Welcome to the Dub Dive. Today we are cracking
open a file on a man whose name is, well, it's
pretty much synonymous with the absolute pinnacle
of literary achievement. Count Lev Nikolaevich
Tolstoy. Leo Tolstoy, yeah. And when you hear
that name, your mind probably jumps straight
to these thousand -page novels, right? War and
Peace, Anna Karenina. But the real mystery we're
tackling today is the profound, almost violent
internal transformation that defined the second
half of his life. We're really looking at how
one of Russia's most privileged aristocrats systematically
dismantle his own life, his own ideology, to
become... Well, to become the world's most radical
moral reformer. That is precisely our mission
today. We've got a stack of sources here that
let us move beyond the required reading list
and really trace the fault lines of this spiritual,
ethical, and political revolution he went through.
A revolution, that's a good word for it. It really
was. This transformation saw Tolstoy shift from
being a celebrated writer, chronicling these
huge historical epochs, to a global moral authority.
His uncompromising views on pacifism and nonviolent
resistance, they laid the actual groundwork for
20th century leaders. We're talking about leaders
fighting for civil rights and independence across
the globe. Exactly. We're dealing with a colossal
figure who basically decided his artistic genius
was secondary to his ethical duty. And the sheer
volume of his output. It's just astounding. We're
talking monumental novels, yes, but then you've
got novellas, short stories, plays. And these
highly aggressive political arguments, polemics,
right? And deep philosophical treatises and even
wrote popular textbooks. The range is incredible.
But what grabs you immediately is the sheer paradox
of the man. He was born into the highest tier
of Russian nobility, a count with a title and
vast estates, yet he utterly rejected wealth,
private property, and the very concept of aristocracy.
He did. He tried to tear it all down. And maybe
even more compellingly, he was a decorated war
veteran, celebrated for his courage during the
brutal siege of Sevastopol, who emerged from
that experience as the world's fiercest and most
famous apostle of absolute nonviolence. And that
profound internal contradiction is perfectly
mirrored in his literary career. It's almost
bracketed by two massively different kinds of
works. How so? Well, his career launched with
his semi -autobiographical trilogy, Childhood,
Boyhood, and Youth. And for its time, despite
some sentimentality, it really captured the universal
pain and wonder of growing up. Okay, a fairly
standard, if brilliant, debut. Right. But later
in life, he wrote the complete antithesis of
that. His nonfiction manifesto, The Kingdom of
God is Within You. And this later work is a stringent
revolutionary call for civil disobedience and
nonviolent resistance. It became a foundational
text for figures like Gandhi. So it's a moral
framework for action that completely transcended
literature. Intended it entirely. And before
we unpack his life, we have to address one curious
detail we found in the sources. This one concerning
official recognition. We noted that Tolstoy was
nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature every
single year from 1902 to 1906. Every year. He
was also nominated multiple times for the Nobel
Peace Prize, specifically in 1901, 1902 and again
in 1909. Yet he never won either of them. He
remains arguably the most famous and persistent
oversight in Nobel history. Yeah, that's a big
one. What do you think that refusal to award
him, even when he was so clearly the world's
greatest living writer, what does that tell us?
It tells us that by the turn of the 20th century,
the cultural establishment was just deeply, deeply
uncomfortable with him. Too radical. Way too
radical. His genius was undeniable, but his radicalism
was too destabilizing. He wasn't just criticizing
the czar. He was challenging the legitimacy of
the state, the church, wealth, the very concept
of patriotism. So for a committee tasked with
honoring service to humanity. Exactly. For them,
they had a genius on their hands who was actively
trying to undermine all the existing structures
of power. This rejection suggests that his role
as a revolutionary moralizer actively overshadowed
his stature as the greatest novelist. His political
philosophy just made him too dangerous for mainstream
institutional approval. Okay, so let's unpack
the path that took this count from his country
estate to, well, to global revolutionary status.
And we have to start at the beginning. He was
born in 1828 at the family estate of Jasnaya
Polyana. Right, which is located about 12 kilometers
southwest of Tular. And this was not... Not a
humble origin by any stretch. The Tolstoy family
was part of the old established Russian nobility.
Absolutely. And it's worth dwelling on that heritage
for a moment because it's the bedrock he spent
the rest of his life trying to blast away. The
family's claim to antiquity was extremely important
to them. They had a whole mythology around it,
right? They did. They traced their ancestry back
to a, well, a mythical nobleman named Indris,
who, according to the family history that was
promoted by Piotr Tolstoy, arrived in Chernigov
way back in 1353 with... this substantial retinue.
So it's part history, part legend? It is. While
the first documented members only appear in 17th
century records, the pedigree was firm. They
were landowners, aristocrats, and inheritors
of ancient Russian tradition. But that immense
privilege was quickly undercut by profound instability
and loss. His youth was marked by being orphaned
so early. Tragically early. His mother died when
he was just two years old, which is a tragedy
we can only imagine the impact of. And then his
father passed away when Leo was only nine. It's
just devastating. That level of loss, especially
at such formative ages, certainly contributed
to his later struggles for self -definition and
for direction. He and his siblings were essentially
passed around among various relatives who took
on the responsibility of raising them. And while
they were never financially destitute. No, not
at all. But that lack of parental grounding.
It seemed to manifest when he hit adolescence
and early adulthood. And we see that instability
translate directly into his academic career.
When he enrolled at Imperial Kazan University
in 1844, he was supposed to be studying law and
oriental languages. A classical path for an aspiring
nobleman. Exactly. But it seems he was entirely
unsuited to the discipline. Unsuited is putting
it mildly. The official record of his time there
is famously damning. His teachers found him,
and this is a quote, both unable and unwilling
to learn. He found the pedagogical methods completely
stifling, the academic exercises tedious, and
the whole environment hostile to what he considered
genuine inquiry. So he dropped out. right in
the middle of his studies without a degree. This
wasn't an academic failure rooted in a lack of
intelligence, then? Not at all. It was a total
rejection of institutionalized knowledge, which
is a theme that would, of course, define his
later life. That sounds less like a budding intellectual
forging a new path and more like a privileged
young man who's just adrift and directionless,
with ample time and inherited wealth to waste.
That's a very good way to put it. The period
immediately following university is described
as especially dissolute. Our sources detail him
returning to Yasnaya Polyana, then spending heavy
periods in Moscow, Tula, and St. Petersburg.
Indulging in what is bluntly termed a lax and
leisurely lifestyle. And that lax and leisurely
lifestyle was really code for a high -stakes,
high -risk existence that was, well, it was common
among bored, wealthy young aristocrats. He ran
up serious, heavy gambling debts during this
time. Debts that really threatened his finances
and his reputation. Absolutely. We're talking
about a man who inherited a vast estate but was
systematically risking it away at the card table,
driven by this deep lack of purpose and self
-control. It just reveals a huge gulf between
the disciplined moralist he became and the reckless
young count he started out as. So how does this
young man, mired in debt and dissipation, suddenly
find his path? His older brother, Nikolai, who
was serving in the military, he intervened. In
1851, the idea was put forward that Leo should
join him in the Caucasus, perhaps as a way to
escape his creditors and find some structure.
So it was a practical decision. A completely
pragmatic decision born out of necessity, but
it placed him directly on the path to military
service, which became the pivotal turning point
of his moral life. He enlisted as a non -commissioned
officer and then quickly transitioned into an
artillery officer. And this service brought him
face to face with the reality of war. culminating
in the Crimean War, specifically the brutal,
famous 11 -month siege of Sevastopol running
from 1854 to 1855. That experience was transformative
precisely because it involved such intense, close
-quarters combat and really industrialized slaughter.
He served with a distinction. He even participated
in the intense combat of the Battle of the Cherniah.
And our sources confirm he was recognized for
genuine courage under fire. He even earned a
promotion to lieutenant. He was a capable soldier,
no question. But the horrors he witnessed just
broke him spiritually. And this is where the
great reversal starts. He was appalled not just
by the danger, but by the sheer senseless waste
of human life and the, I guess, the mechanical
indifference of warfare. Exactly. He wasn't just
observing from afar. He was a participant. The
revulsion was deep, immediate, and permanent.
He saw firsthand the mechanism of the state applied
to mass murder. And he left the army. Immediately
after the war ended. And that experience of Sevastopol,
where his courage was proven but his moral center
was shattered, became the bedrock of his lifelong
shift toward absolute pacifism. He gained the
moral authority of a man who fought and then
rejected war making his subsequent philosophical
stance far more powerful than if he had simply
been a distant intellectual. The military experience
may have disillusioned the man but wow it provided
incredible material for the writer. That shift
away from the army coincided directly with his
early literary success, capitalizing on the stark
realism he had just experienced. The output was
immediate and critically acclaimed. His military
sketches, the Sevastopol sketches from 1855,
they captured the gritty, ugly reality of siege
warfare from the perspective of a man on the
ground. Which was unusual at the time. Very unusual.
This gave him instant literary acclaim, solidifying
his stature alongside his earlier work, Childhood,
and the Cossacks. from 1863. He was now officially
one of Russia's serious realist writers. And
then he achieved the monumental. We arrive at
the undisputed pinnacle of his literary career,
War and Peace in 1869, followed by Anna Karenina
in 1878. I mean, War and Peace is so often referred
to as one of the greatest novels ever written,
just for its sheer dramatic breadth. It's an
unprecedented historical canvas. It combines
history, philosophy, and domestic drama on an
unbelievable scale. We're talking about a novel
that tracks the lives of 580 distinct characters.
580, that's incredible. It is. Weaving historical
figures like Napoleon and Khrushchev seamlessly
with the fictional lives of the Bezokovs and
Bolkonskys, it moves from these intimate ballroom
scenes to the absolute chaos of Austerlitz and
Borodino. And what's truly fascinating, according
to our sources, is that Tolstoy's original idea
was actually to investigate the causes and consequences
of the Decembrist Revolt. Wait, the Decembrist
Revolt, which was the 1825 uprising against Tsar
Nicholas the First. So it started as a much more
specific, politically charged historical event.
It did. The novel was initially intended to follow
the son of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky as he became
a Decembrist. But the research process was so
thorough and the scope of his inquiry. the origins
of the Napoleonic conflict so vast that the novel
just, it ballooned. It took on a life of its
own. So the Decembrist Revolt is only referenced.
In the very last chapters. It just shows how
the novel evolved into something far grander
and more philosophical than a mere political
history. And that philosophical grandeur is key.
War and Peace allowed him to lay out his definitive
theory of history. It's this epic that argues
for the complete insignificance of individuals
such as Napoleon and Alexander in the face of
these vast, almost accidental collective forces
of mass movement. It sounds like a philosophical
rejection of the great man theory of history.
It absolutely is. He posited that history is
not driven by the genius or ambition of monarchs
and generals, but by the myriad small decisions
and actions of millions of people. This theory
is a foundational element that prepares the reader
for his later political rejection of all centralized
authority. If great men don't drive history,
then why do we allow them to run the state? Precisely.
It's brilliant. It's monumental. It's universally
praised. And yet here we encounter the enormous
contradiction that defines the second phase of
his life. Tolstoy later rejected war and peace,
and to a lesser extent, Anna Karenina, as nothing
more than elitist, worthless, counterfeit art.
That's just astonishing. It is the ultimate act
of artistic self -sabotage, and it was driven
by this intense moral demand. After his profound
spiritual crisis, he decided that the only valid
purpose of art was to express universal brotherly
love or to be a vehicle for moral and spiritual
utility, understandable by everyone. And he viewed
the stylistic complexity and elite subject matter
of his great epics as failing that standard.
Completely. It's interesting that he did concede
that Anna Karenina, with its deep focus on marital
fidelity and personal morality, was closer to
his ideal. He actually called it his first true
novel. I find that almost comically tragic. Here's
the man who wrote what many consider the greatest
work in the Russian language, yet he views it
as a youthful folly. Meanwhile, the critical
world was just pouring out praise. Virginia Woolf
didn't hedge at all. She called him the greatest
of all novelists. And we have that famous anecdote
about William Faulkner, who, when asked to list
the three greatest novels ever written, just
replied, Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, and Anna
Karenina. The world saw genius. Tolstoy saw vanity.
Their appreciation focused heavily on his distinctive
prose style, which he honed to perfection during
this era. Richard Peavier, whose modern translations
have brought new life to the works, points out
that Tolstoy's writing is full of provocation
and irony and written with broad and elaborately
developed rhetorical devices. He managed to blend
deep psychological realism. You feel like you
really understand Pierre Bezirkov's internal
confusion or Anna's desperation with this sweeping
philosophical commentary on society and faith.
And for a man who spent his life writing, he
had a surprising disdain for a major literary
form, poetry. Yeah, that was very cutting. It
was. He famously said, Writing poetry is like
plowing and dancing at the same time. His critique
was rooted in his demand for sincerity and utility.
He criticized poets like Pushkin for using false
epithets just, quote, simply to make it rhyme.
He saw art as a serious ethical undertaking,
not a frivolous aesthetic game. And this demand
for sincerity, for realism, for utility in writing.
It really foreshadowed the complete moral upheaval
that was about to rock his world. That demand
for absolute sincerity and utility, it reached
a fever pitch in the 1870s. This marks the transition
from celebrated novelist to tormented seeker.
This was the period of his profound moral crisis,
a spiritual awakening so intense that he documented
it in his stark nonfiction work, Confession,
published in 1882. And this was far more than
an intellectual turning point. It was an existential
collapse. While he was actually finishing up
the final installments of Anna Karenina, a novel
dealing deeply with despair, infidelity, and
suicide, he was experiencing an almost suicidal
anguish in his own life. I mean, the sources
note he reached such an extreme state of mind
that he began physically putting away guns and
ropes. Out of a genuine paralyzing fear that
he would end his own life. The success he had
achieved, the wealth he possessed, the family
life he enjoyed, it all felt meaningless. It
plunged him into despair. That context is so
vital. This wasn't a philosopher calmly considering
an ethical problem. This was a man fighting for
his soul. So what specific external forces and
influences helped steer him out of that darkness
and into this new radical spiritual framework?
Well, two very different foreign influences stand
out as catalysts for change. The first was purely
philosophical. the German pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer.
In 1869, Tolstoy recorded experiencing what he
called constant raptures over Schopenhauer, finding
in him a profound intellectual confirmation of
his own despair. Schopenhauer, whose magnum opus
was The World as Will and Representation. That's
some dense stuff. How did a deeply metaphysical
critique of human desire translate into Tolstoy's
practical ethical choices? It's a great question.
Schopenhauer argues that the world is driven
by this restless, irrational will, an internal
driving force of desire that guarantees perpetual
suffering. The only path to genuine peace, Schopenhauer
argued, was through the denial of the will. Which
you could achieve through aesthetic contemplation
or... Or, and this is the critical part for Tolstoy,
through aesthetic morality. Complete denial of
self, voluntary poverty, self -sacrifice. He
cited figures like Buddha and Francis of Assisi.
Scholesway took that metaphysical denial and
applied it as a practical social imperative.
He concluded that the moral obligation for the
rich upper classes was to adopt this self -denial
and voluntary poverty. That provides the intellectual
route for his later wholesale rejection of his
own aristocratic status. But the second influence
was far more visceral, shocking, and it happened
much earlier. That would be the public execution
he witnessed in Paris in 1857. This experience
wasn't intellectual. It was raw trauma. He was
deeply horrified by the state -sanctioned murder,
seeing the mechanism of government applied for
the purpose of killing. And he wrote about it.
He did. In a letter to a friend shortly thereafter,
he wrote that the experience solidified his total
permanent rejection of state violence in any
form of political service, stating, The truth
is that the state is a conspiracy designed not
only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its
citizens. Henceforth, I shall never serve any
government anywhere. Wow. That one horrifying
moment essentially laid the ideological genesis
for his entire anarchist anti -state platform
almost 20 years before his spiritual awakening
formalized it. Precisely. And armed with this
clarity, the Schopenhauerian asceticism provided
the ethical how and the execution provided the
political why, he articulated his specific highly
stripped down Christian beliefs in what I believe
in 1884. He wasn't interested in theology or
miracles? No, not at all. He sought a literal,
ethical interpretation of Jesus' teachings, centering
almost exclusively on the Sermon on the Mount.
He wanted a faith he could actually live. And
his entire new philosophy hinged on that famous
central commandment from Matthew 5 .39. But I
say to you, do not resist the one who is evil,
but if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn
to him the other also. That phrase, which he
interpreted as non -resistance to evil by force,
became the absolute bedrock of his doctrines
of pacifism and absolute nonviolence. He also
deepened this conviction through corresponding
with American Quakers, who introduced him to
the writings of George Fox and William Penn.
further bolstering his nonviolent convictions.
For Tolstoy, if Christ meant it, it must be taken
literally. Absolutely. Any use of physical force
by an individual, or more damningly, by a state,
was a direct betrayal of true Christianity. And
this emphasis on a stripped -down, purely ethical,
anti -state Christianity inevitably put him on
a collision course with the institutional Russian
Orthodox Church. Irreconcilably so. He viewed
the church not as a keeper of faith, but as a
political instrument that had perpetuated a perversion
of Christ's original revolutionary teachings.
He argued the church had corrupted the message
by embracing rituals, seeking temporal power,
and worst of all, endorsing state violence, the
military, and the absolute authority of the Tsar.
Yes, he believed that true and lasting happiness
came only from striving for inner perfection
and loving one's neighbor and God, rather than
relying on external guidance. or authority from
either the state or the church. And that stance
led, quite predictably, to the ultimate symbolic
rejection of the establishment, his formal excommunication
from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. It
was inevitable. His novel resurrection directly
attacked the church's rituals, and his tracts
challenged its core doctrines. The church, which
was heavily intertwined with czarist authority,
could not allow a man of his stature and popularity
to continue asserting that they were fundamentally
misleading the populace. The excommunication
served as a clear warning to others, I imagine.
It did, yet it also cemented Tolstoy's status
globally as a fearless moral dissident. He had
literally been exiled by both the literary and
the religious establishment, which only increased
his credibility among the common people and international
thinkers. So the next stage of his life solidified
his identity not just as a writer or a Christian,
but as a full -fledged radical philosopher. His
rejection of state and church institutions ultimately
made him, by definition, a nonviolent and spiritual
anarchist. Indeed. His political development
was heavily chased by direct engagement with
contemporary anarchist thought. He had traveled
and met with the French anarchist Pierre -Joseph
Proudhon back in 1861, primarily discussing educational
theory. And later he engaged with others. Oh,
yes. He later engaged deeply with the works of
the Russian revolutionary anarchist Peter Kropotkin.
The resulting ideology, Christian anarchism,
was just uncompromising in its critique of centralized
power. And his definition of the state is brutal.
He viewed it openly as a conspiracy designed
solely to exploit and corrupt citizens based
on organized violence. He used incredibly provocative
language. He called the state the domination
of the wicked ones supported by brutal force.
For him, government was simply institutionalized
criminality. Is that famous quote. Right. He
was often quoted asserting robbers are far less
dangerous than a well -organized government because
the state's violence is supported by legality,
patriotism and religious sanction, making it
far more insidious and destructive. And his followers,
who began to call themselves Tolstoyans, led
by his confidant, Vladimir Chertkov, they formed
to propagate these radical religious and political
teachings. Yet even as an anarchist, he had a
crucial non -negotiable disagreement with other
anarchists. regarding the method of achieving
anarchy. Most anarchists advocate for revolution.
And that is the essential dividing line. While
he fully agreed with their sharp critique of
the existing social and political order, he sharply
criticized their willingness to use violent revolutionary
means to overthrow it. For Tolstoy, violence
only replaced one form of domination with another.
Exactly. Anarchy could only be instituted through
a permanent moral revolution, what he termed
the regeneration of the inner man. So he believed
political change had to be a personal, spiritual
transformation first. Precisely. In his 1900
essay on anarchy, he maintained that while anarchists
were right in their negation of the state, they
were mistaken in thinking revolution could achieve
true anarchy. True statelessness, he argued,
would only be achieved when people gradually
chose not to participate in or require the state's
protection or authority. His vision required
millions of individual moral choices, not a single
violent uprising. It did. This insistence on
nonviolence is perhaps his most enduring global
contribution. His ideas on nonviolent resistance,
outlined most forcefully in The Kingdom of God
is Within You from 1894, had an almost immediate
and massive international impact. The best and
most historically significant example, of course,
is his direct influence on Mahatma Gandhi. Their
correspondence, which lasted from 1909 until
Tolstoy's death in 1910, is one of the great
ideological exchanges of the 20th century. Gandhi
was a young lawyer then, practicing in South
Africa. He was, and he read Tolstoy's crew. A
letter to a Hindu, and subsequently reached out
to the Russian sage. What did that letter contain
that so resonated with Gandhi? A letter to a
Hindu was an uncompromising argument against
British rule and the violence used to uphold
it. It asserted that British power rested entirely
on the submission and lack of moral resistance
from the Indian people. It was a call to spiritual
awakening and non -cooperation. And Gandhi saw
the kinship in their beliefs. Immediately. He
acknowledged his immense debt, calling Tolstoy
the greatest deposit of nonviolence that the
present age has produced. He was directly inspired
to establish the Tolstoy Forum in South Africa
for his followers. That philosophical debt flows
directly down the 20th century, right through
the American civil rights movement. Absolutely.
Tolstoy's nonviolence served as a philosophical
blueprint for Martin Luther King Jr., who studied
the concept of non -resistance. It also influenced
other key figures like James Govel. These thinkers
adopted and adapted the ethical foundation established
by Tolstoy, proving that his spiritual anarchism
could be operationalized into a method of mass
political action that transcended religious doctrine.
His pacifism was also intensely anti -imperialist,
which gave him the authority to condemn virtually
all modern state wars and conflicts. He used
his vast global platform fearlessly. For instance,
he wrote the epistle to the Chinese people, denouncing
the intervention by the Eight Nation Alliance,
which included Russia, in the Boxer Rebellion.
He also condemned the bloody Russo -Japanese
War. He did not reserve his criticism for distant
foreign powers. He went after his own government.
He went so far as to accuse his own ruler, Tsar
Nicholas II, alongside Kaiser Wilhelm II, of
Christian brutality for their actions in China.
He specifically cited the looting, rapes, and
murders committed by the Allied troops during
the suppression of the rebellion, calling the
intervention terrible for its injustice and cruelty.
This wasn't armchair philosophy. This was a direct
political challenge to the heads of state, and
he was fully aware of the consequences. And he
didn't just write critiques. He actively supported
those who embodied non -resistance in their lives.
He became a major advocate and fundraiser for
the Dukobors, a pacifist religious group in Russia.
This was after they burned their webhouse in
protest in 1895. Yes, a powerful public act.
After that, they faced severe persecution from
the czarist regime. Tolstoy helped bring international
attention to their plight and crucially aided
their eventual migration to Canada, providing
the moral and financial support necessary for
them to establish a life free of the violent
state. So we have Christian ethics. We have nonviolent
anarchism. But late in life, Tolstoy took on
a very specific practical economic philosophy,
Georgism. From the American economist Henry George.
Right. This seems like a surprisingly technical
layer to add to his otherwise spiritual radicalism.
But it was the necessary practical application.
Yeah. Tolstoy had long identified the fundamental
economic evil underpinning the aristocratic system
he despised. private property, and land. Which
was the main non -productive source of income
for the Russian aristocracy. Exactly. Georgism
provided a non -violent, revolutionary economic
solution. Henry George argued that while people
should own the foods of their labor, the land
itself, all natural resources, should not be
subject to private ownership as was created by
God or nature. for everyone. So Georgism proposes
a single tax on the rental value of land. Which
essentially abolishes the economic profitability
of mere land speculation and removes the basis
of aristocratic power, ensuring equal access
to natural resources without state seizure or
revolution. That perfectly aligns with his goal
of dismantling the aristocratic system without
resorting to violence. Precisely. It was a nonviolent
method of fundamentally restructuring wealth
distribution, making it the perfect economic
fit for his Christian anarchism. He was utterly
dedicated to promoting this idea. He said something
like, people don't argue with it. They simply
do not know it. And it is impossible to do otherwise
with his teaching, for he who becomes acquainted
with it cannot but agree. He believed it was
an unassailable truth that simply needed dissemination.
And he incorporated this specific economic doctrine
directly into his creative work. He did. He wove
Georgism into his last major novel, Resurrection,
in 1899. The protagonist, Dmitri Ivanovich Niklidov,
undergoes a transformation that includes realizing
the immorality of land ownership. And this book,
which functioned as a critique of man -made laws
in the church, was one of the major direct causes
for his excommunication. It was a total published
rejection of the economic, legal, and religious
pillars of the Tsarist state. That drive for
reform also extended into practical education.
After serfdom was abolished in 1861, Tolstoy
didn't just philosophize. He returned to Yasnaya
Polyana and founded 13 schools specifically for
peasant children. These short -lived experiments
were crucial precursors to modern democratic
and progressive education. He outlined the principles
in his 1862 essay, The School at Yasnaya Polyana,
emphasizing student freedom and the importance
of allowing the child to define their own path
of inquiry. And they were shut down. They were.
They faced harassment and were eventually shut
down by the Tsarist secret police. But they are
justly claimed as the first examples of a coherent
theory of democratic education, foreshadowing
later efforts like A .S. Neal's Summerhill School.
For Tolstoy, education was an essential tool
for the regenerated inner man needed for anarchy
to thrive. To truly understand the intensity
of this radical shift, we have to look closely
at his personal life. The gap between his aristocratic
reality and his ethical ideals created immense
tragic tension, especially in his marriage. The
private life of the public revolutionary was
constantly on the bunk. His marriage to Sofia
Barrisonia in 1862, when she was 16 years his
junior, it reads like its own novel. Initially,
their partnership was the bedrock of his literary
success. Sonia was essential. She was. She acted
as his secretary, editor, financial manager,
enduring the arduous task of hand copying the
notoriously complex drafts of War and Peace multiple
times so he could continue editing and provide
clean, final versions to the publisher. Her labor
made those monumental works possible. So she
was literally the intellectual and logistical
bedrock of his genius. But our sources describe
their later life as one of the unhappiest in
literary history. What caused such a complete
collapse? The conflict was driven entirely by
his increasing uncompromising radicalism. As
Tolstoy sought to fully embody his ascetic morality,
he tried repeatedly to renounce his inherited
and earned wealth. And crucially, he attempted
to renounce the copyrights on his most famous
and lucrative works. Yes. And for Sonia, who
was raising their surviving children and managing
their vast, complex estate, this attempt to unilaterally
impoverish the family, to essentially dissolve
their financial security, it created a severe,
unbearable, and ultimately irreconcilable tension.
He was ethically pure. She was practically responsible.
A perfect summary. And that leads us back to
the earlier point about his mental state. That
detail about him putting away guns and ropes
while finishing Anna Karenina out of fear of
killing himself, it just illustrates the depth
of his internal suffering. It does. This wasn't
merely a philosophical disagreement with Sonia.
It was an existential war he was fighting within
himself. The sincerity of his moral philosophy
was validated by the physical and mental anguish
it caused him. And this commitment to his ethical
philosophy drove radical changes, not just in
his politics, but in his day -to -day habits,
particularly regarding his relationship with
the natural world and animals. We know he was
a passionate outdoorsman. He was introduced to
hunting by his father and was a passionate huntsman
for decades, actively including hunting scenes
in War and Peace. He was a typical aristocratic
huntsman, shooting everything from ducks and
quail to otters. And yet, sometime in the 1880s,
driven by his burgeoning ethical philosophy,
He stopped. Completely. He wrote a preface for
an anti -hunting pamphlet in 1890, confirming
his new staunch opposition. He saw killing animals
for sport as an unnecessary cruelty. It violated
his principle of universal love. Though in a
classic Tolstoyan contradiction, it's noted that
he never gave up his love for vigorous horse
riding. He still enjoyed the physicality of the
animal, just without the violence. And this concern
for animals translated directly to his plate
through his eventual conversion to vegetarianism.
This was a long, gradual process beginning around
1882. But by 1890, he adopted a strict vegetarian
diet that he was alleged never to have consciously
violated. And he pursued this for purely ethical
and spiritual reasons. Exactly. He argued that
abstaining from meat was linked to high moral
views on life. He viewed meat -eating as simply
immoral because it involved the unnecessary cruelty
of taking life. Was there a specific moment or
catalyst that solidified this commitment for
him? Yes, there is a memorable and very vivid
detail he shared. In his introductory essay,
The First Step, he recounted witnessing a cruel
experience at a slaughterhouse in Tula. The visceral
experience of observing the mechanized, cold
-blooded killing confirmed his belief that meat
-eating is simply immoral. as it involves the
performance of an act which is contrary to moral
feeling killing. He refused to be complicit in
that organized violence. And his diet became
increasingly restrictive as his moral demands
intensified, going far beyond mere vegetarianism.
He was aiming for austerity. By 1903, he had
removed eggs from his diet after a friend questioned
whether eating them constituted taking life.
He wrote to a Dutch medical student that his
health had improved significantly since he gave
up not just meat, but also milk, butter and eggs,
alongside sugar, tea and coffee. So what was
he eating? His later diet consisted primarily
of simple whole grains like oatmeal porridge,
kasha, which is buckwheat, whole wheat bread
and vegetable soups. He fully committed to the
austerity he preached, insisting that the physical
body should mirror the spiritual purity he sought.
He secretly left home. He just left. a dramatic
exit designed to live out his final days as a
true pauper, unshackled from property. And he
died only a few days later, from pneumonia, on
November 20, 1910, at Astapovo Railway Station,
after a brief, brutal train journey south. His
health deteriorated so rapidly that the stationmaster
housed him in his small apartment, where he soon
expired. Just imagine that scene. The most famous
living writer in the world, the Count, who authored
War and Peace, running away from his own life
only to die of exposure and pneumonia in a rural
railway station, surrounded by reporters and
onlookers who were captivated by his final moral
act. It was a global media event. It attracted
reporters and cameras from all across Europe.
And even in his final moments, our sources note
that he reportedly spent his last conscious hours
preaching the core tenets of his final philosophy,
universal love, absolute nonviolence, and Georgism
to his fellow train passengers and anyone who
happened to be nearby. It was the final testament
of the apostle. It really was. His funeral reflected
both the massive public impact he had and the
caution with which the state viewed this charismatic
man. And despite that request for silence, the
entire event was marked by a quiet... pervasive
police presence. The Tsarist regime was clearly
terrified that this enormous gathering of mourners,
many of them peasants and followers, would transform
into a massive political demonstration against
the state and its authority. So the burial itself
under the trees at Yasnaya Polyana remained silent,
simple, and anti -clerical. Exactly as he wished.
His complex legacy proved particularly volatile
in the years that followed, especially with the
rise of Bolshevism and Soviet Russia. The Tolstoyan
movement, championing nonviolence, anti -urbanism,
and opposition to the state, was fundamentally
at odds with communist ideology. How did the
fiercely anti -state moralist become the Soviet
Union's best -selling author? It was a fascinating
act of ideological co -option. His daughter,
Alexandra Sasha, whom he named heir to his works
to ensure they were published cheaply for the
Russian people, alongside his editor, Vladimir
Chertkov, they faced huge resistance from the
new regime. But the Soviets recognized his immense
popular appeal. And his usefulness as a critic
of the aristocracy and the church. So he was
selectively rehabilitated. Right. In 1928, an
agreement was reached for the publishing of a
monumental 92 -volume collection of his works.
And over 400 million copies of his works were
eventually printed in the Soviet Union. He was
repurposed. How did they manage that? Anatoly
Lancharski, the head of the People's Commissariat
for Education, gave a major speech during the
1928 Jubilee celebration attempting to reconcile
Tolstoy with the communist state. Lancharski
praised Tolstoy's love for equality and his disdain
for wealth, the church, and private property.
But conveniently minimized his fiercely pacifistic,
religious, and anti -patriotic sentiments. That's
the tightrope walk. Praising the revolutionary
spirit while discarding the revolutionary method,
it was essential for the state, especially as
they geared up for later conflicts. They even
had a literary historian write a biography trying
to convince people that Tolstoy would have revised
his views for World War II. Yes, Nikolai Gudzi
argued that Tolstoy would have revised his pacifistic
and anti -patriotic views had he lived to see
WWII. the regime needed to neutralize his anti
-war message. Even as a state, Yasnaya Polyana,
which was briefly allowed to exist as a commune
for the Tolstoyans, was eventually taken over
by state commissariats and turned into a more
controlled museum. Interestingly, his impact
was felt just as strongly by the Bolsheviks'
ideological opponents as their proponents. Vladimir
Lenin wrote several essays on Tolstoy, acknowledging
that his powerful hatred for feudalism and capitalism
marked a necessary prelude to proletarian socialism.
However, Lenin's praise came with a sharp rebuke.
He focused his critique on Tolstoy's core concept
of non -resistance to evil. For Lenin, this pacifism
was exactly why the 1905 Russian Revolution failed.
He argued the movement was not militant enough.
Right. He said it allowed the autocracy to easily
crush it. For Lenin, Tolstoy's philosophical
consciousness was simply not fully developed
for a revolution that required violent, decisive
action. And in stark, almost poetic contrast,
Gandhi confirmed the direct transformative debt
he owed to Tolstoy's understanding of Christianity.
That is the ultimate global legacy of Tolstoy's
moral vision. Gandhi's Gujarati word for his
nonviolent movement, satyagraha, which translates
to firmness in truth, was birthed directly from
Tolstoy's idea of truth as universal love, rooted
in his literal reading of the Sermon on the Mount.
It defined the method by which India gained independence.
And finally, his moralizing novellas, which he
later prized over his epic novels, they endorse
strongly in popular culture. They absolutely
do. The death of Ivan Ilyich, which captures
the protagonist's intense personal crisis in
search for truth, has been adapted repeatedly,
most famously by Akira Kurosawa as Ikiru in 1952,
and more recently as the 2022 film Living. And
of course, the dramatic circumstances of his
final anguished year of life, the flight, the
conflict with Sonia, were captured in the 2009
film The Last Station. His life, like his books,
remains profoundly dramatic. So what we have
explored today is the astonishing duality of
a man who was simultaneously an aristocratic
literary genius and a revolutionary moral reformer.
His life path led him from chronicling the vast
chaos of the Napoleonic Wars in War and Peace
to dedicating his final decades to spreading
the simple, uncompromising message of non -resistance
in the kingdom of God. is within you it was a
complete decades -long rejection of the material
world and his own literary fame in pursuit of
a pure unassailable truth his entire life especially
the second half became a dramatic and ultimately
tragic struggle to align his personal actions
in his vast inherited wealth with the uncompromising
ethical ideals he derived from his literal reading
of jesus exposure to schopenhauer's asceticism
and the specific economic principles of henry
george He was striving for a radical internal
perfection, believing this moral revolution was
the only honest and permanent path to lasting
social change. A stunning story of conversion,
contradiction, and global consequence. Indeed.
And for our closing thought, we have to return
to that fundamental contradiction we discussed
earlier. Although Tolstoy himself rejected his
great realist novels like War and Peace and Anna
Karenina as nothing more than counterfeit art,
Considering them inferior in utility to his political
and religious tracks, consider this. Did the
power and realism he mastered in his fiction,
the ability to show the horrors of war, the complexities
of human motivation, or the falsities of aristocratic
society, did that actually give his later philosophical
works the global authority and weight needed
to influence transformative figures like Gandhi?
Was the depth and credibility of the artist absolutely
essential for the eventual impact of the Apostle?
That's something to continue thinking about as
you reflect on the scope of Leo Tolstoy's radical
life.