Lev Tolstoy

In reply to a request for his views on Zionism, Count Leo Tolstoy writes:

“There is no progressive spirit in this movement, which is cut out according to European fashion — it has not even the character of progress of which they speak so eloquently at their congresses. And this is the most amazing feature of it all. If the leaders of Zionism, generally sensitive and sensible men, but far from their people, were unable to create a healthy national movement, they are not to be blamed. They are eager to do something, but they can not. But if all these people, with their quick understanding of everything that is progressive and striking, did not understand what really moves the higher life of Europe and what constitutes the power of the summits of the European minds, they can not be excused under any circumstances. Believing that the strength of Europe lies in its imperialism — that is in its gun powder, with all the horrors of militarism — they have decided to array their old man also in the armor of a warrior and give him a rifle in his hands. They felt like creating a new Juden-Staat. The best minds in Europe, and also in America, all those that think truthfully and sincerely, are agitated to the very depths of their souls at the madness and horror of this abyss whither savage mankind, so-called civilized, is drifting head foremost.

“All that is right, sensible, and not enslaved by fear of money is striving with all its might to undeceive the people and to remind them that the strength of mankind does not at all lie in the cannon power of imperialism, and that the future of mankind is not in the passion to separate themselves and to live in small states. Those that are truly progressive see the happiness of mankind in just the reverse, in broad union and in the complete absence of cannon and mortars and those groups which are now held together only by the power of mortars, thus ruining the life of the people. All the rational work of the rational portion of mankind is against such imperialism. And they, the leaders of Zionism, want to give life to this antiquity and call such a wild aspiration — progress.

“This is a great sin. It borders on blasphemy against the most sacred things that we have in life now. We need no new government; we need loving people who see in their love the mission of life and love of God. What is it that tempted them, what is it that they like so much in this nationalist, which is in reality a military movement among the European little nations which the leaders of Zionism are apparently trying to imitate with all their might? Is it the toy freedom of Servia, where the word of the Austrian ambassador is of greater importance than the orders of the King, and where all their freedom comes to nothing but endless slaughter and intrigues among the parties, and finally to the ruination of the peasants and the exhaustion of the land, which is overburdened with taxes in order to maintain the great, number of officials and soldiers, who could be mowed down by two or three volleys from a small battery? Do they like this? Or do they like the seeming freedom of Bulgaria, which is also torn asunder by riots on account of their temporary little Czars, and which will soon be swallowed up by some other power? Or do they like Rumania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Crete, Greece — which of these does Zionism like? I say nothing of Italy, France, England, Germany, and some of the countries still nearer to us, where the cry also goes up to Heaven from the tortured people who are becoming savage and impoverished, thanks to militarism and organization.

“The healthy seed of immigration which is striving to break up the congestion of the Jews and to bring them back to long-forgotten agriculture — this undoubtedly a pure and beautiful movement, which the Zionists now claim as their own — does not at all belong to the Zionists. The tendency toward colonization existed before; Zionism has boldly usurped it and given it an unnatural and unnecessary political coloring, and has thus completely checked the return of the Jews to agriculture. The vision of a Jewish State was started, and this has only complicated the simple and clear desire of the people to leave the cities and take up the only proper, healthy living, and honest work of God — the tilling of the soil.”