Page:Pavel Ivanovich Biryukov - The New Russia - tr. Emile Burns (1920).djvu/29

 rouse peoples. They need an ideal outside their daily life, which they feel is always full of compromise.

Hence the void which Communist doctrine cannot fill produces a spiritual thirst which they cannot quench; and the political pamphlets spread broadcast by the Party in power are not enough to satisfy the people. It is all very well to wave flags on which are written the great words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Justice, and so forth. The people knew too well that they have been carved on the buildings of a neighbouring republic, and that they failed to lead the nation towards a moral end.

Now, therefore, the people are turning towards the man who has been for a long time looked up to as expressing the consciousness of humanity—Leo Tolstoi. What a deep antagonism between the doctrine of love and non-resistance and the doctrine of violence and terror and dictatorship! And yet Tolstoism plays a leading part in Russia to-day, and the dictators tolerate the followers of the great apostle, and even given them a certain preferential treatment as compared with the members of other parties and movements. What is the reason? It is quite a simple one. The political party now in power is much disturbed by the struggles of the other political parties which desire to overthrow it and to take its place. The Tolstoians are not a danger in this sense, because a sincere Tolstoian could never accept a responsible position in a State based on violence; and, in fact, the Tolstoians have no desire to seize power from those who now hold it. It is to this political disinterestedness that the Tolstoians owe their relative liberty.

But there is an even deeper cause which allows the followers of the great apostle to pursue their activities without hindrance. The purity of his ideal and his whole life work, directed as it was for the good of the working classes; his severe criticism of the idle possessing classes;