A Discourse, at Temple Keneseth Israel,
by
Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf, D. D.

Philadelphia, January 8th, 1911.

Tolstoy's fatal flight.

The world was amazed, a few weeks ago, at the news that Tolstoy had fled from his family and home, with the resolve to retire to some wilderness, there to await his end. Guesses as to the cause were many, and the opinion was quite general that extreme old age had affected his reason.

Explained in light of last article of his.

I could not subscribe to this conclusion, neither could I see anything strange in his sudden departure. I knew of a number of similar flights in his life, and the reasons for them, and, therefore, I was little surprised. And as to suspecting him of failing mentality, I had but a short time before read the latest of his writings, entitled "Three Days in a Village," in which I had seen no sign of a lessening of his power of mind and heart and soul. And it is obvious that the Russian government, likewise, saw no lessening of his mentality, for it promptly suppressed the publication of it. An enterprising newspaper man, however, succeeded in forwarding a copy to our country, which enterprise not only rescued for us the last of Tolstoy's writings but also furnished us an explanation of his sudden and fatal flight.

Divided into three parts.

The article, a comparatively short one, was divided into three parts, each a heart-rending recital of miseries in villages neighboring the count's estate.

First part described peasant poverty.

The first part deals with wayfaring men. From six to twelve of them visit these villages daily in search of bread and clothes, of work and shelter. Some are blind or lame, some sick or feeble, some are very old or very young, some are maimed or crippled, dragging with them hideous memories of the recent Japanese war. Many of them are ignorant and filthy, but some of them are intelligent and revolutionary, who look upon the prosperous as thieves, and ask for their share of the coined blood pressed from the hearts of the poor and down-trodden. To keep these unceasing streams of wayfaring paupers from becoming a government charge, they are parcelled out by the authorities among the poor and helpless peasantry, good care being taken that they are not loaded upon the landlords, merchants or priests. The wickedness of this course is fully intelligible only to those who have some conception of the indescribable poverty and misery of Russian peasants. Stripped of almost all by taxation and by landlord oppression and by priest and constable extortion, many of them have scarcely food and room enough for themselves and cattle, scarcely clothes enough to cover their nakedness, no money with which to buy the absolutely necessary farming-implements, or to keep their wretched hovels from toppling over their heads. And yet, notwithstanding their appalling misery, Tolstoy saw their hearts go out in pity to these wandering paupers, and religiously dividing their crust with those yet more unfortunate than they, not knowing how soon they themselves might be in a similarly wretched plight.

Second part described peasant misery.

The second part of the article bears the sub-title "Living and Dying." Upon entering the village accompanied by his physician, the count was entreated for aid by a woman. Upon inquiry he learned that her husband had been drafted into the army, and that the family was starving. Upon asking the village authority why the law had been violated in taking from a family its sole supporter, he was told that the husband's brother was quite capable of supporting the family. Next he met a little orphan girl twelve years old, who was the head of a family of five children. Her father had been killed in a mine; her mother had dropped dead from exhaustion, a few weeks after; poor but kind-hearted neighbors kept their eyes on the children, whilst the oldest went about begging the means for their support. In another hovel he found a man in his death-throes with pneumonia. The room was damp and cold; there was no fuel for the stove; no food, no medicine, no mattress, no pillow, for the dying man.

Contrasted with extravagance in his own family.

Saddened by what he had seen and heard the count drove home. In front of his house he saw a carpeted sleigh, drawn by magnificent horses, driven by a coachman attired in heavy fur-coat and cap. It was the conveyance of the count's son, who had come on a visit to his father. There were ten at the table, who partook of a dinner of four courses, spiced by two kinds of wine. Two butlers were in attendance, and costly flowers were on the table. "Whence came these orchids?" asked the son, to which the mother replied that they had come all the way from St. Petersburg. "They cost a ruble and a half a piece," said the son, adding that at a recent concert the whole stage was smothered with orchids. Another at the table talked of a little recreation trip to Italy, but thought it troublesome to be obliged to spend thirty-nine hours in an express train, and regretted that aviation had not proceeded far enough to make possible a trip to Italy in shorter time. The count contrasted these table sights and sounds with those he had seen and heard in the village in the course of the day, and he left the table even sadder than he was when he came to it.

Third part described peasant oppression.

The third part of the article deals with the taxation of the villagers. From one old peasant the tax collectors took his samovar—the brass kettle for making tea—as indispensable to a Russian as a stove is to us. From another, a widow, they took a sheep; from another they took a cow, and so on. One poor woman offered him some linen at the price of two rubles, the amount she needed for taxes, saying that, if she failed to make the sale, they will seize not only the linen but also her chickens, her only means of support. That women play so large a part in these taxations is due to so many of the men having been killed in the Japanese war, or serving in the army. Upon remonstrating with the village authorities, he was told that they were sorry for the poor people, but helpless, that they had received instructions from headquarters to be unsparing in the discharge of their duty. Upon visiting the district chief he was made clearly to recognize that back of his severity lay his ambition for promotion as a reliable, immovable government official.

Felt that all his labors had been in vain.

Little wonder, that the government suppressed the publication of this last of Tolstoy's writings. Little wonder, that the three days spent amid the miseries of the villagers saddened his heart beyond endurance. And still less wonder, that the government's responsibility for it, and the world's indifference to it, even his own family's, drove him to despair, ripened in him the resolve to retire to some wilderness, where the soul would no longer be harrowed by the sight of human outrages and sufferings.

In the midst of such miseries as he saw, he must have felt that the more than half a century of unceasing labors in behalf of the poor and down-trodden, all his renunciations and sacrifices had all been in vain. He must have felt that the lot of the peasant was as bad as ever, that the government was as cruel as before, that all his writings and all his pleadings for a more equitable division of God's gifts had failed to make the slightest impression upon the people, judging by the extravagances within his own family, seeing four courses of delicacies on his own table, at a single meal, two kinds of wine, costly orchids, when, at but a short distance away, men and women, even children, working infinitely harder than any of his own family, deserving infinitely more than any who lord it over them, were literally starving for the want of the necessities of life, were dying in agony for the want of medical care and ordinary comforts, had their last possession taken from them by pitiless tax-collectors for the support of a vast army of soldiers and officials, for the maintenance of a costly and an oppressive autocracy.

Noted his discontent when in conversation with him.

Even as far back as 1894, when he was sixteen years younger than he was at the time of his flight, even then I noted in my conversations with him an undercurrent of deep sorrow when dwelling on the sufferings of the people, an occasional outburst of impatience at the slowness of progress, and now and then a cry of despair, an utter hopelessness of ever seeing a state of society different from what it was.

Those responsible for wrongs charged him with irreligion.

What seemed to vex him most was seeing the very people who were responsible for these wrongs and outrages considering themselves religious, and branding as infamous such a man as he whose sole cry was for justice and right. "Because they mumble so many prayers a day," said he to me, when speaking of Pobdiedonostzief, "and cross themselves so many times, and fast so many days in the year, they consider themselves Christian, as for the rest of their conduct, one finds it difficult to believe that they had ever heard of the Sermon on the Mount, of the Golden Rule or of the Mosaic command" "Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself." Asking me for an explanation of Reform Judaism, and telling him that is was founded upon an emphasis on the spirit of religion rather than on its forms, he replied that it would not be tolerated in Russia, that the mere words Reform and Spirit were quite sufficient to condemn it. The government knows that they who seek the Spirit also seek the Truth, and it is afraid that Truth will overthrow autocracy and hierarchy, blind obedience and stupid ceremony, and will set men free.

Few men had studied religion as much as he.

There are many things in connection with Tolstoy which Russia of the future will wish to see expunged from the pages of its history, and chief of these will be its having branded him as infamously irreligious. Few men have been as genuinely religious as he. Few men have given religion as much thought as he. Few men have written on religious subjects as much as he.

Rebelled against adulteration of religion.

He studied the Scriptures in the original languages, and carefully he read Church doctrine and dogmatic theology, and the more he read the firmer became his conviction that Christ's Christianity was quite a different thing from Church Christianity. He rejected the latter, and fervently he espoused the former. Three-fourth of what passes for Christianity, he said, has no historical nor logical nor spiritual warrant. He saw how its fundamental principle, the equality of all men as sons of God, had been perverted to give the classes the right to enslave the masses. He saw how a divine being had been made of Jesus, and how this enabled the church to say that living the life he lived, and practicing the precepts he preached was impossible for human beings. He had read in the Scriptures not to resist evil, and yet had been taught the soldier's trade, the art of killing. The army to which he had belonged was called "The Christophile Army," and it was sent forth with a Christian benediction. One day, he said, he was reading in Hebrew, with a Rabbi, the fifth chapter of Matthew. After nearly every verse the Rabbi said "This is in the Old Testament or in the Talmud," and showed me the corresponding passages. When we reached the words "Resist no evil," the Rabbi did not say "This is in the Talmud," but he asked "Do the Christians obey this command? Do they turn the other cheek?" "I had nothing to say in reply," said Tolstoy, "for at that particular time, Christians, far from turning the other cheek, were smiting the Jews upon both cheeks. I saw the support the church gave to persecutions and to the death penalty, and my soul cried out against it."

And his mind rebelled, he said and wrote, against the mythology which was paraded as theology, such teachings as the immaculate conception, the heaven opening and the angels singing, Christ's flying through the air and into the sky, and seating himself at the right hand of God. He denounced as blasphemous such teachings as that by partaking of the Sacrament God's body becomes assimilated with that of man, or that of God being three Gods in one, being still angry at man for the sin of Adam, and sending His only son on earth to be crucified so that by the son's blood the father's wrath may be appeased. He regarded as unworthy even of heathens such teachings as that salvation for sin depended on being baptized, and that God will visit eternal punishment on those who do not believe in His divinely begotten son. He professed a sincere belief in God as the author of all existence, and as the source of all love. He believed that death meant a new and higher birth. He believed that God's will was most clearly expressed in the teachings of the man Jesus, whom to consider and pray to as God he regarded as blasphemous.

Compressed religion into five commandments.

He compressed the teachings of Jesus into the following commandments: I. "Do not be angry. II. Do not lust. III. Do not give away the control of your future actions by taking oaths. IV. Do not resist evil. V. Do not withhold love from any one." These five commandments he developed into a comprehensive moral philosophy, and by it he conscientiously endeavored to guide his life and thought.[8]

Was indebted for his faith to peasants.

And for that strong and simple faith of his, which is destined, in the not distant future, to inaugurate an era in the religious world similar to that which Luther inaugurated four centuries earlier in Germany, he was indebted to the peasants. During the libertine life of his early years, he had lost the little faith that had been taught him in his childhood. He had returned to his estate an avowed atheist, and as such had he continued for some time, until, one day, he inquired into what it was that made the wretchedly poor and ignorant and hard-working peasants contented with their lot, resigned to their fate, bearing hardships and sufferings unmurmuringly, and looking happily forward to the end. He found it in their faith. "Surely," said he, "a state of mind that can do so much for the poor is worth having by all." And he devoted himself to a diligent study of their religion. He found it burdened with foreign accretions, contaminated with a putrid mass that had been gathered during centuries of darkness and superstition, adulterated with all kinds of conscious and unconscious inventions. Stripping away the foreign and putrid and false, he alighted upon a rational, satisfying faith, the faith which he believed to have been that of the Rabbi of Nazareth, and, henceforth, consecrated his life to the propagation of it.

Gave them his life and labor in return.

And more yet than what the peasants gave to him he gave to them in return. He gave them himself, and, in the end, he sacrificed even his life for them. He found them down-trodden serfs, he endeavored to make free men of them. He found them cowed and bowed, he taught them to walk and stand erect. He found them unbefriended, he became a brother to them. He found them wretchedly poor, he renounced pleasure and treasure, luxury and ease, to lessen as much as he could the distance between them and himself. He dressed as they dressed, and labored as they labored, and, as far as permitted, ate the kind of food they ate. He found them stalking in darkness, he brightened their way for them. He found them ignorant and at the mercy of priest and government official, he became their advocate, dared to brave an all-powerful autocracy in the defense of their rights. He started schools for them. He gave up writing for the thousands of select readers that he might write for the millions of illiterate peasants and other laborers. He wrote special booklets for them, and sold them at a loss, at one-half cent a copy, stories, legends, symbolical tales, moral plays and religious tracts, all fitted for their minds and stations, and intended to deepen in them the law of love and right.

Died believing he had failed.

To have sacrificed and renounced and dared as much and as long as he had, and, in the end, to find what he found, in his three days observation of village miseries and outrages, was more than his great heart could stand. It broke. He was eighty-two years old. He could no longer continue the fight. He could no longer look upon the suffering of the unfortunates, nor upon the wrongs of the world, nor upon the extravagances even within his own family. He regarded his whole life-work a dismal failure. He knew of no other balm for his bleeding heart than flight from the world to some secluded spot, there, as a hermit, to await the end, which he knew was not far distant. Truly pathetic were his farewell lines to his wife:

"I cannot continue longer to live a life of ease and luxury while others starve and suffer. Like many other old men, I retire from the world to await my end in solitude. I ask that you do not seek my place of sojourn, and that you do not come to it if it be discovered. I beg forgiveness for the grief that I may cause you."

Characteristic of great reformers.

He was not the first of the world's great reformers and lovers of humanity to lose heart and to experience spells of despair. Moses and Elijah and Jesus and others had their hours of agony, and prayed that the end might come, and deliver them from their hopeless labors. And many who, like Tolstoy, closed their eyes in the belief that they had utterly failed loomed large in subsequent ages among the greatest of the world's benefactors.

Succeeded better than he knew.

Tolstoy has not failed. He succeeded better than he knew. His pathetic death revealed the vast number of followers he had in his own country and in all parts of the world. And had he cared to inquire, he might have known it before his death. He could have seen it from the fact that more books of his were sold than of all other Russian authors combined. He could have seen it in the vast crowds that gathered all along the line, to catch a glimpse of him, when on his journey, a few years ago, to the Crimea, in search of health. He could have seen it in the deputations of sympathizers that waited upon him, and in the streams of congratulatory letters and telegrams that rushed in upon him—till suppressed—after his excommunication. He could have seen it in the Tolstoyan societies among the students of almost all the Russian universities and among other bodies. He could have seen it among the considerable number of landlords, who made conscientious efforts at following his life, and at adopting his mode of dealing with peasants and laborers. Were the yoke of autocracy removed, there would arise in Russia an army of Tolstoyans as vast and mighty as the host which Ezekiel in his vision saw in the valley of dry bones.

Religion of future will be largely Tolstoyan.

The religion of Russia of the future will be largely that which Tolstoy lived and taught, and it will be the religion of a large part of the rest of the world. Time's sifting process will eliminate whatever is untenable in his system of moral and social and economic philosophy, which sprang more from a flaming heart than from a cool, calculating mind. He had neither the time nor the inclination to work out a synthetic philosophy. He wrote as the spirit moved him, and whenever it moved him, the keynote of all his writing having been, as he said to me, "the hastening of the day when men will dwell together in the bonds of love, and sin and suffering will be no more."

There are in the Tolstoyan system of religion the elements of the long-dreamed of universal creed. It will take time for the rooting of it. Mormonism and Dowieism spring up, like Jonah's gourd, and pass away as speedily as they came. A system as rational and radical as that of Tolstoy requires an age for germination. But, once it takes root, it takes root forever; once it blossoms, it blossoms for eternity.