Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich

I can't be silent

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

I can't be silent

"Seven death sentences; two in St. Petersburg, one in Moscow, two in Penza, two in Riga. Four lives: two in Kherson, one in Vilna, one in Odessa." And it's in every newspaper. And this goes on not for a week, not for a month, not for a year, but for years. And this is happening in Russia, in that Russia, in which the people consider every criminal unfortunate and in which, until very recently, according to the law, there was no death penalty. I remember how proud I once was of this before the Europeans, and now the second, third year of incessant executions, executions, executions. I take the current newspaper. Today, May 9, something terrible. There are short words in the newspaper: "Today in Kherson on the Strelbitsky field twenty peasants were executed by hanging for a robbery attack on the estate of a landowner in Elisavetgrad district" (*).

(* Later, refutations of the news of the execution of twenty peasants appeared in the newspapers. I can only rejoice at this mistake: both the fact that eight people were crushed less than in the first news, and the fact that this terrible figure forced me to express in these pages that a feeling that has been tormenting me for a long time, and therefore only, replacing the word twenty with the word twelve, I leave without change everything that is said here, since what has been said refers not to one twelve executed, but to all the thousands who have recently been killed and crushed people .*)

Twelve people from the same people whose labors we live, the same people whom we corrupt and corrupt with all our might, starting from the poison of vodka and up to that terrible lie of faith in which we do not believe, but which we try with all our might to inspire them - twelve such people are strangled with ropes by the very people they feed and clothe and furnish and who have corrupted and corrupted them. Twelve husbands, fathers, sons, those people, on kindness, industriousness, whose simplicity alone keeps Russian life, were seized, imprisoned, chained in leg irons. Then they tied their hands behind their backs so that they could not grasp the rope on which they would be hanged, and led them under the gallows. Several of the same peasants as those who will be hanged, only armed and dressed in good boots and clean uniforms, with guns in their hands, accompany the condemned. Next to the condemned, in a brocade robe and stole, with a cross in his hand, is a man with long hair. The procession stops. The leader of the whole thing says something, the secretary reads the paper, and when the paper is read, the man with long hair, addressing those people whom other people are going to strangle with ropes, says something about God and Christ. Immediately after these words, the executioners - there are several of them, one cannot cope with such a difficult task - spreading soap and lathering the loops of ropes so that they are better tightened, they take on the chained ones, put shrouds on them, cock them onto a platform with gallows and put them on their necks. rope loops. And now, one after another, living people collide with the benches pulled out from under their feet and, with their weight, immediately tighten the loops around their necks and painfully suffocate. A minute before this, living people turn into dead bodies hanging on ropes, which at first slowly sway, then freeze in immobility. All this for their brothers people is carefully arranged and invented by people of the upper class, scientists, enlightened people. It was devised to do these deeds secretly, at dawn, so that no one could see them, it was devised that the responsibility for these atrocities would be so distributed among the people who commit them, so that everyone could think and say: he is not the culprit of them. What has been devised is to look for the most depraved and unfortunate people and, forcing them to do a deed that we have invented and approved, to pretend that we abhor the people who do this deed. Even such a subtlety was invented that they are sentenced alone (a military court), but it is not the military, but the civilians who are necessarily present at the executions. The unfortunate, deceived, depraved, despised, who are left with only one thing to do: how best to soap the ropes so that they tighten their necks more correctly, and how to get drunk on what is sold by these same enlightened ones, superior people poison, in order to quickly and more completely forget about his soul, about his human rank. The doctor walks around the bodies, feels them, and reports to the authorities that the deed is done as it should: all twelve people are undoubtedly dead. And the authorities retire to their usual activities with the consciousness of a conscientiously performed, albeit difficult, but necessary task. Frozen bodies are removed and buried. After all, it's terrible! And this is done not once, and not over these only 12 unfortunate, deceived people from the best class of the Russian people, but it is done without ceasing, for years, over hundreds and thousands of the same deceived people, deceived by the same people who are doing over them these terrible things. And not only this terrible deed is being done, but under the same pretext and with the same cold-blooded cruelty, the most diverse tortures and violence are committed in prisons, fortresses, hard labor. This is terrible, but the most terrible thing is that this is done not out of passion, a feeling that drowns out the mind, as is done in a fight, in a war, even in robbery, but, on the contrary, at the request of the mind, a calculation that drowns out the feeling. This is what makes these things especially terrible. They are terrible because nothing so clearly as all these deeds performed from the judge to the executioner, by people who do not want to do them, nothing so clearly and clearly shows all the destructiveness of despotism for human souls, the power of some people over others. It is outrageous when one person can take away from another his labor, money, a cow, a horse, can take away even his son, daughter - this is outrageous, but how much more outrageous is what one person can take away his soul from another, can make him do that. that destroys his spiritual self, deprives him of his spiritual good. And this is what is done by those people who arrange all this and calmly, for the sake of people's good, force people, from judge to executioner, by bribery, threats, deceit, to do these things, probably depriving them of the true good. And while all this has been going on for years all over Russia, the main culprits of these cases, those on whose orders this is being done, those who could stop these cases, are the main culprits of these cases in full confidence that these cases are useful and even necessary - either they come up with and say speeches about how to prevent the Finns from living the way the Finns want it, and by all means force them to live the way a few Russians want it, or issue orders on how in the "army in the hussar regiments, the cuffs of the sleeves and collars of the dolmans should be in the color of the latter, and the mentics, to whom they were assigned, without piping around the sleeves under the fur. Yes, it's terrible!

Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was an ardent opponent of the death penalty. During a trip abroad in 1857, the writer saw in Paris the beheading of a criminal on the guillotine. The memory of this horror has never been erased from Tolstoy's memory - more than once in his works he recalled the impact that the death penalty he saw had on him. “I am not a political person, I will never serve any government anywhere,” he wrote after this incident. Tolstoy appealed to Alexander III with a request to pardon the regicides; he refused to serve as a juror, not wanting to deal with a state institution based on violence; he defended the philosophy of forgiveness and non-resistance to evil by violence, which rightfully made the great writer the voice of the conscience of the Russian people.

After the revolution of 1905-1907. the country languished under the yoke of reaction: everywhere arrests and exiles were made, executions were carried out. In May 1908, the newspaper "Rus" published a message: "Kherson. May 8 Today, twenty peasants were executed by hanging on the shooting field, convicted by the military district court for robbery on the estate of the landowner Lubenko in the Elisavetgrad district. Under the influence of this message, Leo Tolstoy dictated into the phonograph: “No, this is impossible! You can't live like this! You can't live like this! It is impossible and impossible. Every day there are so many death sentences, so many executions. Today five, tomorrow seven, today twenty peasants have been hanged, twenty deaths ... And in the Duma, talk continues about Finland, about the arrival of kings, and it seems to everyone that this is how it should be ... ". On May 12, Tolstoy wrote in his Diary: “Yesterday it was especially painful for me from the news of 20 hanged peasants. I began to dictate into the phonograph, but could not continue. The next day, Tolstoy drafted an article later titled "I Can't Be Silent". Work on the text continued for a month.

In excerpts, the article was first published on July 4, 1908 in the newspapers Russkiye Vedomosti, Slovo, Rech, modern word”, etc. All newspapers that printed excerpts were fined. According to Russkiy Slovo, the Sevastopol publisher pasted up an issue of his newspaper around the city with excerpts from the article and was arrested. In August 1908 the article was printed in an illegal printing house in Tula; in the same year it was published by I.P. Ladyzhnikov with the following preface: “The new work of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, which we are printing, was published simultaneously in the newspapers of almost all civilized countries on July 15, 1908 and made a deep impression, despite the author’s negative attitude towards the Russian liberation movement. As an interesting historical and characteristic document for a great writer, we offer this work to the Russian reader.”

“Seven death sentences: two in St. Petersburg, one in Moscow, two in Penza, two in Riga. Four executions: two in Kherson, one in Vilna, one in Odessa.”

And it's in every newspaper. And this goes on not for a week, not for a month, not for a year, but for years. And this is happening in Russia, in that Russia in which the people consider every criminal unfortunate and in which, until very recently, there was no death penalty by law. I remember how proud I once was of this before the Europeans, and now the second, third year of incessant executions, executions, executions. I take the current newspaper.

Today, May 9, something terrible. There are short words in the newspaper: “Today in Kherson, on the Strelbitsky field, twenty peasants were executed by hanging for a robbery attack on the estate of a landowner in Elisavetgrad district.” (The newspapers later published refutations of the news of the execution of twenty peasants. I can only rejoice at this mistake: both the fact that eight fewer people were crushed than in the first news, and the fact that this terrible figure made me express in these pages that feeling which has been tormenting me for a long time, and therefore only, replacing the word twenty with the word twelve, I leave everything that is said here unchanged, since what has been said refers not to one twelve executed, but to all the thousands who have recently been killed and crushed people) .

And now, one after another, living people collide with the benches pulled out from under their feet and, with their weight, immediately tighten the loops around their necks and painfully suffocate. A minute before this, living people turn into dead bodies hanging on ropes, which at first slowly sway, then freeze in immobility.

All this for their brothers people is carefully arranged and invented by people of the upper class, scientists, enlightened people. It was devised to do these deeds secretly, at dawn, so that no one could see them, it was devised that the responsibility for these atrocities would be so distributed among the people who commit them, so that everyone could think and say: he is not the culprit of them. What has been devised is to look for the most depraved and unfortunate people and, forcing them to do a deed that we have invented and approved, to pretend that we abhor the people who do this deed. Even such a subtlety was invented that they are sentenced alone (a military court), but it is not the military, but the civilians who are necessarily present at the executions. The unfortunate, deceived, depraved, despised, who are left with only one thing to do: how better to lather the ropes so that they more correctly tighten their necks, and how to better get drunk on what is sold by these same enlightened, higher people of poison, in order to quickly and completely forget about their soul, about his human rank.

The doctor walks around the bodies, feels them, and reports to the authorities that the deed is done as it should: all twelve people are undoubtedly dead. And the authorities retire to their usual activities with the consciousness of a conscientiously performed, albeit difficult, but necessary task. Frozen bodies are removed and buried.

And this is done not once, and not only over these 12 unfortunate, deceived people from the best class of the Russian people, but it is done without ceasing, for years, over hundreds and thousands of the same deceived people, deceived by the same people who are doing over them these terrible things.

And not only this terrible deed is being done, but under the same pretext and with the same cold-blooded cruelty, the most diverse tortures and violence are committed in prisons, fortresses, hard labor.

This is terrible, but the most terrible thing is that this is done not out of passion, a feeling that drowns out the mind, as is done in a fight, in a war, even in robbery, but, on the contrary, at the request of the mind, a calculation that drowns out the feeling. This is what makes these things especially terrible. They are terrible because nothing so clearly as all these deeds performed from the judge to the executioner, by people who do not want to do them, nothing so clearly and clearly shows all the destructiveness of despotism for human souls, the power of some people over others.

It is outrageous when one person can take away from another his labor, money, a cow, a horse, even his son, daughter - this is outrageous, but how much more outrageous is that one person can take away his soul from another, can make him do that. that destroys his spiritual "I", deprives him of spiritual good. And this is what is done by those people who arrange all this and calmly, for the sake of people's good, force people, from judge to executioner, by bribery, threats, deceit, to do these things, probably depriving them of the true good.

And while all this has been going on for years all over Russia, the main culprits of these cases, those on whose orders this is being done, those who could stop these cases, are the main culprits of these cases in full confidence that these cases are useful and even necessary - either they come up with and say speeches about how to prevent the Finns from living the way the Finns want it, and by all means force them to live the way a few Russians want it, or issue orders on how in the "army in the hussar regiments, the cuffs of the sleeves and the collars of the dolmans should be the same color as the latter, and the mentics, to whom they are assigned, without piping around the sleeves over the fur, ”Yes, this is terrible!

And this corruption is spreading with extraordinary speed.

Recently, two executioners could not be found among the entire Russian people. Until recently, in the 80s, there was only one executioner in all of Russia. I remember how Vladimir Solovyov then happily told me how they could not find another executioner all over Russia, and one was taken from place to place. Now it's not.

In Moscow, a merchant-shopkeeper, having upset his affairs, offered his services to carry out murders committed by the government, and, receiving 100 rubles from a hanged man, in a short time so improved his affairs that he soon ceased to need this side trade, and now he is still trading.

In Orel in the past months, as elsewhere, an executioner was needed, and immediately a man was found who agreed to carry out this work, having put himself in touch with the head of government murders for 50 rubles per person. But, having learned already after he was dressed in price that in other places they pay more, the voluntary executioner during the execution, putting a shroud-bag on the murdered man, instead of leading him to the platform, stopped and, approaching to the boss, he said: “Add, Your Excellency, a quarter ticket, otherwise I won’t.” They added to him, and he fulfilled.

The next execution was for five. On the eve of the execution, an unknown person came to the manager of government murders, wishing to talk over a secret matter. The manager left. An unknown person said: “Hope some of you took three quarters for one. Today, I hear, five have been appointed. Order everyone to leave behind me, I will take fifteen rubles each and, be calm, I will do as I should. I do not know whether the proposal was accepted or not, but I know that the proposal was.

This is how these crimes committed by the government affect the worst, least moral people of the people. But these terrible deeds cannot remain without influence on the majority of morally average people. Hearing and reading without ceasing about the most terrible, inhuman atrocities committed by the authorities, that is, by people whom the people are accustomed to revere as the best people, - the majority of middle-aged, especially young people, busy with their personal affairs, involuntarily, instead of understanding that people who do nasty deeds are unworthy of respect, make the reverse reasoning: if people revered by all, they reason, do things that seem nasty to us, then, probably, these things are not so vile as we think.

Executions, hangings, murders, bombs are now being written and spoken about, just as they used to talk about the weather. Children play hanging. Almost children, the high school students are ready to kill at the expropriation, as they used to go hunting. Killing the big landowners in order to take possession of their lands now seems to many people to be the surest solution to the land question.

In general, thanks to the activity of the government, which allows the possibility of murder to achieve its goals, any crime: robbery, theft, lies, torture, murder - are considered unfortunate people who have been corrupted by the government, the most natural deeds inherent in man.

Yes, no matter how terrible the deeds themselves are, the moral, spiritual, invisible evil they produce is, without comparison, even more terrible.

You say that you commit all these horrors in order to restore peace and order. You bring peace and order!

What are you feeding him with? The fact that you, representatives of the Christian authorities, leaders, mentors, approved and encouraged by church ministers, are destroying the last remnants of faith and morality in people, committing the greatest crimes: lies, betrayal, all kinds of torment, and - the last most terrible crime, the most repugnant to everyone to a completely depraved human heart: not murder, not one murder, but murders, endless murders, which you think to justify with various stupid references to such and such articles, written by you in your stupid and false books, blasphemously called by you laws.

You say that this is the only means of appeasing the people and extinguishing the revolution, but that is clearly not true. Obviously, if you do not satisfy the requirements of the most primitive justice of the entire Russian agricultural people: the destruction of landed property, but, on the contrary, affirming it and irritating the people in every way and those frivolous, embittered people who began a violent struggle with you, you cannot calm people down by torturing them. tormenting, exiling, imprisoning, hanging children and women. After all, no matter how hard you try to drown out in yourself the reason and love inherent in people, they are also in you, and as soon as you come to your senses and think in order to see that, acting as you do, that is, participating in these terrible crimes, you not only you do not cure the disease, but only strengthen it, driving it inside.

Because it's too clear.

The reason for what is happening is not in any way in material events, but the whole thing is in the spiritual mood of the people, which has changed and which cannot be returned to its former state by any effort, just as it cannot be returned, just as it is impossible to make an adult a child again. Public irritation or tranquility can in no way depend on the fact that Petrov will be alive or hanged, or that Ivanov will live not in Tambov, but in Nerchinsk, in penal servitude. Public irritation or tranquility can depend only on how not only Petrov or Ivanov, but the entire vast majority of people will look at their position, on how the majority will relate to power, to landed property, to the preached faith - on how in what the majority will consider good and in what evil. The strength of events is not in the material conditions of life, but in the spiritual mood of the people. If you killed and tortured even a tenth of the entire Russian people, the spiritual state of the rest will not be what you want.

So everything that you are doing now, with your searches, spying, exiles, prisons, penal servitude, gallows - all this not only does not bring the people into the state in which you want to bring them, but, on the contrary, increases irritation and destroys all the possibility of relaxation.

But what to do, you say, what to do now to calm the people? How to stop the atrocities that are being committed?

The answer is simple: stop doing what you are doing. If no one knew what needs to be done in order to calm the "people" - the whole people (many people know very well what is most needed to calm the Russian people: the land must be freed from property, as it was necessary 50 years ago, freed from serfdom), even if no one knew what is now needed to calm the people, it is still obvious that in order to calm the people it is probably not necessary to do anything that only increases their irritation. And that's exactly what you're doing.

What you are doing, you are doing not for the people, but for yourself, in order to keep that which, according to your delusion, you consider advantageous, but in essence the most miserable and ugly position that you occupy. So don't say that what you do, you do for the people: it's not true. All those nasty things that you do, you do for yourself, for your selfish, ambitious, conceited, vengeful, personal goals, in order to live a little more yourself in the corruption in which you live and which seems to you good.

But no matter how much you say that everything you do, you do for the good of the people, people understand you more and more and despise you more and more, and your measures of suppression and suppression are looked more and more wrong , as you would like: as the actions of some higher collective person, the government, but as the personal bad deeds of individual unkind self-lovers.

You say that the atrocities committed by the revolutionaries are terrible. I do not argue and I will add to this that their deeds, in addition to being terrible, are also just as stupid and miss the mark just as your deeds. But no matter how terrible and stupid their deeds are: all these bombs and tunnels, and all these disgusting murders and robberies of money, all these deeds are far from reaching the criminality and stupidity of the deeds you commit.

They do exactly what you do, and for the same reasons. They, just like you, are under the same (I would say comical, if the consequences of it were not so terrible) delusion that some people, having drawn up a plan for themselves about what, in their opinion, is desirable and should be a device societies, have the right and opportunity to arrange the life of other people according to this plan. The delusion is the same, and the means to achieve the imaginary end are the same. These means are violence of every kind, reaching the point of murder. The justification for the atrocities committed is the same. The justification is that a bad deed done for the good of many ceases to be immoral, and that therefore it is possible, without violating moral law to lie, to plunder, to kill, when it leads to the realization of that supposed welfare for the many, which we imagine we know and can foresee, and which we wish to arrange.

You, government people, call the deeds of the revolutionaries atrocities and great crimes, but they did and do not do anything that you would not do, and did not do to an incomparably greater extent. So, by using those immoral means that you use to achieve your goals, you certainly cannot blame the revolutionaries. They only do the same thing as you: you keep spies, you deceive, you spread lies in the press, and they do the same; you take away people's property by every kind of violence and dispose of it in your own way, and they do the same; you execute those whom you consider harmful - they do the same. Everything that you can bring in your justification, they will bring into yours in the same way, not to mention the fact that you will do a lot of such bad things that they do not do: the waste of national wealth, preparations for wars, the subjugation and oppression of foreign nationalities and much more.

You say that you have the traditions of antiquity that you observe, there are examples of the activity of great people of the past. They also have traditions that have been going on for a long time, even before the great French revolution, and there are no less great people, role models, martyrs who died for truth and freedom than you do.

So if there's a difference between you and them, it's only that you want things to stay the way they are, and they want a change. And thinking that it is impossible for everything to always remain as before, they would be more right than you if they did not have the same strange and destructive delusion, taken from you, that some people can know the form of life that is characteristic of future for all people, and that this form can be established by violence. In all other respects, they do just the same thing that you do, and by the same means. They are completely your students, they, as they say, picked up all your droplets, they are not only your students, they are your work, they are your children. If it wasn't for you, there wouldn't be them, so when you want to suppress them by force, you do what a person does who leans on a door that opens on him.

If there is a difference between you and them, then it is not in your favor, but in their favor. The mitigating circumstances for them, in the first place, is that their atrocities are committed under the condition of greater personal danger than the one to which you are exposed, and the risk, the danger, justifies a lot in the eyes of the enthusiastic youth. Secondly, in the fact that in the vast majority of them they are very young people who tend to err, while you are mostly mature, old people who are characterized by reasonable calmness and indulgence towards the erring. Thirdly, mitigating circumstances in their favor also lie in the fact that, no matter how disgusting their murders, they are still not as coldly systematically cruel as your Shlisselburgs, hard labor, gallows, executions. The fourth extenuating circumstance for the revolutionaries is that they all absolutely reject all religious teaching, believe that the end justifies the means, and therefore act in a perfectly consistent way, killing one or more for the imagined good of many. Whereas you, government people, from the lowest executioners to their highest administrators, you all stand for religion, for Christianity, which is in no way compatible with the deeds you are doing.

And you, old people, leaders of other people who profess Christianity, you say like children who have fought when they are scolded for fighting: “We didn’t start, but they,” and you don’t know anything better than this, you can’t say you people who have assumed the role of rulers of the people. And what kind of people are you? People who recognize as God the one who most definitely forbade not only all murder, but all anger against a brother. Who forbade not only judgment and punishment, but the condemnation of a brother. Who, in the most definite terms, abolished all punishment, recognized the inevitability of eternal forgiveness, no matter how many times a crime was committed. Who ordered the one who struck on one cheek to turn the other, and not to repay evil for evil. Who so simply, so clearly showed the impossibility of judging and punishing others by one people with a story about a woman sentenced to be stoned, you, people who recognize this teacher as God, cannot find anything to justify yourself, except that “they started, they kill Let's kill them too."

She said: "Dad is in the attic." She did not yet know that her father knew that he was doing a bad deed and that he therefore had to be afraid of everyone. The artist explained to the hostess that he needed her husband for "nature", in order to write off a portrait from him, since his face fits the conceived picture. (The artist, of course, did not say for which picture he needed the janitor's face.) After talking with the hostess, the artist suggested that, in order to appease her, take the boy-son to him for training. This offer obviously bribed the hostess. She went out, and after a while the owner came in looking frowningly, gloomy, restless and frightened, he asked the artist for a long time why and why he was needed. When the artist told him that he met him on the street and his face seemed to him to fit the picture, the janitor asked where he saw him? what time? in what clothes? And, obviously, being afraid and suspecting the worst, he refused everything.

Yes, this direct executioner knows that he is an executioner and that what he does is bad, and that he is hated for what he does, and he is afraid of people, and I think that this consciousness and fear of people redeem at least part of his fault. Yet you, from secretaries of the court to the chief minister and the king, mediocre participants in the daily atrocities, you do not seem to feel guilty and do not feel that feeling of shame that participation in the horrors committed should cause you. True, you are just as afraid of people as the executioner, and the more you are afraid of the greater your responsibility for the crimes you commit: the prosecutor is more afraid of the secretary, the chairman of the court is more than the prosecutor, the governor-general is more than the chairman, the chairman of the council of ministers is even more, the king is more than anyone . You are all afraid, but not because, like that executioner, you know that you are doing bad things, but you are afraid because it seems to you that people are doing bad things.

And therefore, I think that no matter how low this unfortunate janitor has fallen, he nevertheless stands morally incomparably higher than you, the participants and partly the perpetrators of these terrible crimes, people who condemn others, not themselves, and carry their heads high.

I know that all people are people, that we are all weak, that we are all mistaken, and that it is impossible for one person to judge another. For a long time I struggled with the feeling that the perpetrators of these terrible crimes aroused and arouse in me, and the more higher these people stand on the social ladder. But I can't and don't want to fight this feeling anymore.

But I can’t and don’t want to, firstly, because these people, who do not see all their criminality, need denunciation, it is necessary both for themselves and for that crowd of people who, under the influence of external honor and praise of these people, approves of their terrible deeds and even tries to imitate them. Secondly, I can’t and don’t want to fight anymore because (I frankly admit this) I hope that my denunciation of these people will cause the desired eruption of me in one way or another from that circle of people among which I live and in which I do not I can not feel like a participant in the crimes committed around me.

After all, everything that is being done now in Russia is being done in the name of the common good, in the name of ensuring and calming the life of people living in Russia. And if this is so, then all this is being done for me, who lives in Russia. For me, therefore, the poverty of a people deprived of the first, most natural human right - the use of the land on which he was born; for me, these half a million peasants cut off from a good life, dressed in uniforms and trained to kill; for me, this is the false so-called clergy, whose main duty is to pervert and conceal true Christianity. For me, all these deportations of people from place to place, for me, these hundreds of thousands of hungry workers wandering around Russia, for me, these hundreds of thousands of unfortunate people, dying of typhus and scurvy in the fortresses and prisons that are lacking for all. For me, the suffering of mothers, wives, fathers, exiled, locked up, hanged. For me, these spies, bribery, for me, these killing policemen who receive a reward for killing. For me, the burying of dozens, hundreds of those who are being shot, for me this terrible work of people-executioners who are hard to get, but now no longer so abhorrent of this business. For me, these gallows with women and children hanging on them, peasants; For me, this is a terrible bitterness of people against each other.

And strange as it may seem to say that all this is done for me and that I am a participant in these terrible deeds, I still cannot but feel that there is an undoubted relationship between my spacious room, my dinner, my clothes, my leisure and those terrible crimes that are committed to eliminate those who would like to take away from me what I use. Although I know that all those homeless, embittered, depraved people who would rob me of what I use if there were no government threats are produced by this very government, I still cannot help but feel that now my tranquility is really due to all the horrors that are now committed by the government.

And realizing this, I can no longer endure it, I cannot and must free myself from this painful situation.

You can't live like this. At least I can't live like that, I can't and won't.

Then I write this and will do my best to spread what I write, both in Russia and outside it, so that one of two things: either these inhuman deeds end, or my connection with these deeds would be destroyed, so that they would either put me in prison, where I would clearly realize that all these horrors are not already being done for me, or that it would be best of all (so good that I don’t even dare to dream of such happiness), put on me, just like on those twenty or twelve peasants, a shroud, a cap, and also pushed off the bench, so that with my weight I tightened the soapy noose on my old throat.

And in order to achieve one of these two goals, I appeal to all the participants in these terrible deeds, I appeal to everyone, starting with those who put caps and nooses on people-brothers, on women, on children, from prison guards and up to you, the main stewards and sanctioners of these terrible crimes.

Brother people! Come to your senses, think again, understand what you are doing. Remember who you are.

After all, before being executioners, generals, prosecutors, judges, prime ministers, kings, first of all you are people. Today you looked out into the light of God, tomorrow you will not be. (You, the executioners of every category, who aroused and are arousing special hatred for yourself, you especially need to remember this.) Are you really, looking out for this one short moment into the light of God - after all, death, even if they don’t kill you, always all of us behind us - can't you see in your bright moments that your calling in life cannot be to torture, kill people, tremble with fear of being killed, and lie to yourself, to people and to God, assuring yourself and people that by taking part in these things, you are doing an important, great work for the benefit of millions? Don't you yourself know - when you are not intoxicated by the situation, flattery and habitual sophisms - that all these are words invented only so that, when doing the worst deeds, you could consider yourself a good person? You cannot fail to know that you, like each of us, have only one real business, which includes all other affairs, that is, to live this short period of time given to us in accordance with the will that sent us into this world, and in agreement with her to leave it. This will wants only one thing: the love of people for people.

You, what are you doing? Where do you put your spiritual energy? Who do you love? Who loves you? Your wife? Your child? But it's not love. The love of a wife, children is not human love. So, and stronger, love animals. Human love is the love of man for man, for every man, as for a son of God and therefore a brother.

Who do you love so much? Nobody. And who loves you? Nobody. They are afraid of you, as they are afraid of a kata-executioner or wild beast. They flatter you because in their hearts they despise and hate you - and how they hate you! And you know it and are afraid of people.

Yes, think all of you, from the highest to the lowest in the killings, think about who you are and stop doing what you are doing. Stop - not for yourself, not for your personality, and not for people, not so that people stop judging you, but for your soul, for that God who, no matter how you drown Him out, lives in you.

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| site collection
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| Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
| I can't be silent
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“Seven death sentences; two in St. Petersburg, one in Moscow, two in Penza, two in Riga. Four executions: two in Kherson, one in Vilna, one in Odessa.”
And it's in every newspaper. And this goes on not for a week, not for a month, not for a year, but for years. And this is happening in Russia, in that Russia in which the people consider every criminal unfortunate and in which, until very recently, there was no death penalty by law.
I remember how proud I once was of this before the Europeans, and now the second, third year of incessant executions, executions, executions.
I take the current newspaper.
Today, May 9, something terrible. There are short words in the newspaper: “Today in Kherson, on the Strelbitsky field, twenty peasants were executed by hanging for a robbery attack on the estate of a landowner in Elisavetgrad district.”
Twelve people from the same people whose labors we live on, those very people whom we corrupt and corrupt with all our might, starting from the poison of vodka and up to that terrible lie of faith in which we do not believe, but which we try with all our might to inspire them - twelve such people are strangled with ropes by the very people they feed and clothe and furnish and who have corrupted and corrupted them. Twelve husbands, fathers, sons, those people, on kindness, industriousness, whose simplicity alone keeps Russian life, were seized, imprisoned, chained in leg irons. Then they tied their hands behind their backs so that they could not grasp the rope on which they would be hanged, and led them under the gallows. Several of the same peasants as those who will be hanged, only armed and dressed in good boots and clean uniforms, with guns in their hands, accompany the condemned. Next to the condemned, in a brocade chasuble and stole, with a cross in his hand, is a man with long hair. The procession stops. The leader of the whole thing says something, the secretary reads the paper, and when the paper is read, the man with long hair, addressing those people whom other people are going to strangle with ropes, says something about God and Christ. Immediately after these words, the executioners - there are several of them, one cannot cope with such a difficult task - spreading soap and lathering the loops of ropes so that they tighten better, they take on the chained ones, put shrouds on them, cock them onto a platform with gallows and put them on their necks. rope loops.
And now, one after another, living people collide with the benches pulled out from under their feet and, with their weight, immediately tighten the loops around their necks and painfully suffocate.

A minute before this, living people turn into dead bodies hanging on ropes, which at first slowly sway, then freeze in immobility.
All this for their brothers people is carefully arranged and invented by people of the upper class, scientists, enlightened people. It was devised to do these deeds secretly, at dawn, so that no one could see them, it was devised that the responsibility for these atrocities would be so distributed among the people who commit them, so that everyone could think and say: he is not the culprit of them. What has been devised is to look for the most depraved and unfortunate people and, forcing them to do a deed that we have invented and approved, to pretend that we abhor the people who do this deed. Even such a subtlety was invented that they are sentenced alone (a military court), but it is not the military, but the civilians who are necessarily present at the executions. The unfortunate, deceived, depraved, despised, who are left with only one thing to do: how better to lather the ropes so that they more truly tighten their necks, and how to get drunk better on what is being sold by these same enlightened, higher people of poison, in order to forget about their soul more quickly and completely. , about his human rank.
The doctor walks around the bodies, feels them, and reports to the authorities that the deed is done as it should: all twelve people are undoubtedly dead. And the authorities retire to their usual activities with the consciousness of a conscientiously performed, albeit difficult, but necessary task. Frozen bodies are removed and buried.
After all, it's terrible!
And this is done not once, and not only over these 12 unfortunate, deceived people from the best class of the Russian people, but it is done without ceasing, for years, over hundreds and thousands of the same deceived people, deceived by the same people who are doing over them these terrible things.
And not only this terrible deed is being done, but under the same pretext and with the same cold-blooded cruelty, the most diverse tortures and violence are committed in prisons, fortresses, hard labor.
This is terrible, but the most terrible thing is that this is done not out of passion, a feeling that drowns out the mind, as is done in a fight, in a war, even in robbery, but, on the contrary, at the request of the mind, a calculation that drowns out the feeling. This is what makes these things especially terrible. They are terrible because nothing so clearly as all these deeds performed from the judge to the executioner, by people who do not want to do them, nothing so clearly and clearly shows all the destructiveness of despotism for human souls, the power of some people over others.
It is outrageous when one person can take away from another his labor, money, a cow, a horse, even his son, daughter – this is outrageous, but how much more outrageous is that one person can take away his soul from another, can make him do that. that destroys his spiritual "I", deprives him of spiritual good. And this is what is done by those people who arrange all this and calmly, for the sake of people's good, force people, from judge to executioner, by bribery, threats, deceit, to do these things, probably depriving them of the true good.
And while all this is being done for years all over Russia, the main culprits of these cases, those on whose orders this is being done, those who could stop these cases, are the main culprits of these cases in the full confidence that these cases are useful and even necessary - they either invent and say speeches about how to prevent the Finnish people from living the way the Finns want it, and by all means force them to live the way a few Russians want it, or issue orders on how in the "army in the hussar regiments, the cuffs of the sleeves and collars of the dolmans should be in the color of the latter, and the mentics, to whom they are assigned, without piping around the sleeves over the fur.
Yes, it's terrible!

The most terrible thing about this is that all these inhuman violence and murders, in addition to the direct evil that they inflict on the victims of violence and their families, cause even greater, greatest evil to the whole people, spreading the corruption of all estates of the Russian people. This corruption is spreading especially rapidly among the simple, working people, because all these crimes, exceeding hundreds of times everything that was done and is being done by simple thieves and robbers and all revolutionaries together, are committed under the guise of something necessary, good, necessary, not only justified, but supported by different, inseparable in the concepts of the people with justice and even holiness institutions: the senate, the synod, the duma, the church, the king.
And this corruption is spreading with unusual speed.
Recently, two executioners could not be found among the entire Russian people. Until recently, in the 80s, there was only one executioner in all of Russia. I remember how Vladimir Solovyov then happily told me how they could not find another executioner all over Russia, and one was taken from place to place. Now it's not.
In Moscow, a merchant-shopkeeper, having upset his affairs, offered his services to carry out murders committed by the government, and, receiving 100 rubles from a hanged man, in a short time improved his affairs in such a way that he soon ceased to need this side trade, and now leads still trading.
In Orel in the past months, as elsewhere, an executioner was needed, and immediately a man was found who agreed to carry out this work, having put himself in touch with the head of government murders for 50 rubles per person. But, having learned already after he was dressed in price that in other places they pay more, the voluntary executioner during the execution, putting a shroud-bag on the murdered man, instead of leading him to the platform, stopped and, going up to boss, said: "Add, Your Excellency, a quarter ticket, otherwise I won't." They added to him, and he fulfilled.
The next execution was for five. On the eve of the execution, an unknown person came to the manager of government murders, wishing to talk over a secret matter. The manager left. Unknown person said:
“Somebody took three quarters from you for one. Today, I hear, five have been appointed. Order everyone to leave behind me, I will take fifteen rubles each and, be calm, I will do as I should.
I do not know whether the proposal was accepted or not, but I know that the proposal was.
This is how these crimes committed by the government affect the worst, least moral people of the people. But these terrible deeds cannot remain without influence on the majority of morally average people. Constantly hearing and reading about the most terrible, inhuman atrocities committed by the authorities, that is, people whom the people are accustomed to revere as the best people, the majority of average, especially young people, busy with their personal affairs, involuntarily, instead of understanding what people Those who do nasty deeds are unworthy of respect, make the reverse reasoning: if people revered by all, they reason, do nasty things that seem to us, then these deeds are probably not as nasty as they seem to us.
Executions, hangings, murders, bombs are now being written and spoken about, just as they used to talk about the weather. Children play hanging. Almost children, the high school students are ready to kill at the expropriation, as they used to go hunting. Killing the big landowners in order to take possession of their lands now seems to many people to be the surest solution to the land question.
In general, thanks to the activity of the government, which admits the possibility of murder in order to achieve its goals, any crime: robbery, theft, lies, torture, murder are considered unfortunate people who have been corrupted by the government, the most natural things inherent in man.
Yes, no matter how terrible the deeds themselves are, the moral, spiritual, invisible evil they produce is, without comparison, even more terrible.

You say that you commit all these horrors in order to restore peace and order.
You bring peace and order!
What are you feeding him with? The fact that you, representatives of the Christian authorities, leaders, mentors, approved and encouraged by church ministers, are destroying the last remnants of faith and morality in people, committing the greatest crimes: lies, betrayal, all kinds of torment, and - the last most terrible crime, the most repugnant to everyone to a completely depraved human heart: not murder, not one murder, but murders, endless murders, which you think to justify with various stupid references to such and such articles, written by you in your stupid and false books, blasphemously called by you laws.
You say that this is the only means of appeasing the people and extinguishing the revolution, but that is clearly not true. Obviously, without satisfying the demands of the most primitive justice of the entire Russian agricultural people: the destruction of landed property, but, on the contrary, affirming it and irritating the people and those frivolous, embittered people in every possible way who began a violent struggle with you, you cannot calm people down by torturing them tormenting, exiling, imprisoning, hanging children and women. After all, no matter how hard you try to drown out the reason and love inherent in people, they are in you, and as soon as you come to your senses and think in order to see that, acting as you do, that is, participating in these terrible crimes, you not only do not you cure the disease, but only increase it by driving it inward.
Because it's too clear.
The reason for what is happening is in no way in material events, but the whole thing is in the spiritual mood of the people, which has changed and which cannot be returned to its former state by any effort - just as it is impossible to return, just as it is impossible to make an adult a child again. Public irritation or tranquility can in no way depend on the fact that Petrov will be alive or hanged, or that Ivanov will live not in Tambov, but in Nerchinsk, in penal servitude. Public irritation or tranquility can depend only on how not only Petrov or Ivanov, but the entire vast majority of people will look at their position, on how the majority will relate to power, to landed property, to the preached faith - on how in what the majority will consider good and in what evil. The strength of events is not in the material conditions of life, but in the spiritual mood of the people. If you killed and tortured even a tenth of the entire Russian people, the spiritual state of the rest will not be what you want.
So everything that you are doing now, with your searches, spying, exiles, prisons, penal servitude, gallows - all this not only does not bring the people into the state in which you want to bring them, but, on the contrary, increases irritation and destroys all the possibility of relaxation.
“But what to do, you say, what to do now to calm the people? How to stop the atrocities that are being committed?
The answer is simple: stop doing what you are doing.
If no one knew what needs to be done in order to calm the "people" - the whole people (many people know very well what is most needed to calm the Russian people: the land must be liberated from property, as it was necessary 50 years ago liberation from serfdom), even if no one knew what is now needed to calm the people, it is still obvious that in order to calm the people it is probably not necessary to do anything that only increases their irritation. And that's exactly what you're doing.
What you are doing, you are doing not for the people, but for yourself, in order to keep that which, according to your delusion, you consider advantageous, but in essence the most miserable and ugly position that you occupy. So don't say that what you do, you do for the people: it's not true. All those nasty things that you do, you do for yourself, for your selfish, ambitious, conceited, vengeful, personal goals, in order to live a little more yourself in the corruption in which you live and which seems to you good.
But no matter how much you say that everything you do, you do for the good of the people, people understand you more and more and despise you more and more, and your measures of suppression and suppression are looked more and more wrong , as you would like: as the actions of some higher collective person, the government, but as the personal bad deeds of individual unkind self-lovers.

You say: "It was not we who started, but the revolutionaries, and the terrible atrocities of the revolutionaries can be suppressed only by firm (that's what you call your atrocities), firm measures of the government."
You say that the atrocities committed by the revolutionaries are terrible.
I do not argue and I will add to this that their deeds, in addition to being terrible, are also just as stupid and miss the mark just as your deeds. But no matter how terrible and stupid their deeds are: all these bombs and tunnels, and all these disgusting murders and robberies of money, all these deeds are far from reaching the criminality and stupidity of the deeds you commit.
They do exactly what you do, and for the same reasons. They, just like you, are under the same (I would say comical, if the consequences of it were not so terrible) delusion that some people, having drawn up a plan for themselves about what, in their opinion, is desirable and should be a device societies, have the right and opportunity to arrange the life of other people according to this plan. The delusion is the same, and the means to achieve the imaginary end are the same. These means are violence of every kind, reaching the point of murder. The justification for the atrocities committed is the same. The justification is that an evil deed done for the good of many ceases to be immoral, and that therefore it is possible, without violating the moral law, to lie, rob, kill, when this leads to the realization of that supposed good state for many, which we imagine that we know , and we can foresee, and which we want to arrange.
You, government people, call the deeds of the revolutionaries atrocities and great crimes, but they did and do not do anything that you would not do, and did not do to an incomparably greater extent. So, by using those immoral means that you use to achieve your goals, you certainly cannot blame the revolutionaries. They only do the same thing as you: you keep spies, you deceive, you spread lies in the press, and they do the same; you take away people's property by every kind of violence and dispose of it in your own way, and they do the same; you execute those whom you consider harmful - they do the same. Everything that you can bring in your justification, they will bring in theirs in the same way, not to mention the fact that you do a lot of such bad things that they do not do: the waste of national wealth, preparations for wars and wars themselves, subjugation and oppression of foreign nationalities and much more.
You say that you have the traditions of antiquity that you observe, there are examples of the activity of great people of the past. They also have traditions that have been going on for a long time, even before the great French revolution, and there are no less great people, role models, martyrs who died for truth and freedom than you do.
So if there's a difference between you and them, it's only that you want things to stay the way they are, and they want a change. And thinking that it is impossible for everything to always remain as before, they would be more right than you if they did not have the same strange and destructive delusion, taken from you, that some people can know the form of life that is characteristic of future for all people, and that this form can be established by violence. In all other respects, they do just the same thing that you do, and by the same means. They are completely your students, they, as they say, picked up all your droplets, they are not only your students, they are your work, they are your children. If it weren't for you, there wouldn't be them, so when you want to suppress them by force, you do what a person does who leans with all his might on the door that opens on him.
If there is a difference between you and them, then it is not in your favor, but in their favor. The mitigating circumstances for them, in the first place, is that their atrocities are committed under the condition of greater personal danger than the one to which you are exposed, and the risk, the danger, justifies a lot in the eyes of the enthusiastic youth. Secondly, in the fact that in the vast majority of them they are very young people who tend to err, while you are mostly mature, old people who are characterized by reasonable calmness and indulgence towards the erring. Thirdly, mitigating circumstances in their favor also lie in the fact that, no matter how disgusting their murders, they are still not as coldly systematically cruel as your Shlisselburgs, hard labor, gallows, executions. The fourth extenuating circumstance for the revolutionaries is that they all absolutely reject all religious teaching, believe that the end justifies the means, and therefore act in a perfectly consistent way, killing one or more for the imagined good of many. Whereas you, government people, from the lowest executioners to their highest administrators, you all stand for religion, for Christianity, which is in no way compatible with the deeds you are doing.
And you, old people, leaders of other people who profess Christianity, you say like children who have fought when they are scolded for fighting: “We didn’t start, but they,” and you don’t know anything better than this, you can’t say you people who have assumed the role of rulers of the people. And what kind of people are you? People who recognize as God the one who most definitely forbade not only all murder, but all anger against a brother, who forbade not only the trial and punishment, but the condemnation of a brother, who in the most definite terms abolished all punishment, recognized the inevitability of eternal forgiveness, no matter how much since the crime has not been repeated, which ordered the one who struck on one cheek to turn the other, and not to repay evil for evil, which so simply, so clearly showed the story of a woman sentenced to be stoned that it is impossible for some people to condemn and punish others, you are people who recognize this teacher God, you can’t find anything else to say in your defense, except that “they started, they kill - let’s kill them too.”

A painter I know conceived the painting "The Death Penalty", and he needed the executioner's face for nature. He learned that at that time in Moscow the work of the executioner was performed by a caretaker-janitor. The artist went to the watchman's house. It was on the holy. Family discharged sat at the tea table, the owner was not there: as it turned out later, he hid when he saw a stranger. The wife was also embarrassed and said that her husband was not at home, but the child-girl betrayed him.
She said: "Dad is in the attic." She did not yet know that her father knew that he was doing a bad deed and that therefore he should be afraid of everyone. The artist explained to the hostess that he needed her husband for "nature", in order to write off a portrait from him, since his face fits the conceived picture. (The artist, of course, did not say for which picture he needed the janitor's face.) After talking with the hostess, the artist suggested that, in order to appease her, take the boy-son to him for training. This offer obviously bribed the hostess. She went out, and after a while the owner came in looking frowningly, gloomy, restless and frightened, he asked the artist for a long time why and why he needed him. When the artist told him that he met him on the street and his face seemed to him to fit the picture, the janitor asked where he saw him? what time? in what clothes? And, obviously, being afraid and suspecting the worst, he refused everything.
Yes, this direct executioner knows that he is an executioner and that what he does is bad, and that he is hated for what he does, and he is afraid of people, and I think that this consciousness and fear of people redeem at least part of his fault. Yet you, from secretaries of the court to the chief minister and the king, mediocre participants in the daily atrocities, you do not seem to feel guilty and do not feel that feeling of shame that participation in the horrors committed should cause you. True, you are just as afraid of people as the executioner, and the more you are afraid of the greater your responsibility for the crimes you commit: the prosecutor is more afraid of the secretary, the chairman of the court is more than the prosecutor, the governor-general is more than the chairman, the chairman of the council of ministers is even more, the king is more than anyone . You are all afraid, but not because, like that executioner, you know that you are doing bad things, but you are afraid because it seems to you that people are doing bad things.
And therefore, I think that no matter how low this unfortunate janitor has fallen, he still morally stands incomparably higher than you, the participants and partly the perpetrators of these terrible crimes - people who condemn others, not themselves, and carry their heads high.

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I can't be silent

Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich

I can't be silent

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

I can't be silent

"Seven death sentences; two in St. Petersburg, one in Moscow, two in Penza, two in Riga. Four lives: two in Kherson, one in Vilna, one in Odessa." And it's in every newspaper. And this goes on not for a week, not for a month, not for a year, but for years. And this is happening in Russia, in that Russia in which the people consider every criminal unfortunate and in which, until very recently, there was no death penalty by law. I remember how proud I once was of this before the Europeans, and now for the second, third year, incessant executions, executions, executions. I take the current newspaper. Today, May 9, something terrible. There are short words in the newspaper: "Today in Kherson on the Strelbitsky field twenty peasants were executed by hanging for a robbery attack on the estate of a landowner in Elisavetgrad district" (*).

Twelve people from the same people by whose labors we live, the same people whom we corrupt and corrupt with all our might, starting from the poison of vodka and up to that terrible lie of faith in which we do not believe, but which we try with all our might to inspire them - twelve such people are strangled with ropes by the very people they feed and clothe and furnish and who have corrupted and corrupted them. Twelve husbands, fathers, sons, those people, on kindness, industriousness, whose simplicity alone keeps Russian life, were seized, imprisoned, chained in leg irons. Then they tied their hands behind their backs so that they could not grasp the rope on which they would be hanged, and led them under the gallows. Several of the same peasants as those who will be hanged, only armed and dressed in good boots and clean uniforms, with guns in their hands, accompany the condemned. Next to the condemned, in a brocade robe and stole, with a cross in his hand, is a man with long hair. The procession stops. The leader of the whole thing says something, the secretary reads the paper, and when the paper is read, the man with long hair, addressing those people whom other people are going to strangle with ropes, says something about God and Christ. Immediately after these words, the executioners - there are several of them, one cannot cope with such a difficult task - spreading soap and lathering the loops of ropes so that they are better tightened, they take on the chained ones, put shrouds on them, raise them to a platform with gallows and put them on their necks. rope loops. And now, one after another, living people collide with the benches pulled out from under their feet and, with their weight, immediately tighten the loops around their necks and painfully suffocate. A minute before this, living people turn into dead bodies hanging on ropes, which at first slowly sway, then freeze in immobility. All this for their brothers people is carefully arranged and invented by people of the upper class, scientists, enlightened people. It was devised to do these deeds secretly, at dawn, so that no one could see them, it was devised that the responsibility for these atrocities would be so distributed among the people who commit them, so that everyone could think and say: he is not the culprit of them. What has been devised is to look for the most depraved and unfortunate people and, forcing them to do a deed that we have invented and approved, to pretend that we abhor the people who do this deed. Even such a subtlety was invented that they are sentenced alone (a military court), but it is not the military, but the civilians who are necessarily present at the executions. The unfortunate, deceived, depraved, despised, who are left with only one thing to do: how better to lather the ropes so that they more correctly tighten their necks, and how to better get drunk on what is sold by these same enlightened, higher people of poison, in order to quickly and completely forget about their soul, about his human rank. The doctor walks around the bodies, feels them, and reports to the authorities that the deed is done as it should: all twelve people are undoubtedly dead. And the authorities retire to their usual activities with the consciousness of a conscientiously performed, albeit difficult, but necessary task. Frozen bodies are removed and buried. After all, it's terrible! And this is done not once, and not over these only 12 unfortunate, deceived people from the best class of the Russian people, but it is done without ceasing, for years, over hundreds and thousands of the same deceived people, deceived by the same people who are doing over them these terrible things. And not only this terrible deed is being done, but under the same pretext and with the same cold-blooded cruelty, the most diverse tortures and violence are committed in prisons, fortresses, hard labor. This is terrible, but the most terrible thing is that this is done not out of passion, a feeling that drowns out the mind, as is done in a fight, in a war, even in robbery, but, on the contrary, at the request of the mind, a calculation that drowns out the feeling. This is why these things are especially terrible. They are terrible because nothing so clearly as all these deeds performed from the judge to the executioner, by people who do not want to do them, nothing so clearly and clearly shows all the destructiveness of despotism for human souls, the power of some people over others. It is outrageous when one person can take away from another his labor, money, cow, horse, even his son, daughter, this is outrageous, but how much more outrageous is that one person can take away his soul from another, can make him do that. that destroys his spiritual self, deprives him of his spiritual good. And this is what is done by those people who arrange all this and calmly, for the sake of people's good, force people, from judge to executioner, by bribery, threats, deceit, to do these things, probably depriving them of the true good. And while all this is being done for years all over Russia, the main culprits of these cases, those on whose orders this is being done, those who could stop these cases, are the main culprits of these cases in the full confidence that these cases are useful and even necessary, either they come up with and say speeches about how to prevent the Finns from living the way the Finns want it, and by all means force them to live the way a few Russians want it, or issue orders on how in the "army in the hussar regiments, the cuffs of the sleeves and collars of the dolmans should be in the color of the latter, and the mentics, to whom they were assigned, without piping around the sleeves under the fur. Yes, it's terrible!

The most terrible thing about this is that all these inhuman violence and murders, in addition to the direct evil that they inflict on the victims of violence and their families, cause even greater, greatest evil to the whole people, spreading the corruption of all estates of the Russian people. This corruption spreads especially rapidly among the simple, working people, because all these crimes, hundreds of times greater than what was done and is being done by simple thieves and robbers and all revolutionaries together, are committed under the guise of something necessary, good, necessary, not only justified, but supported by different, inseparable in the concepts of the people with justice and even holiness institutions: the senate, the synod, the duma, the church, the king. And this corruption is spreading with unusual speed. Recently, two executioners could not be found among the entire Russian people. Until recently, in the 80s, there was only one executioner in all of Russia. I remember how Vladimir Solovyov then happily told me how they could not find another executioner all over Russia, and one was taken from place to place. Now it's not. In Moscow, a merchant-shopkeeper, having upset his affairs, offered his services to carry out murders committed by the government, and, receiving 100 rubles from a hanged man, in a short time improved his affairs in such a way that he soon ceased to need this side trade, and now leads -still trade. In Orel in the past months, as elsewhere, an executioner was needed, and immediately a man was found who agreed to carry out this work, having put himself in touch with the head of government murders for 50 rubles per person. But, having learned already after he was dressed in price that in other places they pay more, the voluntary executioner during the execution, putting a shroud bag on the murdered man, instead of leading him to the platform, stopped and, going up to to the chief, said: "Add, Your Excellency, a quarter ticket, otherwise I won't." They added to him, and he fulfilled. The next execution was for five. On the eve of the execution, an unknown person came to the manager of government murders, wishing to talk over a secret matter. The manager left. An unknown person said: “I hope some one took three quarters from you for one. Today, I hear, five have been appointed. I do not know whether the proposal was accepted or not, but I know that the proposal was. This is how these crimes committed by the government affect the worst, least moral people of the people. But these terrible deeds cannot remain without influence on the majority of morally average people. Constantly hearing and reading about the most terrible, inhuman atrocities committed by the authorities, that is, by people whom the people are accustomed to revere as the best people, most of the average, especially young people, busy with their personal affairs, involuntarily, instead of understanding what people Those who do nasty deeds are unworthy of respect, make the reverse reasoning: if people revered by all, they reason, do nasty things that seem to us, then these deeds are probably not as nasty as they seem to us. Executions, hangings, murders, bombs are now being written and spoken about, just as they used to talk about the weather. Children play hanging. Almost children, the high school students are ready to kill at the expropriation, as they used to go hunting. Killing the big landowners in order to take possession of their lands now seems to many people to be the surest solution to the land question. In general, thanks to the activity of the government, which admits the possibility of murder in order to achieve its goals, any crime: robbery, theft, lies, torture, murder are considered unfortunate people who have been corrupted by the government, the most natural things inherent in man. Yes, no matter how terrible the deeds themselves are, the moral, spiritual, invisible evil they produce is, without comparison, even more terrible.

E.V.: I am publishing two articles on the same topic .... Understand for yourself, dear readers ... Personally, the point of view of the second author, Vladimir Sarafanov, is closer to me

Viktor Sbruev: Leo Tolstoy against the crimes of Pyotr Stolypin

Today is the 184th anniversary of the birth Tolstoy. I remember the position Lev Nikolaevich occupied by him, in relation to the now so popular prime minister Stolypin, to the deeds thereof.

Born in Dresden, alien to Russia, Pyotr Stolypin and so forever remained a foreign body in the Russian state. Hot-tempered and vindictive, distinguished by exorbitant conceit and cruelty, this man brought many misfortunes to Russian soil.

Pyotr Stolypin's father - Arkady Dmitrievich(1822-1899) was friendly with Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy since the Crimean War - the defense of Sevastopol. Tolstoy, being an opponent of the imposed bourgeois slavery, wrote: “... the capitalist system must be destroyed and replaced by a socialist one ...” Lev Nikolaevich clearly saw that the Stolypin slave-owning agrarian reform in Russia, the reform of the new enslavement of the peasants to the landowner, was short-lived and doomed. Tolstoy rightly rejected all types of private property, with the exception of ownership of the production of one's labor. In 1907, in a letter to Stolypin, the great writer pointed out:

“It is necessary to abolish the age-old, ancient injustice... This injustice, the so-called right to land ownership, is now felt by all the people of the Christian world, but especially vividly by the Russian people... The injustice consists in the fact that it cannot exist rights one person to own another (slavery), so it cannot exist rights one, no matter what person, rich or poor, king or peasant, to own the land as property. The land is the property of all, and all people have the same right to use it ... For someone who understands this question in its true meaning, it should be clear that the right to own as property at least one octopus of land, whether the owner is a pro-peasant, is just as illegal and criminal, like the possession of a million acres by a rich man or a king. And therefore the question is not who owns the land and how much, but how to destroy the right of ownership of the land and how to make its use equally accessible to everyone.

In a reply letter, Pyotr Stolypin wrote:

“Nature has invested in man some innate instincts, such as: the feeling of hunger, sexual feeling, etc., and one of the most strong feelings of this order is the feeling of ownership”…

On the initiative of Pyotr Arkadyevich, they began to actively fight against the dissatisfied - courts-martial were introduced, mass executions came to Russia. Thousands of people were hanged and the atrocities of the bloody couple Stolypin-Nicholas II continued; when in May 1908 Leo Tolstoy wrote:

“And this is being done in that Russia, in which there was no death penalty, the absence of which I was once proud of before the Europeans. And then the incessant executions, executions, executions. The same is true today. But now it’s something terrible, for me, at least, such that I can’t not only keep silent, I can’t live as I lived, in communion with those terrible creatures who do these things. Today there are short words in the newspaper: the death sentence was executed in Kherson by hanging over 20 peasants, i.e. 20, twenty people from the very ones whose labors we live, the very ones whom we corrupt with all our might, starting with the poison of vodka, which we solder them, and ending with soldiery, our nasty institutions, which we call laws, and, most importantly, our terrible lies of that faith in which we do not believe, but with which we try to deceive them, 20 people from these very people, those only in Russia, on the simplicity, kindness, diligence of which Russian life rests, we dress these people, husbands, fathers, sons, just like them, in shrouds, put caps on them, and under the protection of the deceived soldiers taken from them, we raise them to the dais under the gallows , we put loops on them in turn, push the benches out from under their feet, and one by one they tighten the loops around their necks with their weight, suffocate, writhe and, in three minutes full of life given to them by God, freeze in dead immobility, and the doctor walks and feels their feet - are they cold ...

I appeal to all the participants in the crimes that are constantly committed under the false name of the law, to all of you, from those who hang to the gallows and put on caps and nooses on people-brothers, on women, on children, and to you, the two main secret executioners, with your connivance participating in all these crimes: to Pyotr Stolypin and Nikolai Romanov.

Come to your senses, think again. Remember who you are and understand what you are doing.

After all, before you were executioners, prime ministers, kings, first of all people and brothers of people, today you looked out into the light of God, tomorrow you will not be. (To you, who have called and are calling to yourself, both executioners and you, a special hatred, you especially need to remember this.) Are you really looking out for this one short moment into the light of God - after all, death, if you are not they will kill, here it is always behind us all - can your vocation in life be only to kill, torturing people, to tremble with fear of murder yourself and lie to yourself, to people and to God that you are doing all this out of duty for some fictitious non-existent goal, for a fictitious goal just for you, precisely so that, being a villain, you can consider yourself an ascetic of a fictitious Russia ...

Can you believe that if you don’t satisfy the demands, the definite demands of the entire Russian people and the demands already recognized by the majority of people, the demands of primitive justice itself, the demands for the abolition of landed property, without even satisfying other demands of the youth, on the contrary, irritating the people and youth, you can you calm the country with murders, prisons, exiles? You cannot fail to know that by doing this, you not only do not cure the disease, but only increase it, driving it inside ...

At first I thought about Pyotr Stolypin, when I had the naivete to propose to him a speech with a project to liberate land from property, that he was only limited and confused by his position, I thought about Nikolai Romanov, that by his birth, upbringing, environment, he was reduced to the stupidity that he manifested and manifests in his actions, but the longer the current situation continues, the more I am convinced that these two people, the perpetrators of the atrocities that are being committed and the corruption of the people, are consciously doing what they are doing, and what exactly they are doing, being in the environment where they , due to their ability to satisfy the desires of the people around them, live in a constant atmosphere of flattery and lies that these two people, more than any others, need to be rebuked and reminded.

Yes, all of you, from the first executioner to the last of them, Nicholas II, come to your senses, think about yourself, about your soul ... "

A fierce admirer of Western liberalism, an advocate of private ownership of land, a destroyer of the peasant community, Pyotr Spolypin in Russia caused a sharp rejection, which turned into hatred of the entire Russian people. His crimes were so great that the death of the bloody reformer seemed a foregone conclusion ... This was understood by the hated by all Pyotr Arkadyevich, who shortly before his death said: "My own security will kill me"...

Sarafanov Vladimir: "I can't be silent!" -

Despite the numerous victims of the terrorist war waged by left-wing radicals against the state, a significant part of the Russian intelligentsia saw the revolution as an absolute blessing, an unclouded source of good, and the death of revolutionaries as a sacrifice in the name of a beautiful future, confirming the evil essence of the reaction.

So, in 1908 L.N. Tolstoy published an article "I can not be silent", where he points to the main culprits of the terrorist war in Russia - the state and its representatives. Tolstoy clarifies what exactly angered him: ““Seven death sentences: two in St. Petersburg, one in Moscow, two in Penza, two in Riga. Four executions: two in Kherson, one in Vilna, one in Odessa.” And it's in every newspaper. And this goes on not for a week, not for a month, not for a year, but for years. And this is happening in Russia, in that Russia, in which the people consider every criminal unfortunate, and in which, until very recently, according to the law, there was no death penalty. I remember how proud I once was of this before the Europeans, and now the second, third year of incessant executions, executions, executions. I take the current newspaper. Today, May 9, something terrible. There are short words in the newspaper: “Today in Kherson, on the Strelbitsky field, twenty peasants were executed by hanging for a robbery attack on the estate of a landowner in Elisavetgrad district.”

It is noteworthy that the great humanist does not condemn murder as such, regardless of whether the murdered policeman, minister, revolutionary or passerby. No, Tolstoy focuses on one part of the entire spectrum of murders - the death penalty, which means that he points to the only culprit - the state. True, it later turns out that the events are “somewhat” distorted. The number of executed peasants is overestimated. It is possible that no one was executed at all. Tolstoy admits: “The newspapers later published refutations of the news of the execution of twenty peasants. I can only rejoice at this mistake: both the fact that eight fewer people were crushed than in the first news, and the fact that this terrible figure forced me to express in these pages the feeling that has long been tormenting me, and therefore only, replacing word twenty word twelve, I leave without change everything that is said here, since what has been said refers not to one twelve executed, but to all the thousands who have recently been killed and crushed people.

Even the fact that the author became a "victim of rumor" did not cool his accusatory pathos. He directly points to the source of evil: “The same is done by those people who arrange all this and calmly, for the sake of the welfare of the people, force people, from a judge to an executioner, by bribery, threats, deceptions to do these things, probably depriving them of the true good. And while all this has been going on for years all over Russia, the main culprits of these cases, those on whose orders this is being done, those who could stop these cases, are the main culprits of these cases in full confidence that these cases are useful and even necessary - either they come up with and say speeches about how to prevent the Finns from living the way the Finns want it, and by all means force them to live the way a few Russians want it, or issue orders on how in the "army in the hussar regiments, the cuffs of the sleeves and the collars of the dolmans should be the same color as the latter, and the mentics, to whom they are assigned, without piping around the sleeves over the fur. Yes, it's terrible!

The "revived" peasants of the Elisavetgrad district, the "unfortunate" Finns, who had a maximum of autonomy in 1908, which is still rarely found in the most civilized countries, "cuffs" and "dolomaniacs" are boiled in one mess here.

However, the most terrible, the most phantasmagoric in all this is that Yasnaya Polyana - the estate of the count himself - was protected from attacks by the surrounding peasants, guards hired by his wife, Sofya Andreevna. Tolstoy, freely walking around the park under their protection, subjected them to "moral flogging", drawing deep conclusions from dialogues with illiterate guards. The publisher of the magazine "Life for All" V. A. Posse in his book "My life path“Recalled Tolstoy’s story: “I went up to the guard and asked him: “What is this hanging on your side? Knife, right?

What knife? It's not a knife, it's a cleaver.

What are you going to do to them? Cutting bread?

What kind of bread is there?

Well, so the man who feeds you with bread.

Well, I'll cut the man.

After all, you are a man too. How can you not be ashamed to cut your brother man?

Although ashamed, I will cut, because this is my position.

Why did you go to such a position?

And then, that the whole price for me is sixteen rubles a month, and they pay me thirty-two rubles, that's why I went to this position.

The answer of the guard, - Tolstoy remarked with a grin, - explained to me many incomprehensible things in life. Take, for example, Stolypin. I knew his father well and once rocked him on my knees. Maybe he is ashamed to hang, but hangs because that is his position. And he went to this position, because the red price for him is not even sixteen rubles, but maybe a broken penny, but he receives eighty thousand a year.

Grandiose! What a lump! It is only strange that such a “hardened human being” is not able to understand that, apart from new acts of terror, his “kind” article could and did not cause anything.

The famous writer V.G. went even further. Korolenko. In 1906, the peasants of the village of Sorochintsy, Mirgorodsky district, Poltava province, beat to death the assistant police officer Barabash. Advisor to the provincial government F.V. Filonov, with the help of hundreds of Cossacks, forced them to repent, putting them on their knees. Korolenko was outraged by Filonov's behavior. His angry article said: “I will wait that if there is even a shadow of justice in our country, if you, your colleagues and your superiors have a sense of professional honor and duty, if we have accusatory chambers, courts and judges who remember what the law or judicial conscience is, then one of us should sit in the dock and suffer judicial punishment: you or me. And if you, like others like you, remain unpunished, if, having avoided any trial due to the leniency of the authorities and the impotence of the law, you, together with the cockade, prefer to bear the stigma of these heavy public accusations, then even then I believe that this appeal of mine will not pass without a trace. .

And he guessed. The Social Revolutionaries heard his threat and hurried to put it into practice. Fighter D.L. Kirillov shot at F.V. Filonov from a revolver, when he went to work - a bullet pierced his chin and exited the back of his head. The killer fled to Switzerland. Korolenko was accused of inciting, but not by the authorities, but by the victim herself. Shortly before his death, Filonov wrote a response to the writer, where he accused him of thickening colors and demagogy. In the same place, he pointed out that Korolenko actually called on the terrorists to deal with him, and he had already begun to receive anonymous letters with threats.

The question arises - who is more humane? An official who punishes dark peasants for murder by "repentance on his knees" and believes that this will become a prevention against future crimes, or an enlightened writer who denounced an official for this and exposed him to the bullets of terrorist fanatics?

A difficult question, which, in my opinion, has not been resolved to this day. It is important to understand that literature, and especially journalism, are especially effective means in times of social conflict. The interpretation of events is of paramount importance and has a total impact on the mass reader. Therefore, if the majority of the writing community has taken one of the opposing sides, this circumstance is capable of ensuring success for this side in the long run. Unfortunately, most Russian writers of the early twentieth century. chose the side of the revolutionary aggressors, while changing objectivity, humanism and mercy. To determine the degree of "humanity" of the supporters of the struggle against the autocracy, it is enough to name the number of victims of revolutionary terror in 1905-08. - 17 thousand people. Of these, only at the hands of the Social Democrats (not counting the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Anarchists) killed 5 thousand civil servants.

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