Leo Tolstoy

The Russian public hated Stolypin, but this did not deter Tolstoy from acting. In July 1907 he wrote a letter to the all-powerful minister pleading with him to pay attention to Social Problems. As Stolypin did not reply, in October Tolstoy wrote again, asking Stolypin to help an old Tolstoyan who had been arrested and reproaching him for ignoring his first letter. This time the minister answered. He promised to reconsider the criminal case, but not his policy and ideas. He gave a nod to the theories of George, but insisted that these could only be applied in Russia in the remote future:

Do not think that I did not pay attention to your letter. I could not answer, because it wounded me too much. You consider evil what I believe to be good for Russia. It seems to me that the lack of landed property is the cause of all our problems. Nature has imbued man with some inborn instincts like hunger, sexual feelings, and one of the most powerful feelings of this order is the sense of property. One cannot love what belongs to another as well as that which is one’s own and a man will not take care of land he uses on a temporary basis in the same way he would take care of it were it his own . . . I have always considered you a great man, and I have a modest opinion of myself. I have been lifted up by the wave of events, most likely just for a moment! Still, I want to use this moment to the utmost extent of my strength, understanding and feelings for the benefit of the people and my motherland, which I love as they used to love it in the old time. How then can I possibly do what I do not think and consider to be good? And you write to me that I am following the way of evil deeds, ill fame, and most importantly – sin. Believe me, that feeling often the possibility of an approaching death one cannot help thinking about these questions, and my way seems to me to be the honest one.²⁰

Stolypin’s goal was to undermine the peasant commune, the institution most cherished by Tolstoy. Stolypin hoped to put in the place of these communes millions of private landowners who would transform Russian agriculture and the national psyche. In order to provide the land necessary to establish these future American-style farmers without a major land redistribution programme, Stolypin envisaged a mass voluntary resettlement of peasants to Siberia. The Trans-Siberian Railway, which had started functioning in the first years of the century, provided the necessary logistical means to fulfil this plan.

Stolypin had already survived several assassination attempts. Tolstoy could therefore appreciate the power and seriousness of his correspondent’s convictions, but was not able to accept his views. He regarded exclusive preference for one’s own to the common and universal in the same way that he regarded sexual instincts, that is, as something to be fought against, not condoned and cherished. To turn the resources given to humans by God into private property was, for Tolstoy, tantamount to ‘contemporary slavery’ or another kind of serfdom. Moreover, the concept of private land property was, according to him, antithetical to the very essence of the Russian peasant soul. Stolypin’s plans looked to Tolstoy like a new incarnation of Peter’s Westernizing reforms that could only be imposed in the same way, by violence and coercion.

In October 1907 Tolstoy again wrote to Stolypin, using as a pretext the arrest of one of his assistants. With the letter, he sent a copy of Social Problems. In January, not having received an answer, he again pleaded with the minister to think of his own soul and start doing things that corresponded to the hopes and aspirations of the majority of Russians:

You who have already suffered so cruelly from attempts on your life, who are considered to be the most powerful and energetic enemy of revolution, you would suddenly take the side not of revolution, but of eternally distorted truth, thus eliminating the soil that breeds revolution. It might well happen that, however softly and cautiously you would act in suggesting such a new measure to the government, they may not agree with you and remove you from power. As I can understand you, you would not be afraid of this, because you do, what you do now, not to keep yourself in power, but because you consider it to be just and necessary. Let them remove you 20 times, slander you in all possible ways, this would still be better than your current situation. (CW, LXXIX, p. 43)