work absorbed the greater part of his time and energy. Russia was passing through an alarming crisis; for a moment the empire of the Tsars seemed to totter on its foundations and about to fall in ruin. The Russo-Japanese war, the disasters which followed it, the revolutionary troubles, the mutinies in the army and the fleet, the massacres, the agrarian disorders, seemed to mark “the end of a world,” to quote the title of one of Tolstoy’s writings. The height of the crisis was reached in 1904 and 1905. During these years Tolstoy published a remarkable series of works: War and Revolution, The Great Crime, The End of a World. During the last ten years of his life he occupied a situation unique not only in Russia but in the world. He was alone, a stranger to all the parties, to all countries, and rejected by his Church, which had excommunicated him.[1] The logic of his reason and the revolutionary character of his faith had “led him to this dilemma; to live a stranger to other men, or a stranger to the truth.” He recalls the Russian proverb: “An old man who lies is a rich man who steals,” and he severs himself from mankind in order to speak the truth. He tells the whole truth, and to all. The old hunter of lies continues, unweariedly, to mark down all superstitions, religious or social, and all fetishes. The only exceptions are the old maleficent powers—the persecutrix, the
- ↑ The excommunication of Tolstoy by the Holy Synod was declared on February 22, 1901. The excuse was a chapter of Resurrection relating to Mass and the Eucharist. This chapter has unhappily been suppressed in the French edition.
