Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
(1828–1910)

Tolstoy and Fyodorov were acquainted in person: they met in the late 1870s at the Rumyantsev Museum, where Fyodorov served as librarian, and grew closer from autumn 1881 onwards. At Fyodorov's suggestion, Tolstoy deposited his manuscripts at the museum for safekeeping. He spoke of him with a respect rare for himself: «I am proud to live at the same time as such a man».

But this respect concerned the man, not his teaching — and Tolstoy states this directly. In a letter to V. I. Alekseyev (November 1881) about Fyodorov's plan of universal resurrection: «I do not share, and have never shared, his views, but I have understood them in such a way that I feel capable of defending these views before any other creed, that has an external aim». He calls Fyodorov himself the purest Christian in life: a pauper who gives everything away, always cheerful and meek.

Tolstoyism

Tolstoy was not only a writer, but also the creator of a religious-moral doctrine, grown from his own reading of the Gospel. Main principles:

— Non-resistance to evil by force. A central principle, based on the words of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:39): evil must not be answered with evil; violence in response to violence only perpetuates it.

— Simplification. A renunciation of luxury, estate privileges, and intellectual pride in favour of a simple working life, close to that of peasants. For a count and large landowner, this was a renunciation of his own position: in 1891 Tolstoy publicly renounced copyright to everything he wrote after 1881, and in 1892 divided his property among his wife and children.

— Criticism of the state and the official Church. Tolstoy considered the state an apparatus of violence (army, courts, police), and the official Church an institution that had distorted Christ's teaching. In February 1901, the Holy Synod published a ruling on Count Leo Tolstoy, asserting his lapse from the Church; the words «excommunication» and «anathema» do not appear in the text, though in common usage this act is called excommunication.

Divergence with Fyodorov

For Tolstoy, what matters is moral transformation, the spiritual «resurrection» of man here and now, in life: through renunciation of egoism, property, and power, through service to God and humanity. Death in this system is not a problem to be solved by external means; the question is how a man lives, not what he will do with nature.

In Fyodorov's case, the vector is opposite — outward and backward. The Common Task is directed not toward the inner perfection of the individual, but toward the collective labour of generations; and not toward the future as such, but toward the past: the duty of living sons is to restore life to dead fathers. The means are fundamentally external: science, the regulation of nature, organized action by all humanity. Fyodorov did not reject the state and the Church, but saw them as possible participants in the Common Task — that is, precisely the institutions that Tolstoy denied.

The rupture proved mutual. Over time, Fyodorov came into sharp disagreement with Tolstoy: he was repelled by the anti-Church motifs in Tolstoy's writings and what he considered lack of patriotism; in Fyodorov's articles there are many attacks on Tolstoy.