In 1909, the book “Alexander Ertel’s Letters” was published in the Moscow-based printing house of Ivan Dmitriyevich Sytin. The collection of letters was prepared for printing by Alexander Ertel’s widow — Mariya Vasilyevna Ogarkova-Ertel. The editor and author of the preface was the philosopher, publicist and translator Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon, who conducted literary research on Pushkin, Chaadayev and Turgenev.
In his introductory article “The Worldview of Alexander Ertel”, he analyzed Ertel’s letters and facts of his biography and was able to outline his basic views on society, religion and relationships between people, as well as the general rules that guided the writer throughout his life and a peculiar system of his ideas and thoughts based on the “philosophy of being busy”.
Mikhail Gershenzon wrote, “Ertel needed a worldview, just like a craftsman needs technique to practice their art or someone who sits down to play cards needs to know the rules of the game. He was above all a man of action. He had a natural endowment of great vitality as if some inexhaustible spring inside filled him with energy and willpower.”
For the first time, one book comprised Alexander Ertel’s letters to his contemporaries, prominent Russian writers and public figures Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko, Vladimir Viktorovich Lesevych, Viktor Alexandrovich Goltsev, Pavel Alexandrovich Bakunin and Zinaida Sergeyevna Sokolova. A significant part of the book consists of the writer’s letters to Vladimir Grigoryevich Chertkov, with whom he had a long-standing friendship. The first large letter to Chertkov contains Ertel’s detailed autobiography.
The book was met with excitement in the press. A well-known public figure, publicist and philosopher named Pyotr Berngardovich Struve noted,
