Abstract

The Russian pacifist movement emerged at the end of the nineteenth century as an outgrowth of Tolstoyans’ (the disciples of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy) socio-political self-determination. ¹ This popular movement was well known among contemporaries because of its appealing religious and social ideas that followers believed could solve urgent social and political problems. At first, Tolstoyism appealed to that part of Russian populism (narodnichestvo) that sought a peaceful alternative to the ideas of violent revolutionaries. Even by the 1880–1890s the Tolstoyans supported communitarianism—the idea that society can be transformed not by social revolution, but through personal reflection and moral self-perfection by smaller communes of people. ²