The Inevitable Revolution

{{Infobox book

| pub_date = July 5, 1909

| title_orig = Неизбежный переворот

}}

The Inevitable Revolution (Неизбежный переворот) is an essay written by Leo Tolstoy on July 5, 1909, about abolishing the law of violence and replacing it with the law of love. It is generally considered a text on civil disobedience, pacifism, and anarchism, and it is Tolstoy's last non-fiction work detailing his final opinions on political, economic, and religious issues.

Content

In it, he criticizes prisons, parliaments, wars, conscription, capitalism, theft, revolutionary violence, and taxes, and praises Christianity's message of love as the solution to these problems, although he recognizes the law of love in other religions, as well. Tolstoy asked people not to directly commit any violence (as a soldier, etc.), not to take part in violence (working for the government, etc.), and not to approve of violence (in writing or speech, etc.).

Within the literary academic community

It was translated from Russian to English in 1975 by Dr. Ronald Sampson, lecturer in Politics at the University of Bristol, England, and published by Housmans jointly with the Fellowship of Reconciliation.{{cite book

| url=https://archive.org/details/sparrowsnest-2595/

| publisher=Housmans and Fellowship of Reconciliation

| author=Leo Tolstoy

| title=The Inevitable Revolution

| year=1981

| edition=2nd

}} It was previously published in The New York Times on September 26, 1909.{{cite web

| title=The Inevitable Revolution

| work=New York Times

| url=https://www.nytimes.com/1909/09/26/archives/the-inevitable-revolution-by-tolstoy.html

| date=1909-09-26

| author=Leo Tolstoy

}} The original text of the essay is drawn from the Russian Jubilee edition of Tolstoy's Complete collected works.{{cite web

| title=Russian Jubilee edition of Tolstoy's Complete collected works

| volume=38

| publisher=Originally published in Moscow, research work from the National Library of Australia.

| year=1936

| pages=72–99

| url=https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/833780

}} The essay is considered critical by academics E. I. Pats’orka and A. N. Koshechko in understanding Tolstoy's pedagogical ideas.{{cite journal

| url=https://vestnik.tspu.edu.ru/en/archive.html?year=2019&issue=6&article_id=7418

| title=F. M. Dostoyevsky And L. N. Tolstoy: Experience Of The Comparative Analysis Of The Pedagogical Ideas

| author=Pats’orka E. I., Koshechko A. N.

| journal=Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin

| issue=6

| year=2019

| pages=28–37

| doi=10.23951/1609-624X-2019-6-28-37

| s2cid=204607680

| doi-access=free

}} The text is also considered critical by academic G. M. Hamburg in understanding historian Boris Eikhenbaum's incorrect assessment on Tolstoy's opinion of Vekhi, a collection of essays written by the Russian intelligentsia.{{cite book

| page=194

| quote=Tolstoi’s “The Inevitable Revolution” summoned readers to follow the “law of love” instead of the “law of violence.” If they did so...

| url=https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/30910/641431.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

| title=Landmarks Revisited: The Vekhi Symposium 100 Years On

| chapter=Lev Tolstoi, Petr Struve and the 'Afterlife' of Vekhi

| editor=Robin Aizlewood and Ruth Coates

| date=2013

| publisher=Academic Studies Press

| author=G. M. Hamburg

}} The academic Alexandre J. M. E. Christoyannopoulos also considers this text when comparing the political influence of religion, notably terrorism, with the peaceful and love-based vision proposed by Tolstoy.{{cite journal

| title=Turning the Other Cheek to Terrorism: Reflections on the Contemporary Significance of Leo Tolstoy's Exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount

| author=Alexandre J. M. E. Christoyannopoulos

| year=2008

| journal=Politics and Religion

| volume=1

| issue=1

| pages=27–54

| doi=10.1017/S1755048308000035

| s2cid=154302767

| url=https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/6673

}} In 2018, I.F. Salmanova compared Tolstoy's 1909 diary entries with The Inevitable Revolution to reveal Tolstoy's literary mechanism.{{cite web

| author=И.Ф. Салманова

| page=65

| url=https://imwerden.de/pdf/materialy_nauchnykh_sessy_2017_goda_v_muzee_tolstogo_2018__ocr.pdf

| title=Исповедальность как переживание себя в мире и мира в себе (на материале поздних дневников Л. Н. Толстого)

}}

References

External links

Source of text
[http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=10047 The Inevitable Revolution], from RevoltLib.com
[https://www.marxists.org/archive/tolstoy/1909/the-inevitable-revolution.html The Inevitable Revolution], from Marxists.org
[https://libcom.org/library/inevitable-revolution The Inevitable Revolution], from Libcom.org
[https://archive.org/details/sparrowsnest-2595/ The Inevitable Revolution], from Archive.org
[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/leo-tolstoy-the-inevitable-revolution The Inevitable Revolution], from TheAnarchistLibrary.org

Category:Books by Leo Tolstoy

Category:1909 non-fiction books