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The Gospel According to Tolstoy and the Gospel According to Proudhon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

David Matual
David Matual
Affiliation:
Wright State University
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Extract

During a tour of Europe in 1860–61, Lev Tolstoy had the opportunity to meet the internationally famous French socialist, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, who was then living in exile in Brussels. Since by that time Proudhon's reputation in Russia was already well established, and since the young Russian author was thoroughly familiar with his Qu' est-ce que la propriété?, Tolstoy looked forward to the meeting with great anticipation. By all accounts he was not disappointed. The two men hit it off remarkably well, and even toward the end of his life Tolstoy remembered Proudhon with affection and admiration. This is not to say that their views on politics, society, religion, and international law were in complete accord. Tolstoy was, after all, quite skeptical about Proudhon's socialism both before and after their encounter. But in the main he respected him for his impassioned commitment to moral truth and social justice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 75 , Issue 1 , January 1982 , pp. 117 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1982

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References

1 During this trip Tolstoy bought a whole crate of books. Among his purchases were several works by Proudhon. See Eikhenbaum, Boris Mikhailovich, Lev Tolstoy. Kniga vtoraia. 60-ye gody (Leningrad/Moscow: GIKhL, 1931) 299–300.Google Scholar

2 Tolstoy told his official biographer that Proudhon had impressed him as a “strong man,” who had “le courage de son opinion.” See Biriukov, Pavel Ivanovich, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy: Biografiia (2 vols.; Moscow: Posrednik, 1906) 1. 389–90.Google Scholar

3 In a letter to John Kenworthy dated 8 July 1894, Tolstoy speaks of the “profound and good undertakings” of nineteenth-century reformers, among whom he lists Proudhon. See Tolstoy, Lev Nikolaevich, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (ed. Chertkov, V. G. et al.; 90 vols.; Moscow: GIKhL, 1928–1958) 67.167.Google Scholar All subsequent references to Tolstoy pertain to this edition. All translations from Russian are my own.

4 Tolstoy, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 48. 85.

5 For an excellent comparison of La Guerre et la paix and War and Peace, see Eikhenbaum, Lev Tolstoy, 300–306. The following passage from Proudhon is echoed on more than one occasion in Tolstoy's novel: “War and peace, which the mob imagines to be two mutually exclusive states of affairs, are the alternating conditions of the life of nations. They name each other, define each other, complete and support each other like the inverse but adequate and inseparable terms of an antinomy. Peace demonstrates and confirms war; war in its turn is a demand of peace.” See Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, La Guerre et la paix (2 vols.; 1861; reprint ed., New York/London: Garland, 1972) 1. 91.Google Scholar All translations from French are my own.

6 In addition, there are certain similarities in the temperaments of the authors. For a comparison, see Eikhenbaum, Lev Tolstoy, 286. In the nineteenth century the Russian critic Nikolai Konstantinovich Mikhailovskii noted that both men were characterized by a passionate involvement in their work, by a love of generalizations, and by “a faith in the people and in freedom.” See “Desnitsa i shuitsa L'va Tolstogo,” in Literaturno-kriticheskie stat'i (Moscow: GIKhL, 1957) 174.Google Scholar It is impossible to determine whether or not Tolstoy read Les Evangiles. All that can be said for certain is that in December 1877, he received a shipment of books from his friend Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov, that most of these books were “about religion,” and that they included works by Max Müller, Ernest Renan, David Friedrich Strauss, “and also works by Proudhon.” See Gusev, Nikolai Nikolaevich, Letopis' zhizni i tvorchestva L'va Nikolaevicha Tolstogo. 1828–1890 (Moscow: GIKhL, 1958) 484.Google Scholar

The many similarities between the Union and Les Evangiles should not obscure the fact that there are also a number of significant dissimilarities, especially with regard to Matthew 5–7, i.e., the Sermon on the Mount. For Tolstoy, this was the most crucial passage in the gospels, but Proudhon either puts a different interpretation on its various parts or passes over some of Tolstoy's favorite verses in total silence. The “poor in spirit” (Matt 5:3), for example, are people “afflicted in soul,” while for Tolstoy they are and must be people without material possessions. See Proudhon, , Oeuvres complètes (26 vols.; Paris/Brussels: Lacroix, 1849–1970)Google Scholar; Oeuvres posthumes, 5. 23. All subsequent references to this volume will be given parenthetically. Proudhon did not downplay the importance of poverty in Christian life. Indeed, one passage in La Guerre et la paix brings him very close to Tolstoy's point of view: “If we lived, as the gospel recommends, in a spirit of joyous poverty, the most perfect order would reign on earth. There would be no vice or crime. Through work, reason, and virtue men would form a society of sages. They would enjoy all the happiness of which their nature is capable” (2.146). But his emphasis in Les Evangiles is on poverty of spirit rather than on poverty of means. Likewise, he does not seem to share Tolstoy's belief in non-violence. In fact, he says nothing at all about the verse on which Tolstoy bases his theory—Matt 5:39. (All biblical translations are from the RSV.) The pacifism which Tolstoy finds in Matt 5:43–44 is completely ignored by Proudhon. In La Guerre et la paix war is even described as “just, virtuous, moral, holy … a phenomenon of a divine order” (1. 36–37).

7 Tolstoy, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 24. 25. All subsequent references to volume 24 will be given parenthetically.

8 The issue is not quite so clear as Proudhon would have his readers believe. Biblical scholars are sharply divided on the interpretation of the two titles in question.

9 In a letter to E. R, Stamo (14 December 1907) concerning Houston Steward Chamberlain's Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, Tolstoy writes: “Chamberlain's book is very good …. His assertion that Christ was not a Jew by race, a claim that is completely accurate and which he has proved irrefutably, is only a small part of his marvellously conceived book.” See Tolstoy, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 77. 258.