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Published abroad in 1894 because the Russian censors banned it, this is Tolstoy's long argument that the Sermon on the Mount should be taken literally: do…
Published abroad in 1894 because the Russian censors banned it, this is Tolstoy's long argument that the Sermon on the Mount should be taken literally: do not resist evil with violence. He goes through the churches, the armies and the courts and asks how a Christian state can draft men to kill, collect taxes for war and imprison its critics, and answers that it cannot.
Context and significance
The young lawyer Mohandas Gandhi read it in South Africa and later said it overwhelmed him; the two men exchanged letters in 1909 and 1910. If you know Tolstoy only from War and Peace, this book shows the moralist he became in his later years, blunt, stubborn and impossible to ignore.
About the author
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), born at Yasnaya Polyana and a veteran of the Crimean War, wrote two of the summits of the novel, War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
In later life he preached simplicity and non-violence in The Kingdom of God Is Within You, a book that deeply influenced Gandhi.