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[TOLSTOY ON MARRIAGE AND INTIMACY] Brak i polovaya lyubov’ / s predisloviyem V. Chertkova [i.e. Marriage and Physical Love / With a Foreword by V. Chertkov]

Tolstoy, L.

Item #2739

New York: Rabocheye Knigoizdatel’stvo, 1919. 96 pp. 19,5x13,3 cm. In original publisher’s illustrated wrappers. Wrappers worn, rear wrapper detached, spine lacks fragments, but otherwise good.

Scarce. Text in Russian.
An extremely rare first compilation of Leo Tolstoy’s controversial thoughts on marriage and intimacy, assembled from his private letters and diaries by his close friend and one of the most prominent Tolstoyans Vladimir Chertkov (1854-1936).
The book was published by Rabocheye Knigoizdatel’stvo [i.e. Workers’ Publishing House] in New York in 1919, bypassing both the ideological restrictions of the Bolshevik regime and the severe paper shortages that plagued post-revolutionary Russia. By the late 1910s, New York had become an important center for Russian intellectuals and political exiles fleeing the turmoil of the Revolution and Civil War. The publishing house primarily catered to the Russian émigré community in America, issuing Russian literature, anarchist writings, and radical political philosophy often banned in the Russia Empire/ Soviet Union.
Leo Tolstoy’s views on love, sex, and marriage underwent a radical transformation in his later years, moving away from the more traditional portrayals of his early works toward a philosophy of extreme asceticism. He came to regard sexual desire (even within marriage) as a physical “weakness” that obstructed genuine spiritual union. These ideas were most forcefully expressed in his 1889 novella “The Kreutzer Sonata” and its subsequent “Afterword”. Upon publication, the work was banned by Russian censors and the U.S. Post Office for its alleged indecency, while the Russian Orthodox Church condemned it as heretical. This public shift sparked intense domestic conflict with his wife, Sophia Tolstaya, who publicly challenged what she viewed as a hypocritical rejection of their shared life and thirteen children.
The book serves as a theoretical companion to Tolstoy’s fictional works (especially “The Kreutzer Sonata”) and focuses on his radical revaluation of intimate relationships. In the foreword, Vladimir Chertkov introduces the volume with a letter sent from New York in October 1890, which references the pamphlet “Diana”, a psychological essay on sexual relations. Chertkov utilizes this Western text to demonstrate that Tolstoy’s ideals of restraint were not isolated eccentricities, but were finding resonance among modern thinkers worldwide. The foreword is followed by a collection of excerpts from Tolstoy’s private diaries and correspondence. In these writings, he advocates for the ideal of chastity among both the single and the married, while simultaneously addressing the absurdity of gender equality. Highlights from these excerpts include:
“If a man can be so restrained as to not know a woman at all, that is the very best thing he can do.”
“According to Church belief, the end of the world must eventually come… why, then, are people so outraged that a moral, good life would also lead to the end of the human race?”
“I believe that for the benefit of the human being one (both man and woman) must strive for total virginity, and only then will that which is meant to be emerge from a person.”
“Acknowledging a woman for what she is, a spiritually weaker being, is not a cruelty toward her; acknowledging them as equals is the true cruelty.”
“A good family life is possible only when women are raised with the conscious conviction that it is necessary to always submit to their husbands.”

Overall, an extremely rare compilation of Tolstoy’s radical views on marriage published for the Russian diaspora in New York in 1919.

Price: $450.00