19th Century
Leo Tolstoy
1828–1910 · Christian anarchism
The kingdom of God is within. No state can deliver it.
In their words
“Government is violence, and the only way to oppose it is to refuse to take part.”
After Anna Karenina, Tolstoy turned to a moral program of nonresistance to evil, arguing that the state is sustained by violence, taxation and the blessing of the church, and that a Christian cannot participate in it. He corresponded with Gandhi, whose satyagraha drew directly on his reading. He died in a railway station, having renounced his estate and his copyrights.
Why it matters for freedom
He argued that the state lives on the obedience of ordinary people, and that withdrawing it is enough.
Who they stood against
the tsar, the church, and every institution that ran on organized force