Tolstoy’s Pacifism By Colm McKeogh

—Tolstoy, The Cossacks ⁹

It was in order to be with his beloved brother Nikolai that Leo went to the Caucasus in 1851, intending to try his hand at writing. ¹⁰ Alexander I had annexed Georgia for Russia in 1801 and, half a century later, Russian forces were still attempting to subdue the Chechens. Shortly after his arrival in the town where Nikolai was garrisoned, Tolstoy volunteered in an attack on Chechens. Praised by the commander for his courage under fire, he then petitioned to join and was accepted into the same artillery battery as his brother. His motive, he explained in a letter to his “Tante Toinette,” his father's cousin Tatyana Alexandrovna Yergolskaya, was his belief that too much leisure time had led to moral failings in his past life. ¹¹ Though not officially in the army yet, Tolstoy took part in further expeditions against the Chechens, narrowly escaping capture on one, and nearly being killed by a grenade on another (“With all my strength I will assist with the aid of a cannon in destroying the predatory Asiatics,” the future pacifist wrote to his brother). ¹² Unfortunately, army life provided ample and irresistible opportunities for drinking, gambling, and worse, and Tolstoy soon returned to old bad habits. The clash between his sensitive conscience and his urgent passions could not be ended by a change of location. Here, as elsewhere, he could soar to heights of mystical bliss and then plummet immediately into lustful passion: “I could not feel my own body. I was pure spirit. And then, the wretched carnal side took over again, and hardly an hour later I was listening to voices of vice, ambition, vanity, life. I knew where these voices came from. I fell asleep dreaming of fame and women. But I am not to blame, it was stronger than I.” ¹³ To finance his high living and gambling, he sold thirty male serfs, 365 acres of land, and even the main part of the house at Yasnaya Polyana where he had spent his first eight years (disassembled by the purchaser, it was removed by cart and pieced back together twelve