![]() ![]() However, just as in the West, the history of the Soviet peace movement has to be considered as part of the history of modern Christianity and contemporary religious thought. At first sight, the new wave of the pacifist movement looked entirely secular. Their agenda covered antinuclear activism, demilitarization, nonviolence, human rights, freedom of worship, social and cultural tolerance, conscientious objection, alternative military service, calls against psychiatric repressions, democratization, ecological issues, and many more. The two main groups – the anti-nuclear Group to Establish Trust between East and West (the Trust Group) and the pacifist group Free Initiative – represented the movement. ![]() The grassroots peace activism re-emerged in the USSR only in the 1980s on the new social base. ![]() As a result, between the 1940s and 1960s, the traditions of Russian pacifist movement were almost forgotten. Those few Tolstoyans, who survived the Great Terror in the late 1930s and the Second World War, did not participate in any public events and never attempted any self-organizing actions. They also struggled against the militarization of consciousness and everyday life, corresponded with their foreign adherents, and organized the famine relief in Russia in collaboration with international organizations. In the early Soviet period, the Russian pacifists, advocating the values of nonviolence, appealed to the authorities with the protest against violence, coordinated interreligious dialogue, organized lectures on the history of religious freedom and nonviolence. The first wave of the Russian pacifist movement reached the peak of their public success after the revolutions of 1917. ![]() Tolstoyans aimed to transform spontaneous practices of passive resistance and non-cooperation (‘weapon of the weak’) into the modern, ethical (nonviolent) and effective methods of social protest against the state, the Church and war. Tolstoy and Tolstoyans supported the popular protest against the total invasion of the state, enriching it by the ideas of peace and nonviolence and attempted to create a public movement based on these values. Among them, there were the Dukhobors, Molokans, Malevantsy, S’utaevtsy, Dobroliubovtsy, Baptists, Evangelical Christians, Mennonites, Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovists (Il’in’s followers), New Israelites, spiritual monists, Teetotalers (Trezvenniki), as well as ndividual God-seekers. Apart from the Tolstoyans, the representatives of some other religious and ethical groups declared – individually or collectively – their support to the pacifism. Although the leaders of the pacifist movement in Russia came mainly from the privileged circles, the movement was geared towards the ordinary people – namely the religious sectarians, peasants and workers. Additionally, there were attempts to formulate a programme for Christian anarchism on the pages of Tolstoyan periodicals, along with a discussion on the forms of political life for the Christians and the methods of nonviolent resistance. The final goal of them was proclaimed to be a worldwide revolution of Brotherhood, which had to be a nonviolent, moral, spiritual revolution. Its main values were nonviolence, freedom of conscience, and social justice. The Tolstoyan pacifist movement was both religious and socio-political in nature. It was almost completely secular in character however, it was preceded by several separate religious peace initiatives of the 1960–1970s. The second one emerged in the late Soviet period in the form of the independent peace movement. One of the waves started in the early 20th century, and it was represented by the Tolstoyan radical pacifist movement that had a massive social base among the Russian religious sectarians. The article explores two waves of the pacifist movement in the 20th century Russia. ![]()
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