Иоанн Кронштадтский и Лев Толстой

Abstract

The confrontation between the writer Leo Tolstoy and the priest John of Kronstadt was not just a conflict of two personalities, even if they were outstanding. It was a struggle between two worldviews, two concepts of perception of history and religion, and, finally, the place of historical Russia in the life of all mankind. L.N. Tolstoy was in many respects the ideological leader of the part of intelligentsia that was looking for a way to rebuild society and change personality by way of abandoning old traditions and institutions, in the new understanding of Christianity, in tough opposition to the everything bureaucratic, police, military, in search of an ideal man freed from the usual social order. John of Kronstadt led the way for as if another Russia – one that sought to follow the path already known in Christianity as the way through humility and repentance, and saw a spiritual rebirth of society and nation in following the traditions of Orthodoxy and autocracy. The dispute between an outstanding preacher and a great writer was not purely religious or even religious-philosophical. It was also a political clash: the struggle for the minds, for the souls, for history.