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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.”
After citing Tolstoy’s anti-government views, the police statement continues: “Therefore the actions of Citizen Nikitin should be interpreted as a call to overthrow the existing authorities and also to follow the ideology of Tolstoy.”
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, thousands of people have been arrested for protesting against the war or taking actions interpreted as doing so.
