Tolstoyans
The Tolstoyans ( Russian Толстовцы , Tolstowzy ) were supporters of a form of Christian anarchism and pacifism that was widespread around the turn of the 20th century .
Religious and socio-political ideals
The Tolstoyans were inspired by the works of the writer Leo Tolstoy , in particular by the book The Kingdom of Heaven within you . Vladimir Grigoryevich Tschertkow (1854–1936) is considered to be the founder of Tolstoyanism . Tolstoy himself protested against Tolstojanism, as a doctrine and movement named after him, even though the dissemination of his ideas was a matter of concern to him and he also welcomed it when these were taken up by other people.
The teachings of the Tolstoyans are based primarily on a Christian basis, in particular the Sermon on the Mount and a radical freedom from violence derived from it. State institutions, private property and a secular legal system were consequently rejected by them. "The practice of love is very momentous," wrote the Christian anarchist Felix Ortt in an article called The Influence of Tolstoy on Intellectual and Social Life in the Netherlands . Ortt continues: “There is a lot in contemporary social life that is incompatible with it. I only mention: militarism, exercise of state coercion, administration of justice and the police, capitalism, luxury and excess in the way of life, rawness and abuse of power against animals [...]. "Among the Tolstojanern was" [e] in 'pure life 'Without alcohol and other pleasure poisons and full of serious demands on oneself (and others) [...] model ”as well as the fight“ against destructive' lower instincts', for chastity [...]. The Tolstoians propagated the vegetarian way of life, the struggle against vivisection, the search for a life in community, without exploitation, based on the early Christian Tolstoian ideals. "Tolstojaner therefore usually only a vegetarian or vegan diet and many of them joined Rural communes together.
History and influence
Both under the Tsarist regime and later under Soviet rule , the Tolstoyans were persecuted for their anarchist and radical pacifist ideas. George Woodcock wrote of the Russian Tolstoyans: "Thousands of people inside and outside Russia became his [Tolstoy] passionate disciples and founded Tolstoy settlements based on communal economics and an ascetic life." According to Woodcock, it lasted into the 1920s into an "active Tolstoy movement until it was finally crushed by the Bolsheviks."
The ideas of Tolstojanism had a strong influence on intellectuals such as Pierre Ramus , John Ruskin and Mohandas Gandhi in the first half of the 20th century . Tolstoy's views and writings were also important and widespread in the early Israeli kibbutz movement, alongside those of anarchists such as Gustav Landauer and Peter Kropotkin . In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were particularly many Tolstoyan activists involved in the Netherlands . B. Felix Ortt , Année Rinzes de Jong and Lodewijk van Mierop . Often they were theologians and pastors. The Dutch Tolstoyans founded magazines, settlement projects, horticultural colonies and schools and became involved in areas such as anti-militarism , conscientious objection , libertarian education, alcohol abstinence and vegetarianism. The activities were so extensive that Tolstojanism was called a social movement in the Netherlands at the time .
Woodcock writes of the worldwide influence of Tolstoy's ideas on pacifist and anarchist circles that “[a] outside Russia [...] Tolstoy certainly [influenced] the anarchist pacifists in the Netherlands , Great Britain and the United States. Many British pacifists of World War II participated in neo-Tolstoian communities, but few of them saw the end of the war. ”Woodcock sees“ perhaps the most impressive example of Tolstoian influence in the western world today ”in the Catholic Worker movement and in its founder Dorothy Day , this "pious representative of Christian anarchism of our time".
Tolstoyans were often criticized as unworldly idealists. Amos Oz , for example, writes about Tolstoyans who emigrated to Jerusalem from Eastern Europe:
"The Tolstoyans in our district (...) were without exception all fanatical vegetarians, do-gooders, moral apostles, friends of mankind, friends of every living being, permeated by a deep sense of nature, and they all longed for country life."
From the Christian side, Vladimir Solovyov criticized Tolstoyanism as "legal nihilism".
literature
- Charlotte Alston: Tolstoy and his Disciples: The History of a Radical International Movement. Bloomsbury Academic, London 2020, ISBN 978-1-350-15943-3 .
- Dennis de Lange: You are the revolution! Tolstojanism as a social movement in the Netherlands. Verlag Graswurzelrevolution, Heidelberg 2016. ISBN 978-3-939045-27-4 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Johann Bauer: You are the revolution! The Tolstoyan Movement in the Netherlands. In: Grassroots Revolution No. 422, October 2017.
- ↑ Johann Bauer: You are the revolution! The Tolstoyan Movement in the Netherlands. In: Grassroots Revolution No. 422, October 2017.
- ↑ George Woodcock: Leo Tolstoy. A nonviolent anarchist.
- ↑ James Horrox: A Living Revolution. Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement. AK Press, Edinburgh / Oakland 2009.
- ↑ For Tolstoyan pedagogy see Ulrich Klemm: Education as dialogue and not as instruction. In: Grassroots Revolution No. 270, Summer 2002.
- ↑ Dennis de Lange: You are the revolution! Tolstojanism as a social movement in the Netherlands. Verlag Graswurzelrevolution, Heidelberg 2016.
- ↑ George Woodcock: Leo Tolstoy. A nonviolent anarchist.
- ↑ Amos Oz: Chekhov in Jerusalem . In: The world . July 10, 2004 (preprint from A story of love and darkness. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 2004, ISBN 3-518-41616-2 )
- ↑ Anita Schlüchter: In defense of the law. The criticism of Tolstoy's legal nihilism by lawyers and Solov'ev. ( Memento of the original from November 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Young Forum Slavic Literary Studies. 2004 ( PDF; 208 KB ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. )
