Unlike George, Tolstoy was an anarchist who rejected, as a matter of principle, not only the notion of taxation, but the very idea of the state itself. Nonetheless, the ideas of the American theorist showed him a possible way to peacefully transform the current order into a world in which people willing to engage in agricultural labour would have access to enough land and others would have to produce the goods and services necessary for those who cultivate the land. In this utopian world, states, governments and laws would themselves become redundant.
Tolstoy had discovered Henry George in February 1885, when he wrote to Chertkov that he ‘was sick for a week but consumed by George’s latest [Social Problems] and the first book Progress and Poverty, which produced a strong and joyous impression’ on him:
This book is wonderful, but it is beyond value, for it destroys all the cobwebs of Spencer–Mill political economy – it is like the pounding of water and acutely summons people to a moral consciousness of the cause and even defines the cause . . . I see in him a brother, one of those who according to the teachings of the Books of the Apostles [has more] love [for people] than for his own soul. (CW, LXXXV, p. 144)
Moved and flattered by Tolstoy’s approval, Henry George wanted to come to Russia to talk to the great man, but his health did not permit him to make such a journey. When George died in 1897, Tolstoy wrote to Sofia that he was shocked by the death and felt as if he had lost ‘a very close friend’. Around the same time, he made Nekhlyudov in Resurrection give away his land according to George’s principles: ‘What a head this Zhorzha was’ (CW, XXXII, p. 231), an old peasant says admiringly, having finally understood the plan. Tolstoy’s interest in Henry George reached its peak during the revolution of 1905, when he wrote a foreword to the translation of Social Problems that had been made by his follower Sergei Nikolaev and several essays popularizing Georgism.
In June 1907 Nicholas II dissolved the Duma and issued a new electoral law ensuring the victory of loyalists at the next elections. This gave de facto dictatorial powers to Pyotr Stolypin, the minister of interior affairs he had appointed a year before at the height of revolutionary upheaval. Stolypin was known for personal courage, fierce independence and had the reputation of a reformer. Stolypin was also Tolstoy’s distant relative; Tolstoy had personally known and liked his father.
The Russian public hated Stolypin, but this did not deter Tolstoy from acting. In July 1907 he wrote a letter to the all-powerful minister pleading with him to pay attention to Social Problems. As Stolypin did not reply, in October Tolstoy wrote again, asking Stolypin to help an old Tolstoyan who had been arrested and reproaching him for ignoring his first letter. This time the minister answered. He promised to reconsider the criminal case, but not his policy and ideas. He gave a nod to the theories of George, but insisted that these could only be applied in Russia in the remote future:
Do not think that I did not pay attention to your letter. I could not answer, because it wounded me too much. You consider evil what I believe to be good for Russia. It seems to me that the lack of landed property is the cause of all our problems. Nature has imbued man with some inborn instincts like hunger, sexual feelings, and one of the most powerful feelings of this order is the sense of property. One cannot love what belongs to another as well as that which is one’s own and a man will not take care of land he uses on a temporary basis in the same way he would take care of it were it his own . . . I have always considered you a great man, and I have a modest opinion of myself. I have been lifted up by the wave of events, most likely just for a moment! Still, I want to use this moment to the utmost extent of my strength, understanding and feelings for the benefit of the people and my motherland, which I love as they used to love it in the old time. How then can I possibly do what I do not think and consider to be good? And you write to me that I am following the way of evil deeds, ill fame, and most importantly – sin. Believe me, that feeling often the possibility of an approaching death one cannot help thinking about these questions, and my way seems to me to be the honest one.20
Stolypin’s goal was to undermine the peasant commune, the institution most cherished by Tolstoy. Stolypin hoped to put in the place of these communes millions of private landowners who would transform Russian agriculture and the national psyche. In order to provide the land necessary to establish these future American-style farmers without a major land redistribution programme, Stolypin envisaged a mass voluntary resettlement of peasants to Siberia. The Trans-Siberian Railway, which had started functioning in the first years of the century, provided the necessary logistical means to fulfil this plan.
Stolypin had already survived several assassination attempts. Tolstoy could therefore appreciate the power and seriousness of his correspondent’s convictions, but was not able to accept his views. He regarded exclusive preference for one’s own to the common and universal in the same way that he regarded sexual instincts, that is, as something to be fought against, not condoned and cherished. To turn the resources given to humans by God into private property was, for Tolstoy, tantamount to ‘contemporary slavery’ or another kind of serfdom. Moreover, the concept of private land property was, according to him, antithetical to the very essence of the Russian peasant soul. Stolypin’s plans looked to Tolstoy like a new incarnation of Peter’s Westernizing reforms that could only be imposed in the same way, by violence and coercion.
In October 1907 Tolstoy again wrote to Stolypin, using as a pretext the arrest of one of his assistants. With the letter, he sent a copy of Social Problems. In January, not having received an answer, he again pleaded with the minister to think of his own soul and start doing things that corresponded to the hopes and aspirations of the majority of Russians:
You who have already suffered so cruelly from attempts on your life, who are considered to be the most powerful and energetic enemy of revolution, you would suddenly take the side not of revolution, but of eternally distorted truth, thus eliminating the soil that breeds revolution. It might well happen that, however softly and cautiously you would act in suggesting such a new measure to the government, they may not agree with you and remove you from power. As I can understand you, you would not be afraid of this, because you do, what you do now, not to keep yourself in power, but because you consider it to be just and necessary. Let them remove you 20 times, slander you in all possible ways, this would still be better than your current situation. (CW, LXXIX, p. 43)
This letter was signed, ‘loving you Lev Tolstoy’. Stolypin again agreed to intervene in the case Tolstoy mentioned, but had nothing more to say in response. Both were growing tired of each other. Tolstoy later said that it was childish of him to believe that the government would listen to him, but he was still glad he had written to the emperor and to Stolypin, at least to be sure that he had done ‘everything to find out that it is useless to address them’.21 Still he felt himself responsible for being so forgiving towards a person he increasingly regarded as a serial murderer or, as he wrote in his last unsent letter to Stolypin in August 1909, ‘the most pitiable man in Russia.’ (Ls, II, p. 690)