les événements actuels en Russie
Current Events in Russia
Leo Tolstoy
Translation by J.W. Bienstock
We published in our previous editions and in our first five series, 1900-1904, so great a number of cahiers of literature — short stories, novels, dramas, dialogues, poems and tales — so great a number of cahiers of history and philosophy; so great a number of cahiers of action; and these cahiers of literature, history and philosophy, of action were so considerable that we cannot think of giving here even the most succinct statement of them; to know what has appeared in the first five series of the cahiers, it suffices to send a money order for five francs to M. Andre Bourgeois, administrator of the cahiers, 8, rue de la Sorbonne, ground floor, Paris, fifth arrondissement; one will receive in return the brief analytical catalogue, 1900-1904, of our first five series.
We have had, through the care of Leon Deshairs, a photograph of Tolstoy and Gorky walking together at Yasnaya Polyana; this photograph was taken by one of Tolstoy’s daughters; it was communicated to Deshairs by Dr. Schlepianoff; we have had it reproduced in three hundred copies; we sell it for two francs.
Our old subscriber M. J.-W. Bienstock brought us several years ago the first of the two fragments one is about to read; one will see below why this fragment presents a truly unique interest; the moment seems to us to have come to bring it forth, at the moment when the parliamentary debates begin in France from which may result this operation called the separation of the Churches and the State, and which it would be better to name and effect the disestablishment of the Churches.
The text one is about to read has not yet been published in France; it will doubtless not be published there outside these cahiers, at least for some time and until its publication in the definitive editions; it is in fact not included in the volume that M. Bienstock is preparing at the same time as we are preparing this cahier, and which is about to appear imminently.
Under this title: Last Words, M. Bienstock gathers into a corpus the various manifestations we have of Tolstoy’s thought during these last three years; these different manifestations and texts collected and assembled form a volume of three francs fifty from the editions of the Mercure de France; it can be ordered from now at the cahiers’ bookshop.