LEO TOLSTOY WORKED AS CENSUS-TAKER 120 YEARS AGO

 
TULA,  /FROM RIA NOVOSTI CORRESPONDENT YELENA SHULEPOVA/--120 years ago, Leo Tolstoy, world's famous Russian writer, walked about a village with a pad and a suitcase in his hands as a census-taker. This was disclosed by staffers of the Yasnaya Polyana mansion-museum, formerly the mansion of the Tolstoys near Tula (the administrative centre of the Tula region, bordering on the Moscow region). Their story was timed for the national census, which is being taken in Russia.

In 1882, Leo Tolstoy got acquainted with organisers of the census in Moscow -- professor of Moscow University Yakovlev and economist-statistician Chupreyev. The writer was one of the 80 organisers of the census. His subordinates were 2,000 census-takers, but he chose to participate in the process himself. So Tolstoy asked to entrust him with an area near the Smolensk market place in Protochny Lane where the so-called Rzhanova fortress was situated. That was one of the poorest districts of Moscow.

During three days, the great writer worked hard as a census-taker. Being well aware of the villagers' troubles, Tolstoy, nevertheless, was surprised by the degree of local poverty. However, the writer did not only want to find out the level of the city's poverty, but also to help the impoverished people. As a result, an article about the census was published in the Sovremennye Izvestia newspaper soon, and a speech in the State Duma was planned to call for help for the poor. But the article did not produce the desired effect.

Having returned to Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy wrote a work "So What Shall We Do?", which aroused controversial reaction but attracted public attention to  the problems raised in it.

According to Tolstoy's great-great grandchild, director of the Yasnaya  Polyana mansion Vladimir Tolstoy, Leo Tolstoy was at the time very much  involved in studying Russia's problems with the help of the national census but later grew disappointed by the census's formal character.