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Rh people were started; also many persons from the middle classes and nobility went to live among the workers; others refused to take the oath or to fulfil their military duties. One of the first cases was the refusal, in 1886, of Alexis Zabulovsky to serve as a soldier. He was condemned to two years in the disciplinary battalion at Askhabad in Central Asia, where he suffered greatly, especially during the long marches to his destination. Afterwards the refusals became more and more frequent, in Russia as well as in foreign countries, and nowadays they occur at every recruiting season.

The spread of Tolstoy’s works in western Europe and America also led to communications from and correspondence with societies accepting Christianity in the same spirit as himself; that is to say, condemning violence whether by the individual or by the State. From England the first response came from the Quakers; from America the Shakers, and members of non-resistance societies formed by Harrison and Ball; from Austria wrote a sect of Nazarenes, the members of which regularly refuse military service and are imprisoned in consequence. As to the Russian Dukhobors, we shall speak of them later.

In 1885, Tolstoy was visited by a Russian