The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories · Chapter
Endnotes explained
A collection of explanatory footnotes providing cultural, historical, and textual context for terms and references found throughout the preceding stories.
What happens
A collection of explanatory footnotes providing cultural, historical, and textual context for terms and references found throughout the preceding stories. The notes clarify Russian military ranks, customs, religious practices, social structures, and historical events.
Themes in this chapter
War and Peace
Notes detail military life in the Crimean War, including soldierly customs, the experience of being besieged, and the mechanics of warfare.
Faith, Spirituality, and Redemption
Explanations of Russian Orthodox icons, church rituals like marriage and christening, and the schism with the Old Believers highlight the role of religion in daily and institutional life.
Social Class and Hierarchy
Notes on customs like giving a 'living' to a son-in-law as a dowry, and the distinction between different school types (classical vs. natural science), reflect entrenched social structures.
Key passages
“Rifles, except some clumsy stutzers, had not been introduced into the Russian army, but were used by the besiegers...”
The Russian army was technologically outmatched in the Crimean War, a fact Tolstoy subordinates to his focus on human character.
Highlights Tolstoy's authorial focus on human experience over military technology.
“The Khodinka is a large plain outside Moscow... It was here that the people of Moscow assembled to celebrate the Tsar’s accession, and where many hundreds were crushed to death.”
A site of public celebration turned into a mass-casualty disaster.
Provides grim historical context for a location mentioned in the stories.
“That is to say, books and pamphlets which, for political reasons, the censor would not sanction, and which it was therefore dangerous to publish.”
Literature critical of the government was banned and its publication carried serious risk.
Clarifies the reality of censorship and political repression in Tsarist Russia.