'A Light Shining in Darkness': Tolstoi and the Imprisonment of Conscientious Objectors in Imperial Russia
2003; Maney Publishing; Volume: 81; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/see.2003.0119
ISSN2222-4327
Autores Tópico(s)Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research
ResumoSEER,Vol. 8i, No.4, October 2003 'A Light Shining in Darkness': Tolstoi and the Imprisonment of Conscientious Objectors in Imperial Russia PETER BROCK IN I896, with his mind much occupied with the Dukhobor soldiersand their provocative burning of military weapons during the previous summer, Tolstoi set about writing a play which he called AndtheLight Shineth inDarkness (I svetvot'mesvetit). 1He continued intermittentlyinto the followingyear, and even beyond, but he never completed the work. Afterfinishingfour acts he abandoned it. Of the fifthact he got barely a page on to paper. The hero of the drama is a young Russian prince, Boris (Boria) AleksandrovichCheremshanovwho, because of his belief in Tolstoianstyle non-resistance,refusesinduction into the armywhen called up as a conscript. 'Let them beat the life out of you in a [penal] battalion, anything's better than serving these deluders', he tells the soldiers detailed to guard him after his arrest. His family are, of course, disgustedat hisbehaviour.He had owed hisconversionto aprogressive landowner, Nikolai Ivanovich Sarintsev (a.k.a. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoi), whose allegiance to the Tolstoian gospel, unlike the more resolute Boria's, had been hitherto largely a matter of theory. At the outsetofAct V, Borisisincarceratedin thebarracksof apenal battalion of the Russian army. To break his will the commanding officer sends Boris to the punishment cells. 'We'llflog him', he says. But Boris does not yield. In the eyes of the world the young man is a ruined man and a fool as well: as a universitygraduate he would not have had to serveforverylong. PeterBrockisEmeritusProfessor in theDepartmentof History,UniversityofToronto. I Tolstoi had already contemplated such a play in I893. The drama has appeared twice in English translation: first by Louise and Aylmer Maude in Plays byLeo Tolstoy,London, I923 (hereafter, Maude, Plays), and then by Marvin Kantor with Tanya Tulchinsky in Tolstoy's Plays, vol. 3, Evanston, IL, I998. The Russian text can be found in Tolstoi's Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, Moscow-Leningrad [cited below as PSS],3 I (I 954), pp. I I3-84, followed by a detailed history of its composition and printing ('Istoriia pisaniia i pechataniia') on pp. 291-300. 684 TOLSTOI AND CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS The play, which Tolstoi himself valued highly and Bernard Shaw praised to the skies,2is indeed no masterpiece, even though it contains some powerful scenes. But it does express in dramatic form Tolstoi's sanguine belief that the young men who in Russia, and abroad, were refusing to perform military service on grounds of conscience when summoned to do this by the state represented 'a light shining in darkness'that would slowly transformthe world and establish peace among humankind. True, few if any Russian conscientious objectors to militaryservice (COs) were princes. They were mostlyvillagersor craftsmen,religious dissenters belonging to rural sects that espoused pacifism at least in theory,like the Dukhobors, Molokans and Malevantsii.There were, of course, among the COs disciples of the Master, too; and Tolstoians were sometimes of middle class or gentry origin. Since the imposition in Russia of conscription in I874 only Mennonites, centred in south Russia (today Ukraine), were exempt from military service. Their drafteeswere assigned to forestrycamps run by the church under the general supervision of the government.3 Other COs (and these were the people Tolstoi was really concerned about) faced a variety of punitive measures. The pacifist section of the Dukhobors solved the problemby emigratingas a groupto Canada at the end of the century.4 2 See Aylmer Maude's preface to Plays,pp. xi-xiii. I Sources for the Mennonites' forestry camps and the sect's espousal of non-resistance (Wehrlosigkeit) are extensive. See, for example, my Pacifismin Europeto 1914, Princeton NJ, I972 (hereafter, Pacifismin Europe),pp. 432-4I, 524; Freedom from Violence. Sectarian Nonresistance from the Middle Ages to the Great War, Toronto, I99I (hereafter, Freedom from Violence), pp. I53-7I, 329-34; alsoLawrenceKlippenstein,'Otkazot voennoi sluzhbypo motivam sovesti v mennonitskikh obshchinakh tsarskoi Rossii', pp. 150-7I, in T. A. Pavlova (ed.), Dolgiiput' rossiiskogo patsifizma.Idealmezhdunarodnogo i vnutrennego miravreligioznofilosofskoii obshchestvenno-politicheskoi mysliRossii, Moscow, I997; Ingrid I. Epp and Harvey L. Dyck (eds), 7he PeterJ. BraunRussianMennoniteArchive,I8I3-I920. A ResearchGuide, Toronto, I996, pp. xvii, I39, I42-88, I90-20I, 206-I 3...
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