Speaker 1: A good idea can be truly transformative. An original invention
Speaker 1: or a new way of looking at things can change
Speaker 1: the world, and sometimes in history is the power of
Speaker 1: an idea that binds people and events together, even across
Speaker 1: wide expanses of time and space. This season on The Thread,
Speaker 1: we trace the trajectory of a revolutionary idea, one that
Speaker 1: has traveled around the globe for more than a century.
Speaker 1: We began this season of The Thread fifty years ago
Speaker 1: in Memphis, Tennessee. Doctor Martin Luther King, the apostle of
Speaker 1: non violence in the civil rights movement, has been shot
Speaker 1: to death. In Memphis, Tennessee. Doctor King revolutionized the struggle
Speaker 1: for racial justice in America through the use of non
Speaker 1: violent resistance Negroes of the United States. Following the people
Speaker 1: of India have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity,
Speaker 1: but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation,
Speaker 1: and in the first three episodes of this season, we
Speaker 1: traveled back in time in order to trace the origins
Speaker 1: of that powerful moral force. Doctor King would not have
Speaker 1: become the champion of non violence without the influence of
Speaker 1: a black activist named Buyer Drustin. We are non violent
Speaker 1: because injury to one is injury to all. More than
Speaker 1: any other civil rights leader, including King, Rustin was responsible
Speaker 1: for injecting peaceful protests into the Black freedom struggle. Rustin's
Speaker 1: own inspiration came from across the globe, from an Indian
Speaker 1: lawyer determined to convert his enemies into friends, and the
Speaker 1: struggle to free his homeland from the British Empire. I
Speaker 1: regard my two as a soldier, though a soldier of
Speaker 1: p Mohanas. Gandhi even that nonviolence was the key to
Speaker 1: social change and to personal change as well. It became
Speaker 1: his mission to become a better person every day, and
Speaker 1: so he gradually worked on all his weaknesses and transformed
Speaker 1: them into strength. Gandhi's faith in the power of nonviolent
Speaker 1: resistance was inspired by another man half the world away,
Speaker 1: Leo Tolstoy. Like Gandhi, the famous novelists strived to live
Speaker 1: a simple life of virtue and to help the least
Speaker 1: fortunate in his Russian homeland to fight back against an
Speaker 1: oppressive regime. You to go, I am to stint everything
Speaker 1: there is to know about you. No should all make
Speaker 1: up political views. Everything there is to know about you.
Speaker 1: Gandhi once called Leo Tolstoy, the greatest apostle of non
Speaker 1: violence in the present age. His admiration for the Russian
Speaker 1: thinker came from more than just an appreciation of his writings.
Speaker 1: The two men corresponded in a series of letters and
Speaker 1: exchanged ideas on non violent protests just before Tolstoy's death
Speaker 1: in nineteen ten. Like Gandhi, Tolstoy was a larger than
Speaker 1: life figure in his home country for decades. Tolstoy was
Speaker 1: a wealthy Russian aristocrat and world famous novelist. He was
Speaker 1: the author of two of the greatest novels ever written,
Speaker 1: War in Peace and Anna Karenina. And then Tolstoy turned
Speaker 1: his back on his aristocratic life and accomplishments. He experienced
Speaker 1: a profound spiritual crisis, one followed by an equally profound awakening.
Speaker 1: Lit everything about last Night, I supposed. Leo Tolstoy was
Speaker 1: born in his family's estate in the Russian countryside south
Speaker 1: of Moscow in eight This is Tolstoy scholar j Perini.
Speaker 1: I mean, the crucial thing about Tolstoy is he was
Speaker 1: an aristocrat. He was Count Leo Tolstoy. He inherited this
Speaker 1: vast estate he which had originally had thousands of serves
Speaker 1: on it. He would have had thirty servants in his
Speaker 1: own house. He was from the extreme upper classes, and Tolstoy,
Speaker 1: like many other young men in his social circle, lived
Speaker 1: a privileged existence. Tolstoy biographer Rosamond Bartlett, he is very
Speaker 1: characteristic in his early life for sort of having these
Speaker 1: incredible passions that evaporate quite quickly. Um So one day
Speaker 1: he decides to do one thing, and then you know,
Speaker 1: very shortly he'll give it up and do something else.
Speaker 1: J Parini again. He traveled to Paris and spoke French,
Speaker 1: like all Russian aristocrats did. He spent time in Moscow
Speaker 1: and St. Petersburg. He was a great frequenter of whore
Speaker 1: houses and gambling joints. He was a wild man in
Speaker 1: his youth. He had endless mistresses and love affairs. Then
Speaker 1: his life took a very different term Rosamond Bartlett. Everything
Speaker 1: crystallized for him when on a whim he decided in
Speaker 1: his early twenties to travel down to the Caucasus with
Speaker 1: his elder brother Nikolai, whom he idolized. Nikolai was an
Speaker 1: officer in the Russian Imperial Army, which was bogged down
Speaker 1: in the Crimean War in the Caucusus. Tolstoi went along
Speaker 1: for the ride, but he ended up joining his brother
Speaker 1: in the army. What he witnessed there disturbed him, and
Speaker 1: so his experience of violence was real. Um. He really
Speaker 1: was on the front lines. He watched people being riddled
Speaker 1: with bullets. He was really shell shocked by the experience
Speaker 1: of fighting in the Crimean War. Tolstoi's encounter with war
Speaker 1: stayed with him. You could say there was a sort
Speaker 1: of foundation for the later views about lens Um, but
Speaker 1: they took a long time to mature. But certainly it
Speaker 1: was a life changing experience for him. During the war,
Speaker 1: Toulstoy also took up another activity that would prove life changing.
Speaker 1: Because he had so much time on his hands, he
Speaker 1: also started writing, and the birth of his literary career
Speaker 1: takes place in the Caucasus. Tolstoy's first book of stories
Speaker 1: addressed the eleven month long siege of the Crimean capital
Speaker 1: of Sebastopol. It took readers behind the scenes of the
Speaker 1: Russian Army's doomed war effort. It was a devastating account
Speaker 1: of the horror and futility of war. Tolstoy continued to
Speaker 1: write after the war, including a colossal work widely considered
Speaker 1: his first masterpiece. So then, of course he'd plunged into
Speaker 1: the writing of War and Peace, which is this, you know,
Speaker 1: this great work of genius, incredible novel. War and Peace
Speaker 1: chronicled another war, the French invasion of Russia under Napoleon
Speaker 1: in eighteen twelve. Tolstoy researched the war extensively in order
Speaker 1: to bring it to life, and he found it very
Speaker 1: difficult to know what to do with himself when he
Speaker 1: finished that. For as you can imagine, despite his new
Speaker 1: found fame, Tolstoy, now in his forties, was already beginning
Speaker 1: to grow disillusioned with being a professional writer. He wanted
Speaker 1: to really engage with more pressing questions about the meaning
Speaker 1: of life, and you see that coming up more and
Speaker 1: more in Anna Karnina as it goes on, Tolstoy's second
Speaker 1: great masterpiece, Anna Karina, was published in several installments during
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies. As the novel came to an end
Speaker 1: to Russia was getting involved in another war, which he
Speaker 1: found deeply depressing. Tolsta's opposition to war found its way
Speaker 1: into the novel's final installment. By the time we get
Speaker 1: to the end of Anna Karnina, you're looking at Tolstoy's
Speaker 1: non violent um philosophy in embryonic form. Fyodor dosta Vski,
Speaker 1: another great Russian novelist and contemporary of Tolstoys, wrote a
Speaker 1: review of Anna Karnada. He called it quote flawless as
Speaker 1: a work of art, but he took issues with other aspects.
Speaker 1: Dostoevsky is critical of Tolstoy for opposing war in Anna Kara,
Speaker 1: and yet of two only Tolstoy has actually experienced war
Speaker 1: at close hand. He is the only one who's actually
Speaker 1: served in the army. Dostoevsky never did. Tolstoy Is growing
Speaker 1: discontent was not limited to his objections to war. J
Speaker 1: Perini again, by the time he finished Anna Karenina, I
Speaker 1: think he was just very, very depressed, even suicidal. That
Speaker 1: there was a suicidal tendency in tolstoy Um. He just
Speaker 1: wanted to erase himself because he could see the pointlessness
Speaker 1: of life. But Tolstoy managed to find a way out.
Speaker 1: The solution was a cause far greater than himself. In
Speaker 1: the late eighteen set in these, Leo Tulstoi embarked on
Speaker 1: long religious pilgrimages to find answers to his great spiritual questions.
Speaker 1: Rosamond Bartlin he was on us on a journey to
Speaker 1: discover some practical rules for life, and then he went
Speaker 1: to the Cave's Monastery in Kiev, where Christianity had started
Speaker 1: in in Russia. Tolstoy, like most Russians, was raised to
Speaker 1: believe in the Christian doctrines of the Russian Orthodox Church,
Speaker 1: the ruling religious hierarchy in the nation and one closely
Speaker 1: aligned with the Czarist regime. And rather like earlier decisions
Speaker 1: in his life, it was a very sort of sort
Speaker 1: of lightning moment. He just suddenly snapped. He suddenly just
Speaker 1: turned against it, and so he started to reevaluate all
Speaker 1: his own moral principles. The aristocratic playboy turned acclaim novelists,
Speaker 1: now turned philosopher, Tolstoy undertook a critical examination of Christian theology.
Speaker 1: He went through the Gospels and sort of throughout everything
Speaker 1: which he thought was was made believe, and ended up
Speaker 1: with a new Testament that was shorn of miracles, basically
Speaker 1: that just concentrated on what Jesus said, Tolstoy produced his
Speaker 1: own version of the Christian Gospels, one that he felt
Speaker 1: could serve as a practical guide for living a moral life.
Speaker 1: The new Christianity that Tolstoi devised for himself essentially boiled
Speaker 1: down two the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount
Speaker 1: from Matthew Chapter five Versus thirty eight to forty two.
Speaker 1: That is, you have heard that it was said an
Speaker 1: eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
Speaker 1: But I tell you do not resist an evil person.
Speaker 1: If someone strikes you on the right cheek turned to
Speaker 1: him the other Also, that is a nutshelle. Is Tolstoy's
Speaker 1: religious philosophy. This is what's going to be at the
Speaker 1: heart of the millions of pages he will now write
Speaker 1: about this new Christian philosophy and what will influence people
Speaker 1: around the world, including of course famously Gandhi. Tolstoy spiritual
Speaker 1: journey landed horror on the principle of non violence. He
Speaker 1: came to believe that being a true Christian required one
Speaker 1: to make a commitment to pacifism. What came out of
Speaker 1: Tolstoy's new reading of the Gospels is this idea that
Speaker 1: you cannot take up arms. If you're going to be
Speaker 1: a Christian, then you've you've got to live a Christian
Speaker 1: life to the letter. As far as he could see,
Speaker 1: the most important thing in the Gospels is really the
Speaker 1: sort of lore of of non violence. Tolstoy's newfound faith
Speaker 1: also compelled him to question his own life and lifestyle
Speaker 1: and to take on the sources of the power, privilege,
Speaker 1: and violence he saw everywhere around him. Leo Tolstoy's spiritual
Speaker 1: or birth was also driven by the circumstances of his
Speaker 1: own life and upbringing. J Parini. Again, he looked around.
Speaker 1: He said, what is causing all of this horror in society?
Speaker 1: And he said, wait a minute, it's people like me,
Speaker 1: rich people who live on estates with a thousand servants.
Speaker 1: So the feeling of guilt riddles Tolstoi's conscience, and he
Speaker 1: feels driven. He was driven by guilt. Tolstoi felt the
Speaker 1: need to put his new found beliefs into action, to
Speaker 1: speak out against the evil and degregation he saw around.
Speaker 1: And Tolstoy then became an activist himself again and again
Speaker 1: and again. I mean, he was endlessly trying to think
Speaker 1: of ways of alleviating the massive poverty which he saw.
Speaker 1: Tulslo was especially appalled by the squalor he witnessed in
Speaker 1: the slums of Moscow. He saw the kind of ferocity
Speaker 1: of the Czar, the repressiveness of this regime, and it
Speaker 1: was also horrified by the way the church, the Russian
Speaker 1: Orthodox Church, allied itself with the Czarist regime Rosamond Bartlett.
Speaker 1: And so he's determined now never to shut up, and
Speaker 1: essentially that is what he does for the next thirty years,
Speaker 1: is to start shouting about the inequality of Russian society,
Speaker 1: the hypocrisy of the system. Toulslo believed that the best
Speaker 1: way to address such issues was through love and nonviolence,
Speaker 1: and as with Gandhi, this approach started at home. He
Speaker 1: is drastically changing his own lifestyle. So this means that
Speaker 1: he does not want to have anyone waiting on him. Ah.
Speaker 1: He just like the idea of servants um. He stops smoking,
Speaker 1: he stops drinking, and he stops eating meat eventually, and
Speaker 1: he doesn't feel that he wants to have any any
Speaker 1: money um, and he certainly doesn't want to earn money
Speaker 1: from his own writings. Tolstoy also started to advocate for
Speaker 1: his new approach to life, and he said, well, we
Speaker 1: must first of all try to live simply. We must
Speaker 1: try to love our neighbors as ourselves, and we must
Speaker 1: resist evil in any way we can, and speak truth
Speaker 1: to power wherever that's possible. Tolstoy could speak truth to
Speaker 1: power with near impunity because of his fame the Russians
Speaker 1: are and authorities knew they couldn't arrest or exile him.
Speaker 1: The public outcry would be immense. He was a person
Speaker 1: with leverage in society, He had wealth, he had lots
Speaker 1: of people who would stand up for him. So the
Speaker 1: authorities put Tolstoy under instant surveillance and did their best
Speaker 1: to censor him, but he very quickly becomes a focus
Speaker 1: of attention for disarist secret police because it's dangerous behavior.
Speaker 1: Nothing that tossed toy rights from this point on can
Speaker 1: be published for that same reason, because it's seen as inflammatory. Still,
Speaker 1: like Gandhi and India, managed to get his message of
Speaker 1: love and non violence out and most Russian people adored
Speaker 1: him for By the end of his life too, he
Speaker 1: had such moral authority that actually people looked up to
Speaker 1: him as the real star because they had no respect
Speaker 1: for Nicholas the Second, who was actually on the throne.
Speaker 1: When Leo Tolstoy would step out of a train in
Speaker 1: Moscow or out of a carriage, he would be mobbed
Speaker 1: by hundreds, in fact thousands of people. That were incidents
Speaker 1: in Russia where thousands crushed in upon him just to
Speaker 1: even see him. He was almost treated like a god
Speaker 1: in Russia. Show Tolstoy next sank his energy and his
Speaker 1: moral authority into another magnum opus. His most ambitious writing
Speaker 1: project yet, Tolstoy completed The Kingdom of God Is Within
Speaker 1: You in The book's manuscript was more than thirteen thousand
Speaker 1: pages longer than War in Peace and antakarn And It
Speaker 1: put together. Tolstoy argues in the book that the basis
Speaker 1: of authority is bodily violence. But Tolstoy also observes that
Speaker 1: the coercive authority of governments quote is so precarious that
Speaker 1: very little is needed to shake their power to pieces
Speaker 1: biographer J. Perini. Again, Here Tolstoy gives his most complete
Speaker 1: theological and ethical um summary of what it means to
Speaker 1: resist violence, but to do so in a kind of
Speaker 1: passive way. Passive resistance to violence, and that's the book
Speaker 1: that King and and Gandhi really looked to and said, ah,
Speaker 1: here we go. This lays it all out so beautifully.
Speaker 1: Tolstoys treatise called for reorganizing society based on the Christian
Speaker 1: prescriptions to love by enemies and refrain from violence. The
Speaker 1: book was immediately banned from publication in Russia, but soon French,
Speaker 1: English and German translations found their way into circulation, and
Speaker 1: tolstoys new gospel of non violence spread. The Kingdom of
Speaker 1: God is within you when right around the world, and
Speaker 1: it influenced people in very far flowing places. You had
Speaker 1: all kinds of people serving in armed forces reading that
Speaker 1: work and immediately resigning their commissions. And of course there
Speaker 1: was this young lawyer in South Africa Gandhi, who read
Speaker 1: it as well, and it had an absolutely electrifying impact
Speaker 1: on him. Gandhi admired Tolstoy's uncompromising search for truth, the
Speaker 1: manner in which he lived according to his principles. Gandhi
Speaker 1: listed The Kingdom of God as one of the three
Speaker 1: most important influences in his life. And he wasn't even
Speaker 1: a Christian, but even Tolstoy had his influences, just like
Speaker 1: Gandhi was influenced by Tolstoy. Up next, the thread continues
Speaker 1: with the origins of Tolstoy's paths and non violence. And
Speaker 1: for that we traveled back to the United States one
Speaker 1: and twenty five years before Martin Luther King Jr. Embarked
Speaker 1: on the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Leo Tolstoy aspired to leave
Speaker 1: a simple life in his later years, but he was
Speaker 1: never able to fully embrace it. J Perini again, he
Speaker 1: wanted to be devoted to these high principles. He could
Speaker 1: certainly have left his family years earlier and gone off
Speaker 1: to live in a monastery um, but he didn't. He stayed,
Speaker 1: kept his title. He was Count Leo Tolstoi. He kept
Speaker 1: his estate, and the guilt continued to weigh upon him.
Speaker 1: He was conscious of all of the ironies that were
Speaker 1: just in live, that his life was laden with these
Speaker 1: tremendous ironies, and there seemed to have been a trap.
Speaker 1: It was no way out, and so he takes off
Speaker 1: um and goes, you know, goes on the run. In
Speaker 1: the middle of a cold October night in nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: the eighty two year old writers snuck out of his house,
Speaker 1: the most famous man in Russia left on foot and
Speaker 1: then boarded a train heading south for the Caucusus. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: a few weeks later, he comes down with um terrible
Speaker 1: um infection, a kind of flow which led to a
Speaker 1: kind of bronchitis, which led to pneumonia. Tolstoy was forced
Speaker 1: to get off the train in a small town in
Speaker 1: the countryside. He spent the last hours of his life
Speaker 1: preaching love and nonviolence to those around him. But you know,
Speaker 1: even in his deathbed he was, you know, reading Rousseau
Speaker 1: and quoting him and and and livering, you know, words
Speaker 1: of wisdom, and so Tolstoy was a bit of an
Speaker 1: oracle right to the very end. Thousands of people descended
Speaker 1: upon the small train station in the freezing cold. When
Speaker 1: Tolstoy finally died, there was a vast outpouring of public sentiment.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was as though the st Leo had died.
Speaker 1: So it was an extraordinary scene. More than five thousand
Speaker 1: mourners waited in line to file past his coffin when
Speaker 1: it was returned to his home. The death of Tolstoy
Speaker 1: was reported on the front pages of not just the
Speaker 1: Russian newspapers, but the New York Times was running daily reports.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was the whole world was watching schools, factories,
Speaker 1: and offices closed across Russia in honor of the fallen
Speaker 1: giant Rosamond Bartlett. Again, by the time Tolstoy died, he
Speaker 1: really was not only the most famous person in Russia,
Speaker 1: but one of the most famous people in the world.
Speaker 1: These days we just think of Tolstoy as the author
Speaker 1: of Warm Peace and Anna Karenina. Principally, during his lifetime
Speaker 1: he was much better known as a thinker, uh and
Speaker 1: as this sort of spiritual leader. J Perini, Well, I
Speaker 1: think it's just important to see Tolstoy as a primary
Speaker 1: voice in this great tradition of passive resistance to violence.
Speaker 1: Tolstoy understood that it's never a good thing to kill people,
Speaker 1: and it's certainly a very bad thing when states organize
Speaker 1: themselves around violence. Tolstoy's ability to think systematically and to
Speaker 1: synthesize various schools of thought helped transform the concept of
Speaker 1: nonviolent resistance, and he was able to modify and extend
Speaker 1: these ideas of non violence and put them into his
Speaker 1: own forms of expression, which then were picked up beautifully
Speaker 1: by others such as Gandhi, Martin, Luther, King, uhs Are Chevez,
Speaker 1: and so many people down the road. Tolsloy was also
Speaker 1: careful to point out that he was not the originator
Speaker 1: of the idea. Tolstoy did not and would never have
Speaker 1: claimed to have invented uh the theories of the idea
Speaker 1: of non violent resistance to evil um. In fact, he
Speaker 1: very explicitly said, I took it from the Quakers. I
Speaker 1: took it from earlier writers. Quaker philosophers such as the
Speaker 1: Englishman Jonathan Diamond had written a great deal about the
Speaker 1: incompatibility of war and Christianity. Tolsloy was also familiar with
Speaker 1: the American Henry David Thurreau's philosophy of civil disobedience, which
Speaker 1: proposed a radically new form of social protest. But there
Speaker 1: was one particular Quaker and American whose works and passion
Speaker 1: Tolstoy revered above all others, William Lloyd Garrison. Tolsloy started
Speaker 1: to publish his religious writings in the second half of
Speaker 1: his life, and then he began to receive responses from
Speaker 1: readers all over the world. One of his admirers was
Speaker 1: an American Wendell Garrison, who edited a journal called Non Resistance.
Speaker 1: Garrison told Tolstoy that his father, the famous white American
Speaker 1: abolitionist and journalist William Lloyd Garrison, had a similar spiritual
Speaker 1: transformation decades earlier. The younger Garrison sent Tolstoy a copy
Speaker 1: of his late father's biography and writings. Tolstoy was moved
Speaker 1: by the elder Garrison's views and how the fiery journalist
Speaker 1: turned his principles of Christian pacifism into a plan of
Speaker 1: non violent resistance for the purposes of opposing slavery in
Speaker 1: the U. S j Poine. Lloyd Garrison was tremendously influential
Speaker 1: in Tolstoy's mind because he was a flashy journalist who
Speaker 1: was able to commandeer ideas to his side. He was
Speaker 1: able to really get in there and nitty gritty and
Speaker 1: really create an abolitionist movement. Tolstoy devoured Garrison's writings, which
Speaker 1: included the world's first declaration of non violent resistance. Garrison
Speaker 1: drew that up nearly half a century earlier for a
Speaker 1: peace convention in Boston in eighteen thirty eight. The declaration
Speaker 1: explained by Garrison and his fellow pacifists would oppose wars,
Speaker 1: unjust laws, and evil. Through non violent resistance and moral persuasion,
Speaker 1: we expect to prevail, Garrison wrote in the Declaration. Through
Speaker 1: the foolishness of preaching, Count Tolstoy found a kindred spirit
Speaker 1: in Boston. He even hung a framed photo of Garrison
Speaker 1: on the wall in his office. Here's Tolsloy biographer Rosamond Bartlett.
Speaker 1: He wasn't really inclined to cooperate with any kind of
Speaker 1: of government. He didn't want to really have to deal
Speaker 1: at all with coercion at any level. And this is
Speaker 1: really the sort of heart of the idea of non
Speaker 1: violence and what so inspired him about William Lloyd Garrison too.
Speaker 1: Tolsloyd paid tribute to Garrison in the Kingdom of God.
Speaker 1: He said that Garrison's work convinced him that justice and
Speaker 1: peace could only be achieved in the world by putting
Speaker 1: the spiritual doctrine of non resistance to evil into act
Speaker 1: of practice. The fact that Garrison was such um an
Speaker 1: activist appeal to Tolstoy as well. Still, Tolstoy could not
Speaker 1: believe that Garrison's powerful views remained relatively unknown to the world.
Speaker 1: And largely forgotten in America. So in the Kingdom of God,
Speaker 1: Tolstoy set out to republicize and build upon the American
Speaker 1: journalists long forgotten insights. A powerful idea was resurrected next
Speaker 1: time on the thread. William Lloyd Garrison, the American who
Speaker 1: influenced Tolstoy, was a man on a remarkable mission, But
Speaker 1: the activist who sought to end his nation's original sin
Speaker 1: through non violent means would live to see it instead
Speaker 1: resolved through the bloodiest violence in American history. Old folks
Speaker 1: get chill with things and Boston bad peace, sad gosh,
Speaker 1: you with things impossibly lord and under running now by
Speaker 1: Gail style. He speaks to make She draws a bread
Speaker 1: and whispers my name. I'm exactly the same as a
Speaker 1: Russian count in a ten twenty three, and he's exactly
Speaker 1: like me, exactly like me.