Leo Tolstoy’s Christian anarchism: Towards a political theology

Abstract

The article specifies the characteristics of Christian Anarchism as applied to the religious teaching of Lev Tolstoy. An attempt is made to overcome the political stereotype of his perception as an anarchist, but to consider it’s in the context of Political Theology. The article calls into question the legitimacy of considering his religious teachings in the unambiguous political discourse of Anarchism. If the concept of Christian Anarchism is a special kind of theoretical and ideological oxymoron of “religious politics”, then Tolstoy’s teaching is considered as a manifestation of his subjectivism, aimed at simultaneously overcoming the personal, animal element in man and reaching an impersonal universal spiritual principle, without any external restrictions. Freedom, as the most important category of his worldview, is presented rather in the form of religious monarchism — submission to the Divine will and life according to Christ, and not in the form of radical Anarchism. Political Theology is considered as a conscious non-participation of individual in politics — that is, refusal to stay in state structures such as courts, army, police, etc., — is the religious-subjective, peaceful destruction of the system, according to Tolstoy. On this path, he went much further than his Enlightenment teachers with their theories of social contracts, creating a model of not struggle, not reconciliation, not an agreement, but retirement from the state in the form of non-participation in its violence and atrocities. But all this is worth doing — not rebelling anarchically, not for the sake of oneself or social justice, but completely obeying the Divine will, which is a religious modification of the Kantian ethical imperative in Tolstoy’s teachings. Chertkov has named this teaching as model of theocratic monarchism.