"My Visit to Tolstoy": Five Discourses

by Joseph Krauskopf

Plain and fearless as was his speech to the government it was yet more so to the people. Not a wrong in society, public or private, which he did not know, and which he did not castigate as only he knew how to castigate. Louder and louder, as he grew older, he preached the Law of God against the law of degenerate society. Art and science, commerce and industry were to him as nothing in comparison with the Moral Law, without which he saw no future for mankind.

His views respecting marriage and society.

The sanctity of the marriage tie, the sobriety and industry of the husband, the domesticity of the wife, were among the most constant of his themes. He loathed the self-exhibiting society woman; in his eyes she was no better than the street-woman. Great to him was the womanly woman, greater the domestic wife, greatest of all the mother, and so many more times greater the more times she was mother.[3]

His views respecting labor and capital.

The sad lot of the poor and the riotous extravagances of the rich were constantly recurrent subjects of discussion with him. "We speak of the abolition of slavery," said he, "but we have abolished only the word, the poor are enslaved as much as ever. We need a new emancipation, the emancipation of the rich from the tyranny of their money, from the thraldom of the false view of themselves and of society. With what right do men speak of the abolition of slavery, when every time they look into the mirror they see a slave-driver, when they live in idleness, and fatten on the heart's blood of the down-trodden, when they indulge their stomachs with the choicest of dainties, and wrap their bodies in silks and broad cloths and furs, while those, whose slavish toil provides these luxuries and comforts, have not enough food to keep body and soul together, nor enough of raiment and shelter to keep from freezing?"

In an article, published a few years ago in the North American Review, Tolstoy spoke of a group of peasants standing aside to let a picknicking party of rich folks drive by. One of the ladies' hats "has cost more than the horse with which the peasant plows the field," and for the gentleman's riding stick has been paid a week's wages of an underground workman. "Everywhere, two or three men in a thousand live so that, doing nothing for themselves, they eat and drink in one week what would have fed hundreds for a year; they wear garments costing thousands of dollars; they live in palaces, where thousands of workmen could have been housed; and they spend upon their caprices the fruits of thousands and tens of thousands of working days. The others, sleepless and unfed, labor beyond their strength, ruining their moral and physical health for the benefit of these few chosen ones." It is natural that the rich should not object to this arrangement, said he, the surprising thing is that the poor take it so complacently. "Why do all these men, strong in physical vigor, and in the habit of labor—the enormous majority of humanity—why do they submit to and obey a handful of feeble men, generally incapable of anything?" Tolstoy finds the answer very simple. It is because the minority have money, and the workingmen need the money to feed their families. Millions of workingmen submit "because one man has usurped the factory, another the land, and a third the taxes collected from the workmen." Were the millions, who now slave for the rich, to get their food from the soil, the rich, to keep alive, would be obliged to raise their own food, and the double redemption would have begun. It is because the number of workers who produce the prime necessities of life is diminishing that the number of those who use luxuries is increasing. Under such conditions, the health of society, wrote he, is as little possible as is the health of that person, whose body is continually growing heavier in weight, and his legs are continually growing thinner and weaker. When the support vanishes the body must fall.[4]

His Remedy.

As a bitter opponent of violent measures, he saw but one way for righting the wrongs of society, and that is in the well-to-do descending to the lowly and starting life anew with them on a common level, and rising with them step by step to the higher planes. And to prevent a relapse to the old iniquitous state, he advocated the eradication of capital, which he held responsible for many of the inequalities and tyrannies and miseries of society. Let the rich, said he, convert their money into land and parcel it out among the poor, and claim for themselves no more than an equal share with the others. Merely wishing the poor well, and yet continuing the old state of affairs, is like sitting on a man's neck and crushing him down, yet all the time assuring him and others that we are sorry for him, and wish to ease his condition by every means in our power except by getting off his back. Or it is like entering an orchard, and barring the door behind, and gathering its fruit for ourselves, and wishing others might have as much yet continuing to keep the door barred and gathering for ourselves alone.[5]

If we really wish to see the lot of the poor improved, said he, we must not look for a miracle to effect it nor trust to some future age to bring it about. We must do it ourselves, and we must do it now. And we must do it at the cost of self-sacrifice. If people really wish to improve the condition of their brother men, and not merely their own, they must be ready not only to alter the way of life to which they are accustomed, but they must be ready for an intense struggle with themselves and their families.[6]