Tolstoy’s Pacifism By Colm McKeogh

Initially, Tolstoy's spiritual seeking in the 1870s had brought him back to Orthodox Church attendance. In July 1878, he made his first visit to Optina Pustyn, the monastery that was a great spiritual center of Russian Orthodoxy. Here were many religious solitaries living lives of piety, and long queues of visitors and pilgrims waiting to see them, touch them, or ask their advice. ⁴³ Christianity among these solitaries was very different from that of the established Orthodox Church, demanding total self-sacrifice. Tolstoy's break from Church attendance came one morning in December 1879 as he was preparing to take communion. The priest asked him to affirm that the flesh and blood of Christ were present in the bread and wine. He had heard the ritual question hundreds of times before, but suddenly it was like a knife thrust at his heart. He left the little country church knowing that he would never take communion again. His mission from then on was to separate truth from falsity in the Christian religion, and to show how the Church had strayed from the Gospels. ⁴⁴