In the documents of correspondence between the Police Department and the Courland Gendarme Department for 1905, stored in the Central State Administration of the USSR, there is a list of persons placed under the public supervision of the police .1 As of January 1, 1905, Karl Lander was also listed as one of the followers of Leo Tolstoy's teachings. In the last volumes of the Soviet academic edition of Tolstoy's works, his letters to the young Latvian K. I. Lander were first published. His letters to Tolstoy are kept in the latter's archive. Correspondence between them was conducted from the beginning of 1901 until the spring of 1905. In the multi-volume History of the CPSU, Karl Lander is mentioned as a prominent Bolshevik who played a significant role in the revolutionary movement2 . Karl Ivanovich was born in 1884 in Courland, in a poor peasant family and even as a child learned hard work. Completely ruined, his parents moved to Libava (Liepaja), where his father became a laborer. Karl, after graduating from the sixth-grade city school, worked as an apprentice in a carpenter's workshop, a laborer in a factory, and a longshoreman in a port. At the age of sixteen, he passed an external examination for the title of national teacher and took the place of a junior teacher in a rural school. Even then, he showed a great interest in revolutionary literature, was associated with the Social Democrats, contributed to their propaganda among the workers, and considered himself a socialist. It was then that the young man met the famous Tolstoy Ivan Mikhailovich Tregubov, who was exiled to Libava under police supervision, and fell under his influence .3Lander became a fanatical follower of Tolstoy's ideas. He "said goodbye", did not cut his hair and did not shave, became a vegetarian. His main mottos of those years were: "I don't eat anyone" and " Don't resist evil with violence." The young teacher accordingly instructed the students-rural children. He gave them to read the wor ... Read more