What does the fat lion need for fruitful work? Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy - as a children's writer

In 1906, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy refused to consider his candidacy for Nobel Prize. The writer explained this by his attitude towards money, but the public perceived the refusal as another waywardness of the count. Below are a few more “quirks” of Leo Tolstoy...

One of the most colorful scenes of Anna Karenina is the description of haymaking, during which Konstantin Levin (whom Lev Nikolaevich, as you know, largely wrote from himself) works in the field along with the men. But Tolstoy glorified physical labor not only through his heroes, but also through own example. Working in the fields side by side with peasants was not an extravagant lordly hobby for him; he sincerely loved and respected hard physical work.

In addition, Tolstoy, with pleasure and, what is important, with skill, sewed boots, which he then gave to relatives, mowed grass and plowed the land, surprising the local peasants who were watching him and upsetting his wife.

And not with anyone, but with Ivan Turgenev. It is worth saying that Tolstoy in his youth and even in mature age was very far from the image of a wise and calm old man familiar to us today, calling for humility and lack of conflict. In his youth, the count was categorical in his judgments, straightforward, and sometimes even rude. An example of this is his conflict with Turgenev.

Rumor has it that one of the reasons for the discord was “ love affair”, which ensued between Turgenev and Countess Maria Nikolaevna, Tolstoy’s beloved sister. But the final disagreement between them occurred when both writers were visiting the house of Afanasy Fet. Judging by the latter's memoirs, the reason for the squabble was Turgenev's story about his daughter's governess, who, for educational purposes, forced her to repair torn clothes beggars.

Tolstoy thought this manner was too ostentatious, which he told his interlocutor with straightforwardness and fervor. The verbal altercation almost led to a fight - Turgenev promised Tolstoy to “punch him in the face,” and he, in turn, challenged him to a duel. Fortunately, they did not start fighting - Turgenev apologized, Tolstoy accepted them, but a long-term discord ensued in their relationship. Only seventeen years later Turgenev came to Yasnaya Polyana to see Tolstoy, who had become enlightened and no longer so hot-tempered.

In 1882, a population census was held in Moscow. It is interesting that Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy took part in it on a voluntary basis. The count wanted to know the poverty in Moscow, to see how people live here, in order to somehow help the poor townspeople with money and business. For his purposes, he chose one of the most difficult and disadvantaged areas of the capital - near the Smolensky market on Protochny Lane, in which flophouses and shelters of poverty were located.

I.E. Repin. Leo Tolstoy in a room under the arches. 1891

Except social analysis Tolstoy also pursued charitable goals: he wanted to raise money, help the poor with work, place their children in schools and the elderly in orphanages. Tolstoy personally visited the night shelters and filled out census cards, and in addition raised the problems of the poor people’s disorder in the press and the city duma. The result was his article “So what should we do?” and “About the census in Moscow” with calls for help and support for the poor.

Over the years, Tolstoy became increasingly obsessed with spiritual quests, and he paid less and less attention to everyday life, striving for asceticism and “simplification” in almost everything. The Count is doing hard peasant labor, sleeps on the bare floor and walks barefoot until it gets cold, thereby emphasizing his closeness to the people. This is exactly how Ilya Repin captured him in his painting, barefoot, wearing a belted peasant shirt and simple trousers.

I.E. Repin. L.N. Tolstoy barefoot. 1901

He described it in the same way in a letter to his daughter: “No matter how this giant humiliates himself, no matter how mortal rags he covers his mighty body, Zeus is always visible in him, from the wave of whose eyebrows the whole Olympus trembles.”

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy plays Russian folk game towns, Yasnaya Polyana, 1909.

Lev Nikolaevich maintained physical vigor and fortitude until the very last days. The reason for this is passionate love Count to sports and all kinds of physical exercises, which, in his opinion, were mandatory, especially for those involved in mental work.

Tolstoy’s favorite discipline was walking; it is known that already at the quite respectable age of sixty years, he made three walks from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana. In addition, the count was fond of speed skating, mastered cycling, horse riding, swimming, and began every morning with gymnastics.

Writer Leo Tolstoy learns to ride a bicycle in the former building of the Manege (Cyclist magazine for 1895).

Tolstoy was ardently interested in pedagogy and even set up a school for peasant children on his estate in Yasnaya Polyana. It is interesting that a largely experimental approach to teaching was practiced there - Tolstoy did not put discipline at the forefront, but rather supported the theory of free education - children in his lessons sat as they wanted, there was no specific program, but the classes were very fruitful. Tolstoy not only personally taught his students, but also published children's books, including his own ABC.

Conflict between Tolstoy and Orthodox Church became one of the strangest and saddest pages in the writer’s biography. The last two decades of Tolstoy's life were marked by his final disappointment in the church faith and rejection of Orthodox dogmas. The writer questioned the authority of the official church and spoke critically of the clergy, insisting on a broader understanding of religion. Thus, his break with the church was a foregone conclusion - in response to public criticism of Tolstoy and a series of publications devoted to the topic of religion, the Synod in 1901 excommunicated him from the church.

Already in old age At the age of 82, the writer decided to go wandering, leaving his estate, leaving his wife and children. IN farewell letter To his Countess Sophia, Tolstoy writes: “I can no longer live in the conditions of luxury in which I lived, and I do what old people of my age usually do: they leave worldly life to live in solitude and silence the last days of their lives.” .

Accompanied by his personal doctor Dusan Makovitsky, the count leaves Yasnaya Polyana and goes on a wanderings without specific purpose. Having stopped at Optics Pustyn and Kozelsk, he decides to go south to his niece, from where he plans to move further to the Caucasus. But the last journey was cut short as soon as it began: on the way, Tolstoy caught a cold and contracted pneumonia - on November 7, Lev Nikolaevich died in the house of the head of the Astapovo railway station.

Dmitry Nazarov

“They didn’t talk about this at school...”

We all went to school, read or didn’t read, were interested or not. Many did not like literature lessons, but they fell in love with reading, discovered great writers, and realized that even works that were “boring” at school can reveal an unknown world. How much longer unknown facts remained outside the strict limits school curriculum, which they are now still trying to reduce every year! As in the manifesto of the Cubo-Futurists: “Abandon Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc. and so on. from the Steamboat of Modernity,” but even here, if you look at it, it’s all about something else.

In our new section, we will tell you something about famous writers that was not in school textbooks. Let's start with one of the most famous Russian writers and thinkers XIX century - Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

Biography

Russian writer, publicist, philosopher, moralist, religious teacher and teacher. Born into the family of a count and, according to tradition, received an excellent home education, then studied at Kazan University and was typical representative"golden youth" He did not complete the course and went to Moscow, where he lived, as he himself said, “very carelessly, without service, without classes, without purpose.”

Youth

Tolstoy, for us wise and sedate, in his youth lost the building of his inherited estate - the Yasnaya Polyana estate, where the writer was born and spent his childhood. The neighbor who won dismantled this estate and took it to himself as a trophy, but Tolstoy, for one reason or another, was never able to return this house. Debts began to overwhelm young Leo, and he leftto the Caucasus. The impressions from this trip were so strong that I was born « Sevastopol stories» . At first, when the stories were first published, everyone could not believe that it was Leo Tolstoy who wrote them. After all, he didn’t speak very well, and he didn’t like to write letters.

Having moved to St. Petersburg, Leo Tolstoy began to make “literary acquaintances.” His literary circle included Sovremennik employees - Nekrasov, Turgenev, Goncharov, Chernyshevsky and others. About Turgenev - separately: Tolstoy brought him to tears, mocking his, as he put it, “democratic thighs.” Their quarrel lasted for seventeen years! Duels were scheduled and canceled, many letters were sent - sometimes angry, sometimes humble. And only at the age of 50 Tolstoy took the first steps towards reconciliation, which ended the seventeen-year confrontation between the two giants of Russian and world literature.

Tolstoy traveled a lot, partly out of curiosity. He studied Western European educational methods. What he saw led him to decide that Russian education is fundamentally wrong, especially regarding the peasantry. These convictions were so strong that Tolstoy abandoned literature for some time and established a school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana. There he published his journal on pedagogy and introduced his educational theories.

Family

At the age of 34, he marries seventeen-year-old Sofya Andreevna Bers. They lived together for 48 years and gave birth to 13 children. After his marriage, Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “Incredible happiness... It cannot be that this all ends only in life.” There are many stories about this amazing relationship, and we recommend the book to you Tikhon Polner "Leo Tolstoy and his wife." Leo Tolstoy was a very contradictory person, with a difficult character; there was a constant struggle in his soul, which sometimes even those closest to him did not know about. Sofya Andreevna repeated more than once: “I lived with Lev Nikolaevich for forty-seven years, but I never found out what kind of person he was...”. The help that Sofya Andreevna provided to her husband is difficult to overestimate. It was she who rewrote his drafts. So, for example, she rewrote the novel “War and Peace” more than 7 times.

In his later years, Tolstoy struggled to reconcile his spiritual beliefs with the tensions he created in his family life. His wife not only did not agree with his teachings, but also did not approve of his students, who regularly visited Tolstoy on the family estate. In an effort to avoid his wife's growing discontent, in October 1910 Tolstoy and his youngest daughter Alexandra went on a pilgrimage, in which Lev Nikolaevich died on November 20, 1910.

Literature

Tolstoy had a strict attitude towards literature. Until his last days, he retained his passionate and selfless enthusiasm and did not recognize “works” without the conviction that people need them. “...I devote myself to what I love, like a drunkard, and work with such passion that I am completely absorbed in work.” Tolstoy looked at writing as an activity in which “you prepare to live and die on the basis of the words that you express.” He told his fellow writers: “You need to write only when every time you dip your pen, you leave a piece of meat in the inkwell...”.

Spirituality

Tolstoy is a famous vegetarian. At the age of 57, he was visited by William Frey, a follower of the teachings of Auguste Comte. Then Tolstoy first learned about the preaching of vegetarianism - the statement that the structure of man, his teeth and intestines proves that man is not a predator. Lev Nikolaevich immediately accepted this teaching and, after realizing the resulting theory, immediately abandoned meat and fish. Not immediately, but his family followed his example.

Tolstoy's relationship with the church is not the simplest. Lev Nikolaevich's courage, honesty and openness in defending his views were the subject of controversy. And the final impetus that prompted the synod to excommunicate the writer from the church was his novel “Resurrection.” In his works, Tolstoy convincingly criticized the basic tenets of the Orthodox Church and severely denounced its ministers.

In 1891 Tolstoy at the age of 63 relinquished ownership of all his works , passing it on to the general free use all works written after 1881 (the novel “Resurrection”, the stories “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, “Notes of a Madman”, “The Kreutzer Sonata”, “The Devil”, “Mother”, the stories “After the Ball”, “Poor People”, “ Divine and Human" and many other works); right to publish works of art, written by him before 1881, he gave to his wife.

IN last years In his life, L.N. Tolstoy collected the most important thoughts of the greats and systematized them in the form of aphorisms for every day. Quotes from the book “Thoughts for Every Day” are a real treasure of eternal truths and brilliant thoughts.

"When I thought about writing the whole the real truth, without hiding anything bad in my life, I was horrified by the impression that such a biography should have made... [But] if you write a biography, then you must write the whole real truth. Only such a biography, no matter how ashamed I may be to write it, can be of real and fruitful interest to readers.”.

And in his diary of 1895 (March 27), outlining his first will, he writes: “The diaries of my former single life, having selected from them what is worth it, I ask you to destroy... not because I would like to hide my bad life from people: my life was an ordinary crappy life of unprincipled young people, but because these diaries , in which I wrote down only what tormented me with the consciousness of sin, produce a false, one-sided impression and represent... But by the way, let my diaries remain as they are. From them it is clear, at least, that, despite all the vulgarity and trashiness of my youth, I still was not abandoned by God and, even as I grew older, I began to understand and love Him a little.”

In 1849, Lev Nikolaevich, who was then only 20 years old, began writing on his family estate Yasnaya Polyana. But soon Tolstoy was forced to stop these studies due to admission to military service. He resumed pedagogical work in 1859, already being famous and a participant in the famous defense of Sevastopol. Lev Nikolaevich opened a school for peasants in Yasnaya Polyana, and also actively contributed to the opening of several more schools in nearby villages. By in my own words, he then experienced a three-year passion for this matter.

Unfortunately, Tolstoy’s progressive (for those times) teaching methods, as well as his regular meetings with teachers and like-minded people, seemed suspicious to the local authorities. In 1862, gendarmes searched Tolstoy's house in Yasnaya Polyana, looking for evidence of seditious activities. Lev Nikolaevich was extremely offended by this and, as a sign of protest, stopped teaching.

Subsequent pedagogical activity of the writer

The break lasted 7 years. Tolstoy resumed classes with children in 1869, and in 1872 the book he compiled, “The ABC,” was published. Three years later, Lev Nikolaevich published “New” and four “Books for Reading”.

Tolstoy’s “On Public Education” attracted much public attention, in which the writer sharply criticized the activities of the zemstvos on issues of educating the peasants. Subsequently, Tolstoy joined one of the zemstvos and made a great contribution to the creation of new schools. In addition, he developed a peasant teachers' seminary. Tolstoy himself jokingly called such a seminary “a university in bast shoes.” Lev Nikolaevich presented the project of this seminary to the Ministry of Public Education and in 1876 was able to achieve its approval. However, zemstvo councils reacted negatively to Tolstoy's project. This dealt the writer such a strong psychological blow that he again decided to stop pedagogical activity.

Only in old age did Lev Nikolaevich return to teaching. In the 90s of the 19th century, he began to promote his moral and philosophical concept of human upbringing and his attitude to life and society, which later became known as “Tolstoyism.” And in 1907–1908. on the threshold of his 80th birthday, he again taught classes with children.

Since the late 1880s. Tolstoy persistently advocates the fight against drugs, drunkenness, and “intoxicating” drugs; Founds the temperance society “Consent Against Drunkenness.” In 1888, he wrote two articles-appeals against drunkenness: “To young people” and “It’s time to come to your senses!”, in the next - articles “To God or Mammon?”, “Feast of Enlightenment on January 12th”, edited three articles by F. A. Zheltov about drunkenness, spoke about the dangers of wine and tobacco even at a volost meeting, but, according to his admission, “received a rebuff” (Diary, October 3, 1889).

Tolstoy begins the article with a series of questions: “What is the use of intoxicating substances - vodka, wine, beer, hashish, opium, tobacco and other less common ones: ether, morphine, fly agaric?.. Why do people need to become intoxicated? Ask a person why he started drinking wine and drinks...” Tolstoy calls for abstinence from the use of intoxicants, alcohol and other narcotic substances.

“The sin of intoxication is that a person, instead of using all the forces of his attention to eliminate everything that can cloud his consciousness, revealing to him the meaning of his true life, tries, on the contrary, to weaken and darken this consciousness by external means of stimulation.”

“We must,” Tolstoy convinces, “as far as it depends on us, try to place ourselves and others in conditions under which the clarity and subtlety of thought would not be impaired,” and not complicate “this work of consciousness by consuming intoxicating substances.”

“Those drunkards who get drunk in taverns and taverns are usually considered reprehensible, despicable people.<...>The same people who buy wine at home, drink every day and in moderation and treat their guests to wine - such people are considered good and respectable people and do nothing wrong. Meanwhile, these people are more worthy of condemnation than drunkards.”

“Why do different people there are different habits, but the habits of smoking and drinking are the same for everyone, both rich and poor? - Tolstoy asked and answered himself: “And because most people are dissatisfied with their lives” and “people, both poor and rich, try to forget themselves by smoking or drinking.” Many people strive to be in a state of mild alcoholic euphoria, when, according to Tolstoy’s subtle observation, it seems to a person “that he suddenly has a lot of thoughts.”

According to Tolstoy, people “become stupefied” solely in order to relieve tension from dissatisfaction with life.

Tolstoy claims that “the reason for the worldwide spread of hashish, opium, wine, tobacco” “is the need to hide the instructions of conscience from oneself. People know this property of wine<...>drown out the voice of conscience and deliberately use it for this purpose.” Tolstoy convincingly proves that “the use of intoxicating substances in large or small quantities, periodically or constantly, is caused by the same reason - the need to muffle the voice of conscience in order not to see the dissonance of life with the demand of consciousness.” He is concerned about the poisonous effect of the “insane custom of drinking wine.”

Tolstoy's idea is simple and convincing. Intoxication is a source of immoral acts: “A sober person is ashamed of what a drunk person is not ashamed of”; cause serious crimes: “Nine-tenths of crimes are committed like this: “For the courage to drink...”.”

Tolstoy is also upset by the fact that “not only do people themselves become stupefied in order to drown out their conscience, knowing how wine works, they, wanting to force other people to do an act that is contrary to their conscience, stupefy them.”

Tolstoy notes with regret: “We do not know the degree of height to which people who drink and smoke would reach if they did not drink and smoke.”
“What does vodka bring to a person?” - asks Tolstoy and answers himself: “The most terrible consequence of drunken drinks is that wine darkens the mind and conscience of people: people from drinking wine become ruder, stupider and angrier.”

Also in the article, Tolstoy refutes the widespread opinion about the admissibility of “moderate consumption of wine and tobacco”: “Of course, this is for the educated class. The educated classes are very uneducated in this regard,” Tolstoy noted in a letter to Rachinsky.

The article first appeared under the title "Drinking wine and smoking tobacco" translated into English language in the February issue of the London magazine “Contemporari Review” and in a reverse translation under the title “On Wine and Tobacco” was published in A. S. Suvorin’s newspaper “New Time” (1891, Nos. 5354, 5355, 5357, 5358).

Published in Russian as a preface to P. S. Alekseev’s book “On Drunkenness” (ed. magazine “Russian Thought”, 1891); also ed. Odessa Society for the Fight against Drunkenness (Odessa, 1891, edition 500 copies); ed. “The Mediator” (1891, edition 12,000 copies)

The Tula children who came to visit Tolstoy in 1907 remembered this trip not only because they visited the great writer, but also because they were given tea there.

L.N. Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana with children from Tula. 1907

Postcard (artist – E. M. Boehm).

Pupils of the Smolny Institute noble maidens in the dining room.

N. P. Bogdanov-Belsky. Teacher's name day. 1910

K. V. Lemokh Morning in the Swiss. 1874

On June 26, 1907 (old style), a very numerous guests: as many as 800 children along with teachers. They spent the whole day with the writer, and before leaving they were given tea. This important detail, although someone may say: “Just think, tea is a great thing!” But in fact, the tea for those guests who came to Tolstoy that day was quite delicious treat. Now, of course, it is difficult for us to imagine that at the beginning of the 20th century, tea could have been a luxury for someone. However, that is exactly what happened.

A free trip for the children of Tula workers to Yasnaya Polyana was organized by Ariy Davydovich Rotnitsky - public figure and teacher, one of the first organizers and popularizers of preschool education in Tula province. His industrialist father really wanted his son to become a mining engineer. But he was drawn to the children of workers and peasants. This is how he himself wrote about it: “I wanted to work among the children of the outskirts, I wanted to make the childhood of these stepsons of the Russian state joyful, to tear them out of darkness and spiritual isolation.” In 1907, he became a member of the board of the Tula Department of Public Health.

In his memoirs, Rotnitsky wrote about the trip to Yasnaya Polyana: “Everyone was united by the idea of ​​​​a trip to Tolstoy with our students and students. We wrote a letter to Lev Nikolaevich and asked if he could accept children. He agreed. We did not talk about the trip, since it was known that, by order of the authorities, the clergy and teachers were forbidden to meet with Tolstoy.”

Guests visited the great writer often, but for 800 of them to come, this had never happened before! The children in Yasnaya Polyana spent the whole day outdoors: swimming, dancing in circles, playing, and studying. physical exercise under the guidance of a great writer. The Tolstoys greeted the children hospitably and cordially. Tables and benches were placed near the house, and samovars were brought. Drank tea. According to Sofia Andreevna, “sixty buckets of tea were drunk.” L. N. Tolstoy’s neighbor, the merchant E. P. Gogolev, brought sweets, gingerbreads, fruits, and nuts for the children’s tea party. They joked and laughed a lot at the table, and then Sofya Andreevna took pictures of everyone.

Of course, until the end of their lives, the children and their teachers did not forget the trip and how Count Tolstoy himself treated them to tea - and not only because of Tolstoy, but also because of the tea itself. For children from the village, who were sent to learn the craft of tailors, shopkeepers, hairdressers, and bakers, tea at that time was a luxury - the greater the more difficult the daily work. From 5-6 o'clock in the morning they were on errands all day, there was no time left for studying, and the students went to bed later than everyone else. They also had to work around the house: fetch water, chop wood, run to the store, and even look after the owner’s children.

We know about their lives from the stories of writers. V. A. Gilyarovsky in the story “Olsufevskaya Fortress” wrote: “single<мастеровые>with the boy students they spent the night in the workshops, slept on workbenches and on the floor, without any bedding: a pillow - a log in their heads or their pants, if they were not already soaked. By six o'clock the bucket samovar was boiling, set in advance by the students, who had to get up before everyone else and fall asleep after everyone else. Everyone has their own mug, or just some kind of jar. The tea is the owner's, but the bread and sugar are their own, and not everyone has it. In some workshops, boys were given tea only twice a year - at Christmas and Easter, in a mug:

“Don’t fool around!”

For boys who could not buy bread and sugar, the owner’s free tea was not only a means to quench their thirst, but also food, it was not for nothing that they said “have some tea,” and invited them to tea: “Come on, have some tea!” And tea in such cases, as Gilyarovsky testifies, it was just boiling water with chicory brewed for coloring. But there might not have been such tea. In Chekhov’s story, Vanka Zhukov, apprenticed to a shoemaker, wrote to his grandfather Konstantin Makarych: “But there is no food. They give you bread in the morning, porridge at lunch, and bread in the evening, but for tea or cabbage soup, the owners themselves crack it.” And there were also beatings and beatings for the slightest infractions.

In a word, for ordinary children then tea was more than tea, and many of them, probably having tasted tea from Leo Tolstoy, could repeat the words from the pre-revolutionary postcard of the artist E.M. Bem: “Let's drink some tea and forget the melancholy!” Yes, and we now, knowing what tea was for them, look differently at the painting by N. P. Bogdanov-Belsky, who depicted children and their teacher at the same table, and at the painting by K. V. Lemokh “Morning in the Swiss, in which we see a girl who has apparently dropped in for tea.

It was also difficult for those who, while studying, ate at government expense. Let us cite, as an example, lines from the memoirs of a student of the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens: “It’s hard to imagine how nutritious our food was. For breakfast we were given a small, thin slice of black bread, lightly greased with butter and sprinkled with green cheese - this tiny sandwich constituted the first meal. Sometimes, instead of green cheese, there would be a thin piece of meat on the bread, like a piece of mail, and for the main course we would get a tiny portion of milk porridge or pasta. That's all breakfast." The food portions were small, in the morning and evening there was another mug of tea and half a French roll. The tiny portions and poor quality of food were explained quite simply: in Smolny, as in all government institutions, theft flourished. There is a well-known phrase from Nicholas I, who came to the institute with an unexpected inspection: “My soldiers are fed better...”

In urban conditions, poor people who did not have the means to support themselves could drink tea and have a snack for free in “people's canteens.” The first such canteen was opened in St. Petersburg in 1892. The menu in the “people's canteens” was extremely monotonous, but quite high demands were placed on food preparation. In 1908, there were already nine such canteens in the city; in addition to them, another children’s canteen and one student canteen were opened. The opening of public canteens has become a common form of charity.

A special category was represented by canteens for poor students. They did not serve drinks, but for a small fee you could buy hearty lunch. They did not pay taxes, and even received subsidies. They were clean and tidy, often maintained by the owner and her family. Many of these canteens were located around educational institutions: y Institute of Technology, near the university. According to the memoirs of F. F. Raskolnikov, a student at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic (now St. Petersburg Polytechnic University), in the student canteen in 1912 you could buy a plate for 4 kopecks sour cabbage soup, for 8 kopecks pasta, sprinkled with liquid lard. “After swallowing lunch, I counted the money and saw that I could drink tea: a glass of tea with lemon cost three kopecks, and without lemon - two kopecks. In the next room, a copper-red samovar was boiling on the counter, and a girl in a white robe and white handkerchief warmly handed me a glass of liquid yellowish tea.” It is interesting to note that at that time bread was free in public catering establishments; it lay in piles in pieces in deep plates. Taking only tea for money, you could eat as much bread as you wanted and this would satisfy your hunger.

At home, instead of tea, students often brewed chicory, a quarter-pound round stick of which cost 3 kopecks, and was enough for four to ten days.

Princess M.K. Tenisheva - public figure, artist, teacher, philanthropist and collector - founded in St. Petersburg art studio, which was located in a place where there was neither a canteen nor a pastry shop nearby, and in order not to walk far, many studio residents went hungry until the evening. Tenisheva herself came to their rescue. “To eliminate this inconvenience, I came up with the idea of ​​setting up something like a tea room in a special room, next to the workshop,” the princess recalled. – At twelve o’clock a huge samovar with a large number of rolls was served. At first, my artists were embarrassed to use free tea, they refused under various pretexts, some even ran away until twelve o’clock, but then little by little they got used to this custom, especially since I first came to drink tea with them during breaks, inviting them to join me.”

Tenisheva was not the only one who fed her students - for example, famous artist S.I. Gribkov, from whose workshop many came wonderful artists, organized parties for his students on holidays, where vodka and beer were not allowed, but only tea, gingerbread, nuts and dancing to the guitar and accordion.