The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-11-08
The Writings
of Tolstoy and
the Bolsheviks
By EN-. YARoSLAYSKY.
TRANSLATED from the "Pravda" b.
Valentine V. K0nin.)
(Continued)

ton was strange to him. For many
decades, Tolstoy used all the pow
ers of his artistic talent and all his
tremendous influence only to prove
the futility, the harm, and the ruin
of the revolutionary way, and to
convince the toiling masses that
they must renounce the class strug-
gle and the forceful resistance of
evil.
Is it right, therefore, for the
Bolsheviki-the representatives of
the class which has overthrown with
it's own arms the class of the land
owners and capitalists, and which
is rebuilding the world in revolu-
tionary way-is it right for them to
honor Tolstoy in connection with
the Tooth anniversary of his birth?
Is it right for them, who have chos-
en- revolutionary force as the means
for the remaking of human society,
to celebrate the jubilee of the writ
er who denied on principle revolu-
tionary resistance and preached
submission instead? Is it right for
the party which considers religion
the opium of the people to publiss,
the full set of Tolstoy's works in
which the most reactionary reli-
gious teachings play such an impor-
tant part? (And we must add that
it is only during the Soviet regime
that the works of Tolstoy will APP
pear as they had been originally
written.)
Yes, we think we are right in at
tracing the wide attention of the
public to our way of reckoning up
the accounts of Tolstoy's ENORMOUS
literary inheritance and of showing
without any falsehood and hypocrisy
our attitude towards Tolstoy.
For many decades Tolstoy had
been not only the son of his class
the class of mobiles and landowners
but their principal voice as well.
No one else among the Russian au-
thors had even given such an analo-
gy nor had written such a hymn of
praise to the Russian nobility as
did Tolstoy in his "War and Peace
For he himself had for long time
been no more than landowner in
terested above all in the problems
of his household. 1t is known that
at one time Tolstoy was greatly in
terested in breeding a certain kind
of pigs whom he kept in buildings
specially constructed for that pur-
pose in Yasnaya Palyana. At that
period he was Indifferent to the
fate of the huge army of the half
serfs, half-slaves, which constituted
an overwhelming mass of the popu-
lation of our country. Tolstoy be-
gan life when on the Senatsky
Square of St. Petersburg the shots
were fired at the Decembrists; he
had no sympathy for them. Even
at the time when his literary talent
was flourishing he wrote in his
diary the following concerning the
Polish rebellion Of 1865:
81 do not sympathize with those
who forbid the Poles to speak Pol
ish, but am not angry at them for
that. l am perfectly Indifferent;
let them choke all the Poles. Butch
ers kill cows which we eat; I am
not obliged to accuse them or to
sympathize with them"
His contemporary, N. G. Cher
nishevsky, appeared to him as a
writer with the odor of bedbugs."
Tolstoy of that period did not I'M
derstand the life of the other
classes of society. He himself wrote
about it in one of the unpublished
prefaces to "War and Peace"
''In my work the characters are
all counts speaking and writing
French, as if the whole life of Rus
STA were concentrated in those
people. The life of clerks, mer-
chants, clergy, and peasants is
neither interesting nor wholly COM
prehensible to me"
However, there are peasants In
"War and Peace; for even then,
Tolstoy extolled Platon Karataev in
comparing MIN 10 the educated
landowners, Bezoukov, or Bolkan-
sky In "War and Peace" he speaks
even of the factory workers; but
how does he represent them? He
represents them as drunkards
gambling away their fatherland--
quite comparison--to the virtuous
landowners, the Rostovs. As
whole a worker has no luck in Toll
stoy's writings. Not one of them
appears ever as zero in his novels.
For in him Tolstt. perceived the
"ulcer of proletariansin." And that
not because he knew nothing of the
workers movement; he had been
abroad, and was acquainted with
the workers movement in western
Europe; but the movement was
strange to him. More than that, it
frightened him, just as victoriously
approaching capitalism frightened
the landowner in hiM. And Tolstoy
reflected in his writing the hatred
Of his class towards capitalism.
(To Be Continued.) o
I