Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (74 page)

Tolstoy continued to have casual relations with prostitutes and a married serf on his estate bore him a son. He also had affairs with women of his own class, but in 1862 after a brief courtship he married Sophie Andreyevna Behrs. She bore him thirteen children, four of whom died. Although she became her husband’s diligent and jealous amanuensis, she confirmed Tolstoy’s view of woman (shared lamentably by Proudhon), namely that their principal role in life is motherhood. ‘Every woman,’ Tolstoy wrote, ‘however she may dress herself and however she may call herself and however refined she may be, who refrains from childbirth without refraining from sexual relations is a whore. And however fallen a woman may be, if she intentionally
devotes herself to bearing children, she performs the best and highest service in life — fulfils the will of God — and no one ranks above her.’
¹⁸
He later saw women as dangerous temptresses, diverting man from his spiritual life.

Despite, or perhaps because of, his strong sexual drive, Tolstoy eventually believed that it was best to remain single and celibate. In his story
Kreutzer Sonata
(1890), he made it clear that if desire drove one to marry, one should still try and remain as chaste as possible. No doubt reflecting on his own conjugal difficulties, Tolstoy is reported to have said: ‘Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, terrible illnesses, and every kind of physical suffering, but always the most poignant tragedy was, is, and ever will be the tragedy of the bedroom.’
¹⁹
He eventually came to see sex as the greatest evil and recommended complete chastity — an ideal, despite supreme efforts, he was unable to fulfil even as an old man.

Nevertheless, although he thought woman’s nature most fulfilled in motherhood and sex without procreation untenable, he did not, as Proudhon did, regard women as inferior to men. He advocated the same education for both men and women. He brought up his daughters in the same way as his sons, and they were his most ardent supporters. While he rejected free love, thought monogamy a natural law of humanity, and defended marriage as the only moral outlet for sex, he wrote in his diary: ‘I am of course against all legal restrictions, and for complete liberty: only the ideal is chastity and not pleasure.’
²⁰
In this, Tolstoy was following the teaching of St Paul who argued that it is better to marry than to burn, but best of all is to abstain completely from sexual passion. For Tolstoy the spiritual life involves the ceaseless effort to free oneself from the desires of the flesh. This does not excuse, nonetheless, his outrageous misogyny, which was eventually to broaden out into misanthropy.

After his marriage, Tolstoy settled on his Volga estate and combined its progressive management with writing
War and Peace
(1863–9), arguably the world’s greatest novel. He originally planned to make the hero one of the Decembrist rebels who had been exiled to Siberia in 1825 but finally placed the novel in the period before Napoleon’s invasion of 1812. The political considerations were gradually superseded by the characterization. In a draft introduction to the novel he declares: ‘I shall write a history of people more freely than of statesmen.’ In the event, he presents the fortunes of two families — the Rostovs and the Bolkonskis — against the background of Russia’s struggle against Napoleon. The proud Prince Andrew and the hedonistic but searching Pierre mirror two aspects of Tolstoy’s own personality.

But the work goes beyond psychological interest. The tide was borrowed from Proudhon’s
War and Peace
, and Tolstoy was keen to demonstrate
that history is not made by exceptional individuals but is comprised of a myriad of circumstances. Military victories, for example, are not won as in a game of chess but are produced by unpredictable and chance events which make up the fortunes of war. His position comes close to Marx’s but he does not share his confidence in inevitability.

In an article ‘Some Words About
War and Peace’
(1868), Tolstoy clarified his philosophy of history. While man psychologically wishes to believe that he acts according to his own free will, and some actions do indeed depend on the will, the more he involves himself with the actions of others, the less free he is. Therefore, there is a law of predetermination guiding history, although it is difficult for men to predict or control it. This approach led Isaiah Berlin to describe Tolstoy as a fox, who knows many things, though Tolstoy himself believed he was a hedgehog, who knows only one big thing: ‘Tolstoy perceived reality in its multiplicity, as a collection of separate entities round and into which he saw with clarity and penetration scarcely ever equalled, but he believed only in one vast, unitary whole.’
²¹

Although he was principally committed to literature during this period, Tolstoy defended a private before a military court who had been charged with striking an officer. The soldier however was found guilty and executed. The event undoubtedly hardened Tolstoy’s growing opposition to the judicial and military institutions of the State. He later wrote a moving indictment of capital punishment in
I Cannot Be Silent
(1908).

He continued to be interested in education and wrote stories and
A Primer
for peasant children. His next great work
Anna Karenina
(1874–82) depicted the dilemma between the creative artist and the committed moralist which Tolstoy himself experienced. The work took a great deal out of him. Like Anna, he felt torn between two contradictory forces — between a sense of vitality which grasps at life (Anna was ‘too eager to live’), and a sense of life’s pointlessness and tragedy. Tolstoy records how at this time he would travel through the muddy farms on his estate and say to himself ‘very well — you will be more famous than Gogol or Pushkin or Shakespeare or Molière — and what of it?’
²²

Tolstoy was soon undergoing a deep spiritual crisis which took him to the verge of suicide. But while he felt that human life was a remorseless stream carrying all towards nothingness, he became convinced that there was a bank of God to hold it back. He became increasingly interested in religious matters, and visited several monasteries. As he described so movingly in
A Confession
(1882), he thought of his past with horror: ‘Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder — there was no crime I did not commit…’
²³

After a desperate search to find a meaning to his life in philosophy and religion, and then amongst the people, Tolstoy eventually was converted to
a religion of love based on the literal interpretation of the Gospels, especially the Sermon on the Mount. This new Christianity confirmed the libertarian leanings of his youth and helped him develop a fully-fledged philosophy of pacifist anarchism. It was never fully consistent, however, and his desultory attempt to live out his philosophy — however sincere and earnest — has opened him up to accusations of hypocrisy.

In a series of books, pamphlets and commentaries issued in the 1880s and 1890s, Tolstoy elaborated a highly unorthodox version of Christianity. He came to believe that Christ is not the divine son of God but rather a great moral teacher. There is no afterlife, although we are all part of the infinite. At the same time, an inner light reveals itself in human reason, which comes from a source outside ourself and will endure after our death. Unlike the analytical reason of the
philosopher
, it leads us not away from but towards God, for the activity of reason is truth, and God is divine truth. God is far from being a personal being who judges us; ‘God is that whole of which we acknowledge ourselves to be a part: to a materialist — matter; to an individualist — a magnified, non-natural man; to an idealist — his ideal, Love.’ There is no Romantic separation or contradiction between love and reason, for ‘reason should be loving’ and love should be reasonable’.
²⁴
This is at the centre of Tolstoy’s philosophy.

Tolstoy became convinced that the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels provided the key of how a good life should be lived on earth. From his careful reading of the Gospels, he inferred the following five commandments:

Tolstoy thought that these principles formed the central message of Christianity and they became the basis of his moral teaching. The first commandment confirmed his anarchism since all governments are based on organized violence. The fourth commandment – ‘Do not resist evil’ – led him to develop his doctrine of non-resistance, that is to say, the refusal to resist evil by violence. It does not mean that one should not resist evil at all; on the contrary, it is right to resist evil by persuasion and to influence public
opinion on which evil institutions rest. The fifth commandment was based on Tolstoy’s interpretation of the maxim ‘Love thy enemy’ to mean one’s national enemy; it involved rejecting every kind of patriotism, even the patriotism of the oppressed.

With these beliefs, it was a simple logical step for Tolstoy to argue that all governments, laws, police forces, armies and all protection of life or property are immoral. The law of God is always superior to the law of man. He therefore inferred: ‘I cannot take part in any Governmental activity that has for its aim the defence of people and their property by violence; I cannot be a judge or take part in trials; nor can I help others to take part in lawcourts and Government offices.’
²⁶
It also follows that no one has a right to keep anything that anyone else wishes to take.

Although Tolstoy condemned the passions of greed, anger and lust as vigorously as any tub-thumping Puritan, he was no other-worldly moralist. He recommended the happiness which is to be found in a life close to nature, voluntary work, family, friendship, and a painless death. He considered moreover that life is a blessing for the individual who identifies with Christ and tries to realize the kingdom of God on earth. According to Tolstoy, Christ demonstrated in his own life that if people live without resisting others by violence and without owning property they will find contentment.

Tolstoy’s new moral and religious beliefs at first made him much more active in denouncing injustice. In 1881, he wrote to the new Tsar, asking him to pardon the assassins of Alexander II: ‘Return good for evil, resist not evil, forgive everyone.’
²⁷
Not surprisingly, the Tsar did not like being reminded that God’s law is above all other laws; the call for forgiveness fell on deaf ears. Alexander III could not imprison the wayward Count, but he did his best to ban his works. ‘This ignominious L. Tolstoy’, the Tsar later wrote, ‘must be stopped. He is nothing but a nihilist and a non-believer.’

In 1882, Tolstoy took part in a census in Moscow and visited the slums for the first time. The horrifying experience only strengthened his concern for the poor. In an attempt to live out his beliefs, he refused to do jury service. He renounced blood sports and became a vegetarian since he felt it is immoral to take animal life for entertainment or appetite, especially when it is possible to be healthy without eating meat. In 1886, he made new contact with the Russian people during a 130-mile walk from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana. During the serious famine which affected much of European Russia during 1891–2, he also threw himself — with the help of his family — into the campaign to alleviate the suffering of its victims.

In
The Kingdom of God is Within You
(1894), he summed up years of reading and meditating. He depicted the exploitation and oppression which are incompatible with true Christianity but which are often carried out in
its name. With great energy, he also portrayed the hypocrisy of the wealthy and respectful, including himself:

Tolstoy used the money from his next novel
Resurrection
(1899), which was about the moral regeneration of a young nobleman, to help the persecuted sect of Dukhobors to emigrate to Canada. The novel reflected his new aesthetic view already expressed in
What is Art?
(1897–8); art is an extension of morality, which in the Christian era should reflect a religious view of man’s place in the world. It should also be simple enough for everyone to understand.

Many literary historians and biographers have suggested that the moralist got the better of the artist in the later part of Tolstoy’s life. A. N. Wilson, for instance, has argued that ‘the wilful absence of common sense in Tolstoy was ultimately the death of his artistic imagination.’
²⁹
Yet this is far too simplistic a view. There was always a strong moral theme to Tolstoy’s great early novels, and much of his later fiction, such as the short stories
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
(1886),
The Master and Man
(1895) and the short novel
Hadzhi Murad
(1911), show that his imaginative powers remained to the end. His decision to write simply and clearly so that the most uneducated peasant could understand often lends a powerful starkness to his best stories. Moreover, his ability to express himself with simple verve give his later moral and political works a peculiar strength of their own.