The trip started, characteristically, with a falsehood. For an underage child to go abroad required a doctor’s certificate of illness and an endorsement by provincial authorities. Those authorities gave the endorsement without reading the papers. Why should they take the trouble? The whole exercise was a charade.
Maklakov was no simplistic fan of the French Revolution, but he was dazzled by the freedom enjoyed by the French. Political hawkers would press flyers into his hands—the presidential campaign of General Boulanger was then under way—and Maklakov at first, out of Russian caution, was afraid to hold on to them. He was struck by the common ground shared by antagonistic political actors. He fondly recalled the scene after a group of Boulangists invaded an anti-Boulangist meeting, leading to a rather violent debate, with antagonistic mobs swirling out of the meeting hall and into the street. Suddenly the strains of the “Marseillaise” were heard from the hall, and minutes later the two chief adversaries were walking off arm in arm, enveloped in the music. “The whole crowd in the street suddenly followed them, caps flew into the air, all sang and applauded and embraced. The Marseillaise, the republic—for a minute reconciled everyone.”
And the French voters impressed him. Pro-republic, they were discerning enough to reject not only outright foes of the republic but also demagogues who would compromise it (Boulanger, for example). Maklakov felt that France’s freedom had taught him a lesson in a kind of conservatism—a popular readiness to preserve a relation to the historical past. Russia, he thought, had nurtured no such readiness.42
His French revolutionary hero was Mirabeau, whom he admired, he said, not for his genius, but for his commitment to Berryer’s view that “the only way to avert a revolution is to make one.” As the French Revolution’s most eloquent proponent of averting revolution through reform, Mirabeau was obviously the perfect model for Maklakov. Later, in Russia, Maklakov was given an eight-volume work that included a biography of Mirabeau and excerpts from his speeches, many of which he memorized and retained for life. Ariadne Tyrkova-Williams—Maklakov’s longtime friend and colleague in the Kadet party and the only woman member of its central committee—reported that Maklakov would recite long excerpts from Mirabeau’s oratory. His memoirs enthusiastically quote Mirabeau’s self-description as “a man who does not believe that wisdom lies in extremes or that the courage to destroy should never give way to the courage to create.”43
The Paris trip implanted in Maklakov a belief in the affirmative value of a free state, one that recognized the independence of individuals and of society and protected them from lawlessness. He linked this to the experience of the Novoselov colony, which obviously needed government to defend its legal rights from the crowd. He even wrote to Novoselov—one hopes not gloatingly—to argue that the state was necessary for the success of undertakings such as the Tolstoyans’.44
Gregarious as ever, Maklakov naturally sought out French students and, after brief frustration because he mistakenly looked first in the cheapest cafés, found the Association générale des étudiants de Paris, whose students welcomed him enthusiastically. He declared this event the decisive moment of his trip abroad. His links gave him access to the nitty-gritty of political campaigns in which the students were active—so different from politics and student life in Russia. His father was scheduled to go home before the elections, but Maklakov persuaded him to let him stay on.
On his return the Russian state hit Maklakov with an immediate reminder of its character. He had brought along books and cartoons relating to French politics and the revolution; border guards confiscated the cartoons. Wanting to share part of his experience, he wrote an article recounting the lively, innocent, and unburdened activity of the Paris students’ association. Submitting it to Russkie Vedomosti (Russian news), the first of many pieces he ultimately published there, he was pleased at its acceptance, but dismayed that the editor had shortened it in the published version. He went to see the editor, who assumed Maklakov was coming to thank him. At the end, the editor said, “This will be a lesson to me not to have anything to do with young people who know nothing.” Maklakov replied, “And it will be a lesson for me not to have to do with old people who’re afraid of everything.” In retrospect, he saw that the shortening had done no harm, preserving the article’s message about the benefit of allowing Russian student organizations to associate with international ones.45
The French students had told Maklakov of an international students’ meeting in Montpelier and said that only Russia was sending no delegate; they urged him to come. As the time of the conference approached, Maklakov found himself barred by his involvement in the disorders that had led to his time in Butyrskaia. Somehow a substitute was found, one Dobronravov. He participated and as a result was also excluded from the university for political unreliability. To assist Dobronravov’s struggle for rehabilitation, the Paris students’ association mobilized the French ambassador in St. Petersburg to vouch for his irreproachable behavior. Strange to think that such heavy diplomatic artillery was needed to address the Russian state’s paranoia! Besides this, what may have been the standard remedy was applied: vouching by Kapnist as tutor (resting, in part, on somewhat unreliable assurances from Maklakov). But by the time Dobronravov’s exclusion was canceled, he had unfortunately died of a blood infection.46
Before leaving Maklakov’s time in the natural sciences faculty, we should have a look at his initial acquaintance with Tolstoy. An indirect acquaintance began very early, as he had been given—and very much liked—a copy of Tolstoy’s account of his childhood. Later, in the second grade at the gymnasium, Maklakov had been sent with his brothers, because of diphtheria in the family, to the house of a friend of his father, V. S. Perfilev, the prototype of Stiva Oblonsky (of Anna Karenina). A man came in wearing a blouse and high boots, and Maklakov discovered that it was Tolstoy. Having already read the account of Tolstoy’s childhood, Maklakov had hoped he would show him a little attention, but he became much more interested in the dog that Tolstoy had brought with him. He remembered Tolstoy’s broad thick beard, not yet gray, just as in the photographs. The wife of Maklakov’s host explained that in his clothing Tolstoy was imitating the simple people, and that this was all right for a brilliant writer, but that children were not to copy him.47
Later, as a student, he had another sighting of Tolstoy, seeing him walking along Nikitskaia Street, looking exactly the way he looked in a photo at the beginning of a volume of collected works. Maklakov followed him, and even ran ahead so as to have a chance to meet him, deeply envying the person Tolstoy was talking with. But he didn’t dare approach and was content to contemplate him from afar.
After he’d gotten to know Tolstoy, Maklakov had an experience showing him how the writer’s mere presence inspired a similar awe in others. Maklakov and a fellow student named Singer were at the Tolstoys’ on the evening before Singer’s father, a professor of mathematics, was to deliver a lecture on Darwinism at the university. Singer told Tolstoy that his father would use the occasion to attack Darwinism, of which Tolstoy was no fan. Maklakov and his fellow student had the bright idea of taking Tolstoy to the talk, naively thinking that he could come without anyone’s noticing. Tolstoy agreed to come. Singer and Maklakov awaited him at the entrance and spirited him up a special staircase. Only a handful of people accidently spotted him as he entered. He sat in the hall behind a column, where no one could see him, but somehow word of his presence spread through the hall. People asked where he was and wouldn’t accept Singer’s and Maklakov’s assurances that he wasn’t there. The crowd’s whispering, and some members’ departures, made it impossible for the lecturer to proceed. Representatives of the event’s organizers persuaded Tolstoy to come up onto the platform, in the hopes that this would quiet people. But no: members of the audience jumped from their seats, waved handkerchiefs, applauded, and shouted. Professor Singer brought his lecture to a close, and Tolstoy disappeared. Maklakov caught up with him on the street; Tolstoy, “normally