RUSSIAN police have tried to justify the arrest of a man who was holding up a quotation from Leo Tolstoy, saying that the novelist’s anti-tsarist views meant that his act should be interpreted as incitement to “overthrow the existing authorities.”

The world-famous author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, who died in 1910, was a pacifist whose advocacy of non-violent resistance was an influence on Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, but a police report on Saturday’s arrest of Alexei Nikitin in Moscow said: “This writer’s works and articles were harshly critical of the ruling regime, including for justifying violence.”

Mr Nikitin’s placard quoted Tolstoy as saying: “Patriotism is the abdication of human dignity, reason and conscience and a slavish submission to those in power. Patriotism is slavery.”