- Project Runeberg -  In the Land of Tolstoi /
71

(1897) [MARC] Author: Jonas Jonsson Stadling Translator: Will Reason With: Gerda Tirén, Johan Tirén - Tema: Russia
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from the press is tainted in its source, and poisoned throughout
by the deadly influence of Mammon. The most revolting
example of this they consider to be the composition and sale of
hymns to the love of God and books concerning Jesus, all with
a view to amassing money; a proceeding that is in most violent
contrast to the whole life and teaching of the Master.
Everyone knows that Tolstoi himself is consistent in this; that he
retains no copyright in his works. It may not be so generally
known that in Russia his books, forbidden by the censor to be
printed, are written out by hand at immense cost, and distributed
at a price much below the value of the labour of copying
them. It seems scarcely credible that this laborious process
should be necessary in these days of automatic compositors and
rapid presses, yet who knows whether the influence of the works
so copied and circulated in manuscript is really less than that
of the enormous mass of printed literature that issues from the
press of Western Europe?

Tolstoi told me once that he desired to write two books
before his death. One was to be a kind of counterblast to the
increasingly martial spirit of the time, that seemed almost
personified in the young German Emperor. This has since
been published under the title of “The Kingdom of Heaven
is Within You.” It is, as the Count meant it to be, a
kind of summing up of the case against all use of physical
force.

The other, that has not yet appeared, was to be the history
of some Russian colonists, who had unknowingly settled
outside the frontier of Eastern Siberia. There, away from all
interference from Government officials, they had built up a little
commonwealth of their own by the simple development that
sprang from the natural satisfaction of their common needs,
and passed several years in peace and quiet happiness. But
one fine day the authorities discovered them. It was true they
were beyond the frontier and outside the Russian jurisdiction,
but that was a small difficulty in the eyes of the paternally
benevolent Government. They simply shifted the frontier so
as to include the colony, and thus conferred on the unwilling
people the inestimable blessings of life under an autocratic

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