Archive for leo tolstoy
Tolstoy On Violent Revolution
Posted by: |Running on the coat-tails of yesterday’s post, here is an excerpt I found particularly interesting in The Kingdom of God is Within You. Make of it what you will…
“Some persons maintain that freedom from violence, or at least a great diminution of it may be gained by the oppressed forcibly overturning the oppressive government and replacing it by a new one under which such violence and oppression will be unnecessary, but they deceive themselves and others, and their efforts do not better the position of the oppressed, but only make it worse. Their conduct only tends to increase the despotism of government. Their efforts only afford a plausible pretext for government to strengthen their power.
“Even if we admit that under a combination of circumstances specially unfavorable for the government, as in France in 1870, any government might be forcibly overturned and the power transferred to other hands, the new authority would rarely be less oppressive than the old one; on the contrary, always having to defend itself against its dispossessed and exasperated enemies, it would be more despotic and cruel, as has always been the rule in all revolutions.
“While socialists and communists regard the individualistic, capitalistic organization or society as an evil, and the anarchists regard as an evil all government whatever, there are royalists, conservatives, and capitalists who consider any socialistic or communistic organization or anarchy as an evil, and all these parties have no means other than violence to bring own to agreement. Whichever of these parties were successful in bringing their schemes to pass, must resort to support its authority to all the existing methods of violence, and even invent new ones.
“The oppressed would be another set of people, and coercion would take some new form: but the violence and oppression would be unchanged or even more cruel, since hatred would be intensified by the struggle, and new forms or oppression would have been devised. So it has always been after all revolutions and all attempts at revolution, all conspiracies, and all violent changes of government. Every conflict only strengthens the means of oppression in the hands of those who happen at a given moment to be in power.”
Tags: government, leo tolstoy, non-resistance, pacifism, revolution, The State, violence, war
Leo Tolstoy Against the State
Posted by: |This past May, I posted a shorter essay about Leo Tolstoy and non-resistance. I wrote a longer paper on the topic (using the previous essay as its basis) and now wish to share it with you in full. Tomorrow I’ll post an excerpt from Tolstoy’s book The Kingdom of God is Within You that I find particularly compelling. It may be difficult for us to hear the challenge of Tolstoy to today’s world of violence, but even if we do not take a pure pacifist stance it is a message worth taking to heart. May we never think that a few more people dying will make our living better, may we never believe violence is the answer to the world’s problems.
Russian writer Leo Tolstoy is considered one of the greatest novelists of all time. War and Peace and Anna Karenina have inspired millions over the last century. Less well-known about Tolstoy, though, is that his interpretation of Christian ethics has had a profound effect upon the world, especially regarding non-resistance and pacifism. In this paper, I will examine the development of these themes in Tolstoy’s philosophy as they appear in The Kingdom of God is Within You.
Leo Tolstoy was born in 1838 into an aristocratic family. He was the son of Count Nicholas Ilich Tolstoy and Princess Marya Nikolayevna Volkonsky, whose marriage was one of negotiation and convenience. Social class meant everything in eighteenth-century Russia, and the Tolstoys were part of the upper echelon of power. Leo’s ancestry included generals, diplomats, and ministers of the Tsarist rulers. Thus, Tolstoy enjoyed the privileges of the high class, such as the ability to attend university. As a young man, he lived a profligate and wild life while attending the University of Kazan, struggling to find a purpose in his life. He decided to join the military and went to war. Seeing the grim reality of war motivated him to write, and he achieved some early success in his publications while on the front. He finally married at age 34 and settled down to begin the major portion of his literary career. He also began to re-explore religion and came to a realization about God, the church, the state, and self. It was during this time that he reflected upon the writings of anarchists such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and saw that non-resistance was the only means of lasting change to be found.
Tags: Book Reviews, Gandhi, government, leo tolstoy, Martin Luther King, non-resistance, pacifism, recommended books, The State, theology, violence, war
Norman Horn is the creator and primary writer for LCC. Learn a little bit about him in the 