Leo Tolstoy

In War and Peace Tolstoy glorified popular resistance to invasion; now he regarded military service as one of the worst abominations in human history. Native government was no more legitimate than any foreign one; living under the rule of the French, the Turks or whoever else would be a lesser evil for his compatriots than going to war and killing people. Equally, no crime could ever justify violent punishment. Robbers and murderers acting at their own risk deserved more compassion than executioners or judges who send people to the gallows protected by the law and the repressive apparatus of the state. In general, mortals were not entitled to make laws, all they had to do was to obey the eternal rules of God, but even those should not be enforced, as the Church hierarchy and coercion in the sphere of religious beliefs were especially repulsive.

A. N. Wilson, the author of a perceptive biography of Tolstoy, called this anarchist credo ‘the silliest’ and ‘the least Russian’ thing Tolstoy ever said.² The question of ‘silliness’ of Tolstoy’s worldview is, of course, fully dependent upon the perspective of the biographer, but the claim of its ‘un-Russianness’ is plainly wrong.

Tolstoy was a contemporary and a compatriot of such leading figures in the history of European anarchism as Mikhail Bakunin and Piotr Kropotkin. All three of them were aristocratic intellectuals who looked for ideals in the life of Russian peasant communes, in the stubborn resistance of sectarians and Old Believers to the official Church and central authorities, in Cossack settlements providing military support to the crown, but defying state bureaucracy in their way of life. No less important for Tolstoy were the numberless wanderers, pilgrims and beggars who left their homes and villages to search for God. The utopian vision of life without a state, masters or an official Church is no less important for Russian intellectual tradition and popular aspirations than its antithesis: unswerving trust in the secular and spiritual authorities. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky represented the two trends.

In 1881 Dostoevsky met Tolstoy’s cousin Alexandra and asked her to explain to him ‘the new direction taken by Lev Nikolaevich’. Fervently Orthodox, Alexandra regarded Dostoevsky as a prophet. She prepared for him copies of several of Tolstoy’s letters and, at his request, read them out to him. Dostoevsky listened, ‘his hands on his head repeating in a desperate voice: “It’s all wrong”.’ According to Alexandra Tolstoy, ‘he did not sympathize with a single thought of Lev Nikolaevich’ (LNT & AAT, p. 32). Intending to write a refutation, he took home with him both the copies and the originals.

Given Tolstoy’s taste for heated debates, a letter from Dostoevsky could have provoked one of the most fascinating dialogues in literary history. As it happened, Dostoevsky died five days later and his polemical answer to Tolstoy remained unwritten. The letters he borrowed from Alexandra Tolstoy disappeared forever.

Tolstoy wrote to Strakhov shortly afterwards:

I never saw the man and never had any direct relations with him, and suddenly when he died, I realized that he was the closest, dearest and most necessary man for me. I was a writer and all writers are vain and envious – I at least was that sort of writer. But it never occurred to me to measure myself against him, never. Everything that he did (every good and real thing that he did) was such, that the more he did it, the happier I was. Art arouses envy in me and so does intelligence, but the things of the heart arouse only joy. I always considered him my friend, and I never thought otherwise than that we should meet, and that it was my fault that we hadn’t managed to do so yet. And suddenly during dinner – I was late and dining alone – I read that he was dead. Some support gave way under me. I was overcome; but then it became clear how precious he was to me, and I cried and am still crying. (Ls, II, p. 340)

He was fully aware of the differences between his and Dostoevsky’s views, but he also knew that they both understood that the world around them was crumbling and believed that their duty was to prevent it. Now he felt that he had to shoulder the burden and the responsibility alone.