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
After that they pick up the blood-stained, dying, maimed, killed,
and wounded men, frequently also women and children; the dead are
buried, and the maimed are sent to the hospital. But those who are
considered to be the plotters are taken to the city and tried by a
special military court. If on their part there was any violence,
they are sentenced to be hanged. Then they put up a gallows and with
the help of ropes choke to death a few defenceless people, as has
many times been done in Russia and as is being done, and must be
done where the public structure is based on violence. Thus they do
in case of opposition.
In the second case, when the peasants submit, there takes place
something special and peculiarly Russian. What happens is this:
the governor arrives at the place of action, makes a speech to the
people, rebuking them for their disobedience, and either stations
troops in the farms of the village, where the soldiers, quartering
at times as much as a month at a time, ruin the peasants, or,
satisfied with threatening them, graciously pardons the people and
returns home, or, which happens more frequently than anything else,
announces to them that the instigators ought to be punished, and
arbitrarily, without trial, selects a certain number of men, who are
declared to be the instigators and in his presence are subjected to
tortures.
In order to give an idea as to how these things are done, I will
describe an affair which took place at Orél and received the
approval of the higher authorities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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