Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1908
Source: From RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
One need only recall Christ’s teaching forbidding violent resistance to evil, and people, from the privileged gentry as compared to the laboring classes, will, whether they are believers or nonbelievers, simply smile ironically at such a reference, as if the idea that nonviolent resistance to evil were possible is such blatant nonsense that serious-minded people would not even mention it.
The majority of such people, considering themselves moral and educated, will talk seriously and argue about the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the redemption, the sacraments and so forth; or about which of two political parties would have the best chance of success, or which political unions are the most desirable, whose proposals are sounder, those of the social democrats or those of the Socialist revolutionaries; but they are all quite agreed that belief in nonviolent resistance to evil cannot be taken seriously.
Why is this?
Because people cannot but feel that acceptance of the principle of nonresistance to evil tears their established way of life at its roots, and requires from them something new and unknown which seems scary to them.
The outcome is that questions about the Trinity, the immaculate conception, the Eucharist and baptism may concern religious people, just as non-religious people may concern themselves with problems of political alliances, parties, Socialism and Communism, But the question of nonviolent resistance to evil strikes them all as some kind of astonishing nonsense, and the more absurd it is the greater the advantages they enjoy, under the existing structure of the world.
This is why the negation of the teaching of nonresistance and the failure to comprehend it are always in proportion to the degree of power, wealth, and sophistication of people.
People who occupy important positions of power, those who are very rich, used to their position, and who, like the majority of scholars, justify it, simply shrug their shoulders in response to any mention of nonresistance. People less important, less wealthy and less learned are less contemptuous. Still less contemptuous are people of even less importance, wealth and learning. And yet, all those whose life is directly funded on violence, though they might not be so scornful, will always adopt a negative attitude towards the idea of possibility of applying to life the teaching of nonviolent resistance to evil.
Thus, if the solution to the question of liberating oneself from the perverted Christian teaching and from the admissibility of violence that flows from it and which destroys love, and of recognition of the Christian teaching in its true meaning, depended only on civilized people, who in our society enjoy a better position, in the material sense, than the majority of the working population – if this were so, the impending transition from a life based on violence to a life based on love would not be so close and inevitable as it is now, especially here in Russia where the vast majority of the nation, more than two thirds of it, is not yet corrupted by wealth, power or civilization.
And since this majority has no reason or advantage of depriving itself of the blessings of a life of love by admitting the possibility of violence, it is therefore among these people (who are not perverted by wealth, power or civilization) that the change in the social structure, which is required by the attained understanding of the Christian teaching, must begin.