WEBVTT - The Transformation of Leo Tolstoy 0:00:04.680 --> 0:00:08.440 A good idea can be truly transformative. An original invention 0:00:08.680 --> 0:00:10.600 or a new way of looking at things can change 0:00:10.640 --> 0:00:14.320 the world, and sometimes in history is the power of 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.640 an idea that binds people and events together, even across 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:21.440 wide expanses of time and space. This season on The Thread, 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:25.079 we trace the trajectory of a revolutionary idea, one that 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:32.920 has traveled around the globe for more than a century. 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:38.320 We began this season of The Thread fifty years ago 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:42.640 in Memphis, Tennessee. Doctor Martin Luther King, the apostle of 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:45.680 non violence in the civil rights movement, has been shot 0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:50.120 to death. In Memphis, Tennessee. Doctor King revolutionized the struggle 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:52.760 for racial justice in America through the use of non 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:59.560 violent resistance Negroes of the United States. Following the people 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:07.400 of India have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:15.440 but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation, 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:18.200 and in the first three episodes of this season, we 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:20.920 traveled back in time in order to trace the origins 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:24.120 of that powerful moral force. Doctor King would not have 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:27.000 become the champion of non violence without the influence of 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:31.280 a black activist named Buyer Drustin. We are non violent 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:37.080 because injury to one is injury to all. More than 0:01:37.080 --> 0:01:40.680 any other civil rights leader, including King, Rustin was responsible 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:44.959 for injecting peaceful protests into the Black freedom struggle. Rustin's 0:01:44.959 --> 0:01:47.920 own inspiration came from across the globe, from an Indian 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:50.800 lawyer determined to convert his enemies into friends, and the 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:54.160 struggle to free his homeland from the British Empire. I 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:57.800 regard my two as a soldier, though a soldier of 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:01.760 p Mohanas. Gandhi even that nonviolence was the key to 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:06.280 social change and to personal change as well. It became 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:12.600 his mission to become a better person every day, and 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:17.120 so he gradually worked on all his weaknesses and transformed 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:22.400 them into strength. Gandhi's faith in the power of nonviolent 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:25.799 resistance was inspired by another man half the world away, 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:30.480 Leo Tolstoy. Like Gandhi, the famous novelists strived to live 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:33.040 a simple life of virtue and to help the least 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:36.040 fortunate in his Russian homeland to fight back against an 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:42.959 oppressive regime. You to go, I am to stint everything 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:48.440 there is to know about you. No should all make 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:55.760 up political views. Everything there is to know about you. 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:01.359 Gandhi once called Leo Tolstoy, the greatest apostle of non 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:04.800 violence in the present age. His admiration for the Russian 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:07.679 thinker came from more than just an appreciation of his writings. 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:10.840 The two men corresponded in a series of letters and 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:14.720 exchanged ideas on non violent protests just before Tolstoy's death 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:18.640 in nineteen ten. Like Gandhi, Tolstoy was a larger than 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:22.200 life figure in his home country for decades. Tolstoy was 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:26.760 a wealthy Russian aristocrat and world famous novelist. He was 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:28.880 the author of two of the greatest novels ever written, 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:32.640 War in Peace and Anna Karenina. And then Tolstoy turned 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:36.480 his back on his aristocratic life and accomplishments. He experienced 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:41.680 a profound spiritual crisis, one followed by an equally profound awakening. 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:57.360 Lit everything about last Night, I supposed. Leo Tolstoy was 0:03:57.400 --> 0:04:00.320 born in his family's estate in the Russian countryside south 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:04.520 of Moscow in eight This is Tolstoy scholar j Perini. 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:07.000 I mean, the crucial thing about Tolstoy is he was 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:11.200 an aristocrat. He was Count Leo Tolstoy. He inherited this 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:15.080 vast estate he which had originally had thousands of serves 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:17.680 on it. He would have had thirty servants in his 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:22.200 own house. He was from the extreme upper classes, and Tolstoy, 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:25.000 like many other young men in his social circle, lived 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:30.280 a privileged existence. Tolstoy biographer Rosamond Bartlett, he is very 0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:34.320 characteristic in his early life for sort of having these 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:40.479 incredible passions that evaporate quite quickly. Um So one day 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:42.760 he decides to do one thing, and then you know, 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:45.919 very shortly he'll give it up and do something else. 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:50.839 J Parini again. He traveled to Paris and spoke French, 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:54.640 like all Russian aristocrats did. He spent time in Moscow 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:58.680 and St. Petersburg. He was a great frequenter of whore 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:03.840 houses and gambling joints. He was a wild man in 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:08.440 his youth. He had endless mistresses and love affairs. Then 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:12.240 his life took a very different term Rosamond Bartlett. Everything 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:18.040 crystallized for him when on a whim he decided in 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:21.680 his early twenties to travel down to the Caucasus with 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:26.480 his elder brother Nikolai, whom he idolized. Nikolai was an 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:29.440 officer in the Russian Imperial Army, which was bogged down 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:32.839 in the Crimean War in the Caucusus. Tolstoi went along 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:35.000 for the ride, but he ended up joining his brother 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:38.480 in the army. What he witnessed there disturbed him, and 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:41.880 so his experience of violence was real. Um. He really 0:05:42.360 --> 0:05:45.480 was on the front lines. He watched people being riddled 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:48.920 with bullets. He was really shell shocked by the experience 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:53.440 of fighting in the Crimean War. Tolstoi's encounter with war 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:55.560 stayed with him. You could say there was a sort 0:05:55.560 --> 0:06:01.400 of foundation for the later views about lens Um, but 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:05.480 they took a long time to mature. But certainly it 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:08.480 was a life changing experience for him. During the war, 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:12.200 Toulstoy also took up another activity that would prove life changing. 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:14.680 Because he had so much time on his hands, he 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:20.560 also started writing, and the birth of his literary career 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:24.960 takes place in the Caucasus. Tolstoy's first book of stories 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:28.040 addressed the eleven month long siege of the Crimean capital 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:31.080 of Sebastopol. It took readers behind the scenes of the 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:34.920 Russian Army's doomed war effort. It was a devastating account 0:06:34.920 --> 0:06:38.440 of the horror and futility of war. Tolstoy continued to 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:41.839 write after the war, including a colossal work widely considered 0:06:41.880 --> 0:06:45.159 his first masterpiece. So then, of course he'd plunged into 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:47.680 the writing of War and Peace, which is this, you know, 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:52.320 this great work of genius, incredible novel. War and Peace 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:55.880 chronicled another war, the French invasion of Russia under Napoleon 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:59.800 in eighteen twelve. Tolstoy researched the war extensively in order 0:06:59.839 --> 0:07:03.760 to bring it to life, and he found it very 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:06.359 difficult to know what to do with himself when he 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:09.840 finished that. For as you can imagine, despite his new 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:13.240 found fame, Tolstoy, now in his forties, was already beginning 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:17.160 to grow disillusioned with being a professional writer. He wanted 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:21.480 to really engage with more pressing questions about the meaning 0:07:21.560 --> 0:07:26.040 of life, and you see that coming up more and 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:30.280 more in Anna Karnina as it goes on, Tolstoy's second 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:34.000 great masterpiece, Anna Karina, was published in several installments during 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:37.160 the eighteen seventies. As the novel came to an end 0:07:37.240 --> 0:07:40.640 to Russia was getting involved in another war, which he 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:44.560 found deeply depressing. Tolsta's opposition to war found its way 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:47.520 into the novel's final installment. By the time we get 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:53.440 to the end of Anna Karnina, you're looking at Tolstoy's 0:07:53.520 --> 0:08:00.320 non violent um philosophy in embryonic form. Fyodor dosta Vski, 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:03.960 another great Russian novelist and contemporary of Tolstoys, wrote a 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:07.680 review of Anna Karnada. He called it quote flawless as 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:10.520 a work of art, but he took issues with other aspects. 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:17.720 Dostoevsky is critical of Tolstoy for opposing war in Anna Kara, 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:23.040 and yet of two only Tolstoy has actually experienced war 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:26.480 at close hand. He is the only one who's actually 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:31.480 served in the army. Dostoevsky never did. Tolstoy Is growing 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:34.920 discontent was not limited to his objections to war. J 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:38.800 Perini again, by the time he finished Anna Karenina, I 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:42.520 think he was just very, very depressed, even suicidal. That 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:45.600 there was a suicidal tendency in tolstoy Um. He just 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:48.199 wanted to erase himself because he could see the pointlessness 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.240 of life. But Tolstoy managed to find a way out. 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:58.960 The solution was a cause far greater than himself. In 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:01.840 the late eighteen set in these, Leo Tulstoi embarked on 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:06.120 long religious pilgrimages to find answers to his great spiritual questions. 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:10.120 Rosamond Bartlin he was on us on a journey to 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:15.320 discover some practical rules for life, and then he went 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:21.560 to the Cave's Monastery in Kiev, where Christianity had started 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:26.120 in in Russia. Tolstoy, like most Russians, was raised to 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:29.240 believe in the Christian doctrines of the Russian Orthodox Church, 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:32.800 the ruling religious hierarchy in the nation and one closely 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:37.720 aligned with the Czarist regime. And rather like earlier decisions 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:39.760 in his life, it was a very sort of sort 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:45.680 of lightning moment. He just suddenly snapped. He suddenly just 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:53.120 turned against it, and so he started to reevaluate all 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:58.600 his own moral principles. The aristocratic playboy turned acclaim novelists, 0:09:58.640 --> 0:10:04.280 now turned philosopher, Tolstoy undertook a critical examination of Christian theology. 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:11.720 He went through the Gospels and sort of throughout everything 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:15.400 which he thought was was made believe, and ended up 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:21.120 with a new Testament that was shorn of miracles, basically 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:26.800 that just concentrated on what Jesus said, Tolstoy produced his 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:29.600 own version of the Christian Gospels, one that he felt 0:10:29.640 --> 0:10:32.680 could serve as a practical guide for living a moral life. 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:39.840 The new Christianity that Tolstoi devised for himself essentially boiled 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:45.200 down two the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:50.640 from Matthew Chapter five Versus thirty eight to forty two. 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:54.120 That is, you have heard that it was said an 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:57.120 eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:00.880 But I tell you do not resist an evil person. 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:04.200 If someone strikes you on the right cheek turned to 0:11:04.360 --> 0:11:10.239 him the other Also, that is a nutshelle. Is Tolstoy's 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:15.160 religious philosophy. This is what's going to be at the 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:19.840 heart of the millions of pages he will now write 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:24.640 about this new Christian philosophy and what will influence people 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:30.439 around the world, including of course famously Gandhi. Tolstoy spiritual 0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:33.760 journey landed horror on the principle of non violence. He 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:36.160 came to believe that being a true Christian required one 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:40.160 to make a commitment to pacifism. What came out of 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:45.559 Tolstoy's new reading of the Gospels is this idea that 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.000 you cannot take up arms. If you're going to be 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:52.440 a Christian, then you've you've got to live a Christian 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:56.200 life to the letter. As far as he could see, 0:11:56.840 --> 0:12:00.520 the most important thing in the Gospels is really the 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:04.480 sort of lore of of non violence. Tolstoy's newfound faith 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:07.680 also compelled him to question his own life and lifestyle 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:10.560 and to take on the sources of the power, privilege, 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:19.160 and violence he saw everywhere around him. Leo Tolstoy's spiritual 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:21.680 or birth was also driven by the circumstances of his 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:25.280 own life and upbringing. J Parini. Again, he looked around. 0:12:25.320 --> 0:12:29.119 He said, what is causing all of this horror in society? 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:31.320 And he said, wait a minute, it's people like me, 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:36.160 rich people who live on estates with a thousand servants. 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:40.160 So the feeling of guilt riddles Tolstoi's conscience, and he 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:44.199 feels driven. He was driven by guilt. Tolstoi felt the 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:46.720 need to put his new found beliefs into action, to 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:49.560 speak out against the evil and degregation he saw around. 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:54.000 And Tolstoy then became an activist himself again and again 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:56.800 and again. I mean, he was endlessly trying to think 0:12:56.840 --> 0:13:00.400 of ways of alleviating the massive poverty which he saw. 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:04.040 Tulslo was especially appalled by the squalor he witnessed in 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:07.160 the slums of Moscow. He saw the kind of ferocity 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:11.679 of the Czar, the repressiveness of this regime, and it 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:15.120 was also horrified by the way the church, the Russian 0:13:15.240 --> 0:13:20.280 Orthodox Church, allied itself with the Czarist regime Rosamond Bartlett. 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:25.120 And so he's determined now never to shut up, and 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:29.840 essentially that is what he does for the next thirty years, 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:36.040 is to start shouting about the inequality of Russian society, 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:39.760 the hypocrisy of the system. Toulslo believed that the best 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:42.840 way to address such issues was through love and nonviolence, 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:47.360 and as with Gandhi, this approach started at home. He 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:53.480 is drastically changing his own lifestyle. So this means that 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:59.040 he does not want to have anyone waiting on him. Ah. 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:06.800 He just like the idea of servants um. He stops smoking, 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:11.720 he stops drinking, and he stops eating meat eventually, and 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:15.360 he doesn't feel that he wants to have any any 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:18.480 money um, and he certainly doesn't want to earn money 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:23.080 from his own writings. Tolstoy also started to advocate for 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:25.560 his new approach to life, and he said, well, we 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:29.960 must first of all try to live simply. We must 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:33.640 try to love our neighbors as ourselves, and we must 0:14:33.680 --> 0:14:36.760 resist evil in any way we can, and speak truth 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:41.080 to power wherever that's possible. Tolstoy could speak truth to 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:44.240 power with near impunity because of his fame the Russians 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:46.920 are and authorities knew they couldn't arrest or exile him. 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:50.040 The public outcry would be immense. He was a person 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:55.800 with leverage in society, He had wealth, he had lots 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:58.280 of people who would stand up for him. So the 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:01.800 authorities put Tolstoy under instant surveillance and did their best 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:07.600 to censor him, but he very quickly becomes a focus 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:14.920 of attention for disarist secret police because it's dangerous behavior. 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:18.560 Nothing that tossed toy rights from this point on can 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:23.040 be published for that same reason, because it's seen as inflammatory. Still, 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:26.520 like Gandhi and India, managed to get his message of 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:29.920 love and non violence out and most Russian people adored 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:32.680 him for By the end of his life too, he 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:36.960 had such moral authority that actually people looked up to 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:39.680 him as the real star because they had no respect 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:43.720 for Nicholas the Second, who was actually on the throne. 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:46.160 When Leo Tolstoy would step out of a train in 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:49.840 Moscow or out of a carriage, he would be mobbed 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:53.600 by hundreds, in fact thousands of people. That were incidents 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:56.440 in Russia where thousands crushed in upon him just to 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:59.440 even see him. He was almost treated like a god 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:02.760 in Russia. Show Tolstoy next sank his energy and his 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:06.600 moral authority into another magnum opus. His most ambitious writing 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:15.160 project yet, Tolstoy completed The Kingdom of God Is Within 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:19.720 You in The book's manuscript was more than thirteen thousand 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:22.640 pages longer than War in Peace and antakarn And It 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:26.040 put together. Tolstoy argues in the book that the basis 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:29.760 of authority is bodily violence. But Tolstoy also observes that 0:16:29.800 --> 0:16:33.520 the coercive authority of governments quote is so precarious that 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:36.400 very little is needed to shake their power to pieces 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:41.840 biographer J. Perini. Again, Here Tolstoy gives his most complete 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:46.960 theological and ethical um summary of what it means to 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:51.240 resist violence, but to do so in a kind of 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:55.440 passive way. Passive resistance to violence, and that's the book 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:59.320 that King and and Gandhi really looked to and said, ah, 0:16:59.360 --> 0:17:02.280 here we go. This lays it all out so beautifully. 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:06.400 Tolstoys treatise called for reorganizing society based on the Christian 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:10.480 prescriptions to love by enemies and refrain from violence. The 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:14.560 book was immediately banned from publication in Russia, but soon French, 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:18.480 English and German translations found their way into circulation, and 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:22.800 tolstoys new gospel of non violence spread. The Kingdom of 0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:27.520 God is within you when right around the world, and 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:33.160 it influenced people in very far flowing places. You had 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:37.159 all kinds of people serving in armed forces reading that 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:42.400 work and immediately resigning their commissions. And of course there 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:46.880 was this young lawyer in South Africa Gandhi, who read 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:50.920 it as well, and it had an absolutely electrifying impact 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:56.600 on him. Gandhi admired Tolstoy's uncompromising search for truth, the 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:59.959 manner in which he lived according to his principles. Gandhi 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:02.160 listed The Kingdom of God as one of the three 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:05.360 most important influences in his life. And he wasn't even 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:09.320 a Christian, but even Tolstoy had his influences, just like 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:13.520 Gandhi was influenced by Tolstoy. Up next, the thread continues 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.919 with the origins of Tolstoy's paths and non violence. And 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:20.119 for that we traveled back to the United States one 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:23.840 and twenty five years before Martin Luther King Jr. Embarked 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:48.760 on the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Leo Tolstoy aspired to leave 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:51.359 a simple life in his later years, but he was 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.960 never able to fully embrace it. J Perini again, he 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:58.480 wanted to be devoted to these high principles. He could 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:01.520 certainly have left his family years earlier and gone off 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:04.600 to live in a monastery um, but he didn't. He stayed, 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:08.440 kept his title. He was Count Leo Tolstoi. He kept 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:12.000 his estate, and the guilt continued to weigh upon him. 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:15.400 He was conscious of all of the ironies that were 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:18.360 just in live, that his life was laden with these 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:21.160 tremendous ironies, and there seemed to have been a trap. 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:23.680 It was no way out, and so he takes off 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:28.080 um and goes, you know, goes on the run. In 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:30.480 the middle of a cold October night in nineteen ten, 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:33.040 the eighty two year old writers snuck out of his house, 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:36.199 the most famous man in Russia left on foot and 0:19:36.240 --> 0:19:39.800 then boarded a train heading south for the Caucusus. Unfortunately, 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:43.600 a few weeks later, he comes down with um terrible 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:46.760 um infection, a kind of flow which led to a 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:50.119 kind of bronchitis, which led to pneumonia. Tolstoy was forced 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:51.879 to get off the train in a small town in 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:54.680 the countryside. He spent the last hours of his life 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:57.840 preaching love and nonviolence to those around him. But you know, 0:19:57.880 --> 0:20:01.400 even in his deathbed he was, you know, reading Rousseau 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:05.119 and quoting him and and and livering, you know, words 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:08.640 of wisdom, and so Tolstoy was a bit of an 0:20:08.640 --> 0:20:12.400 oracle right to the very end. Thousands of people descended 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:15.360 upon the small train station in the freezing cold. When 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:20.320 Tolstoy finally died, there was a vast outpouring of public sentiment. 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:23.359 I mean, it was as though the st Leo had died. 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:26.960 So it was an extraordinary scene. More than five thousand 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:29.679 mourners waited in line to file past his coffin when 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:32.360 it was returned to his home. The death of Tolstoy 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:35.119 was reported on the front pages of not just the 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:39.000 Russian newspapers, but the New York Times was running daily reports. 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:43.840 I mean, this was the whole world was watching schools, factories, 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:46.879 and offices closed across Russia in honor of the fallen 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:51.800 giant Rosamond Bartlett. Again, by the time Tolstoy died, he 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:55.880 really was not only the most famous person in Russia, 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:58.960 but one of the most famous people in the world. 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:02.719 These days we just think of Tolstoy as the author 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:08.320 of Warm Peace and Anna Karenina. Principally, during his lifetime 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:13.120 he was much better known as a thinker, uh and 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:17.920 as this sort of spiritual leader. J Perini, Well, I 0:21:17.960 --> 0:21:21.440 think it's just important to see Tolstoy as a primary 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:26.320 voice in this great tradition of passive resistance to violence. 0:21:26.880 --> 0:21:30.879 Tolstoy understood that it's never a good thing to kill people, 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:34.640 and it's certainly a very bad thing when states organize 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:39.720 themselves around violence. Tolstoy's ability to think systematically and to 0:21:39.760 --> 0:21:43.240 synthesize various schools of thought helped transform the concept of 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:47.639 nonviolent resistance, and he was able to modify and extend 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:50.440 these ideas of non violence and put them into his 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:55.040 own forms of expression, which then were picked up beautifully 0:21:55.280 --> 0:22:01.160 by others such as Gandhi, Martin, Luther, King, uhs Are Chevez, 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:04.120 and so many people down the road. Tolsloy was also 0:22:04.200 --> 0:22:06.440 careful to point out that he was not the originator 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:09.159 of the idea. Tolstoy did not and would never have 0:22:09.200 --> 0:22:11.880 claimed to have invented uh the theories of the idea 0:22:11.920 --> 0:22:15.439 of non violent resistance to evil um. In fact, he 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:18.560 very explicitly said, I took it from the Quakers. I 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:22.080 took it from earlier writers. Quaker philosophers such as the 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:24.840 Englishman Jonathan Diamond had written a great deal about the 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:29.159 incompatibility of war and Christianity. Tolsloy was also familiar with 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:33.280 the American Henry David Thurreau's philosophy of civil disobedience, which 0:22:33.280 --> 0:22:36.880 proposed a radically new form of social protest. But there 0:22:36.920 --> 0:22:40.760 was one particular Quaker and American whose works and passion 0:22:40.880 --> 0:22:50.960 Tolstoy revered above all others, William Lloyd Garrison. Tolsloy started 0:22:50.960 --> 0:22:53.320 to publish his religious writings in the second half of 0:22:53.359 --> 0:22:56.080 his life, and then he began to receive responses from 0:22:56.119 --> 0:22:59.240 readers all over the world. One of his admirers was 0:22:59.280 --> 0:23:03.560 an American Wendell Garrison, who edited a journal called Non Resistance. 0:23:04.280 --> 0:23:07.600 Garrison told Tolstoy that his father, the famous white American 0:23:07.640 --> 0:23:11.600 abolitionist and journalist William Lloyd Garrison, had a similar spiritual 0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:16.359 transformation decades earlier. The younger Garrison sent Tolstoy a copy 0:23:16.400 --> 0:23:20.200 of his late father's biography and writings. Tolstoy was moved 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:23.280 by the elder Garrison's views and how the fiery journalist 0:23:23.320 --> 0:23:26.679 turned his principles of Christian pacifism into a plan of 0:23:26.760 --> 0:23:30.240 non violent resistance for the purposes of opposing slavery in 0:23:30.280 --> 0:23:35.879 the U. S j Poine. Lloyd Garrison was tremendously influential 0:23:36.000 --> 0:23:38.760 in Tolstoy's mind because he was a flashy journalist who 0:23:38.800 --> 0:23:42.000 was able to commandeer ideas to his side. He was 0:23:42.040 --> 0:23:44.199 able to really get in there and nitty gritty and 0:23:44.200 --> 0:23:49.680 really create an abolitionist movement. Tolstoy devoured Garrison's writings, which 0:23:49.720 --> 0:23:53.880 included the world's first declaration of non violent resistance. Garrison 0:23:53.920 --> 0:23:56.159 drew that up nearly half a century earlier for a 0:23:56.160 --> 0:23:59.960 peace convention in Boston in eighteen thirty eight. The declaration 0:24:00.080 --> 0:24:03.320 explained by Garrison and his fellow pacifists would oppose wars, 0:24:03.640 --> 0:24:08.000 unjust laws, and evil. Through non violent resistance and moral persuasion, 0:24:08.800 --> 0:24:12.160 we expect to prevail, Garrison wrote in the Declaration. Through 0:24:12.200 --> 0:24:16.240 the foolishness of preaching, Count Tolstoy found a kindred spirit 0:24:16.240 --> 0:24:19.200 in Boston. He even hung a framed photo of Garrison 0:24:19.240 --> 0:24:23.400 on the wall in his office. Here's Tolsloy biographer Rosamond Bartlett. 0:24:23.800 --> 0:24:29.200 He wasn't really inclined to cooperate with any kind of 0:24:29.200 --> 0:24:33.720 of government. He didn't want to really have to deal 0:24:33.960 --> 0:24:37.639 at all with coercion at any level. And this is 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:42.280 really the sort of heart of the idea of non 0:24:42.440 --> 0:24:47.920 violence and what so inspired him about William Lloyd Garrison too. 0:24:48.440 --> 0:24:51.119 Tolsloyd paid tribute to Garrison in the Kingdom of God. 0:24:51.520 --> 0:24:54.040 He said that Garrison's work convinced him that justice and 0:24:54.080 --> 0:24:56.359 peace could only be achieved in the world by putting 0:24:56.359 --> 0:24:59.880 the spiritual doctrine of non resistance to evil into act 0:25:00.000 --> 0:25:04.520 of practice. The fact that Garrison was such um an 0:25:04.560 --> 0:25:08.480 activist appeal to Tolstoy as well. Still, Tolstoy could not 0:25:08.520 --> 0:25:12.439 believe that Garrison's powerful views remained relatively unknown to the world. 0:25:12.720 --> 0:25:16.760 And largely forgotten in America. So in the Kingdom of God, 0:25:17.200 --> 0:25:20.600 Tolstoy set out to republicize and build upon the American 0:25:20.680 --> 0:25:28.240 journalists long forgotten insights. A powerful idea was resurrected next 0:25:28.280 --> 0:25:31.760 time on the thread. William Lloyd Garrison, the American who 0:25:31.800 --> 0:25:35.600 influenced Tolstoy, was a man on a remarkable mission, But 0:25:35.680 --> 0:25:38.520 the activist who sought to end his nation's original sin 0:25:38.720 --> 0:25:41.720 through non violent means would live to see it instead 0:25:41.760 --> 0:25:47.960 resolved through the bloodiest violence in American history. Old folks 0:25:48.640 --> 0:25:59.800 get chill with things and Boston bad peace, sad gosh, 0:26:00.040 --> 0:26:08.439 you with things impossibly lord and under running now by 0:26:08.600 --> 0:26:13.359 Gail style. He speaks to make She draws a bread 0:26:13.840 --> 0:26:18.800 and whispers my name. I'm exactly the same as a 0:26:19.040 --> 0:26:24.119 Russian count in a ten twenty three, and he's exactly 0:26:24.280 --> 0:26:27.320 like me, exactly like me.