Falsified by Stalin and now Putin, Tolstoy’s thought was that war is senseless but injustice remains intolerable and should be resisted through non-violent means.
by Massimo Introvigne*
*A paper presented at the international webinar “Will Tai Ji Men Finally Be Allowed to Live in Peace?”, co-organized by CESNUR and Human Rights Without Frontiers on May 16, 2023, United Nations International Day of Living Together in Peace.
There is the beauty of living together in peace, celebrated by this United Nations day of observance. And then there is “War and Peace.” First published in its entirety in 1869 by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, many regard it as the greatest novel of all times. Most educated Russians have read it. Many non-Russians read it too (I did, as a young man), although others are scared by its monumental size.
Although Tolstoy was not a Communist, his book was celebrated by the Soviet regime. During World War II, Stalin quoted Tolstoy more often than Lenin or Marx. There was a stamp celebrating the book, and even a Soviet warship named after Tolstoy. The Soviet reading of Tolstoy is now perpetuated by Putin, who also likes to quote or rather misquote the great writer. This interpretation, which Putin learned in Soviet schools, was selective and ultimately fraudulent. It was, however, successful. As one recent biographer of Tolstoy observed, the Soviet interpretation still dominates, for example, Wikipedia, and can be summarized as follows: “Tolstoy was the Russian Homer, who transformed Russia’s victory against Napoleon into a great epic. Unfortunately, he developed some strange or ‘cultic’ religious ideas in the last decades of his life.”
It is true that only “War and Peace” and Tolstoy’s other famous novel, “Anna Karenina,” are read by everybody. The Russian writer’s later texts on religion are read only by my own tribe, religious scholars. There, he criticized the Russian Orthodox Church and tried to establish his own new religion. The Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated him in 1901, and refused to bury him in 1910. His was the first public civil funeral in Russian history.
Yet, it is appropriate to remember Tolstoy in this UN day of observance because his reflection on peace, war, and how we can live together in peace had no discontinuity, and continued throughout his whole life. As a young aristocrat, Tolstoy enrolled in the Army in 1851 at age 23 to escape his gambling debts, and first fought in Russian’s colonial wars in the Caucasus. His first short stories reflected the experience of these wars as noble fights following traditional rules and with a certain romantic beauty. However, in 1854, Tolstoy was called to serve as an officer in the bloody Crimean War. This was a modern conflict, with massive casualties caused by artillery. It changed its perception of war. He was still ready to celebrate the heroism of some, but in general saw war as a senseless carnage.
This ambivalence about war is reflected in “War and Peace.” He refused to consider the book a novel, regarding it more as a philosophical and historical treatise. When he wrote “War and Peace,” Tolstoy regarded war as unavoidable, but challenged the dominant view that it, and its outcome, resulted from the decisions of a few “great men” such as Napoleon. He believed that war was the result of many unpredictable factors, and that the behavior of tens of thousands of men, from local commanders to simple soldiers, determined its outcome more than the decisions taken by a few great generals.
The Soviets (and now Putin) took it as a celebration of the common Russian peasant-soldier, who in the end defeated Napoleon. However, through the pages of “War and Peace” also runs a sense of the pointless brutality of the war and a nostalgia for the sweetness of living together in peace. This is what makes “War and Peace” an exceptional book, and this is also what both Stalin and Putin deliberately decided to ignore.
In fact, during the 1860s and most clearly in the last forty years of his life, Tolstoy moved to a radical religion-based pacifism. He did understand, and the theme is of great actuality today, that absolute pacifism could favor those who promote wars of aggression, but believed (rightly or wrongly) that forms of non-violent resistance can ultimately defeat the aggressors. It is by corresponding with Tolstoy that Gandhi developed his theory of non-violence.
Just as Gandhi, Tolstoy believed that peace can only be based on spirituality. He explored Theosophy (although, unlike Gandhi, never became a member of the Theosophical Society), Buddhism, traditional Chinese culture, various forms of Christian mysticism including the one advocated by the Quakers, as well as anarchism and utopian socialism. Finally, he developed his own religion. It was Christian, in the sense that Tolstoy regarded the teachings of Jesus as superior to those by Eastern religions—which caused his break with Theosophy’s co-founder Madame Helena Blavatsky, who held the opposite view. But it was a Christianity without institutions or dogmas, centered on the Sermon on the Mount, “turning the other cheek,” non-resistance, and non-violence.
He believed that, based on these principles, small communities might be created, while people would really live together in peace. I visited one of them, Churaevka in Connecticut, founded in 1920 by Tolstoy’s son Ilya. It attracted the attention of the great painter Nicholas Roerich, who designed its chapel. When I visited the settlement in 2018, only one old Russian lady was still living there, but Churaevka maintained its original spiritual atmosphere.
Tolstoy would not disagree with us if we would say that for him peace is not primarily a political achievement, but comes from conscience. This is, of course, an essential teaching of Tai Ji Men. I would add that Tai Ji Men are also “Tolstoian” in the sense that they firmly oppose injustice but do not react to it with violence, having chosen the path of a non-violent, principled, and conscientious resistance.
A final teaching by Tolstoy that is relevant for the Tai Ji Men case is that, although he was a radical pacifist, he did not condone aggression and injustice. He never suggested that injustice should be tolerated. He taught that it could be victoriously opposed by non-violent means. Perhaps not in all situations is his teaching applicable, but Gandhi proved that in some cases it can become a successful political strategy.
Tai Ji Men protests in Taiwan.
Similarly, Tai Ji Men’s love for peace, and for a peace based on love, does not and cannot mean that they should accept a “peace” with the Taiwanese institutions that would end the Tai Ji Men case based on falsehood and injustice. Tai Ji Men wants to solve its case, and to live together in peace with all other Taiwanese citizens, including those in the government. But a true peace can only mean that injustice is acknowledged, and justice is restored. Otherwise, we will have a false “end” of the Tai Ji Men case, a travesty of peace that would objectively reinforce injustice and corruption. This was not Tolstoy’s idea of living together in peace—and is not what Tai Ji Men wants.
Source: Bitter Winter