"Risking peace for god", or toward anarchist ideas of Leo Tolstoy

The article discusses the religious and philosophical outlook of L. N. Tolstoy in the context of the concept of anarchism. The complexity of the problem is determined by the duality of Tolstoy’s position: denouncing the violence of power and calling for non-resistance to force. The first allows one to see him as a spiritual oppositionist who totally condemns culture, science, politics and law as institutions of power. The second exposes an ethical, spiritual and existential alternative to life, presented not only in political essays, but also in literary texts. The ability to practically live by Christian ideals becomes Tolstoy’s cherished dream, and at the same time it acquires the features of revolutionary nihilism in the eyes of the government and society. With this, Tolstoy stands on the positions of philosophical idealism, believing in the possibility of everyone’s rational consciousness, aimed at the non-violent transformation of all.