The Kingdom of God is Within You / Christianity and Patriotism / MiscellaniesTolstoy, Leo, graf
Religion
The Kingdom of God is Within You / Christianity and Patriotism / Miscellanies
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Russian literature -- Translations into English
Such are the disadvantages of insubmission; but the disadvantages
of submission will consist in this: at best I shall not be sent
out to kill men, and I myself shall not be subjected to any great
probability of crippling or death, but shall only be enlisted as a
military slave,--I shall be dressed up in a fool's garments; I shall
be at the mercy of every man above me in rank, from a corporal to
a field-marshal; I shall be compelled to contort my body according
to their desire, and, after being kept from one to five years, I
shall be left for ten years in a condition of readiness to appear
at any moment for the purpose of going through all these things
again. In the worst case I shall, in addition to all those previous
conditions of slavery, be sent to war, where I shall be compelled
to kill men of other nations, who have done me no harm, where I
may be crippled and killed, and where I may get into a place, as
happened at Sevastopol and as happens in every war, where men are
sent to certain death; and, what is most agonizing, I may be sent
out against my own countrymen, when I shall be compelled to kill my
brothers for dynastic or other reasons, which are entirely alien to
me. Such are the comparative disadvantages.
The comparative advantages of submission and of insubmission are
these:
For him who has not refused, the advantages will consist in this,
that, having submitted to all the humiliations and having executed
all the cruelties demanded of him, he may, if he is not killed,
receive red, golden, tin-foil decorations over his fool's garments,
and he may at best command hundreds of thousands of just such
bestialized men as himself, and be called a field-marshal, and
receive a lot of money.
But the advantages of him who refuses will consist in this, that he
will retain his human dignity, will earn the respect of good men,
and, above all else, will know without fail that he is doing God's
work, and so an incontestable good to men.
Such are the advantages and the disadvantages on both sides for
a man from the wealthy classes, for an oppressor; for a man of
the poor, working classes the advantages and disadvantages will
be the same, but with an important addition of disadvantages. The
disadvantages for a man of the labouring classes, who has not
refused to do military service, will also consist in this, that, by
entering upon military service, he by his participation and seeming
consent confirms the very oppression under which he is suffering.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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