Desperately trying to avoid military service. 1916

Max Voloshin (Maximilian Alexandrovich Kirienko-Voloshin, 1877-1932)
Desperately trying to avoid military service. 1916
Autograph letter signed ('MAX') to [Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy] ('Dear Alekhon'), Koktebel (Crimea), 3 October 1916.

In Russian. Two pages, 222 x 179mm.

Desperately trying to avoid military service during the First World War. 'Please don't be lazy in answering questions ... The thing is that the next conscription notice for the people's third rank of volunteer corps will include me. According to the new clarification, neither my asthma nor the deformation of my right arm will be exempt me from military service, for those like me are now having to enroll for the logistical service'. Voloshin has however heard that enrollment as a journalist would bring exemption, and asks Tolstoy if it can be done, and how: 'Can one be enrolled so as to be exempted, either concretely (with a job and income) or fictitiously as a correspondent?'. Tolstoy had offered such an opportunity in the spring, and Voloshin asks if this can be renewed – or if not, to whom else he can turn. 'All this is highly important, since I decided a long time ago that ... I will not participate in a war'; if he is conscripted but refuses, there will be consequences, but 'I am not seeking martyrdom and prefer to take all the necessary precautions beforehand ... I would really like to go only to the Asian front to Baghdad or Trebizond'. Such is his desperation for a response that he encloses a stamped addressed envelope (no longer present).

Voloshin had spent the early war years in Switzerland, only returning to Russia in 1916, and settling in Koktebel, where he was to spend the rest of his life. He was strongly opposed to the war, and his attempts to refuse to serve in the army extended to writing to the minister of war that 'I refuse to be a soldier, as a European, as an artist, as a poet ... participation in [the war] would be a crime'. In practice, he was in fact saved from conscription on medical grounds, specifically his asthma and an injury to his arm from an old bicycling accident. The recipient, A.N. Tolstoy (1882-1945, known as the 'Comrade Count') was also exempted from military service on health grounds, but as discussed here served as a war correspondent.

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