Leon
Trotsky: On Tolstoy's Death
November
20, 1910
[Leon
Trotsky on Literature and Art, New York ²1972, p. 143-147]
For
several weeks now the thoughts and feelings of literate and thinking
people throughout the world have been concentrated, first, on the
name and image of Tolstoy and, afterwards, on his grave and ashes.
His decision — in the face of imminent death — to break with his
family and the conditions into which he had been born and in which he
had matured and grown old; his flight from his ancient home — to
disappear among the people, among the gray, anonymous millions; his
death in the view of the whole world — all this gave rise not only
to a powerful surge of sympathy, love, and respect for the great old
man in every unreconciled heart; it also aroused an intangible
anxiety in the ironclad consciousness of those who are the
maintainers of today's social structure. Something is wrong, it
seems, with their sacrosanct property, their state authority, their
church, and their family structure if the eighty-three-year-old
Tolstoy could stand it no longer and, in his final days, became a
fugitive from all this illustrious "culture."
More
than thirty years ago, when he was already a man of fifty, Tolstoy,
in the torments of conscience, broke with the faith and traditions of
his fathers and created his own, Tolstoyan, faith. He then propagated
it in moral-philosophical works, in his voluminous correspondence,
and in the literary works of his last period (e.g., Resurrection).
Tolstoy's
teaching is not our teaching. He proclaimed nonresistance to evil. He
saw the chief motive power not in social conditions but in the soul
of man. He believed that it was possible to eradicate evil by moral
example, to disarm despotism by arguments of love. He wrote
remonstrative letters to Alexander III and Nicholas II — as though
the root of violence lay in the conscience of the oppressor, and not
in the social conditions that give rise to it and nurture it.
Organically, the proletariat cannot accept this teaching. For with
every surge toward the ideal of moral rebirth — toward knowledge,
toward the light, toward "resurrection" — the worker
feels the cast-iron shackles of social slavery on his hands and feet,
and he cannot be delivered from these shackles by inner striving; he
must smash them and cast them off. In contrast to Tolstoy, we say and
teach: the organized violence of the minority can be destroyed only
through the organized revolt and insurrection of the majority.
Tolstoy's
faith is not our faith.
After
he had discarded the ritualistic side of Orthodoxy — baptism,
anointing with oil, the swallowing of bread and wine, prayerful
incantations, all this crude sorcery of churchly worship — Tolstoy
stayed the knife of his criticism before the idea of God as the
inspirer of love, father of all people, and creator and master of the
world. We go further than Tolstoy. As the basis of the universe and
of life we know and acknowledge only primeval matter, obedient to its
own internal laws; in human society, as well as in the individual
human being, we see only a particle of the universe, subject to
general laws. And just as we do not want any kind of crowned
sovereign over our bodies, we do not recognize any kind of divine
master over our souls.
Nevertheless
— despite this profound distinction — there is a deep moral
affinity between the beliefs of Tolstoy and the teachings of
socialism: in the honesty and fearlessness of their renunciation of
oppression and slavery and in their indomitable striving for the
brotherhood of man.
Tolstoy
did not consider himself a revolutionary and was not one. But he
passionately sought the truth and, having found it, was not afraid to
proclaim it Truth in and of itself possesses a terrible, explosive
power: once proclaimed, it irresistibly gives rise to revolutionary
conclusions in the consciousness of the masses. Everything that
Tolstoy stated publicly: about the senselessness of rule by the czar,
about the criminality of military service, about the dishonesty of
landed property, about the lies of the church — in thousands of
ways all this seeped into the minds of the laboring masses, agitated
millions in the populist sects. And the word became deed. Although
not a revolutionary, Tolstoy nurtured the revolutionary element with
his words of genius. In the book about the great storm of 1905 an
honorable chapter will be dedicated to Tolstoy.
Tolstoy
did not consider himself a socialist and was not one. But in the
search for truth in the relations between man and man, he did not
hesitate to reject the idols of autocracy and orthodoxy — he went
further and, to the great perturbation of the propertied classes, he
pronounced an anathema on those social relations which doom one man
to carry off the dung of another.
Those
of property, especially the liberals, slavishly flocked around him,
praised him to the skies, hushed up what was said against him —
tried to flatter his spirit, to drown his thought in glory. But he
did not yield. And no matter how sincere are the tears that liberal
society sheds on the grave of Tolstoy, we have the indisputable right
to say: liberalism does not answer Tolstoy's questions; liberalism
cannot absorb Tolstoy; it is helpless before him, "Culture?
Progress? Industry?" says Tolstoy to the liberals. "The
devil take your progress and your industry if my sisters must sell
their bodies on the sidewalks of your cities!"
Tolstoy
did not know or show the way out of the hell of bourgeois culture.
But with irresistible force he posed the' question that only
scientific socialism can answer. And in this vein one might say that
everything in Tolstoy's teaching that is lasting and permanent flows
into socialism as naturally as a river into the ocean.
Because
Tolstoy served the cause of human emancipation with his life, his
death resounded throughout the country like a reminder of the
revolutionary legacy — a reminder and a summons. And this summons
met with an unexpectedly rousing response.
In
Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov, and Tomsk, student funeral
observances for Tolstoy took on the character of political rallies,
and the rallies spilled out onto the streets as stormy demonstrations
under the slogans "Down with capital punishment!" and "Down
with the priests!" And as in the good old days, the doleful
figures of liberal professors and deputies emerged from the gateways
before the aroused student body, and they timidly waved their hands
at the students and summoned them to "tranquility" And as
in the good old days, the sensible-conciliatory liberal was shoved
aside; the newly revolutionary student began to disturb the peace of
the Stolypin cemetery; the constitutional Cossacks displayed their
prowess on the heads and backs of students; and scenes in the spirit
of 1901 were played out on the streets of both capitals.
But
on the horizon the shape of another, incomparably more menacing
figure appeared. The workers' ranks in the plants, factories, and
print shops of Petersburg, Moscow, and other cities immediately sent
telegrams of sympathy, initiated a "Tolstoy Fund," passed
resolutions, went out on strike in memory of Tolstoy, demanded
initiation by the Social-Democratic fraction in the Duma of
legislation abolishing capital punishment, and even took to the
streets with this slogan. In the workers' districts there was an air
of tension and alarm that was not to be smoothed over quickly.
Such
is the interconnection of ideas and events, which Tolstoy, evidently,
did not foresee on his deathbed. Hardly had the man who had cast the
unforgettable "I cannot be silent!" in the teeth of
triumphant counterrevolution closed his eyes forever than
revolutionary democracy awoke from slumber: the student light cavalry
has already had its baptism of fire — and the heavy reserves of the
proletariat, which goes into action more slowly, is getting ready, on
the morrow, to dissolve the protest against capital punishment in the
midst of banners with the glorious slogans of the revolution,
invincible, like truth.