Ruth Kinna

This year is the hundredth anniversary of Leo Tolstoy's death, and the journal is marking the occasion with two short appreciations, by Alexandre Christoyannopoulos and Terry Hopton. Allan Antliff's art editorial is also devoted to Tolstoy.

Tolstoy's anarchism is still controversial. In part the explanation lies in the designation of his anarchism as Christian. Because of the association of Christianity with the Church, the conjunction seemingly ties anarchism to a history of political reaction, repression and oppression. Yet Tolstoy's Christianity was unorthodox and shaped by biting criticism of Church authority - a point brought out by Alex Christoyannopoulos. And although, as Kropotkin noted, critics were always eager to assert this link to the Church in order to discredit his politics, his religion was not designed to fit any particular belief system. This, at least, was Kropotkin's view. In a letter originally published just after Tolstoy's death, Kropotkin responded to the charge that his final retirement to a monastery had indicated a return to the embrace of the Russian Synod. Tolstoy's commitment, he argued, was

to the working out of a universal rationalist religion, divested of all the mystical elements of modern Christianity - a religion which, he says, would be equally acceptable to the Christian, the Buddhist, the Hebrew, the Musulman [Muslim], the follower of Lao-tse and also to the Freethinkers and to every ethical philosopher (The Times, 15 November 1991).

The controversy about Tolstoy also stems from his understanding of non-violence - the subject of Terry Hopton's essay. Tolstoy is excluded from the 'broad anarchist tradition' importantly analysed in Black Flame by Michael Schmidt and Lucien Van der Walt because his rejection of the state is said to have been informed by a brand of introspective mysticism.1 Tolstoy, they argue, rejected direct action in favour of contemplation, and, in contrast to anarchist pacifists, he withdrew from all forms of resistance, even peaceful coercion.

Tolstoy's work, particularly his position on non-intervention to protect third parties from abuse, is certainly challenging. His standards of godliness appear to make impossibly high demands on ordinary humans, requiring individuals to show enormous moral courage. And some of his short stories - Prayer, for example - point to an accommodation with hardship and tragedy which is difficult to bear. His Letter to A Non-Commissioned Officer includes the following reflection:

The people are oppressed, robbed, poor, ignorant, dying of hunger. Why? Because the land is in the hands of the rich; the people are enslaved in mills and in factories, obliged to earn money because taxes are demanded from them, and the price of their labour is diminished, while the price of things they need in increased.

How are they to escape? By taking the land from the rich? But if this is done, soldiers will come and will kill the rebels or put them in prison. Take the mills and factories? The same will happen. Organise and support a strike? But it is sure to fail. The rich will hold out longer than the workers, and the armies are always on the side of the capitalists. The people will never extricate themselves from the want while they are kept, as long as the army is in the hands of the governing classes (Letters on War, London: Free Age Press, n.d., p33).

Nevertheless, if Tolstoy's response to oppression was in a sense introspective, it did not imply a refusal to resist, only a different understanding of what resistance entailed. His view was that individuals should resist 'hypnosis' and 'fraud' - behaviours fostered by and enforced in the state, and in which the Church was complicit - and he found the answer to these behaviours in the ability to overcome fear of disobedience. One of his most resounding and consistent calls was for individuals to resist military service, not just because the army encouraged the most obvious cruelties, but more importantly because acceptance perfectly illustrated the bewitching power of the state's oppressive practices. Refusing to serve signalled a rejection of the economic and social purposes that the military was organised to meet; purposes that Tolstoy believed made every non-resister morally participant in violence.

Undoubtedly, the rigorously rationalist and ethical dimension of Tolstoy's anarchism is likely to trouble some modern anarchists. His treatment of the avant garde in What is Art? might alienate others. On the other hand, the habit of some early twentieth century activists to read Tolstoy as a companion to Stirner and to find in both an appeal to self-transformation will only confirm the suspicions of critics like Schmidt and van der Walt. What all these concerns and criticisms highlight, however, is the rich suggestiveness of Tolstoy's work. Not surprising, then, that in the hundred years since his death, the value of his contribution to anarchist thought and practice has been recognised by a number of important anarchists - Daniel Guérin, for example, as well as Kropotkin. And his influence on significant parts of the anarchist movement has been and remains profound. It is fitting, therefore, to mark this centenary.

The other articles and essays collected in this issue range over broad territory. Alex Prichard's essay focuses on Proudhon - to whom Tolstoy, as Terry Hopton indicates, was indebted. He argues that anarchist concerns about the operation of the state in the domestic sphere have wrongly diverted attention from the international realm, and he calls for the development of an approach which factors both levels of state behaviour - and the relationship between the two - into anarchist analysis. In an essay which also touches on Tolstoy, Caroline Hamilton explores turn-of-the-century debates about anarchy and order, and the creative relationship between science, art and destruction, violence and expression, through an examination of the fictional writings of Henry Adams and Andrei Bely. Jason Lindsey discusses contemporary liberal theories of functional representation. Notwithstanding the neglect of anarchist work in this area, he argues that the apparently anarchistic turn of some liberal theory is to be welcomed. Kristian Williams' essay on Oscar Wilde's aphorisms and Mother Earth raises questions about the inherently subversive quality of paradox.

The next issue promises a similarly rich diversity of ideas, with articles on Kropotkin's theory of mutual aid and the DIY politics of CrimethInc. scheduled for publication. A reminder that the following issue, for Autumn 2011, is being planned as a special issue to celebrate the life of Colin Ward. If you want to contribute to this issue, please contact Carl Levy at c.levy@gold.ac.uk.

Note
1. Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism is published by AK Press (Edinburgh and Oakland, CA 2009).

Georges Fontenis (1920-2010)
It is with great sadness that we learned of the death on 9 August of Georges Fontenis, who played an important role in the rebuilding of the French anarchist movement after 1945, in the anticolonialist movement at the time of the Algerian war, in supporting the libertarian anti-Francoist movement in exile, and in the formation of a 'libertarian communist' movement. Obituaries have appeared in Le Monde (14 August) and in French, English and Spanish on anarkismo.net.