While reading the fantastic Leo Tolstoy Critical Lives biography by Andrei Zorin, I came across this interesting passage:
The most radical of the many Russian sects receptive to Tolstoy’s beliefs were the so-called Spirit Wrestlers, who rejected the institutionalized Church and had been exiled by Nicholas I to the Caucasus. In the 1890s one of their leaders was struck by the deep affinities between his beliefs and the ideas of the famous count [Tolstoy] and urged his followers to burn their weapons, denounce military service and refuse to take the oath of loyalty to Tsar Nicholas II. As a result of this, some Spirit Wrestlers were beaten to death, others were arrested or deprived of the means to survive in the severe mountain climate where they lived. Tolstoy and his associates issued an appeal on their behalf. Once again, Tolstoy himself was spared any repression, but other signatories, including Chertkov, were arrested. Because of his aristocratic connections, Chertkov was allowed to leave for England; two other prominent Tolstoyans were sent into exile. Due to Tolstoy’s intervention, the persecution of the Spirit Wrestlers began to attract international attention and the government felt compelled to grant them permission to emigrate to Canada. The resettlement of thousands of people was an expensive operation. Tolstoy therefore suspended, for a time at least, his resolve not to take money for his publications. He decided to donate the income from his new novel to help the sectarians. In the summer of 1898 he started reworking and expanding Resurrection. Having found a valid excuse for writing prose, Tolstoy worked on it with intensity and passion. He turned the ‘Koni story’ into a full-scale novel that became the most elaborate artistic representation of his philosophy, and the broadest panorama of Russian life not only in his own fiction, but, arguably, in the whole of Russian literature.
Today, RESURRECTION does not have the same literary reputation of his two great novels, but at the time, it was a massive literary event, leading to book sales that rapidly eclipsed those of WAR AND PEACE and ANNA KARENINA. And all of the proceeds went to relocating the Spirit Wrestlers, also known as the Doukhobors, to Western Canada. I highly recommend reading the full wikipedia entry on the Doukhobors, their story is fascinating. But I especially want to focus on:
A Doukhobor museum known as "Doukhobor Discovery Centre" (formerly, "Doukhobor Village Museum") operates in Castlegar, British Columbia. It contains over 1,000 artifacts representing the arts, crafts, and daily lives of the Doukhobors of the Kootenays in 1908–38.
Castlegar, BC is roughly halfway between Calgary and Vancouver, the two cities I visited recently. And on the site of this museum sits a statue of, you guessed it, Leo Tolstoy. So, I wrote recently that I felt a pull back to writing about Tolstoy because it felt like the universe was telling me to do so. Somehow the universe guided me to the literary criticism section of a bookstore in Calgary where I found both George Saunders' book "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain" and also an odd book called "A Defense of Love." When I bought them both, I had no idea that Tolstoy was in them. I'm glad that I have found my way back to the Tolstoy Project, even though I have no idea what path lies in front of me.