An unanswered letter: Nadezhda Sokhanskaya (Kokhanovskaya) and her rejoinder to the confession of count Leo Tolstoy

Nadezhda Sokhanskaya (pen name Kokhanovskaya; 1823-1884) was an author close to the circle of Slavophiles and wrote the first developed rejoinder to the Confession of Leo Tolstoy. Kokhanovskaya's rejoinder was first intended as a personal leter to the Count, and was sent to him in time for Great Lent in 1883. Kohanovskaya intended to follow the principle outlined in the Gospel and admonish the author of the Confession privately. However, when during an entire year no answer followed from Yasnaya Polyana, Kokhanovskaya published her text as an open leter in the newspaper Grazhdanin. In preparation for this publication, she made several copies of the leter and showed them to her friends, including the Aksakov family. Te main line of argument in the leter is to reproach Tolstoy as one who scandalizes “the litle ones” and to convince him using arguments not from theology, but from Russian religious poetry. When the newspaper Novoye Vremya came out in defence of Tolstoy, Kokhanovskaya wrote a new article, which, in turn, provoked the response of Viktor Burenin, who unequivocally ended the discussion, writing that Kokhanovskaya's arguments are of interest only to herself. In 1898, Kokhanovskaya's article was reprinted in the Neo-Slavophile journal Russkoye Obozrenie