Our Notes & References

Most likely the first separate edition of Tolstoy’s celebrated novella focusing on Russia’s southern expansion towards the Caucasus.

Extremely rare: the only other example we could find is at RGB (Moscow).

“A ruthless depiction of Russian colonial policy based on documented facts” (Kirienkov, our translation here and below), Hadji-Murat is viewed by Harold Bloom as his “personal touchstone for the sublime of prose fiction, to me the best story in the world”.

Tolstoy rewrote the story multiple times and decided not to publish it during his lifetime (Sergeenko); it turned out to be his “most painful text, and the most intimate: he did not part with the manuscript until 28 October 1910, his last day in [his family estate in] Yasnaya Polyana” (Kirienkov).

After Tolstoy’s death on 20 (7) November 1910, his youngest daughter Aleksandra, together with Vladimir Chertkov, his follower and the legatee of his posthumous copyright, published Hadji-Murat as part of the three-volume edition of the Posthumous Writings of L. N. Tolstoy (Moscow, Sytin, 1911-12). All proceeds from the publication were used to purchase the lands of Yasnaya Polyana from Tolstoy’s heirs, with the intention of giving the land to the peasants. In accordance with Tolstoy’s will, his works from the Posthumous Writings were allowed to be reprinted free of charge immediately. However, to gather sufficient funds to fulfil her father’s wish, Aleksandra requested that publishers “delay the release of their editions for six months from the time of the final volume of her edition, i.e., until July 5, 1912”. Simultaneously with Alexandra’s edition, Chertkov published the same collection in Berlin without censor’s cuts, under ‘special authorisation’.

The present edition was published by Posrednik shortly after July 1912 with the same text, comments, and explanations as in Aleksandra’s edition, and with “…….” replacing the inevitably censored parts about the autocrat Nicholas I and the brutality of the Russian army in the Caucasus. Notably, this edition also includes a vocabulary of “explanations of some oriental and folk words and special terms”, which is significantly longer than the one in the original Posthumous Writings.

Chertkov played a key role in establishing Posrednik, which was founded in 1884 at Tolstoy’s initiative to produce affordable fiction and moral literature for the general public. Most of Posrednik’s editions were consecutively numbered, with Hadji-Murat listed as #1090. The publisher advertised it in its catalogues at least as early as the release of the #1080, Posthumous Notes of the Hermit Fedor Kuzmich (1912).

Another edition of Hadji-Murat was also published in 1912, by Golike and Vilborg, with illustrations by Aleksandr Petrovich Safronov and with a text similarly reprinted from the three-volume Posthumous Writings. This edition is scarce, but not as rare as ours rare: we found holdings at Harvard (Kilgour 1207), BL, RNB, RGB, and one copy passing through the market in Russia. We could not identify which edition came out first, but given that Chertkov took part in the initial edition of the Posthumous Writings in Moscow, the immediate republication in Berlin, and that he was affiliated with Posrednik, the present edition most likely was published prior to the one by Golike and Vilborg.

An important historical figure, Hadji Murad was initially a supporter of the famous Daghestani chief Imam Shamil. Due to inter-tribal conflicts, Shamil captured Hadji-Murat’s family and held them hostage, forcing Hadji-Murat to seek help from the Russians. The story ended tragically, after Tsar Nicholas I thwarted the initial plan. As Tolstoy himself wrote, he created this ‘long-standing Caucasian history, part of which he saw, heard part from the eyewitnesses and imagined part of himself’. Tolstoy was serving in the Caucasus himself, when in 1851, he heard about ‘Shamil’s number two, a certain Khadzhi Murat’ defecting to the Russian government. In July 1896, he remembered Khadzhi Murat after seeing a burdock bush on ‘a twice-ploughed, black-earth fallow field’: he recorded the incident in his diary, and later made a thistle bush a symbol for Khadzhi Murat’s strength.

The work on the novella began in 1902, when during his time in the Crimea, Tolstoy made a chance acquaintance with the Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, the grandson of Tsar Nicholas I. “Upon returning to Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy quickly contacted the Grand Duke, requesting research assistance with his newest project […]. The Grand Duke proved extremely helpful, offering Tolstoy even more than he expected, including materials from the Tiflis Archives on the Caucasus. Simultaneously, Tolstoy also came in contact with Anna Korganova, the widow of an officer who had personally guarded Khadzhi Murat during his captivity. Tolstoy frequently corresponded with Korganova, asking extremely detailed questions regarding Murat’s behavior and overall demeanor. Korganova’s responses proved vital to Tolstoy’s novel, and within two more years, Tolstoy had completed Khadzhi Murat” (Eric Souder).

Provenance

Yerevan City Primary Men’s College #2 [Erivanskoe II gorod. nachalnoe muzhsk. uchilishche] imperial stamp on title.

Bibliography

Terras 452 and 455; not in Kilgour and not in Harvard; Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, Macmillan, 1995; Kirienkov, Igor. “Khadzhi-Murat”, Polka academy, 2019; Sergeenko A. P. “Khadzhi-Murat” Lva Tolstogo. Istoriia sozdaniia povesti, Sovremennik, 1983; Souder, Eric M. “The Circassian Thistle: Tolstoy’s Khadzhi Murat and the Evolving Russian Empire”, Miami University

Oxford, Ohio, 2014.