Chapter twelve is broken up into six parts and with each part roughly comparing to each of the previous eleven chapters of the book, I thought it would be wise to break those parts up into different posts. The first part is mostly centered around an episode that Tolstoy witnessed in which the government ruled that a wealthy proprietor could take a forest from peasants that relied on the forest for their livelihood. When the peasants rebelled, many were killed or whipped. I've cut around that episode to make this post, mainly focusing on the conclusions that Tolstoy drew from witnessing the event or highlighting key similarities from the episode and episodes in War and Peace. First, we'll look at how the Russians, as well as all states, subdue those who rebel against it.
The enforcement of the decree of the higher authorities is accomplished by means of killing, of torturing men, or by means of a threat of doing one or the other, according as to whether any opposition is shown or not. In the first case, if the peasants show any opposition, the following takes place in Russia (the same things happen wherever there are a state structure and property rights): the chief makes a speech and demands submission. The excited crowd, generally deceived by its leaders, does not understand a word that the representative of the power says in official book language, and continues to be agitated. Then the chief declares that if they do not submit and disperse, he will be compelled to have recourse to arms. If the crowd does not submit even then, the chief commands his men to load their guns and shoot above the heads of the crowd. If the crowd does not disperse even then, he commands the soldiers to shoot straight into the crowd, at haphazard, and the soldiers shoot, and in the street fall wounded and killed men, and then the crowd generally runs away, and the troops at the command of the chiefs seize those who present themselves to them as the main rioters, and lead them away under guard....The language or communication barrier between those in power and those who are not is a big theme through Tolstoy's work, both in the sense of the French versus Russian divide in War and Peace, the confusion in many episodes, particularly the Pierre episode where he tries to free his serfs (much of which has to do with the education differences of the classes, as well as the deep suspicion the peasant class has for the noble class), and what is generally considered "Orwellian" in today's culture, where language used by the nobility or those in power is one that is intentionally deceiving. The rest of the experience described above is recognized as pretty universal and would continue to play out in the violence states showed against anarchists in the years following Tolstoy's death.
those who are considered to be the plotters are taken to the city and tried by a special military court. If on their part there was any violence, they are sentenced to be hanged. Then they put up a gallows and with the help of ropes choke to death a few defenceless people, as has many times been done in Russia and as is being done, and must be done where the public structure is based on violence....This is another example of how Tolstoy's use of language helps makes his points for him and cements his arguments. With the emphasis on "choke" ("strangle" in Garnett) and "defenceless" (Garnett using "creatures" instead of "people" to further play up the defenseless animal analogy that we see quite a bit in War and Peace), the death penalty, particularly when it comes to these moments of political suppression, is transformed from a perhaps too dramatic and controversial punishment to an act of aggressive violence on the part of the state. Tolstoy also ties together this act of aggression as fundamental to the existence of the state and all states as a whole for reasons discussed in previous chapters and the post on The Slavery of Our Time.
which happens more frequently than anything else, announces to them that the instigators ought to be punished, and arbitrarily, without trial, selects a certain number of men, who are declared to be the instigators and in his presence are subjected to tortures...This kind of episode is clearly played out in War and Peace in both the episode where Nikolai "saves" Princess Marya and locks up Dron and Karp and more violently in the episode where Pierre watches those declared as looters or ones that set fires in Moscow and are shot, with the confused soldiers declaring that it will teach them not to set fires anymore.
the governor, like the Governor of Tula, arrived on a special train with a battalion of soldiers, with guns and rods, having made use of the telegraph, of telephones, and of the railway, and brought with him a learned doctor, who was to watch the hygienic conditions of the flogging, thus fully personifying Dzhingis Khan with the telegraphs, as predicted by Herzen....From Radzinsky, Page 206, on Herzen: "Young Leo Tolstoy went abroad, and naturally met with Herzen. Tolstoy described how he approached the two-story building at the back of a small courtyard. Behind the house were trees with thin spring foliage...Herzen was a small, fat man, full of energy and with quick movements. Tolstoy saw Herzen every day he was in London. Later, the writer quoted Herzen's bitter words, with which he agreed completely. "If people wanted to save themselves instead of saving the world and to free themselves instead of freeing humanity, they would do so much for saving the world and freeing humanity." As mentioned in the previous chapter's discussion, technology has made the administration of government more efficient and deadly. Much focus is put on the governor and the doctor, both fulfilling a duty that they could have avoided doing, much like the "French corporal" who agrees to participate in the invasion of Russia. This oppression could not happen without their participation.
the unfortunate governor, who was now completely intoxicated by the sight of blood, commanded the men to go on, and the torture lasted until they had dealt seventy blows, to which number it for some reason seemed to him necessary to carry the number of the blows...It is impossible to read about the governor in this episode and not make the parallel to Rostopchin's ordering of the death of Vereshchagin, with the governor become intoxicated by both his power and the blood. We also see Tolstoy's classic formulation of "for some reason" that distances himself and the audience from an event that might otherwise seem common place, "making it strange" and pointing out the absurdity of the commonplace situation. This really highlights the arbitrariness of the punishment, not to mention who is punished, as well as the number of blows.
When I asked one of the governors why these tortures are committed on men, when they have already submitted and troops are stationed in the village, he replied to me, with the significant look of a man who has come to know all the intricacies of state wisdom, that this is done because experience has shown that if the peasants are not subjected to torture they will again counteract the decrees of the power, while the performance of the torture in the case of a few men forever confirms the decrees of the authorities...The psychology and motivation of the governors is very important for Tolstoy, as well as their appearance of "significance". For Tolstoy, the significance of actions, especially in the context of history, cannot be known to the people participating in them, yet people have the natural urge and desire to not only have meaning in their lives, but for others to interpret what they are doing as important, hence the existence of uniforms, titles, and honors. Why did the governor speak like this to Tolstoy? For the same reason that people want to appear that they know something that others don't, that they share information that seems irrelevant otherwise; its chief value lies in the fact that they know it and the people they are speaking to do not. The search for a significance in action plays a key role in Tolstoy's conception of happiness and explains not only his actions, but the actions of Pierre and Andrei (and many other characters) in War and Peace. The comical displays of attempted significance appear throughout the book and play a key role in the psychology of not only the German generals but Napoleon himself.
Men who own large tracts of land or have large capitals, or who receive large salaries, which are collected from the working people, who are in need of the simplest necessities, as also those who, as merchants, doctors, artists, clerks, savants, coachmen, cooks, authors, lackeys, lawyers, live parasitically about these rich people, are fond of believing that those prerogatives which they enjoy are not due to violence, but to an absolutely free and regular exchange of services, and that these prerogatives are not only not the result of assault upon people, and the murder of them, like what took place this year in Orel and in many other places in Russia, and continually takes place in all of Europe and of America, but has even no connection whatsoever with these cases of violence...The middle classes are complicit in this violence because they depend on the economic graces of the rich, who depend on exploiting the poor classes and the environment. In this somewhat roundabout way, the middle classes are participants in this violence, which is why they excuse the violence, attempt to keep it at arms length, and support it. This is perhaps the biggest barrier to change since the nobility class is the smallest in number, it should become very easy to subvert their wills and establish a new order of things. However, if the small nobility class is upheld by the middle or merchant class, then not only does
Because not all human relations of violence are accompanied by tortures and murders, the men who enjoy the exclusive prerogatives of the ruling classes assure themselves and others that the privileges which they enjoy are not due to any tortures or murders, but to other mysterious common causes, abstract rights, and so forth. And yet, it would seem, it is clear that, if people, though they consider this to be an injustice (all working people now do), give the main portion of their work to the capitalist, the landed proprietor, and pay taxes, though they know that bad use is made of them, they do so first of all, not because they recognize any abstract rights, of which they have never heard, but only because they know that they will be flogged and killed, if they do not do so...Abstraction and lofty language, the kind of legal language used to pacify (and perhaps intentionally ineffectively) the crowd in the earlier mentioned episode is used to justify the way that the government treats its citizens. It is through enlightenment philosophy, particularly through the ideas of absolutism, that lend intellectual credence to the power of governments in Tolstoy's time, just as previous to Tolstoy's time the idea of God-given power justified the rule of leaders. In our time, a complex conglomerate of election, constitution, and precedence is used to justify the rule and violence of governments and leaders.
As the trained tiger in the cage does not take the meat which is placed under his mouth, and does not lie quiet, but jumps over a stick, whenever he is ordered to do so, not because he wants to do so, but because he remembers the heated iron rod or the hunger to which he was subjected every time he did not obey, — even so men who submit to what is not advantageous for them, what even is ruinous to them, do so because they remember what happened to them for their disobedience....It is no accident that Rostopchin calls those in the crowd "children", as the government treats its peasant class like a parent might treat their child or their pet, in Tolstoy's analogy a wild animal, by conditioning their behavior through punishment or rewards (much more likely to be the former than the latter) and forcing the populace to no longer think for or about themselves, but only in the context of whether they will be punished for their behavior or not.
all the prerogatives of the rich, all their luxury, all that superfluity which the rich enjoy above the average labourer, all that is acquired and supported only by tortures, incarcerations, and executions.And this is the fundamental revolutionary anti-capitalist credo: the rich have not earned their standing and there is nothing fundamentally biological or logical about the rich's standing over the poor. Instead, the rich use violence to suppress the poor and maintain their standing, so all attempts to preserve the current order of things must come through the support of violence to maintain order which is why middle-class conservatism, even when not directly participatory by committing acts of violence, is inherently violent.
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