Sunday, 13 September 2015

Q65: Tolstoy Influenced by Doukhobors?

Q65: Did Doukhobors Impact Tolstoy's Theory of Criminal Punishment?

by Dirk Falkner, Germany (referred from Iskra editor, Barry Verigin, USCC)

By Alexei Talimonov
I am a German scholar.

Leo Tolstoy [Lev N. Tolstoy] is one of my most favourite authors and I have ever been strongly interested in his legacy — not only literary, but also philosophical one.

I read many years ago that Tolstoy's views had been strongly influenced by his close friends — the Doukhobor Community in Russia — and started to learn your teachings and was fascinated by its great love to kindness and humanism.

Having successfully accomplished my LL.M studies at the Law School, I am doing now my LL.D degree and chose as topic of my thesis 'Leo Tolstoy's Theory of Criminal Punishment', that was especially strongly impacted by the Doukhobor faith, and thus to acquaint the German scholarly world with Doukhobor community, its tenets and history.

I would like to ask you, whether you could give me some help finding and sending the sources.

I speak both Russian and English very well.

Answer by Koozma

Your question prompted me to create a list of materials online as: Tolstoy and Doukhobors. Also, I am forwarding your request to others who may help you with material not online.

Though Tolstoy acquired his non-violent philosophy by himself, his association with Doukhobors and other peoples of conscience helped refine his beliefs and behaviour. Lev N. Tolstoy's views and that of the Doukhobors were very close. Both believed that violence is incompatible with Love, which they considered to be the fundamental Law of Life. Both saw wars as a crime against humanity; for Tolstoy, war was 'a slavery of our times'. For Doukhobors this belief was manifested in their defining historic act of arms burning in the summer of 1895.

Tuesday, 1 September 2015

It is criminal how the West is maligning Russia and Putin

By Alex Ewashen. August 4, 2015

Alex Ewashen
On June 27th on the Doukhobor Heritage Tour 2015 to Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Russia, to seek out our forefather’s ancestral roots, Brian and I set out on an experience of a lifetime, we returned on July 20th. These countries mentioned were all a part of Russia when our ancestors migrated to Canada in 1899. The heritage tour is a wondrous story, but that will come at a later day.

It is another world out there which our media tells us nothing about, but to strike right at the bone, it is criminal how the West is maligning Russia and Putin. In our travels through villages, towns, country sides and the streets of cities we found that Putin was well respected and admired, and that Moscow was the centre of that part of the universe. Besides being a very popular tourist destination, (one of the most expensive cities in the world) people from Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and of course Russia go to Moscow to work, they work 20 days there and come home for 10.

There are huge cranes everywhere, from the Kremlin to the outskirts of the city, and streets are being dug up to up grade the infrastructure. In our travels we came into Moscow from two different directions and there are new four and six lane highways leading into the city. The streets of Moscow are clogged with BMW's, Audi's, Mercedes, Volvo's, Cadillacs, and every other American and Japanese cars. Men in silk suits and shinny brief cases hurry by on the streets, too preoccupied, or on iPhones, to give you a glance or a smile. I could have spent my entire time sitting on the street photographing the different ladies foot ware, toenails painted to match their shoes and handbags.

And what about the West’s embargo and sanctions? Well, it seems as far as technology and big business, like KFC, Burger King, and McDonald’s, and the car industry are exempt. It is business as usual. The ordinary man in Russia welcomes the embargo. People were getting upset about the many imports, and Russia has geared up very fast to becoming self sufficient developing their own industries. A young couple we stayed with in a village were into making cheeses and selling cream, butter and milk. Their produce had gone up in price by 60 to 75% since the embargo. A lady running a souvenir kiosk, said: 'Look at my stock, it is all made in Russia now'.

On the other hand while visiting in Georgia, which is under US dominance, the general populace is very upset about the embargo. Georgia has a centuries old wine industry, because they are forced to take part in the embargo, they cannot sell their wine to Russia, who was their biggest customer. Georgia grows tons of watermelon which they used to sell to Russia, this market is no more, so the agricultural producers are really hurting.

Saudi Arabia, the US’s foremost ally in that part of the world, is investing 10 billion US in the next five years, largely in the Russian economy, targeting infrastructure, agriculture, medicine, and logistics. Putin’s goal is to make Russia 100% self-sufficient in it’s food industry within the next 10 years.

The biggest thing happening to demonstrate the futility of Western efforts to isolate Russia is a summit underway between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to establish a new development bank, BRICS, and emergency currency reserve pool, each to be armed with $100 Billion, to rival the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) .

Russians are very conscious about their diet. A bill has been submitted to restrict advertising of food high in sugar, salt, fat and saturated fat. If passed, the bill would ban fast-food advertisements aimed at Russian youth and would require that any advertising of these products be accompanied by a health warning. The law would also prohibit fast food advertisements within 100 metres of gyms, medical clinics, military buildings, cultural venues libraries and schools.

Our trip was an experience of a lifetime, and a real eye opener….

  1. Alex Ewashen. Rags To Riches…My Way. July 8, 2015. Book Review by Koozma.J. Tarasoff.
  2. Natylie Baldwin and Kermit Heartsong. Ukraine: Zbig's Grand Chessboard & How the West Was Checkmated. Next Revelation Press, San Francisco and Montreal, 2015.
  3. Corinne Seminoff. 'Back to the Motherlnd - Remaking Russian Farms in Times of Crisis.'
  4. Ekaterina Blinova. From 1945 - 49 the US and UK Planned to Bomb Russia into the Stone Age.  Russia Insider, September 4, 2015.