Tolstoy’s Pacifism By Colm McKeogh

—Tolstoy, My Religion ⁵³

Following his religious rebirth, Tolstoy was to astound and sadden his admirers in the 1880s by renouncing not only his art but almost everything cultured society lives by. The problems of his old life, he decided again, had been due not to errors in his thinking but to mistakes in his living. He had been living wrongly, that is, for himself rather than for others. His new rules for himself were simple: to work for all he needed in life. As soon as he had made physical labor the ordinary condition of his life, then at once he found that the greater part of his frivolous and expensive habits and desires ceased of themselves, without any endeavor on his part. The marks of his class, their clothes, bedding, conventional cleanliness, late rising and seminocturnal living all became impossible and embarrassing when he began to labor physically. The harder he worked, the stronger, sounder, more cheerful and kinder he felt himself to be. ⁵⁴ The count became a peasant, the huntsman became a vegetarian, the soldier became a pacifist, the great novelist a writer of simple Christian parables.

Though spiritual renewal led Tolstoy to seek to change his life utterly, his character was not so susceptible to immediate alteration. He was injudicious and headstrong, with an intellect more fervent than comprehensive. His new religion did not rectify either, and tolerance and humility were never to come naturally to him. Maxim Gorky noted how