Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/321

Rh resolved to comply in practice with Christ's law of non-resistance to evil by violence. This decision has caused them, on one hand, to destroy all their weapons, which are considered so needful in the Caucasus, thus renouncing the possibility of fighting, and putting themselves at the mercy of every marauder; and, on the other hand, to refuse, under all circumstances, participation in acts of force which may be demanded from them by the government; which means that they must refuse service in the army or wherever else violence is used. The government could not permit so many thousands of people such a desertion of the duties established by law, and a struggle broke out. The government demands compliance with its requirements; the Dukhobors will not obey.

The government cannot afford to yield. Not only because this refusal of the Dukhobors to comply with the requirements of government has, from the official standpoint, no legal justification, and is contradictory to the existing time-consecrated order; but such refusals must be discountenanced at once, for the sole reason that, if allowed to ten, to-morrow there will be a thousand, ten thousand, others who wish to escape the burden of the taxes and the conscription. And if this is allowed, there will spring up marauding and chaos instead of order and security; no one's property or life will be safe. Thus reason the authorities; they cannot reason otherwise; and they are not in the least at fault in so reasoning. Even without any such selfish consideration as that these desertions might deprive him of his means of subsistence, now collected from the people by means of compulsion, every official, from the Tsar down to the uryadnik or village police-commissioner, must be deeply indignant with the refusal of some uncivilized, unlettered people to comply with the demands of the government, which are obligatory upon all. “How dare these mere ciphers of people,” thinks the official, “deny that which is recognized by every one, that which is consecrated by the law, and is practised everywhere?” As officials, they cannot be shown to be in error for