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Rh war enabled this state of mind to spread without difficulty through the rural districts. Refusals of military service became more and more general; and the more brutally they were punished the more stubborn the revolt grew in secret. In the provinces, moreover, whole races who knew nothing of Tolstoy had given the example of an absolute and passive refusal to obey the State—the Doukhobors of the Caucasus as early as 1898 and the Georgians of the Gouri towards 1905. Tolstoy influenced these movements far less than they influenced him; and the interest of his writings lies in the fact that in spite of the criticisms of those writers who were of the party of revolution, as was Gorky, he was the mouthpiece of the Old Russian people.

The attitude which he preserved, in respect of men who at the peril of their lives were putting into practice the principles which he professed, was one of extreme modesty and dignity. Neither to the