The Kingdom of God is Within You is perhaps Leo Tolstoy's most famous non-fiction work. Published in 1894, the book lays out Tolstoy's religious position in combination with his political positions (making it a complex and larger version of a combination of Confessions, though the focus here on is the external actions of the religion, and What is to be Done?).
I've decided to write this review like I wrote the one to The Slavery of Our Times, relying heavily on commentary of quotations, allowing the reader to read sections of the work and then some thoughts on it so the reader can decide what they want to focus on the most when reading the blog posts. Since the the length of both the chapters and the book overall is so much longer, I've decided to break up the review into chapters, publishing each chapter as I get done with them. This is the post for Chapter 1: THE DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE HAS BEEN PROFESSED BY A MINORITY OF MEN FROM THE VERY FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY.
The audiobook version (which is of Constance Garnett's translation, which you can read here) I listened to here. The printed version I used was: The Kingdom of God is Within You, Wilder Publications, Radford Va, 2008 It is horribly printed with many errors and bad formatting so I used the link above more, as well as another translation, as mentioned below.
While The Slavery of Our Times is mostly secular in its argumentation, The Kingdom of God is Within You a religious foundation that needs to be discussed. The book itself is a sequel of sorts, and the first of the book deals with the way his book What I Believe (or My Religion) was received. Tolstoy lays out his interpretation of Jesus's teachings in that book, so while I currently have some notes on the book, I'd like to make a future post on it at some time.
The way Tolstoy sets up the opening chapter of the book is to establish that nothing he is saying is new (in fact, his arguments throughout the book can veer towards the somewhat specious in suggesting that they are basically already accepted and established. He also will appeal to the authority of Christ, as mentioned above, so you just have to accept that as you move through the book) but the culmination of earlier arguments that helped him discover the truth.
“The work of (William Lloyd) Garrison, the father, in his foundation of the Society of Non-resistants and his Declaration, even more than my correspondence with the Quakers, convinced me of the fact that the departure of the ruling form of Christianity from the law of Christ on non-resistance by force is an error that has long been observed and pointed out, and that men have labored, and are still laboring, to correct. (Adin) Ballou’s work confirmed me still more in this view. But the fate of Garrison, still more that of Ballou, in being completely unrecognized in spite of fifty years of obstinate and persistent work in the same direction, confirmed me in the idea that there exists a kind of tacit but steadfast conspiracy of silence about all such efforts.”
However, for various reasons, these arguments and teachings of true anarchist and pacifist Christianity are being suppressed, not necessarily by strict state censorship (there are some examples he mentions that were forgotten for these reasons) but by just being ignored, particularly by those who hold the (especially the intellectual) power in the various churches. The motivation for why this is is because of the connection churches have with political power, which has deformed the purpose of Christianity.
“(Petr) Helchitsky’s (also can be spelled Chelcicky) fundamental idea is that Christianity, by allying itself with temporal power in the days of Constantine, and by continuing to develop in such conditions, has become completely distorted, and has ceased to be Christian altogether.”
It doesn't take a scholar to understand that the Christianity set forth in the "Gospels" in their portrayal of Jesus Christ (or even the Apostle Paul, who is not really discussed in the book) is much different than the institutions of religion and churches in our or Tolstoy's time, and the conversion of Constantine and the conversion of the Roman Empire into "a Christian empire" is a pretty obvious and convenient time to mark where this change happened (though Tolstoy has his problems with the group usually considered "the Church Fathers" and their systematization of doctrine). The connection of the Christian doctrine and political structures weds the two and has changed the former much more than the latter. And this leads to an intellectual dishonesty by those who write and think for the institutions.
“Works of this kind, dealing with the very essence of Christian doctrine, ought, one would have thought, to have been examined and accepted as true, or refuted and rejected. But nothing of this kind has occurred, and the same fate has been repeated with all these works. Men of the most diverse views, believers, and, what is surprising, unbelieving liberals also, as though by agreement, all preserve the same persistent silence about them, and all that has been done by people to explain the true meaning of Christ’s doctrine remains either ignored or forgotten.”
Tolstoy spends the early chapters in the book defending the doctrine of Christ-like non-violence from religious and then non-religious critiques (then later defining what the non-violence looks like in sort of a reversal in the structure you might expect), but the main thread of critiques from both the religious and non-religious sides are non-engagement. According to Tolstoy, they simply throw their hands up, say that non-violence and non-resistance is impossible and do not debate or even acknowledge Christian pacifism, seeing it as a fringe minority not worth spilling ink over. Tolstoy, on the other hand, does acknowledge that Christian pacifism is a minority view that is contrary to the teachings of the churches in power, but that it is the original, correct teaching and that it has always been held by some Christians throughout history.
“(Daniel) Musser’s book is called “Non-resistance Asserted,” or “Kingdom of Christ and Kingdoms of this World Separated.” This book is devoted to the same question, and was written when the American Government was exacting military service from its citizens at the time of the Civil War. And it has, too, a value for all time, dealing with the question how, in such circumstances, people should and can refuse to enter military service.”
Throughout the book, refusing military service and compulsory military service, are the key symbols of tyranny and the object of Tolstoy's derision (sometimes in a comic sense). I've discussed before how Tolstoy's view of American slavery and the American civil war is somewhat unorthodox and can leave a very uncomfortable feeling in a modern day reader (Tolstoy's un-answer to the problem of American racial slavery and opposition to the Civil War sounds a lot to me like Mahatma Gandhi's problematic view on World War 2 and the Jews in the Holocaust), so his highlighting of Musser is not particularly surprising. We, of course, who are glad that the war was fought, the Union won, and the slaves were liberated (though regretting the premature ending of Reconstruction failing to fully reform society and Jim Crow segregation of society) can still recognize the utter horror of America's most violent war and wonder if there could have been a better way. We'll come back to this question as Tolstoy reveals his answers for societal change throughout the book and discuss whether or not they are adequate for such real world problems.
“The author (Musser) concludes his book by saying: “Christians do not need government, and therefore they cannot either obey it in what is contrary to Christ’s teaching nor, still less, take part in it.”
While Tolstoy occasionally clarifies what he means when he says Christian, imagine that he means, unless otherwise stated, that Christians are those who follow non-violent and non-resistant principles, while the Church or churches are the institutions that masquerade under the name of Christianity while supporting political power. As in The Slavery of Our Times, the answer for a Christian or the non-resistant is non-participation. The non-resistant should not need government, should not use government, and should not participate in government or the protection of government. The problem of the non-universality of self-reliance was discussed in my post on The Slavery of Our Times, but here Tolstoy combats this by looking at different communities that have made themselves self-reliant and peaceful.
“There are people, hundreds of thousands of Quakers, Mennonites, all our Douhobortsi, Molokani, and others who do not belong to any definite, who consider that the use of force-and, consequently, military service-is inconsistent with Christianity. Consequently there are every year among us in Russia some men called upon for military service who refuse to serve on the ground of their religious convictions. Does the government let them off then? No. Does it compel them to go, and in case of disobedience punish them? No. This was how the government treated them in 1818. Here is the extract from the diary of Nicholas Myravyov of Kars, which was not passed by the censor and is not known in Russia…”In the morning the commandment told me that five peasants belonging to a landowner in the Tamboff government had lately been sent to Georgia. These men had been sent for soldiers, but they would not serve; they had been several times flogged and made to run the gauntlet, but they would submit readily to the cruelest tortures, and even to death, rather than serve. ‘Let us go,” they said, ‘And leave us alone; we will not hurt anyone; all men are equal, and the Tzar is a man like us; why should we pay him tribute; why should I expose my life to danger to kill in battle some man who has done me no harm? You can cut us to pieces and we will not be soldiers. He who has compassion on us will give us charity, but as for the government rations, we have not had them and we do not want to have them’ These were the words of those peasants, who declare that there are numbers like them Russia. They brought them four times before the Committee of Ministers, and at last decided to lay the matter before the Tzar who gave orders that they should be taken to Georgia for correction, and commanded the commander-in-chief to send him a report every month of their gradual success in bringing these peasants to a better mind.” How the correction ended is not known, as the whole episode indeed was unknown, having been kept in profound secrecy.”
The "Douhobortsi", also spelled as Doukhobors, were the driving force behind the novel Resurrection and are discussed in more detail in Tolstoy and His Problems by Aylmer Maude. Much like Mennonites in Germany or the Quakers in America, they were an off-shoot sect that believed in rejection of society and peace (they differ from the religious wanders, "the people of God", in War and Peace in that they do form their own society rather than going from place to place and begging or asking for places to stay while travelling from icon to icon). Their Luddism, which is tied to their rejection of the political life and structure, is something Tolstoy doesn't emphasize in this book but something you can tell he admires. However, since the biggest argument against pacifism is its impracticability, Tolstoy does concern himself, here and later in the book, with the consequences for those who do not participate in the political structure and do not allow themselves to be subjected to military service. Of course, in this example of 1818, we are in the middle of Alexander's rightward turn with Arakcheev taking charge of the government. The end result of the peasants rising up against the government, the argument against the government so to speak, is virtually the same as how the arguments or pacifism in the church work, they are ignored or put in secret. In an observation that George Orwell (who, despite the his devastating critique of Tolstoy's opinions on art and Shakespeare, has quite a bit in common from a political critique standpoint) famously made in 1984, inspired mainly by the Soviet Union, in which political dissidence is best dealt with in secrecy and kept away form the public eye rather than public spectacle (though with the hangings and show trials, there was still a role for this), avoiding making them into martyrs that can inspire others. As we'll see throughout the book, the government isn't sure how to deal with non-resisters and instead just wants them to go away, since they can't/won't dispose of them like they do violent resisters.
Starting here and, unless otherwise stated, in all the posts on this book, I will be using the Leo Wiener translation that you can see here. Wiener's translation can be a little more mouthy, but I trust it a little more and it seems less simplistic.
“In the late cases of refusal to do military service in consequence of religious convictions, other than those of the Mennonites, the authorities have acted as follows: At first they use all means of violence employed in our time for the purpose of "mending" them and bringing them back to "the proper ideas," and the whole matter is kept a profound secret. I know that in the case of one man in Moscow, who in 1884 refused to serve, they wrote up voluminous documents two months after his refusal, and these were kept in the ministry as the greatest secret.”
Again, non-resistance and rejection of governmental duties, particularly military service is met with by the government by confusion, consulting of laws, and the hushing up of inconvenient facts. And this is because, while the vast majority of people go along with governmental service, most people experience revulsion at the thought of prosecuting non-violence, so much so that the government can be swayed into non-prosecution. The most famous example in our country (again, apologies for the Americentrism) of non-violence resistance to compulsory military service is Muhammad Ali, who was able to use his celebrity and boxing talents to be a spokesman against the war and for his own religion. Because of his unique situation, the government was unable to make him go away or keep it a secret and were forced to confront it head on. Since Ali stood his ground and could not be bribed (bribery or money and opportunities provided by the government comes up later in the book), the government essentially lost the argument because it was a war and a political structure, like all wars and political structures according to Tolstoy, that could not survive argument and when confronted head-on and challenged, crumbled without violence (though the Vietnam war dragged on for political reasons and eighteen-year-olds are still required to sign up for Selective Service and could be theoretically subject to compulsory military service, this has not happened since Vietnam and the United States military has relied on what Tolstoy would call a combination of bribery and hypnotism to maintain its numbers). This is how governmental power is eroded, gradually and by voluntary rejection of governmental service. So how can the government combat this voluntary rejection of government?
"The most convenient thing for the government to do would be to have the refuser executed, beaten to death with sticks, as they used to do of old, or executed in some other manner. But it is impossible openly to execute a man for being true to a teaching which we all profess, and it is equally impossible to let a man alone, who refuses to serve. And so the government tries either through suffering to compel the man to renounce Christ, or in some way imperceptibly to get rid of the man, with out having him publicly executed, — in some way to conceal this man's act and the man himself from other people. And so there begin all kinds of devices and cunning and tortures of this man. Either he is sent to some outlying region, or he is provoked to commit some act of insubordination, and then he is tried for breach of discipline and is locked up in prison, in a disciplinary battalion, where he is freely tortured in secret, or he is declared insane and is locked up in an insane asylum."
Russia is famous for, no matter what kind of government it has, sending people to Siberia as a punishment, though they would also send people to other outliers of the empire such as the Caucuses, the Turkish border, or Poland. And of course, declaring dissenters as having a mental illness or something wrong with their brain and a need for reeducation is something authoritarian Communist governments would perfect (again, see 1984). Tolstoy's honest look at prisons and its applicability today is something that pops up in spurts throughout the book and I wish he concentrated on it a little more because it really anticipates a lot of postmodern critiques of prison systems. The key thread of these three punishments of course lie in their uprooting of the life of the non-resister's life and this is why, though he doesn't use the phrase, non-attachment is key to the non-resister. The non-resister or refuser cannot just refuse to be uprooted for military service or governmental duties, because either way, when the government comes knocking, it will be impossible to maintain the life they are used to. They will have to either consent to the governmental service or face the different consequences the government throws at them (this process will be elaborated on in Chapter 9). In this, non-resistance and what Tolstoy calls Christianity has to exist outside of an individual's connection to the life they are used to. Instead, in the sense that Christianity is "not of this world", a Christian has to be completely unattached from their material possessions and their relation to a comfortable life. When looking at what Tolstoy is advocating for, it cannot be lost that Tolstoy is advocating for something he knows that could get people killed, tortured, or imprisoned. Non-resistance doesn't necessarily come without consequences. In fact, it most likely will come with negative consequences, as he'll discuss more in the book. However, we'll see reasons for why Tolstoy believes this is the only route to societal and worldly change (as with the review of The Slavery of Our Times it should be emphasized that Tolstoy is not advocating martyrdom for the sake of post-world rewards, but instead believing it as an instrument of social and political change, by getting rid of the need of politics altogether).
"Thus the information which I received concerning the extent to which the true significance of Christ's teaching has been elucidated and is being elucidated more and more, and concerning the attitude which the highest ruling classes, not only in Russia, but also in Europe and in America, take toward this elucidation and execution of the teaching, convinced me that in these ruling classes there existed a consciously hostile relation toward true Christianity, which found its expression mainly in the silence observed concerning all its manifestations."
The ruling classes suppress radical pacifism because they find it threatening and thus most people's engagement with Christianity comes through churches, which teach the people that follow them violence rather than non-violence and defines Christianity as violence for those who do not believe in Christianity, making it easier for those who do not wish to engage with Christianity to reject it. And this is the problem Tolstoy will address in the next two chapters as he will combat the conception of Christianity by those who call themselves Christians and by those who reject Christianity. And today, it is clear that Tolstoy still has a point. Christianity, while possessing moderate sects, has had its liberal and pacifist sects almost completely eroded and its conservative and violently patriotic forms define it to those both inside of it and outside of it.
