Leo Tolstoy: Still Feared by Those in Power
Nearly a century has passed since his death, yet Tolstoy remains one of the greatest Russian (and world’s) radical thinkers. His greatness can be sensed through the apprehension with which his writings have been treated by past and present governments, mainstream media and philosophers, through the anathema pronounced on his name by the Church, and through the hunger for his writings amongst the most restless and searching minds.
Sadly, many of his philosophical works were not in demand during the Soviet era (largely unknown to the public, either banned, or destroyed, first, by the tsarist government, and, then, by the Communist censorship). But I have a hunch that his thoughts still frighten our present, post-communist, "freedom-loving" powerholders. One sees very few of his religious writings in today's bookshops, while his agenda seems to be largely ignored by general public.
It comes as no surprise that Tolstoy is detested by governments and public, and there are reasons to believe that this dislike would continue. Having absorbed all the liberating ideas of the past, starting from Buddha and Lao-Tzu, and having renounced all the empty glitter of civilization, Tolstoy advocated an alternative way of living where universal moral values outstrip the self-conceited human notions of ‘utility’ and ‘progress’. These universal values he discovered in the great Eastern and Western traditions, and, most of all, in the lifeways of peasants, whose principles of non-violence and simplicity were borrowed from nature. And, like an ancient Russian fairy-tale bogatyr speaking in the name of Nature, Tolstoy began his unequal fight with civilization. He was labeled, ridiculed, threatened, but secretly admired, for he had the courage to throw his accusations to all hypocrites of the world.
I have chosen one of his earlier pamphlets Thou Shalt Not Kill Anyone (written in 1900 and banned in tsarist Russia), published recently in limited quantities. Readers will see for themselves the relevance and unfading power of Tolstoy's thought, in a world where the number of killings increase with every hour.
For those who are referring to Tolstoy for the first time, it is helpful to recall the words of A.F. Koni, a 19th century political publicist and an acquaintance of Tolstoy:
‘Travelers describe the Sahara as a sultry desert, where every living being stays motionless. When it gets dusky, a darkness joins this deadly silence. And then, a lion goes to his watering place, filling the desert with his roar. He is echoed by the weak howl of other animals, by the shrieks of night birds and faraway noises. Such is our Leo. He might go astray sometimes in his angry search for Truth, but he would persuade others to think, he would break the self-conceited silence, he would wake up those around him from sleep and he would not let them drown in the bog of tranquility.’
V. Postnikov.
2003.
Leo Tolstoy
THOU SHALT NOT KILL ANYONE
I
In the early June 1907, a young man, employed at the St.Petersburg Publishing House ‘Obnovlenie’ (Renewal), was sent to prison by St. Petersburg's court after having been accused of disseminating a "Thou Shalt Not Kill" pamphlet, which I wrote 7 years ago.
Seemingly insignificant in comparison to our present-day ceaseless incarcerations, exiles, executions, etc., this event is remarkable, in respect of the grounds on which it took place.
Now, while all Russia is groaning in horror before the unyielding and increasingly numerous cruelties and murders, a pamphlet, stipulating the ancient law ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’, endorsed by all religions over thousands of years, is banned, and its publisher, like a criminal, has been sent to prison.
It seemed to me that the Government, so long and so unsuccessfully struggling with the growing mania of Russians to kill, should have looked favourably at people propagating ideas opposed to murder; but, strangely enough, the Government is punishing these people instead.
But, perhaps, the brochure "Thou Shalt Not Kill" only bears such a title, while speaking of something different, which is offensive to religion and morality?
I wrote this pamphlet quite a long time ago and could have forgotten its content. I carefully re-read it. No, it says just what its title does, and only that. The pamphlet says that in addition to the fact that any murder of a human being by a human being is a criminal act and contrary to the religious belief that we profess, the murder of kings, emperors, or, more generally, rulers, executed by revolutionaries, are senseless, since the social order cannot change as a consequence of murder of rulers. The motives of such murders are questionable since people forget that, by murdering rulers for their violent deeds, people themselves stay guilty through their obedience to Governments and through rendering their assistance to the very things for which they accuse rulers.
Thus, the whole point of the pamphlet is simply that of stating that Christians SHALL NOT KILL ANYONE, not directly, not indirectly, and not by assisting in murder.
II
The law of retribution is inevitably punishing those who distort God's law.
One thousand nine hundred years ago, Christ, stating the basic precepts of his teaching, put at the head of them not the ancient ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ (he considered this precept established to such an extent that it was not necessarily to speak of it), but a precept that every human being must avoid everything that can lead to murder; must not wish evil on his neighbour, must forgive everyone, make friends with all, and must not have enemies (Matt. 5; 21-26).
Not only was this precept ignored, but the ancient precept forbidding murder was also rejected, such as Moses law rejected it; and people calling themselves ‘Christians’ are continuing to ‘righteously’ kill their fellow men, both in wars and at home, whose death they find desirable.
Governments of Christian nations, with the help of clergymen, have long been educating their subjects that the law ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ does not, actually, imply that people shall not kill without exception - as there are cases when killing is not only possible, but also necessary. And people believed their Governments, and assisted in murdering those whom Governments wished to be murdered. But the time came, and the faith in the impeccability of Governments was shattered, and people took to treating the people in the Governments in the same manner as Governments had done - the only difference being now that governments considered killings allowable in wars and after certain proceedings, which they called ‘courts’; while the people, instead, decided that it was allowed to kill during revolutions and after certain proceedings called ‘revolutionary committees’.
And so it happened; what is now happening in Russia, namely, after 1900 years of professing Christianity, people do not stop exterminating each other: revolutionaries kill their enemies, and governments their enemies - men, women, and all those whose deaths are considered useful. And, what is most astonishing, they are absolutely sure that they are not violating moral or religious laws.
It has come to such an extremes, that, if in Russia, all people had been given a chance to kill everyone whom they consider harmful, nearly all Russians would have killed each other: revolutionaries - all rulers and Capitalists; rulers and Capitalists - all revolutionaries; peasants - all landlords; landlords - all peasants, and so forth.
And this is not a joke - it is a fact.
III
The Government, feeling that somehow it ought to oppose the current situation, tries to stop it by using the only measures it knows. These measures, being altogether stupid and brutal, consist in committing the same crimes as those against which the Government is struggling. And these, especially now with all the advanced tools of murder such as: browning rifles, bombs, machine-guns, etc., which can be used easily even by a small child to kill hundreds of strong men - these stupid and brutal measures are not only ineffectual, but make the situation worse.
...
The Government is persecuting my pamphlet ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ and sending to prison its publisher. Now, inevitably, it has to persecute what I am writing here, has to execute me. And, to be consistent, it should have forbidden not only the Gospels, but also all Ten Commandments of the Old Testament and execute all those who disseminate them as well.
IV
All Russia is groaning under the horror of the unleashing of brutal instincts, which urge people to commit the most horrible, senseless murders...
And now, the most liberal, freedom loving people, when asked about the necessity of defending the freedom of life - that is, of abstaining from killing - these people tend to be silent, as if admitting the necessity of murders, or express this necessity openly, as is being done by revolutionaries and government.
Russia is in a horrible situation. But the most horrible thing is not its material situation, nor the industrial stagnation, nor the agrarian disorder, nor the proletariat, nor the financial disorder, nor robbery, nor riots, nor revolution in general. The most horrible thing is the disorder in the souls and minds of the people which underpins all these calamities. Horrible, too, is the fact that the majority of the Russian people are living without any moral or religious laws whatsoever, that are obligatory and common for all. Some recognize that the obsolete, long dead, religious laws and ancient beliefs have no sense, and are guided solely by their own understanding and tastes; others, acknowledging the uselessness of a faith (religion), are similarly guided by their various inclinations and desires. Thus, the majority of people in Russia, on the pretext of seeking the public benefit, are in essence guided by egoistic, almost bestial, impulses. Most horrible of all is that these people, having rejected rational human life, and having degraded themselves to the level of beasts, are quite satisfied with themselves - and believe that all the stupidities and villainies which they say or do in imitation of Westeners (both Government people and revolutionaries), obviously proves their superiority over the wise and sacred people of the Past, and that it is not only unnecessary to establish some kind of common religious worldview - a faith capable of uniting people – but that it is the absence of any faith whatsoever that proves their intellectual and moral superiority.
V.
People can live a harmonious life, not by adopting some political ideology, but only through joining in common acceptance of the basic meaning of life.
Political ideologies are incapable of uniting the people because those ideologies are innumerable, some believe in one, others in another, Parliament, or Socialism, or Anarchism. Yet, the supreme acceptance of the meaning of life at a certain period, for a certain nation, is unique. Such is history. Such were the Greeks united by one supreme law of life, such were the Romans, Arabs, and Hindus. Such, too, were the Chinese, as well as European nations (so called Christians, as long as they really had faith in that Christian, Catholic religion, adapted from Paganism by Paul).
We are now aware of all the inconsistencies of that pious, paradoxical, vague and hypocritical Church Teaching, which forbids the direct reading of the Gospels, and puts sacraments and blind faith in place of love and evangelical renunciation of worldly riches. We are now aware of the inconsistency of that teaching as compared to the simple and clear teaching of the Gospels. But people had been born into that false faith, and this faith had been impressed on them from childhood. No matter how brutal that faith was (from our present point of view), allowing for executions, murders, wars, etc., people were united in their sincere faith. But the time came when newcomers started to treat the teaching how they liked. Protestantism appeared in its various forms, and enmities and disputes started between the various confessions of this distorted Christianity. These disputes weakened the faith and it ceased to be a religion, i.e., a guiding source in people's life.
VI
There were many reasons for the loss of faith in the Christian religion and its many forms: Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Protestantism. These reasons included both religious disputes and increasing levels of education; the major reason, though, was that Catholic and Protestant Churches preached a Christianity which allowed executions and wars.
The people who introduced Christianity to pagan nations, via their affiliation to the ruling class, naturally, ran into inconsistencies with the pagan way of life. Inevitably, they had to take one of either two ways: to alter the order of pagan life in accordance with Christian teaching, or to alter Christian teaching in accordance with the pagan order of life. They have chosen the latter. That is, they distorted the teaching to such an extent that all contradictions with the present order have been hidden from view. In Judaism and Islam one could obviate the injunction ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ without breaking the law - since in both religions it is assumed that one can divide people into righteous and infidels, and therefore, one could apply the injunction ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ only to the righteous. In Christianity - where the very essence of the teaching treated humans as brothers, where the whole teaching is based on love, expressed through forgiveness, and on love towards our enemies - this could not be done: any acceptance of murder would at once destroy the major principle of Christian teaching. Urging Christianity to conform to murder would inevitably destroy its essence. So it was done. And Christianity ceased to be a religion. It had taken the form of a custom, or show of respectability, or comfort, or poetical fancy, while the real religion, or faith, that could unite people and guide their actions, had been lost.
VII
It seemed that, having lost its only basis, - religion that connects people - people of the Church, the Christian world should have disintegrated, fallen to pieces, ceased to live a common life, but this did not happen. It did not happen because the proselytizing of faith into a perverted Christianity had not occurred suddenly but gradually, while people, loosing their faith, had become more and more attached to another association, based not on religion but on power, i.e., power which has been created and nurtured by religion. People, having stopped believing in God and His law, started believing more and more in the power of the state and its law.
But this association, based not on religion, but on inertia of power, could not last long. The time came when, due to enlightenment, people understood that there was no inner reason for them to obey this particular power. And having understood this, people ceased believing in the necessity of obeying state power, and began to oppose it. This opposition has started long ago and is still continuing in the so-called Christian world.
What is now happening in Russia is just this struggle of the people, who have lost the inner religious ties amongst themselves, and any necessity of obeying authority. This struggle seems to be an attempt to get rid of the violent power of the state by the same brutal methods that were employed by the state to maintain itself.
If in Russia this fight appears uglier and more horrible than in other nations, it is because of its delayed manifestation.
VIII
In many respects the position of the Russian people is similar to that which European nations experienced a hundred years ago, but this position is, in other respects, totally different. It is similar because the whole Russian people have now, like European people in the past, understood that the faith which they were taught - i.e., in the Trinity, Heaven, Hell, mysteries, icons, relics, fasting, prayer, faith in the sacredness and mercifulness of the Tsar, and the necessity of obeying authorities, and a faith compatible with murder and other violence - is not a genuine faith but only its resemblance. So they began, speedily, shedding off this faith and even more groundless faith in benevolent tsarist or, more generally, any Governmental authority.
In this striving to liberate themselves from a faith in perverted Christianity and in the necessity and sacredness of power, the position of the Russian people is absolutely analogous to that of the position of the people of Europe at the beginning of the last century. The difference lies in the fact that the continuing revolution in Russia is the latest of all revolutions, and therefore the Russian people can see now what the peoples of Europe could not see, namely, the consequences of the peoples’ fight with their Governments. The Russian people cannot but see that this fight did not only fail to eliminate, but did not even lessen, the evil they were fighting. Russians cannot but see that all the sufferings of revolutions, all the blood shedding, did not exterminate poverty and the dependence of workers on the rich and powerful, did not stop the cost of seizures of the possessions of others and of wars, which did not liberate people from the power of the few. Russians cannot but see all the vanity of this violent struggle against violence, which has consumed so much effort of the people of Europe. In this lies one reason for the difference between the current situation that Russians experience and that which peoples of the Western world found themselves one hundred years ago.
The second, and the most important, reason is that, besides the official, pseudo-Christian religion, equally inculcated in all Western and Russian people, Russians have, from time immemorial, always lived by the other, non-official, living Christian faith - which, in some strange way – through sacred lives of hermits, through ‘yurodivyi’ and pilgrims, - has penetrated into the lives of people, and established itself in parables, tales, and legends. The essence of this faith is that a man should live in a God-like way, for his soul, that all humans are brothers, that all that is great amongst mankind is an abomination to God, that a man may be saved not through performing ceremonies and prayers, but only through his deeds of mercy and love. This faith has always lived in people's souls and has always been their genuine faith, guiding their lives, alongside the false, externally inculcated, Church's faith. This faith was still strong some 70 years ago - but over the last 50 years, particularly owing to the degraded morality of the priesthood, and, particularly, that of the monastic order - it has gradually declined amongst the people and has been reborn in various sects: so called Molokane, Stundisty, Khlysty, Subbotniki, God’s people, Malevantsi, Yegovisty, Dukhobory and others. The common features of the majority of these sects, apart from their absolute rejection of the Orthodox Church, were the increasing assimilation of moral Christian rules and the rejection of the demands of Government power and, above all, its insistence on the legality and the necessity of the murder of human beings by other human beings. Recently, this faith, as a rebuff to revolutionary animosity, is becoming more and more apparent to the masses of people.
The Russian people are now facing two ways: one, which has been chosen by the European nations: to fight violence with violence, to overcome it and to establish and maintain through violence the newly created order, similar to the cast-off, violent order of things. The other way is the recognition that the association of people through violence can be only temporal, that the genuine communion of people can be achieved only through the common understanding of life and the resultant law – or, at the very least, through an attempt to grasp the exclusion of murder, and the ensuing law that could be the basis for the future social life.
And such a replacement of the association of people, based on violence, by the communion, based on a common understanding of all Christian people of life’s principles, is a prospect, I believe, not only for the Russian people, but for all Christians.
IX
Much water will have flowed, or, perhaps, blood as well, before this happens. But the time will definitely come at last, when all the people of the Christian world, having been released from false faith and imposed violence, will join in one, supreme, religious understanding of life, which renders murder not only impossible, but absolutely unnecessary. This time will come, because the life of humans, being united by violence, can only be a temporal, transient condition, and cannot be the life of conscious beings.
As soon as the people, who think they believe in Christianity, throw away all the nonsense about Trinity, the origin of the Holy Spirit, expiation, Heaven, Paradise, etc., much of the sentimental words about love in the much-loved 13th Chapter of St Paul’s Epistle To the Corinthians, and the people, who don’t believe in Christianity and believe in science, throw all the verbosity and convoluted discussion about the law, Government, progress, future Socialism, and admit, instead, one simple, clear and thousand-year-old truth, a basis for any morality, i.e., a truth, perceived by heart and mind, which states that a man should not kill a man, then all the existing horrible, bestial, order of life will change and life will conform to what the best humans have always aspired.
With halts, and retreats, slowly humanity is ascending higher and higher, in its quest for perfection. For a long time humanity had been standing before the last step which leads to a concordant life without the necessity of killings; but irrespective of its decision, the time will surely come. If not because of reason and aspiration for good, then because of the very misery of existence, people must step in, i.e., arrange life, not on the basis of hatred and threat, but on reason and love.
‘The Kingdom of God on Earth – is the ultimate goal and ambition of humanity. (Thy Kingdom come). Christ has brought it near, but people did not grasp it and set up the kingdom of priests instead – not the Kingdom of God’, Kant declared. ‘One could say on good grounds that the Kingdom of God has arrived only when the church religion in people’s mind gradually gives way to the universal religion of reason’.
What a grave degeneration of minds there must be in the world, if people believe that their life will worsen should they stop executing, torturing, killing, and hanging each other!
How perverted must be the moral and religious feelings of people, and even their common sense, if ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ can be argued to allow to kill other people, or people of other nations!
Yes, the moral and intellectual decline of such people is horrible, especially if they regard themselves as standing at a higher level of spiritual development. And, it is horrible to say, that such are the majority of people in our civilized, perverted, world.
The only consolation is that this horrid decline is the sign of the final stage of corruption, which must be followed by the awakening. And I believe that the current Russian revolution will bring us to this.
Yes, of course, Christ’s teaching is unrealizable for people who live by organizing and overseeing the build-up of battleships, fortresses, overseeing soldiers being taught how to kill, overseeing schools educating murderers, overseeing courts, prisons, gallows; for people engaged in moneymaking who are protected by murders; it is understood that for these people Christ’s teaching is unrealizable. It is time for those who build fortresses and battleships, who are taught how to kill, who execute and shoot, who collect wealth protected by murder, to understand that life without murder, without violence, is realizable compared to the life they are leading.
X
I believe in this because the absurdity of what is happening is too obvious. People of the Government and revolution – some of whom devise the most subtle, shrewd, scientific and Governmental laws, others even more shrewd, complex and far-reaching plans about the future arrangement of humanity - all of them, in order to fulfill their plans, agree to allow the necessity and legality of killing, and, therefore, despite all their profound thoughts and stratagems, life, on the contrary, is becoming ever worse.
People of our time have invented a variety of religious and governmental laws, which, as it were, should protect them, they have improved in various ways their material life: they communicate over oceans, fly in the air, create various wonders, but have allowed just a small deviation from what has been said by the wisdom of the Past: if their mind, heart, has acknowledged the right to kill people, and all religious and Government protection has ceased to protect them, and all the technical wonders not only do not contribute to their benefit, but destroy it.
Therefore, before establishing one or another political order and before improving the use of nature’s power, people should grasp the thousand-year old religious and moral teaching: in every human body there lives the same divine source, and therefore no-one, no group of men, have a right to break that established union of divine source with the human body, that is, to deprive him (her) of his (her) life.
And the acknowledgment and establishment of this religious and moral teaching are not only possible, but life itself becomes impossible without the acknowledgement of this teaching, which is in essence the well-known and much loved, teaching of Christ in its truth.
XI
Yes, all this will come should the Kingdom of God arrive, but what must be done before it is here? One should act so as to hasten the advent of the God’s kingdom.
What should a hungry man do if he’s bereft of food? Work in order to get food. As food does not arrive by itself, so the Kingdom of God, i.e., the good life of people, does not arrive by itself. Above all, people must stop doing the most horrible evil that perpetuates the evil life: murder.
In order to stop doing that evil, not much is needed. One thing should be grasped, acknowledged and made part of our life: the thought that we are not entitled to arrange the life of other people through violence, which inevitably results in murder, and that any murder which we commit, or assist in, on which we build our life’s rewards, cannot be useful, either to us, or to others. On the contrary, it only increases the evil we are striving to correct. If only people would only grasp this and restrain from interference in other people’s lives, if only they would stop seeking the improvement of their condition in external, violent organization, if only they would seek it in themselves - in the approximation which was put before every man by the Christian teaching, and which is by no means compatible with murder - then life would then find its organization by itself, without external measures that only exacerbates the life of people.
There is only one means to save people from the increasing number of disasters. It is the acknowledgement and introduction into our life of genuine Christian teaching and its major principle – no resistance to evil by evil – without which it is a hypocritical teaching, not only in failing to change the bestial character of life, but supporting it.
‘Again this old song of non-violence!’, I hear the conceited, contemptuous voices.
But what should a man do, who sees how the crowd, trampling upon itself, is pressing upon a huge door, hoping to swing it open, while he knows well: the door only opens from inside.
5th August, 1907.
(Abridged translation from the Russian by V. Postnikov, 2003)