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In 2012, while studying the war on terror’s devastating impact on Muslim tribal societies in "ungoverned spaces" like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, we searched for a framework to explain the relentless violence facing these peripheries. We found the perfect metaphor in Leo Tolstoy’s Hadji Murad. Completed in 1904, the novel depicts a real-life Muslim tribal leader’s struggle against the Russian Empire in the Caucasus. Tolstoy, having witnessed the subjugation of these tribes firsthand, captured the same existential conflict between the central state and independent tribal margins that defines the modern war on terror.
Tolstoy and Islam
Tolstoy had a particularly interesting and significant relationship with Islam and Muslims throughout his life which had a substantial impact on his writing and outlook. As a child, he was fascinated with The Arabian Nights and listed it among the most important works of his childhood and adolescence.[1] We recall that Tolstoy’s first subject of interest at university in Kazan were the Arabic and Turco-Tatar languages. He then, while serving in the Caucasus, interacted directly with and was impressed by Muslim peoples. One of Tolstoy’s first stories, “The Raid” (1853), which depicted Russian troops in the Caucasus grappling with the horrors of war, was also his first serious encounter with government censorship—in this case, “the censor removed all those passages which appeared to question the justifiability of Russian soldiers gunning down Muslim tribesmen in their native mountain villages.”[2]
Subsequently, in 1862 while at Yasnaya Polyana working on peasant education, Tolstoy began to feel fatigued and depressed. He decided to leave the area to clear his head and improve his health in the province of Samara, on the open steppes. For over two months, he lived with nomadic Muslim tribesmen of the Bashkir people, which was restorative for him. He stayed in a tent, breathed the fresh air, and drank kumyss, a curing drink consisting of fermented mare’s milk. Tolstoy already had knowledge of Tatar from university, and this eased his communication with the tribesmen, who called him “the Count”[3] and “Prince Tul” (Tula Prince).[4]
Nearly a decade later, in 1871, suffering from ill health, Tolstoy decided to seek relief by returning to this same area, this time journeying further into the open steppe. The Bashkirs welcomed him back as an old friend.[5] On the steppe, he arranged with a mullah to use a tent, which he lived in adjacent to the mullah’s tent. He followed the Bashkir diet and he once again recuperated.[6] The region was one of many peoples and cultures, and a biographer noted that Tolstoy noticed “with pleasure the good relations and complete religious toleration that existed in those parts between the Orthodox peasants and their Mohammedan neighbours.”[7] At one point, Tolstoy attended an annual fair in which Bashkirs, Kirghiz, Russians, and Cossacks all mingled together.[8]
Tolstoy was also fascinated with the Bashkir themselves, remarking, “I have listened to speeches in the English Parliament, which is considered very important, and it seemed to me dull and insignificant; but there, are flies, dirt, and Bashkir peasants, and I, watching them with intense respect and anxiety, became absorbed in listening to them.”[9] On his return journey home Tolstoy’s brother in law, who accompanied him, reported, “evidently under the influence of what he had seen and heard among the Bashkirs,” Tolstoy “read through the Koran.”[10]
While on this second trip, Tolstoy learned that the family of the Governor-General of Moscow was selling a significant tract of land, which Tolstoy decided to purchase.[11] This vastly expanded Tolstoy’s land holdings, and he subsequently purchased an even larger tract, this time from an aide to a senior Russian military official. Tolstoy, now owning considerable land on the steppe, returned every summer apart from two during the 1870s, including with his wife and children. He formed a particular bond with a sophisticated Bashkir, Muhammad Shah Rakhmatullin, who he hired to assist him, and Tolstoy and his family frequently spent time with him in his tent.[12]
In 1878, Tolstoy organised a two day sporting festival featuring wrestling and races in which he involved Bashkirs, Kirghiz, Cossacks, and Russian peasants—the Bashkirs and Kirghiz “arrived with their tents, plenty of koumis [kumyss], boiling-coppers, and sheep.”[13] Several thousand people attended, and “To this day, locals commemorate Tolstoi by holding horse races on the same spot.”[14]
Over time, as his social and political consciousness developed, Tolstoy grew more unhappy with his status as a landowner of such large properties. He decided to liquidate his steppe estate in 1883 and divest himself of it in 1892.[15] He was concerned with the difficulties faced by Russian peasant settlers on the land, as well as those of the Bashkirs. Muhammad Shah Rakhmatullin told of how the Bashkir way of life had deteriorated with the loss of both their pasture lands and aspects of their culture and traditions, and, as traditionally nomadic people, they struggled at farming.[16]
Tolstoy’s experience in Samara and with Islam and the Bashkirs influenced his thinking in important ways. The model for Tolstoy’s ideal life in many ways were the small rural communities of Samara. Initially, Tolstoy prized and heralded autonomous agricultural communities, but eventually he came to see these as a step towards “civilisation” which led to increasing centralisation and thus oppression—in other words, in many ways the perspective of the tribes. Tolstoy stated, “I have very vivid pictures of life in Samara: the steppe, the struggle between the nomadic patriarchal way of life and the civilised, agricultural one. It draws me very much.”[17] He concluded, “Agriculture, which is replacing the nomadic conditions I experienced in Samara, is the first step towards wealth, luxury, dissipation and suffering. It’s obvious from the first step. We must make a conscious effort to return to the simple tastes of that time.”[18] He believed that property was “the root of all evil,”[19] wished to dissociate himself from it, and noted, “Land cannot be the subject of property.”[20]
In “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” (1886), among Tolstoy’s most popular short stories and hailed by James Joyce as the greatest story in world literature,[21] a rural male Russian peasant hears his wife’s sister, who is visiting from a town, extoll the virtues of “civilisation.” These include access to fine clothes, expensive food, and visits to the theatre. While he seems uninterested in things like the theatre, the conversation does rouse his interest in possessing land—a desire he voices and is overheard by the Devil who is also in the room. The Devil decides to play a “game” and gain control over him by facilitating this desire. At several points in the story the peasant hears of opportunities to buy land, each time in higher quantities for low prices. Eventually, he winds up on the open steppes among the Baskir tribes, who tell him that they will let him have as much of their land as he can reach on foot and mark within one day. The peasant so overextends himself in a frantic effort to cover vast distances that he drops dead, and is buried in a grave, “six feet from head to heel, which was exactly the right length”—the answer to the question of how much land a man needs.[22]
Tolstoy collected sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in a book intended to educate Russians about Islam, writing that the essence of the faith was "the unity of God" and "love for God”
By expressing such views of “civilisation,” Tolstoy was challenging the assumptions of many in his reading audience that technological “progress” was inherently good. Tolstoy was there to remind people what they were giving up by too readily accepting the premises of “civilisation.” In one statement, he captures the cost of civilisation by discussing flowers, as in Hadji Murad: “I picked a flower and threw it away. There are so many of them that I wasn’t sorry. We don’t value the inimitable beauty of living creatures and destroy them without pity—not only plants, but animals and human beings. There are so many of them. Culture—civilisation—is nothing else but the destruction of these beautiful things and their replacement. What by? The tavern, the theatre.”[23] “People usually measure the progress of mankind by its technical and scientific successes, supposing that civilisation leads to good,” Tolstoy argued, but “That isn’t true…Increasing the good of people only comes from increasing love, which by its very nature makes all people equal.”[24] The reality is, Tolstoy stated, “The less love a person has, the more he suffers,”[25] regardless of whether someone is living in an “advanced” society or not.
In Hadji Murad, which Tolstoy wrote in the late years of his life, he juxtaposes the two societies, Russian and Muslim, with integrity, authenticity, and empathy. Tolstoy demonstrates how people in both operate ordinarily within their own contexts—as Hadji Murad says, “Every nation has its own customs.”[26] We experience the way Hadji Murad lives his life and thinks, how he relates to his associates, how he carries out Islamic rituals such as praying and performing ablutions, and we see him riding his horse under the stars. We see the masquerade ball of the Tsar, the singing of songs of the tribes, the hierarchies and class divisions of the Russians and clan divisions of the tribes, and the clothing and roles of the different genders in each society. Most of all, we see both the Russians and Muslims as fully formed humans who, while having their own customs and particular contexts, experience the common struggles of life. To a Russian reader, Tolstoy is essentially issuing an invitation to see the interaction between the two systems from the thistle’s perspective, to ask whether its critique of modern Russian society and wish to preserve its own has logic and merit.
Tolstoy does something similar in his short story “A Prisoner of the Caucasus,” except this time the audience is Russian children. In the tale, which Tolstoy included in his ABC Book, two Russian army officers, Zhilin and Kostilin, are taken prisoner by Muslim fighters. A good-natured Muslim girl, Dina, takes pity on the captured men, giving them milk and food. Subsequently, she helps Zhilin escape as an act of kindness. Children reading the story would have seen the virtue of Dina, who represents compassion and humanity amid the brutality of war. They would have also understood why the tribes in the Caucasus might think ill of the Russians. One character, an old man, is described like this: “He’s a great man! He was the bravest of our horsemen; he killed many Russians, and at one time he was very rich. He had three wives and eight sons, and they all lived in one village. Then the Russians came, destroyed the village, and killed seven of his sons.”[27]
When a group of tribesmen leave the village where the protagonists are being held in high spirits and later return crestfallen, with the body of one of their fellows who was killed, Tolstoy describes the funeral: “The mullah was in front…All cast their eyes down and sat in silence. This continued a long time, until the mullah raised his head and said: ‘Allah!’ (which means God). He said that one word, and they all cast their eyes down again, and were silent again for a long time. They sat quite still, without moving. Again the mullah lifted his head and said, ‘Allah!’ and they all repeated: ‘Allah! Allah!’ and fell silent again. The body lay motionless on the grass, and they sat still as though they too were dead. Not one of them moved. There was no sound but that of the leaves of the plane trees stirring in the breeze. Then the mullah said a prayer, and they all rose. They lifted the body and carried it in their arms to a hole in the ground. It was not an ordinary hole, but was hollowed out under the ground like a vault. They took the body under its arms and by its legs, bent it, and let it down gently, pushing it under the earth in a sitting posture, with its hands folded in front.”[28] The scene concurrently captures aspects of local culture and depicts the cost of war on the small community.
In another story, “After the Ball,” which Tolstoy wrote in 1903, we see the Muslim “Other” intruding unexpectedly and unsettlingly in a familiar, quintessentially Russian setting. It is a tale of a young man who falls in love with a young woman and is invited by her father, a moustached military colonel, to dance with her at a resplendent aristocratic ball. After the ball, the young man is over the moon, and yet as he walks down the street a few hours after departing the affair, he comes across a bleak sight heading towards him. It is a procession of Russian soldiers, led by his beloved’s father, thrashing a Tatar on his bare back which is coated in blood. Mere hours earlier, the colonel had been the picture of dignified elegance, but now he was screaming at his troops for not beating the Tatar hard enough. Initially, the protagonist thinks to himself, “He obviously knows something that I don’t…If I’d known what he knows, I’d have understood what I was seeing and it wouldn’t have upset me.”[29] But he cannot get the image out of his head. He begins to feel alienated from society, stops seeing the colonel’s daughter, and drops plans to join the military.
In terms of Islamic intellectual influences on Tolstoy, we can see the impact of Islam clearly in the aforementioned A Calendar of Wisdom. In addition to the Quran and sayings of the Prophet, Tolstoy included Muslim cultural sources including Persian and Arab proverbs and verses from poets such as the great Persians Saadi Shirazi and Omar Khayyam. Tolstoy also features a Sufi saying which captures his universal outlook and mentions another Persian poet, Hafiz: “If you are a Muslim go and live amongst Christians; if you are a Christian go and live amongst Jews; and if a Catholic, amongst Orthodox. Whatever your religion, associate with people of other religions. If you are not offended by what they say, and if you can associate with them freely, you have achieved peace. Hafiz has told us that all religions say the same thing; all people are looking for love, and the entire world is the abode of love—so then why start talking of mosques and churches?”[30]
Tolstoy also, when discussing his own identity which was a matter of perplexity for many after he began publishing on political and religious topics, invoked Islam. In 1884, he stated, “Some people—liberals and aesthetes—think me mad or feeble-minded like Gogol; others—revolutionaries and radicals—think me a mystic or a gas bag; government people think me a pernicious revolutionary; Orthodox people think me the devil. I confess this hurts me…it is even harder when everyone turns on you with bitterness and reproaches. And so please regard me as a good Mohammedan, and then all will be splendid.”[31] Two decades later, Tolstoy wrote a letter to Muhammad Abduh, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, in which he expresses his gratitude that he is able “to correspond with an enlightened man, despite the difference between his creed, and the creed that I was raised to hold. Yet he belongs to the same religion for creeds differ and multiply, but there is only one religion, namely the religion of truth.”[32]
Furthermore, concerning the Prophet of Islam, Tolstoy wrote in 1909, “The Qur’an is consistent and Muhammad forbids war as a mean to expand Islam and killing,” and “What is common to religions is also in the Qur’an: Proclamation of Love.”[33] Yet, he said, “we do not know Islam as Muslims know Christianity.”[34]
In 1910, Tolstoy published a book in Moscow in which he collected some 95 hadiths or sayings of the Prophet, The Sayings of Mahomet Not Included in the Koran. This was intended to spread knowledge about Islam and the wisdom of the Prophet’s sayings to Russians. It was shortly thereafter published in Arabic in Egypt as The Wisdom of Prophet Muhammad Presented by Philosopher Tolstoy (1915).[35] In the introduction, Tolstoy wrote, “The essence of Islam is the unity of God, and therefore the non-worship of many gods, the loving and just nature of God...that everything on earth is transient and perishable, and only God exists eternally. Love for God consists in prayer, help, and forgiveness...A person who has realised the true God should strive to destroy everything that contributes to the development of passions.”[36] When Tolstoy died, in a rail station in southern Russia in November 1910, he was on his way to the Caucasus.[37] While it is uncertain precisely what his plans would have been there, it is notable that at the end of his life he sought to return to the region which had made such an impact on him from the time he was a young man.
Nations, Nationalism, and Patriotism
In Tolstoy’s consideration of the obstacles to human coexistence in the modern world, he frequently discussed the sentiment of national patriotism which mobilises members of one nation against another. Tolstoy interpreted nationalism, which he essentially equated with patriotism, as a problem of the “ego,” and he thought that it should be similarly seen as immoral. If egoism means “a love for oneself more than for others” which many consider “stupid and ridiculous,” Tolstoy argued, and patriotism is “a love for one’s own nation above other nations,” then both are equally wrong.[38] In both cases, love is present, but it is an exclusive, not inclusive love.[39] While it is wonderful and a virtue to love one’s own country as it is to love one’s own family, such virtues “can become vices when they become overwhelming and damage your love for your neighbour.”[40] One’s nation, Tolstoy affirms, represents only one “circle” which is “part of the wider circle that is humanity.”[41]
Exclusivist patriotism, however, like the modern state it supports, is commonly seen in human nations not as a problem but as good, laudable, and even “a necessary condition of progress.”[42] Tolstoy explains that in the modern state such sentiments are widely promoted in schools, textbooks, histories, national songs, in the media and the press, state spectacles, monuments, and by religious institutions.[43] In schools, children learn that “their own people” are “the best of all peoples and always in the right.”[44] Parents “buy their children toy helmets, guns, and swords as playthings,”[45] inculcating patriotic sentiments which are commonly directed at other nations. The cumulative effect is to “embitter” the people “against the foreigner.”[46]
Tolstoy reported that he himself had been through this process. He remarked that his early education included celebrating the “military exploits” of the nation, feeling “enmity” for and “separation” from other nations, and the idea that “my good is connected only with the good of my nation and not with the good of the whole world.”[47] He later came to question this education and understood, as he reminds his audience, that Christ said, “all are alike to God…the sun shines and the rain falls on all men alike; God makes no distinction between nations, and does the same good to all alike; the same ought men to do for all men, without distinction of nationality.”[48] Tolstoy’s message, reflecting that of Christ, is, “You have been told that you must love your neighbours and hate the national enemy; but I tell you, You must love all without distinction as to the nationality, to which any one may belong…love the men of a hostile nation as your own.”[49]
For Tolstoy, much of the suffering of people in the world is caused by patriotism. Patriotism, he contended, produces war due to its zero-sum mentality—what is good for “us” is bad for “them.” The fact that the nations of the world are all celebrating and encouraging the love of themselves over others does not bode well for peace. Tolstoy laments that “very often, a man from one nation already hates a man from another nation, and is ready to cause him sufferings and even death, even before he meets him.”[50]
The increase of patriotism in one country, which causes a nation to increase its military, Tolstoy believed, also has an effect on other nations, which respond by doing the same thing, thus ratcheting up the temperature and tension in a destructive cycle.[51] While the feeling of patriotism resulted in people banding together and forming nations and states to begin with, that same feeling “is now destroying those states” as they turn on each other—“patriotism no longer unites, but disunites.”[52] Even when countries sign peace treaties, conflict is often still present, such as the 1890s alliance between Russia and France which Tolstoy argued was a barely disguised pact of belligerence against Germany.[53]
In reality, Tolstoy contended, the nation exists in our “imagination”—it is a sentiment, a belief, a feeling which divides one people from another.[54] The borders between modern nations are “accidental and temporary…conditioned in the past by a whole series of historical events, principally acts of violence, injustice, and cruelty,” and at present maintained by power and coercion.[55] “During our memory, Nice was Italy and suddenly became France; Alsace was France and became Prussia,” Tolstoy pointed out,[56] and he asked, “What is Russia? Where is its beginning or its end? Poland? The Baltic Provinces? The Caucasus with all its nationalities? The Kazan Tartars? Ferghana Province? All these are not only not Russia, but all these are foreign nationalities desirous of being freed from the combination which is called Russia.”[57]
Additionally, patriotism causes conflict within countries because it drives attacks on the minority. Tolstoy explained that if one speaks to a member of a majority group who is persecuting the minority, they “will tell you it is in defence of their native religion and language; they will tell you that if they do not act thus, their religion and language will suffer,” that the majority will be “Judaised” if the Jews are not suppressed, or “Polonised” if the Poles are not suppressed.[58]
And yet, for peoples held in subjection and domination by others, such as the Indians colonised by the British, the different nationalities of the Russian Empire, or the Eastern nations such as Japan and China which were quickly “modernising,” Tolstoy issued emphatic warnings not to adopt the European model of patriotic nationalism. It was nothing but an “infection” such peoples could catch from their oppressors.[59] In the case of Japan, he noted with disappointment, Japan was assimilating “all the shallow, cunning methods of an immoral and cruel civilisation, and are preparing to withstand their oppressors by the same means that these employ against them.”[60] In doing so, similar to Europe with its religious tradition, Japan was contradicting Buddhism—it was distorting “the great Buddhistic teaching by not only permitting but justifying that murder which Buddha forbade.”[61]
For members of oppressed groups, Tolstoy counselled, resistance should be in the form of non-violence, because violence will only result in more violence and oppression. He advised “all the conquered races” including the Indians, Irish, Bedouin, and Poles, in addition to the “workmen enslaved by the capitalists” to fight back with non-violent means. In India, Tolstoy wrote in 1907, if people refused to enlist in British forces and “did not submit to the English laws,” “all the English in the world” would not be able to “enslave India” any longer.[62]
Tolstoy was gravely concerned for the future. The world was spinning out of control, he felt, without moral guidance or direction.[63] He noted that unlike in the past, where societies could remain isolated from one another, the advances of modernity had increasingly made the world smaller. Nations were intermeshed with each other, Tolstoy said, due to their “frequent international relations—mercantile, social, scientific, artistic”[64] connections to the point where any war would be even more devastating to both “Self” and “Other.” And yet, remarking of the situation both within and between states, he believed that horrific violence was on the horizon, stating, “the awful catastrophe is coming nearer and nearer”[65] and “We are dashing on toward the precipice.”[66] Humanity could experience “universal slaughter,”[67] Tolstoy feared, amid states “arming themselves against each other”[68]—“so-called civilised humanity” was heading for “certain destruction.”[69]
Looking back at history, we can see that Tolstoy’s fears were well founded. Less than four years after his death the First World War broke out, followed by the Russian Revolution with its materialistic focus, totalitarian state reorganisation, and mass suffering of the peasantry, and two decades after that, the Second World War was waged. In the First and Second World Wars, some 100 million people were killed. Contrary to Tolstoy’s hopes, colonised peoples in nations like India, led by Westernised elites, did adopt modernity on the Western model. The memory of Tolstoy and his message were overwhelmed by the Russian Revolution and the ascendency of leaders like Lenin and Stalin, in Russia and abroad. This is while Tolstoy himself continued to be celebrated by leaders like Lenin and Stalin[70]—he was too important a figure for Russians, it seemed, for the authorities to dispense with entirely.
Yet, at the same time, leaders influenced by Tolstoy such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. changed the course of world history through the Tolstoyan methods of love, peace, and non-violence. Gandhi’s method of non-violent resistance, “satyagraha” or truth force, which Gandhi and King also called “soul force,” is heavily indebted to Tolstoy and his understanding of religious truth.[71] Such leaders, and the many around the world who were in turn inspired by them, embodied Tolstoy’s teaching that “The movement of humanity toward the good takes place, not thanks to the tormentors, but to the tormented. As fire does not put out fire, so evil does not put out evil. Only the good meeting the evil, and not becoming contaminated by it, vanquishes the evil.”[72] Tolstoy also influenced the emerging interfaith dialogue movement in the twentieth century, directly inspiring the creation of the UK-based World Congress of Faiths.[73]
In 1991, upon the fall of the Soviet Union and the coming of democracy to Russia, Tolstoy experienced a renaissance. His works which had been banned by Soviet authorities such as A Calendar of Wisdom were reprinted to great fanfare—A Calendar of Wisdom sold over 300,000 copies when it was published in 1995.[74] When Russia again fought in the Caucasus to stop Chechnya from becoming independent, Tolstoy played a role in bringing peace—this time through A Prisoner of the Caucasus (1996), a film adaptation of Tolstoy’s story which had been updated and set during the current war. Shortly after the film was screened privately for Russian President Boris Yeltsin, he reportedly changed his position on Chechnya and decided to negotiate.[75] A few months later, Russia and Chechnya signed an agreement ending the war.
Yet a few years later Russia was once again at war in Chechnya, this time under its new leader Vladimir Putin, and Putin would go on to wage further large-scale wars. Under Putin, Russia experienced increasing totalitarian rule, surging nationalism, and, in its war in Ukraine, nearly two million soldiers have been killed, wounded, or are missing.[76] While Tolstoy is among Putin’s favourite authors who he has quoted in public, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian arctic penal colony, also prominently invoked Tolstoy in his activism.[77] Putin commemorated Tolstoy by naming a major government award after him, the annual Leo Tolstoy International Peace Prize. Putin also announced that Russia will celebrate the 200th anniversary of Tolstoy’s birth in 2028, considering, he said, “the outstanding contribution of Leo Tolstoy to national and world culture.”[78]
Striving for the ideal
By the end of Tolstoy’s life, he was seen by many as a tragic figure and dangerous radical—first and foremost by the Russian government. It is not difficult to see why. Tolstoy, who was widely adored and could easily have continued creating his artistic works without voicing his evolving opinions so explicitly, instead came to publicly oppose the existence of the modern state, national borders, private property, the military, police, and prisons. Even today, there is an enduring image of him as a rather eccentric bearded old man living on his estate in his peasant clothing late in life, for example, as seen in the film The Last Station (2009)—Isaiah Berlin memorably described him as “a desperate old man, beyond human aid, wandering self-blinded” like Oedipus.[79] In other words, unable to reconcile himself with reality. While he was and still is described as an “anarchist,” Tolstoy stated, “I am not an anarchist, but a Christian. My anarchism is only the application of Christianity to human relationships”[80]
And yet there was, and there remains a misunderstanding concerning Tolstoy’s thinking, and particularly his views on politics and how one should live their lives. Tolstoy, in keeping with his understanding of world religions and following the message of Jesus, was concerned with pursuing an ideal. If people follow the precepts of the world religions centred on the Golden Rule, for example, as presented in A Calendar of Wisdom, Tolstoy believed, then in the future we will not need the institutions of the modern state which are based on coercive power. Tolstoy wanted to shake us out of our complacency, our common belief that this is simply how modern states are, that armies of millions must massacre each other for our nation to survive, that workers must work for pittances while a small elite runs societies, and that there is nothing we can do about it. As Tolstoy put it, “in order to have real justice, it is necessary for our striving and our ideal to embody self-denial and love…In order to hit the target it is necessary to aim above and beyond it.”[81]
Thus conceptualising and then pursuing an ideal is central to his thinking. Considering the ideal, Tolstoy argued, focuses us on what he called “the contradiction between what is and what ought to be.”[82] While “Compromise will inevitably come in practice,” we should never compromise the ideal itself.[83] Even concerning violence carried out by the state in the present time, a circumstance could occur in which it might be necessary, but we should work towards a “future government in which violence will not be necessary.”[84]
By concentrating us on distant targets like a world without violence and war, he was reminding us of the necessity of at least moving in that direction. This is exactly what the founders of world religions did, according to Tolstoy. These great figures assisted a progression of humanity towards greater love for one another—they were able to “change the environment little by little, pointing the way to an eternally remote state of perfection, pointing the way there…little by little the environment changes.”[85] The process is not easy, and involves “an infinite number of steps.”[86] As Tolstoy wrote, “An ideal is essential for life. But an ideal is only an ideal when it is PERFECTION. The direction can only be indicated when it is indicated mathematically by a straight line which doesn’t exist in reality.”[87] If you don’t “preach to people an equal love for ALL,” Tolstoy argued, including people different from the majority group and “one’s enemies,” then “there won’t be and can’t be any deliverance from evil, there will only be what comes most naturally: one’s fatherland, one’s people, its defence, armies, and war.”[88]
Through his writings, including his great artistic works and activism, Tolstoy sought to move humanity in this direction. Art in particular had an immense power, he believed, and a “spiritual effect”[89] on people in eliciting empathy and love for one another and bringing people together. It can shape our consciousness, and lead us towards coexistence and embracing the “Other.”[90] Through art, Tolstoy said, “you are transported into other people, you want to feel through them.”[91] Art works by “calling up the feelings of brotherhood and love in people under imaginary conditions…uniting the most diverse people in one feeling and abolishing separation…the joy of general union beyond the barriers set up by life.”[92]
Thus, like John Lennon after him, Tolstoy asked us to imagine a different world and future: “why should we not imagine chaste people, struggling against their lusts, living in loving communion with their neighbours amid fruitful fields, gardens and woods, with tame, well-fed animal friends…they do not consider the land to be anyone’s private property, do not themselves belong to any particular nation, do not pay taxes or duties, prepare for war, or fight anybody; but on the contrary, have more and more of peaceful intercourse with every race?”[93] “I imagined that all men believed in this,” Tolstoy said, “and I asked myself what would then be.”[94]
In works like The Kingdom of God is Within You, Tolstoy argues that the struggle to live up to the ideal of love and unity should start within. One begins by recognising the inner light of the divine whole within human beings and working to cultivate love, within oneself and then towards others, and to turn away from all forms of violence. It is this internal awareness that Tolstoy sought to cultivate in all. With all of us working on ourselves, we can then link up with others doing the same thing, and the world will change. “It always seems to us that we are loved because we are good,” Tolstoy taught, “But we don’t suspect that we are loved because those who love us are good.”[95] Little by little, the love in society increases.
This is because Tolstoy believed that the true power in every society does not lie in the group with the most coercive power or force, but in what he called “public opinion.” He encourages us to use our own voice to change it for the better, for example, when we see people using violence, we can always “try to convince them not to” using “wise, convincing arguments, appealing…to their higher spiritual understanding.”[96] People operating within modern state structures have a particular potential to set positive examples and move society in the right direction—Tolstoy appealed to Tsar Alexander III to act in such a manner by forgiving the people who assassinated his father.[97] “There is nothing more important than an example,” Tolstoy said, “It leads us to do good deeds which would be impossible without this example.”[98]
Tolstoy had no doubt that people proceeding in this manner could fundamentally alter their own societies. He described public opinion as “the spiritual force which moves the world,”[99] “the only power in our control,”[100] and “a million times stronger than any laws and armies.”[101] What yesterday was “the new opinion of one man, becomes to-day the public opinion of the majority. And as soon as this opinion becomes established, at once, gradually, imperceptibly, but irresistibly, men begin to alter their conduct.”[102] We can see how effective public opinion is in the spread of religions like Christianity and Islam, Tolstoy believed. Any attempt to impose such religions by force would have had the opposite effect because “Force can never suppress what is sanctioned by public opinion.”[103] The use of force can, however, swing public opinion against those who use it. As Tolstoy put it, “Dynamite and daggers, as experience shows us, only provoke reaction and destroy the most valuable power” of public opinion.[104]
Tolstoy explains that cultivating our inner self towards loving others will never be a perfect process or produce a perfect result—what is important is that we are aware of the problem in modern society and are attempting to move in the right direction. Tolstoy stated, “The most common reproach levelled against people who express their convictions is that they don’t live in accordance with them, and that therefore their convictions are insincere. But if you think about it seriously, you will realise that it’s just the opposite. Can an intelligent man who expresses convictions with which his way of life is not in accord help seeing this discrepancy? But if, nevertheless, he expresses convictions which do not accord with his way of life, this only shows that he is so sincere that he cannot help expressing what exposes his weakness, and that he is not doing what the majority of people do—tailoring his convictions to suit his weakness.”[105]
As an example, Tolstoy noted, “Not every man can renounce the possession of capital (there are some who do), or the use of articles defended by violence, but each man can, by diminishing his own requirements, be less and less in need of articles which provoke other people to envy.”[106] Speaking up is also encouraged—“Words can unite people”[107] and “you can always recognise the truth and refuse to tell a lie about it.”[108] Even a single good thought we might have, which we then apply to our own life, can improve the world.[109] What Tolstoy is asking us to do is to make an effort, as “even the effort itself gives the biggest blessing of life.”[110]
Pursuing an ideal is also important when confronting explanations of human life and international relations which attempt to prove that “conflict” is natural and thus should be accepted and even encouraged, such as the idea of the “survival of the fittest.” As Tolstoy contended, “to admit…that each man loves himself more than he loves others, can in no way prove that it ought so to be. On the contrary, the whole concern of all humanity, and of every individual, lies in suppressing these preferences and aversions, in battling with them, and in deliberately behaving toward other nations and toward individual foreigners, exactly as toward one’s own nation and fellow-countrymen.”[111] Indeed, if people believe that violence is inevitable and natural, Tolstoy reasoned, they can just as easily “believe in the law of love.”[112]
Tolstoy’s lessons for the world
While the East often looks at the West on a philosophic level and dismisses it as morally vacuous, materialistic, atheistic, and a source of aggression and nationalism, Tolstoy is a clear alternative and challenge to this perception. Tolstoy, steeped in Western culture from childhood, has deep insights concerning how to retain our humanity and spirituality in the face of accelerated societal transformations which are equally applicable to the West and the rest of the world.
In our current difficult, tumultuous, and dangerous time in which religion too often serves to divide people and hatred flows freely, Tolstoy’s lessons about pursuing the ideals of love and unity cannot be more relevant. The threat of nuclear destruction, in addition to the ramifications of advanced weapons systems such as the drones discussed above and AI weaponry are constant concerns. We are also increasingly individually isolated from one another, and society is growing more atomised and divided. Again we can turn to Tolstoy, who was always conscious of his individuality and the isolation and despair that can result from a state of disconnection, and consequently sought union and communion with others.
In Tolstoy’s work, we have a clear direction towards appreciating and embracing the “Other.” Tolstoy speaks to us with an urgency that cuts across the more than one century separating his life from ours. He asks, “what time is the most important? What person? And what act? The time is now, this minute; the person is the one you are now dealing with; and the act is to save your own soul, i.e. to perform an act of love.”[113] He wants us to embrace love with confidence and to not be afraid to do so. Now is the time to revive his example.
It is important to note that despite his exhortations against modern “civilisation,” Tolstoy was not against technology or scientific progress as such but wished to call attention to the level of love and desire for the welfare of others among people who are developing and utilising such innovations. As Tolstoy explained, “When people’s lives are immoral and their relationships are based not on love but on egoism, all technical improvements, the increase of man’s power over nature—steam, electricity, telegraphs, all kinds of machines, powder, dynamite, roburite—create the impression of dangerous toys which have been put into the hands of children.”[114] “Metals dug out of the ground,” he points out, “can be used for the comforts of life or for cannons.”[115] We can imagine Tolstoy saying similar things about the digital age, mass media, and AI.
What Tolstoy asks repeatedly of us is to not ignore our own inner moral voice. There is much we all can do to promote better relations between peoples. Small actions matter in leading the world towards what Tolstoy called a “brotherhood of the nations.”[116] The Golden Rule is as relevant today as ever. Tolstoy tells us that while people say that if we don’t fight our “enemies…they will kill us all,” the reality is that “If we did indeed love our enemies…we would have no enemy.”[117] “[G]ood relations between people,” Tolstoy taught, is the “most valuable thing on earth.”[118] The approach for bringing this about is simple, in Tolstoy’s view, “one should remove that which disunites people and substitute that which unites them.”[119]
Tolstoy asks us to open our hearts, minds, hospitality, and human groups to the “Other,” to extend “the sphere of love.”[120] He argues, “every exclusive union limits the circle of fellowship and deprives man of the chief source of welfare, possibility of loving communion with all on earth.”[121] He implores us, people from whichever nation to which we happen to belong, to “understand that all your real human interests, whatever they may be—agricultural, industrial, commercial, artistic or scientific—as well as your pleasures and joys, in no way run counter to the interests of other peoples or States; and that you are united, by mutual co-operation, by interchange of services, by the joy of wide brotherly intercourse, and by the interchange not merely of goods but also of thoughts and feelings, with the folk of other lands.”[122]
It is “a change of outlook on life” which is most important.[123] Tolstoy repeatedly stresses the importance of education, not just about the “Other” but about the great insights that other faiths, traditions, and cultures can shed on being human and how we should behave in the world. Lest we think Tolstoy himself is particularly wise, he constantly repeats that he is only sharing the message of Jesus and that of the great religious sages of history. Love can change our lives and those of others, and save the world from destruction.
Perhaps most important of all, Tolstoy reminds us to be joyful for the miracle of life, to stay optimistic, and to try to make the world “a better and more joyous place to live, for those who live with us and those who come after us.”[124] The meaning of life itself, Tolstoy asserts, is “the pursuit of happiness,” and we become truly happy only by living for others which connects us to the underlying unity of all things.[125] “Life can’t have any other purpose except good, except joy,” he says, “Only this purpose—joy—is fully worthy of life…there are sources of joy which never dry up: the beauty of nature, animals and human beings which is never absent…And the main source is love—my love for people and their love for me.”[126]
“Rejoice! Rejoice!,” he exclaims, “Rejoice at the sky, the sun, the stars, the grass, the trees, animals, people. And take care that nothing disturbs this joy. If this joy is disturbed it means that you’ve made a mistake somewhere—find that mistake and correct it.”[127] “One has only to love, and what one loves becomes beautiful,” Tolstoy states.[128] In this way love is a “magician.”[129] The more someone loves, Tolstoy affirms, “the more one is united with other people” and “the more not only does he become happy and joyous, but the more happy and joyous does he make other people.”[130] Thus, “love evokes love in others,” a chain reaction.[131] He asks us to “spread a network of love everywhere. No matter who gets into this net, catch them all and fill them with love.”[132] “Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles,” Tolstoy taught, “so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.”[133]
While loving others may seem difficult, unrealistic, or overly idealistic, Tolstoy advises we start with small steps: “To know surely in how far the doctrine of Love is applicable—try it! Test it. Resolve for a certain period to follow the doctrine of Love in all things; to live so as in all things to remember first of all, with every man—thief, drunkard, rough officer, or dependent—not to swerve from Love; that is to say, in the business you have with him, to remember his need rather than your own…Test this: try, instead of returning the offender evil for evil, instead of condemning behind his back a man who lives badly, and so on—instead of all this, try to respond to evil with good, and say no evil of any man. Treat not even a cow or a dog harshly, but treat them kindly and affectionately, and live in this way for a day, or two, or more, as an experiment, and compare the state of your soul with what it was before. Make the experiment, and you will see how, instead of a surly, angry, and depressed condition, you will be bright, merry, and joyous.”[134]
Let us conclude with Tolstoy’s rendition of the Lord’s Prayer which captures his hopes for humanity: “Our Father, hallowed be Thy essence, love, that the kingdom of love may come; Thy will—that all should be ruled by love (by Thee)—be done here on earth as it is, I believe, in heaven. And give me life, i.e. a part in bringing this about here and now. And eliminate the consequences of my mistakes which could be…a hindrance to me, just as I eliminate in my own consciousness the consequences of the mistakes of other people which are apparent to me, and which could hinder me from loving them. And lead me not into temptation—physical suffering, clouding of the mind, desire—which are obstacles to the realisation of love, and above all save me from the main obstacle within myself—from the evil in my own heart. Yes, only one thing is necessary for this life, and for all life, one thing—love—and its increase.”[135]
[1] Piotr Stawinski, “Leo Tolstoy and Islam: Some Remarks on the Theme,” The Quarterly Journal of Philosophical Meditations, vol. 2, no. 5, 2010, p. 5.
[2] A. N. Wilson, “Introduction.” In Leo Tolstoy, How Much Land Does a Man Need? and Other Stories. Translated by Ronald Wilks. (London: Penguin Books, 1993), p. ix.
[3] Maude, The Life of Tolstoy, p. 335.
[4] Edyta M. Bojanowska, “Was Tolstoi a Colonial Landlord?: The Dilemmas of Private Property and Settler Colonialism on the Bashkir Steppe,” Slavic Review, vol. 81, no. 2, 2022, p. 329.
[5] Maude, The Life of Tolstoy, p. 335.
[6] Maude, The Life of Tolstoy, p. 335.
[7] Maude, The Life of Tolstoy, p. 363.
[8] Maude, The Life of Tolstoy, pp. 336-337.
[9] Maude, The Life of Tolstoy, p. 366.
[10] C. A. Behrs, Recollections of Count Leo Tolstoy. Together with A Letter to the Women of France on “The Kreutzer Sonata.” Translated by Charles Edward Turner. (London: William Heinemann, 1896), p. 96.
[11] Behrs, Recollections of Count Leo Tolstoy, p. 96; Bojanowska, “Was Tolstoi a Colonial Landlord?,” pp. 334-335.
[12] Behrs, Recollections of Count Leo Tolstoy, pp. 96-97.
[13] Behrs, Recollections of Count Leo Tolstoy, p. 100.
[14] Bojanowska, “Was Tolstoi a Colonial Landlord?,” p. 326.
[15] Bojanowska, “Was Tolstoi a Colonial Landlord?,” p. 334.
[16] Bojanowska, “Was Tolstoi a Colonial Landlord?,” p. 338.
[17] Tolstoy’s Diaries, Volume II, p. 428.
[18] Tolstoy’s Diaries, Volume I, p. 257.
[19] Tolstoi, “What is to Be Done?,” p. 266.
[20] Bojanowska, “Was Tolstoi a Colonial Landlord?,” p. 345.
[21] Rachel Hurn, “How Much Land Does a Man Need,” The New Yorker, February 15, 2011.
[22] Leo Tolstoy, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” In Leo Tolstoy, How Much Land Does a Man Need? and Other Stories. Translated by Ronald Wilks. (London: Penguin Books, 1993), p. 110.
[23] Tolstoy’s Diaries, Volume II, p. 470.
[24] Tolstoy’s Diaries, Volume II, p. 508.
[25] Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, p. 202.
[26] Tolstoy, Hadji Murád, p. 117.
[27] Leo Tolstoy, “A Prisoner of the Caucasus (A True Story).” In Leo Tolstoy, Writings for Young Children. Translated and edited by Michael R. Katz. Illustrated by Jake Scott. (Boston: Cherry Orchard Books, 2025), p.
208.
[28] Tolstoy, “A Prisoner of the Caucasus (A True Story),” p. 210.
[29] Leo Tolstoy, “After the Ball.” In Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories. Translated by Ronald Wilks, Anthony Briggs, and David McDuff. (London: Penguin Books, 2008), p. 231.
[30] Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom. Translated by Roger Cockrell. (Surrey: Alma Classics, 2015), p. 192.
[31] Leo N. Tolstoy, Tolstoy’s Letters: Volume II (1880-1910). Edited and Translated by R. F. Christian. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978), pp. 376-377.
[32] Wahba, The Problematics of Enlightenment, p. 46.
[33] Stawinski, “Leo Tolstoy and Islam,” p. 20.
[34] Stawinski, “Leo Tolstoy and Islam,” p. 20.
[35] Mikhail Rodionov, “Leo Tolstoy and Ameen Rihani: The Interaction Between Two Creative Worlds.” In Nathan C. Funk and Betty J. Sitka, Ameen Rihani: Bridging East and West, A Pioneering Call for Arab-American Understanding (Lanham, MD: Ameen Rihani Institute, American University Center for Global Peace, University Press of America, 2004), p. 74.
[36] Sagdiev Khabibullo, “Reflection of the Prophet’s Hadith in Tolstoy’s Works,” Modern American Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 1, no. 2, 2025, p. 203.
[37] See Pavel Basinsky, Leo Tolstoy: Flight from Paradise. Translated by Huw Davies and Scott Moss. (London: Glagoslav, 2015).
[38] Leo Tolstoy, “A Reply to Criticisms.” In Leo Tolstoy, Tolstoy’s Writings on Civil Disobedience and Non-Violence (New York: Bergman Publishers, 1967), p. 174; Count Lev N. Tolstóy, “Patriotism or Peace.” In Count Lev N. Tolstóy, The Kingdom of God is Within You, Christianity and Patriotism, Miscellanies. Translated by Leo Wiener. The Complete Works of Count Tolstóy, Volume 20. (Boston: Dana Estes & Company, 1905), p. 477.
[39] Leo Tolstoy, “Patriotism and Government.” Translated by Aylmer Maude. In Leo Tolstoy, Last Steps: The Late Writings of Leo Tolstoy. Edited by Jay Parini. (London: Penguin Books, 2009), p. 123.
[40] Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, p. 356.
[41] Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, p. 377.
[42] Tolstoy, “A Reply to Criticisms,” p. 177.
[43] Tolstóy, “Patriotism or Peace,” p. 477; Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You, pp. 122-124; Tolstoy, “Patriotism and Government,” p. 125; Christoyannopoulos, Tolstoy’s Political Thought, p. 79.
[44] Tolstoy, “Patriotism and Government,” p. 125.
[45] Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You, p. 201.
[46] Tolstoy, “Patriotism and Government,” p. 125.
[47] Tolstóy, “My Religion,” pp. 215, 216.
[48] Tolstóy, “My Religion,” p. 86.
[49] Tolstóy, “My Religion,” p. 86.
[50] Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, p. 52.
[51] Tolstoy, “Patriotism and Government,” pp. 127, 129.
[52] Tolstóy, “Patriotism or Peace,” p. 473.
[53] Christoyannopoulos, Tolstoy’s Political Thought, p. 73; See also L. N. Tolstoy, Christianity and Patriotism. Translated by Constance Garnett. (London: Jonathan Cape, 1922).
[54] Leo Tolstoy, “The End of the Age (On the Approaching Revolution).” In Leo Tolstoy, The End of the Age (On the Approaching Revolution), Preceded by The Crisis in Russia. Translated by V. Tchertkoff and I. F. Mayo. (London: William Heinemann, 1906), p. 49.
[55] Tolstoy, “The End of the Age (On the Approaching Revolution),” p. 49.
[56] Tolstoy, “The End of the Age (On the Approaching Revolution),” p. 49.
[57] Tolstoy, “The End of the Age (On the Approaching Revolution),” p. 49.
[58] Tolstoy, “A Reply to Criticisms,” p. 176.
[59] Tolstoy, “Patriotism and Government,” p. 124.