False patriotism and Christianity: forbidden sayings of Leo Tolstoy

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

These are excerpts from the article "Christianity and Patriotism", which Tolstoy wrote in 1893-94, but was unable to publish due to censorship. For the first time in Russia, this article, along with other prohibited articles by Tolstoy, appeared only in 1906 in the publication of N. E. Felten, for which he was brought to trial.

Governments assure the peoples that they are in danger from the attacks of other peoples and from internal enemies, and that the only means of salvation from this danger is the slavish obedience of the peoples to the governments. So this is clearly seen during revolutions and dictatorships, and so it happens always and everywhere where there is power. Every government explains its existence and justifies all its violence by the fact that if it had not been beaten, it would have been worse. By reassuring the peoples that they are in danger, governments subjugate them. When the peoples submit to the governments, these governments force the peoples to attack other peoples. And thus, for the peoples, the assurances of governments about the danger of attack from other peoples are confirmed.

Bells will ring, long-haired people will dress in golden sacks and begin to pray for murder. And the old, long-known, terrible business will begin again. The newspapermen will bustle, inciting people under the guise of patriotism and hatred of murder, rejoicing that they will receive a double income. Breeders, merchants, suppliers of military supplies will bustle with joy, expecting double profits. All sorts of officials will bustle about, foreseeing the possibility of stealing more than they usually steal. The military authorities, who receive double salaries and rations, will bustle about and hope to receive various trinkets highly valued by them - ribbons, crosses, braids, stars for killing people. Idle gentlemen and ladies will bustle about, enrolling in the Red Cross ahead, preparing to bandage those who will be killed by their own husbands and brothers, and imagining that they are doing this very Christian thing.

And, drowning despair in their souls with songs, debauchery and vodka, people, cut off from peaceful labor, from their wives, mothers, and children, will wander, hundreds of thousands of simple, kind people with murder weapons in their hands wherever they will be driven. They will walk, chill, starve, get sick, die of diseases, and, finally, they will come to the place where they will begin to be killed by the thousands, and they will kill by the thousands, knowing themselves why people whom they have never seen, who have nothing to them have done and cannot do wrong.

And when there are so many sick, wounded and dead that there will be no one to pick them up, and when the air is already so infected with this rotting cannon fodder, which is unpleasant even for the authorities, then they will stop for a while, somehow pick up the wounded, take them away, dump heaps wherever the sick, and the dead will be buried, sprinkled with lime, and again they will lead the whole crowd of the deceived even further, and will lead them like this until those who started it all get tired of it, or until those who needed it, not getting everything they needed. And again people will run wild, become furious, brutalized, and love in the world will diminish, and the Christianization of mankind, which has already begun, will be postponed again by tens, hundreds of years. And again, those people who benefit from this will confidently say that if there was a war, it means that it is necessary, and again they will begin to prepare future generations for this, corrupting them from childhood.

A man of the people always does not care where they draw what border and to whom Constantinople will belong, whether or not Saxony or Braunschweig will be a member of the German Confederation,and whether England will own Australia or the land of Matebelo, and even to which government he will have to pay tribute and to whose army he will give his sons; but it is always very important for him to know how much he will have to pay taxes, how long to serve in military service, how long to pay for land and how much to get for work - all questions are completely independent of general state, political interests.

If patriotic feelings are so characteristic of peoples, then they would be left to manifest freely, and would not excite them by all possible and constant and exclusive artificial means.

What is called patriotism in our time is only, on the one hand, a certain mood, constantly produced and supported in the peoples by school, religion, bribery press in the direction necessary for the government; the level of the people of the people, which is then presented as a constant expression of the will of the entire people.

This feeling is, in its most precise definition, nothing more than the preference of one's state or people to any other state and people, a feeling fully expressed by the German patriotic song: "Deutchland, Deutchland uber alles" (Germany, Germany is above all), in which is only necessary to insert Russland, Frankreich, Italien or NN instead of Deutchland, i.e. any other state, and there will be the clearest formula for a high sense of patriotism.

It may very well be that this feeling is very desirable and useful for governments and for the integrity of the state, but one cannot fail to see that this feeling is not at all lofty, but, on the contrary, very stupid and very immoral; stupid because if each state considers itself better than all others, then it is obvious that all of them will be wrong, and immoral because it inevitably attracts every person who tests it to gain benefits for their state and people in damage to other states and peoples is an attraction that is directly opposite to the basic moral law recognized by all: not to do to another and to others, what we would not want us to do.

Patriotism could be a virtue in the ancient world, when it demanded from a person to serve the highest - accessible person of that time - the ideal of the fatherland. But how can patriotism be a virtue in our time, when it demands from people the exact opposite of what constitutes the ideal of our religion and morality, not recognition of the equality and brotherhood of all people, but the recognition of one state and nationality as prevailing over all others. But not only is this feeling in our time not only not a virtue, but an undoubted vice; feelings of this, i.e. patriotism in its true sense, in our time, can not exist, because there are no material or moral grounds for it.

Patriotism in our time is a cruel tradition of an already experienced period of time, which holds only by inertia and because governments and ruling classes, feeling that not only their power, but also existence is associated with this patriotism, diligently and by cunning and violence excite and support him in the nations. Patriotism in our time is like scaffolding, which was once necessary for the construction of the walls of a building, which, despite the fact that they alone now interfere with the use of the building, still cannot be removed, because their existence is beneficial for some.

For a long time, there has been no reason for discord between the Christian peoples. It is impossible even to imagine how and why the Russian and German workers working together peacefully and together at the borders and in the capitals will quarrel among themselves. And the less one can imagine enmity between some Kazan peasant supplying grain to a German, and a German supplying him with scythes and machines, the same between French, German and Italian workers. It’s even ridiculous to talk about a quarrel between scientists, artists, writers of different nationalities, who live by the same common interests independent of nationality and statehood.

It is assumed that the feeling of patriotism is, firstly, a feeling that is always characteristic of all people, and, secondly, such a high moral feeling that, in its absence, it should be aroused in those who do not have it. But neither one nor the other is unfair. I have lived half a century among the Russian people and in a large mass of the real Russian people during all this time I have never seen or heard the manifestation or expression of this feeling of patriotism, except for those patriotic phrases learned by heart or repeated from books as the most frivolous and spoiled people of the people. I have never heard expressions of feelings of patriotism from the people, but, on the contrary, I have incessantly heard from the most serious, respectable people of the people expressions of complete indifference and even contempt for all kinds of manifestations of patriotism. I observed the same in the working people of other states, and the educated French, Germans and British have confirmed the same to me more than once about their working people.