Why Lenin considered Tolstoy ‘the mirror of the Russian Revolution’
Every Russian knows this phrase since childhood, but few contemplate what it really means. Did the ideas of Tolstoy really reflect the ideas of the Revolution?
“Leo Tolstoy as the Mirror of the Russian Revolution” – These words, that became a catchphrase in reality, are the title of one of Vladimir Lenin’s articles. He wrote it in 1908, after having emigrated to Geneva. He published the article about Tolstoy in his own newspaper ‘Proletary’.
This was still almost 10 years until the 1917 Revolution when the Bolsheviks would seize power and Lenin was referring to the first 1905-1907 Revolution, as well as the revolutionary process in itself, the very idea of revolution.
Why does Lenin write about Tolstoy?
Vladimir Lenin
It would seem that Tolstoy and Lenin were two poles with an abyss between them. The first one was a count, a 19th century literature classic, a devout Christian. The other, although an intellectual, was an atheist, a propagandist of revolution, a supporter of the overthrowing of the monarchy and all old ways, an irreconcilable fighter. Lenin certainly didn’t need the approval of an elderly writer; however, in his propagandist goals, he masterfully exploits the figure of Tolstoy – an undisputed star of a national scale and the most influential author.
The article was written by the leader of the world proletariat on the occasion of the 80th birthday of Tolstoy. At the time when, in his opinion, all legal Russian press was “steeped to nausea in hypocrisy”. While everyone remembered the works of the classic and their artistic greatness, his philosophical life doctrines, Lenin emphasized the political and social views of the hero of the day.
Praise and criticism
Vladimir Lenin takes agitation speech as Chairman of The Council of People's Commissars (Prime Minister)
Noting the greatness of Tolstoy as a writer, Lenin studies his worldview in detail, criticizing him quite a bit.
On the one hand, Tostoy was a genius, who showed “incomparable pictures of Russian life”, genuinely protested against social “falsehood and hypocrisy”, criticized authority and autocracy, growing wealth and poverty. On the other hand, he was “the jaded, hysterical sniveller called the Russian intellectual”, a landowner and, on top of all that, a preacher of “one of the most odious things on earth, namely, religion”.
Lenin was also disgusted by the main principle of Tolstoy – “not resist evil with violence”. As it’s known, Lenin himself believed terror to be an important and integral part of the revolution (including violent disposal of the tsarist power). He noted that Christian ideas such as “turn the other cheek” were only getting in the way of revolution and considered the inability to fight for one’s rights a weakness.
So what did Tolstoy reflect?
Leo Tolstoy
However, Lenin didn’t think that all these contradictions were an accident, to the contrary: “The contradictions in Tolstoy’s views <…> are indeed a mirror of those contradictory conditions in which the peasantry had to play their historical part in our revolution.” He believed it to be logical that with such views Tolstoy “could not possibly understand either the working-class movement and its role in the struggle for socialism or the Russian revolution”.
Moreover, Lenin saw the contradictions of the revolution itself within the contradictions of Tolstoy. It was important for him to notice them and resolve them. “Tolstoy reflected the pent-up hatred, the ripened striving for a better lot, the desire to get rid of the past – and also the immature dreaming, the political inexperience, the revolutionary flabbiness.”
For him, Tolstoy represented not the proletariat, but the patriarchal Russian village. And it’s there, according to Lenin, where the protest against capitalism should be born.
How did Tolstoy feel about the revolution?
Labor Day demonstration in Moscow, 1918
Tolstoy’s ideas really were quite revolutionary. In 1905, in the article ‘A Great Iniquity’, he wrote: “The Russian people <…> continue to be an agricultural nation and desire to remain such.” And the greatest of evils is to deprive the people of their natural right to use the land. The writer called for the abolition of the private ownership of land (this is where the similarity with Lenin lies) and for giving this land to the people, the farmers.
He wrote that the Russian people shouldn’t “become proletarians in imitation of the peoples of Europe and America”. Tolstoy saw his own path for the Russians and they, as he claimed, should have shown other nations the way of “a rational, free and happy life, outside industrial, factory or capitalistic coercion and slavery”.
