V. I. Lenin

Tolstoy’sindictment of the ruling classes was made with
tremendous power and sincerity; with absolute clearness he laid bare the
inner falsity of all those institutions by which modern society is
maintained: the church, the law courts, militarism, “lawful” wedlock,
bourgeois science. But his doctrine proved to be in complete contradiction
to the life, work and struggle of the grave-digger of the modern social
system, the proletariat. Whose then was the point of view reflected in the
teachings of Leo Tolstoy? Through his lips there spoke that multitudinous
mass of the Russian people who already detest the masters of
modern life but have not yet advanced to the point of Intelligent,
consistent, thoroughgoing, implacable struggle against them.

Thehistory and the outcome of the great Russian revolution have shown
that such precisely was the mass that found itself between the
class-conscious, socialist proletariat and the out-and-out defenders of the
old regime. This mass, consisting mainly of the peasantry, showed in the
revolution how great was its hatred of the old, how keenly it felt all the
inflictions of the modern regime, how great within it was the spontaneous
yearning to be rid of them and to find a better life.

Atthe same time, however, this mass showed in the revolution that it
was not politically conscious enough in its hatred, that it was not
consistent in its struggle and that its quest for a better life was
confined within narrow bounds.

Thisgreat human ocean, agitated to its very depths, with all its
weaknesses and all its strong features found its reflection in the doctrine
of Tolstoy.

Bystudying the literary works of Leo Tolstoy the Russian working class
will learn to know its enemies better, but in examining the doctrine of Tolstoy, the whole Russian people will
have to understand where their own weakness lies, the weakness which did
not allow them to carry the cause of their emancipation to its
conclusion. This must be under stood in order to go forward.

Thisadvance is impeded by all those who declare Tolstoy a “universal
conscience”, a “teacher of life”. This is a lie that the liberals are
deliberately spreading in their desire to utilise the anti-revolutionary
aspect of Tolstoy’s doctrine. This lie about Tolstoy as a “teacher of
life” is being repeated after the liberals by some former
Social-Democrats.

The Russian people will secure their emancipation only when they
realise that it is not from Tolstoy they must learn to win a better life
but from the class the significance of which Tolstoy did not understand,
and which alone is capable of destroying the old world which Tolstoy
hated. That class is the proletariat.

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