Non-Activity
{{Short description|1893 article by Leo Tolstoy}}
"Non-Activity" is an 1893 article by Leo Tolstoy{{cite book
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0O5GAQAAMAAJ&dq=tolstoy+%22non-activity%22&pg=PA47
| page=47
| title=Tolstoy's Theory of Social Reform
| year=1916
| author=Milivoy S. Stanoyevich
| publisher=University of California, Berkeley
}} and also the term used to describe Tolstoy's form of anarchist and pacifist thought. This thinking of Tolstoy's was influenced by wuwei (無為, "inaction"), a Taoist concept of finding victory by withdrawing from action.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ki9ZAAAAIAAJ&q=%22non-activity%22|title=The South Atlantic Quarterly|publisher=Duke University Press|year=1951|editor=Mims|editor-first=Edwin|volume=50|page=156|editor-last2=Bassett|editor-first2=John Spencer|editor-last3=Wannamaker|editor-first3=William Hane|editor-last4=Glasson|editor-first4=William Henry|editor-last5=Boyd|editor-first5=William Kenneth|editor-last6=Few|editor-first6=William Preston}}{{cite book
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sE9pAAAAMAAJ&q=%22non-activity%22
| page=333
| title=Canadian-American Slavic Studies
| author=Revue Canadienne-americaine D'etudes Slaves
| volume=6
| year=1972
| publisher=University of Pittsburgh
}} Sometimes Tolstoy's "non-activity" is translated as "under-activity"{{cite book
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2JcuDwAAQBAJ&dq=tolstoy+%22wuwei%22&pg=PT130
| title=Tolstoy's Quest for God
| year=2017
| isbn=9781351471756
| publisher=Taylor & Francis
| author=Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
}} and others have called it "non-violent non-cooperation."{{cite book
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2_ggEAAAQBAJ&dq=tolstoy+%22wuwei%22&pg=PA141
| page=141
| title=Roots, Routes and a New Awakening: Beyond One and Many and Alternative Planetary Futures
| year=2021
| isbn=9789811571220
| publisher=Springer Singapore
| editor=Ananta Kumar Giri
}}
Content
Maxim Gorky has described Tolstoy's "misty preaching of 'non-activity', of 'non-resistance to evil', the doctrine of passivism" as being the result of the natural fermentation of old Russian blood with Mongolian fatalism.{{cite book
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XxFSAQAAMAAJ&dq=tolstoy+%22non-activity%22&pg=PA512
| page=512
| title=Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy
| volume=1
| year=1920
| author=Maxim Gorky
| publisher=Freeman
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y1ZgAAAAMAAJ&dq=tolstoy+%22non-activity%22&pg=PA39
| page=39
| title=Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy
| author=Maxim Gorky
| year=1920
| publisher=B. W. Huebsch
}} According to Henri Troyat and Alexander Lukin, Tolstoy found the ideals of ancient, Chinese philosophy to nicely contrast against the over-industrialized and overly-scientific achievements of the Western Capitalist world.{{cite book
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_ZYYDQAAQBAJ&dq=tolstoy+%22wuwei%22&pg=PT49
| title=The Bear Watches the Dragon: Russia's Perceptions of China and the Evolution of Russian-Chinese Relations Since the Eighteenth Century
| author=Alexander Lukin
| year=2016
| isbn=9781315290515
| publisher=Taylor & Francis
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7kDJ3s1mcZcC&dq=tolstoy+lao+tzu&pg=PA440
| page=440
| title=Tolstoy
| author=Henri Troyat
| year=2001
| publisher=Grove Press
| isbn=9780802137685
}} This admiration was cross-cultural, as Chinese and Japanese anarchists had preferred Tolstoy's pure, agrarian Anarchism over the scientific, modernized anarchism of Peter Kropotkin or Mikhail Bakunin.{{cite book
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=18QIEAAAQBAJ&dq=tolstoy+%22wuwei%22&pg=PA158
| page=158
| year=2021
| title=The State, Identity, and the National Question in China and Japan
| author=Germaine A. Hoston
| isbn=9780691225418
| publisher=Princeton University Press
}} Tolstoy even translated Laozi into Russian.{{cite book
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=75UEAQAAIAAJ
| title=Laozi
| author=老子, 韦利, Arthur Waley, 陈鼓应, 傅惠生
| year=1999
| isbn=9787543820890
| publisher=湖南人民出版社
| editor=Huisheng Fu, 傅惠生
| translator=Arthur Waley, Guying Chen, 陈鼓应, 韦利
}} This translation was made from a German and French text of Tao Te Ching, and this project took Tolstoy a decade.{{cite book
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5XrnDwAAQBAJ&dq=tolstoy+lao+tzu&pg=PA112
| page=112
| title=Anarchist Modernity: Cooperatism and Japanese-Russian Intellectual Relations in Modern Japan
| author=Sho Konishi
| year=2020
| isbn=9781684175314
| publisher=Brill
}} According to Harold D. Roth, it was finally completed in 1893–4.{{cite book
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ffneWORwXnMC&dq=tolstoy+lao+tzu&pg=PA135
| page=135
| title=A Companion to Angus C. Graham's Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters
| author=Harold David Roth, Angus Charles Graham
| year=2003
| publisher=University of Hawaii Press
| isbn=9780824826437
}}
History
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- Original Text
- [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Non-Activity Non-Activity], from Wikisource
- [http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=10493 Non-Activity], from RevoltLib.com
- [https://www.marxists.org/archive/tolstoy/1893/non-activity.html Non-Activity], from Marxists.org
- [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/leo-tolstoy-non-activity Non-Activity], from TheAnarchistLibrary.org
- [https://libcom.org/library/non-activity Non-Activity], from Libcom.org
- [https://archive.org/details/NonActivity_LevTolstoy/page/n25/mode/2up Non-Activity], from Archive.org
{{Leo Tolstoy}}
{{Authority control}}
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