Click to Enlarge Back Cover
Photo of Novogorod 1800s

Click to Enlarge Back Cover

The leather factory owned (up to 1918) by Feodor Zheltov; its name was later changed to the Venetsky Leather Factory, and is currently known as Bokoz, Inc.

The Bokoz Factory Headquarters, which once belonged to Feoder Zheltov.

For Russian version click here.

A Molokan's Search for Truth

The Correspondence of Leo Tolstoy and Fedor Zheltov

"We are simple people, simple peasants — literate, but not well-educated; we will have a lot to learn, to understand, yet at the same time we realize that these great truths for which mankind has been striving with consciously or unconsciously for eons, which it has expressed and still is expressing by various means and which it is searching for either directly or by roundabout ways, are to be found only in the unchanging, eternal moral law, which summarizes their totality in just a few words: love for one's neighbor, love for one's enemy, love for God, hence in knowledge of God, in an understanding of good and truth...The people of whom I am speaking are the sectarians — the "Spiritual Christians," or simply, Molokans." — from Fedor Zheltov's letter to Leo Tolstoy of 18 April 1887. 

I received you story. In terms of both spirit and content, it is very good...I am delightedon the whole to ocmmunicate with you. The point is not so muych to write, but to live a Christian life; that is th ehighest creative achievemnet available to mankind — from Tolstoy's letter to Zheltov of 20 July 1887

The fundamental concept of the letters...is the discussion of religious questions, along with a wide array of burning social problems. F.A. Zheltov's religious beliefs, which in many respects coincided with the views of L.N. Tolstoy, are discussed in some detail in Letter No. 15 (dated 15 October 1889), along with the tenets of the Molokan faith. The contents of this letter; as well as of several other of Zheltov's letters which are so extensive as to approximate detailed critical articles of treatises, give a picture of their author as an extremely intelligent person and at the same time a rather colorful figure. On the one hand, this Russian peasant sectarian remains unshaken in his convictions as a thinker; while on the other hand he stands out as a stranger to his own milieu by virtue of his sharply penetrating analytical mind, the breadth of his reading experience and the logic of his arguments...Zheltov's letters to Tolstoy are fraught with a multitude of interwoven themes. These include educational issues (especially relating to child-raising), the true meaning of literature, marriage, prayer (should it be in a group of in solitude? — "only in solitude," replies Tolstoy), the person of Jesus Christ, famine, drunkenness, and useful books for the people to read — from the Introduction by Andrew Donskov, University of Ottawa.

Translated from the Russian by John Woodsworth
Editor of the English Edition Ethel Dunn
Original Editor Andrew Donskov
Correspondence compiled by Liudmila Gladkova
Published 2001 by Highgate Road Social Science Research Station, Berkeley California USA, and Slavic Research Group at the University of Ottawa, Canada.