordons of Cossacks and towers with soldiers, that it is you who enters the village through the gate and becomes a participant in its daily life.
“The houses of the Cossacks are all raised on poles from the ground to a arshin or more, neatly covered with reeds, with tall princelings. All if not new, then straight, clean, with a variety of high porches and not stuck to each other, but spacious and picturesquely located wide streets and lanes.
In front of the bright large windows of many houses, behind the vegetable gardens, dark green rainforests rise above the huts, delicate light-leaved acacias with white fragrant flowers, and right there - brazenly shining yellow sunflowers and climbing vines of grasses and grapes.
On a wide square one can see three shops with red goods, seeds, pods and gingerbread, and behind a high fence, from behind a row of old rains, one can see, longer and higher than all the others, the house of the regimental commander with casement windows.
The description of the village organically softly and warmly intertwines the writer's appeal to nature, as an integral part of the everyday life of the measured and long-established life of the Cossacks: “There was that special evening that happens only in the Caucasus. The sun had set behind the mountains, but it was still light. Dawn covered a third of the sky, and in the light of dawn, the white-matted masses of mountains sharply separated. The air was rare, still and resonant. A long, several versts, shadow lay from the mountains on the steppe.
Tolstoy’s description of the evening nature smoothly translates to a description of the evening life of the village’s population: “... the village at this time of the evening is especially animated. From all sides, people are advancing on foot, on horseback and on creaking carts to the village. Girls in tucked-up shirts, with twigs, chatting merrily, run to the gate to meet the cattle, which crowds in a cloud of dust and mosquitoes, brought by it from the steppe.
Well-fed cows and buffaloes scatter through the streets, and Cossack women in colored beshmets scurry between them. One can hear their sharp voice, cheerful laughter and squeals, interrupted by the roar of cattle. There, a Cossack in arms, on horseback, escaping from the cordon, drives up to the hut and, bending over to the window, taps on it, and after the knock, the beautiful young head of the Cossack woman is shown and smiling, affectionate speeches are heard.
Cossacks squeal, chasing head over heels in the streets wherever there is a flat place. Through the fences, in order not to go around, climb the women. Fragrant dung smoke rises from all the chimneys. In every courtyard one hears an intensified bustle that precedes the stillness of the night.
At that time, there were other villages on the left bank of the Terek, between which a road was laid in the forest - a cordon line. On the right "non-peaceful" side of the Terek, almost opposite the village of Starogladkovskaya, there was the Chechen village of Hamamat-Yurt. In the south, beyond the Terek, the Cossack villages bordered on greater Chechnya. In the north - with the Mozdok steppe with its sandy breakers.
In the area of the villages of the Grebensky Cossacks, “The Terek, which separates the Cossacks from the mountaineers, flows muddy and fast, but already wide and calm, constantly applying grayish sand to the low right bank overgrown with reeds and washing away the steep, albeit low left bank with its roots of hundred-year-old oaks, rotting plane trees and young undergrowth. On the right bank are peaceful, but still restless auls; along the left bank, half a verst from the water, at a distance of seven and eight versts from one another, there are villages.
Grebentsy is the oldest Cossack community, formed in the late 15th and early 16th centuries in the foothills of the North-Eastern Caucasus from the Don Cossacks and fugitive peasants from the regions of the Great Moscow Principality who settled here.
The established community of Cossacks gradually settled in the Grebni tract along the Sunzha River. Under pressure from neighbors - Kumyks and Chechens, who began to attack the towns of the Cossacks, drive away their cattle, horses and take prisoner not only men, but also women and children, the combers were forced to move to the left bank of the Terek.
The new land holdings of the combers lay along the Terek River, opposite the confluence of the Sunzha River, and represented a narrow strip of fertile and wooded land: about 86 km long and 11-22 km wide. The Grebensky Cossacks were engaged in agriculture, cattle breeding, horse breeding, fishing, viticulture and winemaking.
After the Grebens moved from the right bank to the left, the Grebensky Cossack army was formed from them, which was part of the irregular troops of the Russian Empire. In 1870, a Cossack regiment was formed from the combers as part of the Terek Cossack army.
Being in the Caucasus, the Grebenians, despite the distance from Russia, preserved the Russian language and the old faith in their former purity. The most famous description of the character of the "militant, beautiful and rich Old Believer Russian population, called the" Grebensky Cossacks ", was given by Tolstoy. Describing the combers, he noted their connections with the mountain population.
“Living among the Chechens, the Cossacks were reborn with them, and adopted the customs of life and customs of the highlanders; Until now, the Cossack clans are considered to be related to the Chechen ones, and love for freedom, idleness, robbery and war are the main features of their character. Panache in dress consists in imitation of the Circassian. The Cossacks got the best weapons from the highlanders, they bought the best horses from them.
Adopting the surrounding culture of the highlanders, “well done Cossack, flaunting his knowledge of the Tatar language and, having taken a walk, even speaks Tatar with his brother. “Despite the fact that this Christian people, thrown into a corner of the earth, surrounded by semi-wild Mohammedan tribes and soldiers, considers itself to be at a high level of development and recognizes only one Cossack as a person, looks at everything else with contempt.” In his works, L. Tolstoy noted the hostility of the Grebensky Cossacks to Russian influence, which "is expressed only from an unfavorable side: constraint in elections, removal of bells and troops that stand and pass there."
Observing the life of the combers, Tolstoy wrote: “The Cossack, by attraction, hates the highlander horseman who killed his brother less than the soldier who stands by him to defend his village, but who lit up his hut with tobacco. He respects the highlander enemy, but despises the soldier who is alien to him and the oppressor. Actually, the Russian peasant for the Cossack is some kind of alien, wild and despicable creature, whom he saw as an example in the visiting merchants and Little Russian settlers, whom the Cossacks contemptuously call Shapovals.
In the year of Tolstoy's arrival in the Caucasus, the war with the highlanders continued there. Russian troops under the command of Prince A.I. Baryatinsky conquered more and more new areas, forcing the highlanders to go to the mountains. Many highlanders lost heart and went over to the side of the Russians. As a volunteer, Tolstoy participated in military operations. He observed the life of soldiers and officers, learned about the war, saw the grave consequences of raids on mountain villages.
Tolstoy fell in love with the Caucasus and decided to stay here in the military or civil service, "it doesn't matter, only in the Caucasus, and not in Russia." Moreover, he so fell in love with the life and free life of the Cossacks, their closeness to nature, that he even seriously began to think "to join the Cossacks, buy a hut, cattle, marry a Cossack woman."
Life in the Caucasus among ordinary people and rich nature had a beneficial effect on Tolstoy. He feels fresh, cheerful, happy and wonders how he could live so idly and aimlessly before. Only in the Caucasus did it become clear to him what happiness is. Happiness is being close to nature, living for others, he decides. Tolstoy also likes the general structure of life of the Cossacks; with his militancy and freedom, he seemed to him an ideal for life and the entire Russian people. But no matter how much he admired both the people and the nature of the Caucasus, how much he did not want to connect his fate with these people, he nevertheless understood that he could not merge with the life of the common people.
In the village of Starogladkovskaya, Tolstoy likes the life and way of life of the Cossacks, who never knew serfdom, their independent, courageous character, especially among women. He studies the Kumyk language, the most common among Muslim highlanders, and writes down Chechen songs, learns to ride. Among the highlanders, Tolstoy finds many wonderful, courageous and selfless, simple and close to nature people.
In officer society, he felt lonely. He was more attracted to soldiers, in whom he was able to appreciate the simplicity, kind heart, stamina and courage. But the free life of the Cossacks was especially attractive to him. He became friends with the old Cossack hunter Epifan Sekhin, listened to and wrote down his stories, Cossack songs. Tolstoy captured the character traits of this man later in the image of Uncle Eroshka in The Cossacks. He says about him: “This is an extremely interesting, probably already the last type of Grebensky Cossacks. He was of enormous stature, with a broad beard as gray as a harrier, and broad shoulders and chest. He was wearing a tattered, tucked-up zipun, on his legs reindeer pistons tied with ropes around the onuches, and a disheveled white cap. Behind his back he carried over one shoulder a filly and a bag with a hen and a falcon to bait a hawk; over the other shoulder he carried a wild dead cat on a belt; on the back behind the belt were a bag of bullets, gunpowder and bread, a horse's tail to brush off mosquitoes, a large dagger with a torn scabbard stained with old blood, and two dead pheasants. Tolstoy went hunting with this old 90-year-old Cossack, which allowed the writer to describe his appearance and numerous hunting items so colorfully.
On August 28, 1853, Tolstoy began to write the famous story "The Cossacks", on which he worked for a total of about ten years with interruptions. The title accurately conveys the meaning and pathos of the work, which affirms the beauty and significance of life. In the story, the simple, close to nature working life of the Cossacks is shown as a social and moral ideal. Labor is the necessary and joyful basis of people's life, but labor is not on the landowner's, but on one's own land. So Tolstoy decided back in the early 60s the most topical issue of the era. No one has expressed this dream of a Russian peasant in his work stronger than him. None of Tolstoy's works is imbued with such faith in the elemental power of life and its triumph as The Cossacks.
The first part of the story "Cossacks" was published in the journal "Russian Messenger" in 1863. In this work, the writer combined the description of the beautiful nature of the Caucasus, the deeply personal experiences of her hero Olenin with the majestic description of the whole people, their way of life, faith, labors and days.
While working on The Cossacks, Tolstoy restored his Caucasian impressions from memory, reread Caucasian diaries: conversations with Eroshka, and hunting adventures, and love for a Cossack woman, and night knocks on the window, and admiring Cossack round dances with songs and shooting, and dreams buy a house and settle in the village.
Tolstoy paid much attention to the folklore and ethnography of the peoples of the Caucasus and the Cossacks of the Grebensky villages. Their life, customs, history, folk art and language are captured by Tolstoy in many details and with amazing artistic accuracy.
In Tolstoy's descriptions, the charming women of the Grebensky Cossacks appear - strong, free, strikingly beautiful and independent in their actions. They were complete mistresses in their home. Tolstoy admired their beauty, their healthy build, their elegant oriental attire, courageous character, stamina and determination. In the story “Cossacks” he wrote: “Constant male, hard work and worries gave a particularly independent, courageous character to the Grebensky woman and amazingly developed her physical strength, common sense, determination and fortitude. Women for the most part are stronger, smarter, more developed, and more beautiful than the Cossacks. The beauty of the Grebenskaya woman is especially striking due to the combination of the purest type of the Circassian face with the broad and powerful build of the northern woman. Cossack women wear Circassian clothes: a Tatar shirt, beshmet and chuvyaks; but scarves are tied in Russian. Panache, cleanliness and elegance in the clothes and decoration of the huts are a habit and a necessity of their life.
To match the Cossacks and Grebensky Cossacks and men. Tolstoy described one of them in the image of the young Lukashka: “... he was a tall, handsome fellow about twenty years old ... His face and whole build expressed great physical and moral strength. Looking at his stately build and black-browed, intelligent face, anyone would involuntarily say: "Well done little fellow!"
In my small work, I noted the strong impression that the Caucasus had on the spiritual state of Tolstoy. Life in the village of Starogladkovskaya allowed him to learn and perfectly describe the history of the Grebensky Cossacks - a relatively small community of Russian people who found themselves on the outskirts of Russia, surrounded by hostile highlanders, but who firmly preserved all Russian, Orthodox faith and devotion to their Fatherland.
Given the current reality, I believe it is possible to conclude that the problems of the Caucasus and its peoples, as the writer pointed out, mainly in the region of Chechnya and Dagestan, remain unresolved, rightly unresolved. It seems that they managed to pacify another Chechen war, but tensions between the peoples of this region of Russia remain. Attacks of militants on government officials, terrorist attacks, deaths of people do not stop. The population continues to be in a state of fear for their lives.
The Cossacks of the South of Russia remain dissatisfied for the unfair taking away of their lands in favor of the Chechens, for forced resettlement, for the lack of support in this matter from the authorities. The Chechens expelled the Grebensky Cossacks by force and threats from the Cossack villages located on the left bank of the Terek. Now the entire Shelkovskaya region, its lands, are included in Chechnya, and the former villages of the Grebensky Cossacks are inhabited by Chechens, including the village of Starogladkovskaya, where Tolstoy lived during his stay in the Caucasus. Yes, now these are no longer villages, and Starogladkovskaya is no longer Starogladkovskaya, but Starogladovskaya. It's not all the same, since the village received its original name by the name of its first ataman - Gladkov. With state support, the Chechens built good houses for themselves and acquired a household there. Those who tried to resist were often killed by the Chechens, and entire families of Cossacks were slaughtered. It should be noted that the Grebensky Cossacks and the South of Russia did not reconcile themselves and intend to regain their historical lands and villages, where the Chechens never lived, but now they live on the original Cossack land! The prospect of this deep-seated problem can only be conjectured. At the same time, one thing is clear, the main thing is that it cannot be solved by force!
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