«We are all guilty»: the Exploitation of Christian Discourse in the Epistolary and Publicistic Writing of A.N. Tolstoy 1917-1923

Abstract

The article explores the pragmatic and ideological aspects of employment of Christian topics by A.N. Tolstoy. This process was extremely intensified in the post-revolutionary period, and then just before the return of the writer to the USSR. This motif complex was exploited by the writer in order to express his historiosophical views: he used the image of the state-Leviathan, which during the revolution disintegrated into its component parts and, renewed after the Civil war, must unite into a single «body». The Bolsheviks were directly compared to demons, and the criticism of them is guided by Dostoevsky's philosophical views. Later, shortly before leaving for the USSR, Tolstoy, with the help of Christian imagery, explained the change of ideological position: he turned to the category of conciliarism and metaphors of «death» and «resurrection». To strengthen the support Tolstoy implicitly compared his misadventures in emigration with the agonies of Christ on the cross. The use of Christian imagery both in everyday speech and in journalism helped to give an ambiguous act a messianic tint.