Tolstoy’s most satirical and moralising novel. Prince Nekhlyudov struggles with his past when doing jury service and one of the defendants is a woman Tolstoy’s most satirical and moralising novel. Prince Nekhlyudov struggles with his past when doing jury service and one of the defendants is a woman from his past, Maslova, whom he had raped and got pregnant. She was thrown out by her guardians, Nekhlyudov’s aunts, and had descended into a life of prostitution.
Nekhlyudov tries to make amends for what he did to her by getting her out of a charge for murder. Along the way Nekhlyudov navigates his various influential contacts to try to do that and experiences increasing disgust at their expensive lives at the expense of serfs. What’s ironic is that Nekhlyudov has estates of his own and lives off their poverty, labour and squalor himself, so he tries to amend for this by renting his land to them for cheap, and we see scenes of him visiting the peasants to do that. Nekhlyudov makes many prison visits, despairs at how horrific their treatment and conditions are and tries to help individual prisoners. Like with Gogol’s "Dead Souls", there’s criticism of the civil service which appears to largely exist to give salaries to the upper classes - doing things for the sake of doing things, not for real efficacy - and is rife with bribery.
Tolstoy himself as a young man was dissolute - big gambling debts, drinking, prostitutes, had seduced at least one servant by his own admission - and ran estates with serfs before experiencing a similar revelation in middle age rejecting much of his former lifestyle. So this feels like Tolstoy’s most personal novel, written at the closing stages of his life at 71-years-old.
This is the book that got Tolstoy excommunicated for his brilliantly satirical observations of the Russian Orthodox Church. It’s worth reading those chapters alone. Tolstoy points out how numerous the prayers are for the tsar and his family, how ridiculous it is that bread and wine is considered Jesus’s blood and body, illustrates what a manipulative performance a charismatic preacher puts on, etc.
But this is my biggest issue with Tolstoy - how can he see all of this and *still* think that religion is real? He sees how ridiculous the man-made practice of religion is: why does he not see how equally ridiculous and man-made the Bible is? I think that he’s an idealist who despairs at the hopelessness of things so that the religious revelation that Nekhluydov has at the end is a way to essentially opt out and just focus on himself with the only answerable person being God - a God who is infallible and ideal. No matter if that version of God isn't real - it's a placating delusion. It's convenient that Jesus emphasises to forgive anything, which Tolstoy does too in this novel, starting with the epigraphs from the Bible - that assuages guilt.
Nekhlyudov - I think that one person using his contacts to advocate for individual prisoners, or one person renting his land to serfs for cheaper is all good and well but doesn’t do much. It’s just playing to the system instead of working to change the system itself which is the only way you get real change. Notably, Nekhlyudov evinces little change despite his contacts - Maslova is still sent to Siberia. Oddly, a cruel old general who doesn’t care at all about the prisoners who are his wards (and this general is memorably satirised for using an ouija board to ask Joan of Arc how one will recognise another in the afterlife!) is right on this when he tells Nekhlyudov to join the service - Nekhlyudov would have more real power to change things then. But Nekhlyudov has no interest in that and is fixated on his own personal salvation. There is a certain pride and self-concern about that which Tolstoy does recognise: he gives Maslova the spirit to see through Neklyudov, rejecting his offer of marriage because she sees that he’s using her to try to fix his worries about his salvation. (Of course, Nekhlyudov is still so proud that he thinks that she does so out of love for him!)
Nekhlyudov is quite the prison reformer in views and while I agreed with a lot of his arguments, I never agreed with his extremes. More than once he says that people don’t have a right to punish others. Does that mean that there’s no punishment at all? No prison at all? He argues that if you overthrow the system of land ownership and give everyone a communal share, that would fix things. And there’s a third argument that religious belief and instruction is the solution. The ‘true’ religion as he has it - which inevitably means his interpretation of religion fighting multiple other interpretations! I think that all of these arguments are unrealistic and naive given what I see of human nature.
It occurs to me that it could be argued that these arguments are satirical but they don’t read that way to me - they read as Tolstoy’s sincere views because they read like screeds of moralising - there’s little absurd or bitingly funny about them. And we know that Tolstoy shared those views. Tolstoy was actually a Christian anarchist. The Tolstoyan movement aims to follow Tolstoy's teachings and they do not support or participate in the state, the government or institutions like the police, law courts and the military. Tolstoy advocated for pacifism, asceticism and following Jesus’s teachings to replace those things. And, in fact, Tolstoy finished and published the novel to raise money to donate to the persecuted Spiritual Christian Dukhobortsy movement to emigrate to Canada. The Dukhoborts reject materialism, icons, the Orthodox Christian priesthood, are pacifists and believe that personal revelation is the most important thing. All of these are themes of this novel.
Tolstoy does, however, get bonus points with me for criticising Nietzsche in this novel. And how did he criticise Nietzsche - by saying that Nietzsche is wrong to argue that anything goes and that anything is permissible. So Tolstoy isn’t saying that ‘anything goes’ - he believes in basic civilisation and the value of that at least - but he doesn’t seem to believe in enforcing it with laws, regulations and so on. He appears with a strange zeal to think that you can win people over, and fix things as a consequence, by following the teachings of Jesus.
I find this fascinating in a batshit way but what’s also fascinating about this novel is that it illustrates some of the ferment that eventually led to the Russian revolution. Not only in talking about the terrible injustices serfs and prisoners faced but also in that Nekhlyudov has many interactions with political prisoners.
The book was first published in 1899-1900 and, as we know, in 1917, because the system wasn’t changed, because of intolerable conditions, things erupted in the form of the Russian revolution - which heralded the totalitarian regime of Communism, itself resulting in millions dead and as much unjust oppression and political prisoners. Full disclosure: my politics are centre-left, so my view is that moderation in politics and society is the only thing that works. Nobody’s happy but it both means that things don’t get too unfair and it takes into account the reality of human nature - humans who are varied in their views and values and who are social animals motivated to be better off than someone else in whichever form that takes (with Tolstoy that would be his pride in being spiritually and morally superior). Ultimately Tolstoy’s moral does have a point for me (if I reject how far he takes it): you need to be more fair if you want to avoid the worst, and the worst begets terrible things. For me that’s allowing everyone to have property and rights, allowing political freedom of speech, reforming terrible conditions and the worst excesses, and so on....more
A very funny satire with the picaresque Chichikov. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The oddness of the story - he visits various landowners lA very funny satire with the picaresque Chichikov. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The oddness of the story - he visits various landowners looking to legally buy dead serfs - the descriptions of food and the comic depictions of characters.
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