Following the completion of his major novels, War and Peace and Anna
Karenina, in 1880, Russian writer Leo Tolstoy experienced a spiritual
crisis that led him to denounce the privileges of his social class and its
attendant material wealth, and to embrace the simple rural life of the
peasantry. In the persecuted Doukhobor sect, who also rejected militarism and
church ritual in favour of finding God, he saw a prime example of how it was
possible to live his new-found pacifist ideals in everyday life. He was so
taken with their lifestyle, calling Doukhobors "people of the 25th century,"
that in 1898, he decided to help finance their emigration en masse to
Canada, away from the persecutions of the Russian church and state.
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Andrew Donskov's expanded study presents an outline of Doukhobor
history and beliefs, their harmony with Tolstoy's lifelong aim of "unity of
people," and the portrayal of Doukhobors in his writings. This edition features
Tolstoy's complete correspondence with Doukhobor leader Petr Vasil'evich
Verigin and a timeline on Tolstoy and the Canadian Doukhobors today. The volume
includes guest essays by prominent Canadian Doukhobors Jan
Kabatoff, Eli A. Popoff, and Koozma J. Tarasoff.
Supported by a considerable array of source materials, Donskov's study will
be of relevance to anyone interested in religious, philosophical, sociological,
pacifist, historical or literary studies.
