Yemelyan Yaroslavsky 1942
Author: Yemelyan Yaroslavsky;
Written: 1942;
First published: 11 March 1942 in Pravda;
Translated by: Anton P.
In their hatred of the Russian people, who stood in the way of their predatory plans and inflicted terrible blows on this gang of murderers, arsonists, rapists, invaders, the Nazis stop at nothing. In a special order of General Field Marshal von Reichsnau, approved by Hitler, the German command calls on the soldiers of the German army to destroy all cultural and historical values ? belonging to the Soviet people, to consume the Soviet population in the areas occupied by the Germans. The order explicitly states: “No historical or artistic values matter ??in the East.” This means that such acts of vandalism as the desecration and destruction of Yasnaya Polyana, the destruction of the house of the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky, the desecration of the grave and destruction of the monument to the great Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, the burning of thousands of Soviet schools, palaces of culture, theaters, libraries and other cultural institutions, are a direct order from Hitler.
In particular, the entire civilized world was shocked by the unheard-of vandalism in the history of wars of the last centuries, expressed in the destruction of monuments associated with the life and work of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana. Hitler said: “A people who consider Leo Tolstoy a great writer cannot claim to exist on their own.”
But what if Tolstoy is recognized as a great writer not only by the Russian people, if he is recognized as a great, brilliant writer not only by the peoples of the USSR, but also by all the civilized peoples of the world? What if there is also a genuine German nation, which has nothing to do with the Hitlerite clique, and if this nation also considers Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy a great, a genius writer? It turns out that all peoples are “guilty” before Hitler and his gang and therefore do not deserve to be independent peoples?
We Bolsheviks have always assessed Tolstoy’s great literary legacy critically. No one else criticized Leo Tolstoy as sharply as Lenin, especially his doctrine of not resisting evil by violence. But it was Lenin who called Tolstoy the mirror of the Russian revolution. It was Lenin who wrote about Tolstoy that he was “a brilliant artist who gave not only incomparable pictures of Russian life, but also first-class works of world literature.” It was Lenin who wrote: “Tolstoy is great as an exponent of those ideas and moods that had developed among millions of the Russian peasantry at the time of the onset of the bourgeois revolution in Russia.” Yes, Lenin criticized the great Russian writer; but he also pointed out that “Leo Tolstoy managed to put in his works so many great questions, he managed to rise to such an artistic power that his productions took one of the first places in the world of fiction.” And the era that followed the abolition of serfdom in Russia “acted, thanks to the ingenious coverage of Tolstoy, as a step forward in the artistic development of all mankind.”
Anyone who gets acquainted with the works of the great Russian writer cannot get away from the deep impression of the enormous power of sincerity of everything that Tolstoy wrote. Tolstoy himself expressed this in his work On the Meaning of Life very vividly: “On his own; each one comes to the truth, but one thing I have to say: what I write is not one word, I live by them, they are my happiness, and with these I will die.”
The best people of Germany before the Nazis came to power, when there was still an elementary freedom of speech and press in Germany, now strangled by the Nazis, expressed thoughts about Tolstoy that reflected the opinions of the true German people on Tolstoy. One could cite the vivid thoughts of such writers as Franz Mehring, Stefan Zweig, Heinrich Mann, Anna Seghers, Rosa Luxemburg. Of course, any fascist, after reading these lines, will say: but all this was written by the anti-fascists. We have no doubt that the Nazis have withdrawn from all German libraries the works of Franz Mehring, and Heinrich Mann and Stefan Zweig and Rosa Luxemburg, and all the other works that are not so written as to express the opinions of Goebbels, Hitler or Rosenberg. But still, maybe the fascists have not managed to destroy in their libraries the works of numerous German writers, who in their time, long before the Nazis came to power, honestly wrote about Tolstoy. Acquaintance with pre-fascist German literature about Tolstoy in various directions, with critics, preachers, respected professors; and with major names convinces us that the overwhelming majority of German writers of various directions, very far from socialism, communism, terribly far from Marxism, wrote about Tolstoy with great respect. And there is no doubt that they expressed in their works not only their personal opinion, but also the opinion of the German people. Many of these works were published with great love, on beautiful paper, with many illustrations, in which Yasnaya Polyana was reproduced in almost all details, the same Yasnaya Polyana that was destroyed and desecrated by the Nazi bandits. An acquaintance with these works convinces us that the Hitlerite clique has nothing in common with the German people, with German culture.
Here is a very well-published book by Julius Hart (1859-1930) from a series that includes the works of Ibsen, Hugo, Boccachio, Cervantes, Goethe, Shakespeare: as we can see, Tolstoy was not in bad company in pre-fascist Germany. Julius Hart writes: “This wonderful artist, who lovingly embraces all people, knows how to reincarnate in everyone and live his life ... Tolstoy’s work is nature itself. It seems as if all day long we walk alone through the mountains or descend to the seashore. Granite rocks rise in front of us, water streams rush into the valley, and ancient forests rustle. Here stands the eternal sun in the sky, and a fiery light penetrates the air. This world is filled with peace, and we drink from the green thicket the joy of a deep quiet life, we drink the wine of the sacred world.”
Before us is a luxuriously published book, L. N. Tolstoy, written by Professor Eugen Zabel (Leipzig, 1901). The author devotes this book to none other than the German Reich Chancellor Prince Hohenloe-Schillingfurst “as a token of grateful memory of the castle of Werka.” The author is too far from the radical circles of Germany. He writes: “At the present time, Count Leo Tolstoy, whom we met relatively late in Germany, has more value for us than any other Russian writer. His works have appeared in numerous translations and it is difficult even to take into account the number of editions of his works.” Zabel speaks of Tolstoy’s ever-growing popularity in Germany. “But this does not only apply to Germany; and the French, and the British, and the Americans cannot free themselves from the charm of the mystery radiated by this man.”
Raphael Lowenfeld (1854-1910) in the book Leo Tolstoy, his life, work and philosophy (Berlin, 1892) wrote about Tolstoy: “He who is able to take a clear gaze into the future, someone who understands the language of the present day, understands that Tolstoy is a rare person, that such people come only at moments of great turns in world history to teach, warn, save humanity.” Lowenfeld believes that while Tolstoy the person, is not yet sufficiently known, Tolstoy the writer has conquered the world.
Michael Walter in his book Tolstoy in his socio-economic, state-theoretical and political worldview (Zurich, 1907) writes about the enormous influence of Tolstoy on his contemporaries. “Whoever delves into the creative world of Tolstoy will feel in the depths of his heart a mute call, compelling us to think with an iron force. This is not logic that has irresistibly captivated us. It is rather the elementary power of sensation and truth; this is a magnificent silence, but it is more terrible than the loudest accusation. You experience a powerful feeling that for the one who says so, there is nothing intimate in our soul.”
Some people in 1913 published a book in Heidelberg with many magnificent examples of monuments of Russian culture and art, On Russia, Russian art and the great writer of the Russian land. The author Karl Staehlin (1865-1939) begins his essay with the words: “Again and again we meet the name of the great Russian landowner. Again and again I myself have heard this name in Russia from different people under different circumstances.” Stahlin criticizes Tolstoy, but he recognizes the enormous influence of this “most interesting man of the era, who awakens the conscience of people and teaches them to understand the big questions of life.”
The Germans published in 1926 a correspondence between Leo Tolstoy and Eugen Schmidt, a famous German preacher. In the preface, written by Ernst Keiche, an unconditional opponent of Marx, Tolstoy is given a very large place among the great writers and thinkers. Tolstoy is compared with Goethe and Socrates. The author poses the question: “What new and important things did Tolstoy give to modern Germany?” The author credits Tolstoy with the fact that throughout all his life he was looking for ways to create the unity of mankind. “This unheard-of search for the meaning of life, full of spirituality, misery and suffering, was only a search for an integral, complete truth, a truth that could unite all of humanity, regardless of religious affiliation.”
Pre-fascist Germanshy has a whole series of works about Tolstoy, which critically and at the same time lovingly describe the activities of the great Russian writer in various fields. Here is a book by Walther Allerhand, Leo Tolstoy as a playwright (Leipzig, 1927). The foreword literally says: “Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy stands next to Plato, Luther, Kant, and Goethe, for he is more than a Russian thinker. He is a teacher of humanity, a reformer, a prophet; he occupies an equal place with them not only in the history of literature, but also in the history of mankind, in the history of culture.”
Dr. Gerhard Prox wrote the book Tolstoy as a teacher and his philosophy of education. Here are the words in which this German expert on pedagogy characterizes Tolstoy thus: “The great Russian writer was one of the most famous personalities of the spiritual world of his century ... The influence of this thinker is enormous: Tolstoy set a high goal as a thinker, a preacher in the education of mankind, and he fought for a new mankind with renewed spiritual forces.” We could endlessly continue these extracts from the works of German authors, unanimously testifying that before the fascists came to power, cultured Germany had a completely different assessment of Tolstoy, and had a different assessment of Russian culture than the gang of fascists. It cannot be that the Hitlerites in the eight years of their existence could eradicate from the consciousness of the German people, from German life, this culture accumulated over the centuries, which placed the German people among other civilized peoples!
When the staff of the Leo Tolstoy Museum in Yasnaya Polyana asked of the German officer Schwartz to stop burning personal furniture and books of the great writer in stoves, to take the available firewood for heating, the German officer Schwartz, a vile fascist, replied: “We don’t need firewood. We will burn everything connected with the name of your Tolstoy.” No, you won’t! You will not burn, by any torture you will not burn out from the consciousness of Russian people respect for Russian culture, love for this huge cultural heritage, you do not erase respect for the great writer of the land of Russia Leo Tolstoy! Let the news that the Russian people are energetically restoring everything that the Germans tried to burn, defile, and destroy in Yasnaya Polyana, let these news like a curse drive the fascist gang away! And the Nazis cannot burn out from the consciousness of the German people the painful idea that Hitler is perpetrating such atrocities in the name of the German people. We do not identify Hitler’s clique with the German people, with the German states. We believe that the German people will find the strength to destroy this clique.
We know what the fascists hate Tolstoy for. They hate him, as a Russian writer, who was an enemy of lies, an enemy of deceiving the people: the fascists, however, built their rule from beginning to end on lies, on deceiving the people. The Nazis hate Tolstoy because Tolstoy is the enemy of parasites and exploiters, and the fascists defend the most vile exploiting system, restore the worst forms of serfdom, and crush the freedom of peoples. The fascists hate Tolstoy because Tolstoy, the author of War and Peace, has shown the greatness, courage, and resilience of the Russian people, against which Napoleon’s armies have crashed, against which Hitler’s bands are broken and smashed. The fascists hate Tolstoy because Tolstoy preaches peace between peoples, friendship between peoples, and the Nazis build their prosperity on war, on the extermination of peoples, on their enslavement.
But everything that is hateful to the Hitler clique in Tolstoy, in the Russian people, in Russian culture, in the culture of the Soviet peoples, all this is dear to all mankind, all this is valuable for the German people as well. Recently, the public and political figures of Germany, in their address to the German people, wrote: “We cannot allow that on the day of the judgment of nations, which is inevitably approaching closer and closer, all people in all countries would rise and say: the Germans burned my house, the Germans dishonored my wife, they killed my child, the Germans devastated my country, the Germans tortured my people. We want the German people to have the right to say on this terrible day: but we, the Germans, found the strength in ourselves to rise up against the villains in Germany itself, that we in deed, and not separating ourselves from other nations, we ourselves helped mankind to settle accounts with Hitler, with all his pack of assassins.”
The peoples of the USSR want this with all their soul.
Smash the Hitlerite hordes, destroy the invaders. The Red Army thereby helps the German people to free themselves from the villainous fascist clique that has covered Germany with shame. We believe that the German people will find the strength to put an end to this clique at home.