The Work
Resurrection (Voskreseniye) was published serially in the Russian journal Niva in 1899 and as a book the same year. It was Tolstoy's last major novel, written when he was in his early seventies, and is the most explicitly theological of his major works. Unusually for Tolstoy, the novel was written with a practical purpose: the proceeds from its serialization were used to fund the emigration of the Doukhobors - a Russian pacifist Christian sect whose members had refused military service and were being persecuted by the Tsarist government - to Canada, where they settled in Saskatchewan and British Columbia.
The novel is approximately 500 pages and is organized in three parts: Nekhlyudov's recognition of Katyusha on the jury (Book I), his attempts to follow her through the Russian prison system and help her case (Book II), and Katyusha's final fate in Siberia and Nekhlyudov's moral transformation (Book III). It is less successful as a novel than War and Peace or Anna Karenina - its didactic purposes sometimes override its narrative - but its theological content is more direct and sustained than either.
Biblical Engagement
Matthew 5:38-39 (the antithesis on non-resistance: 'Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil') is the Sermon on the Mount text most directly engaged in the novel's social criticism. Tolstoy uses Nekhlyudov's journey through the Russian prison and judicial system to demonstrate the structural evil of a society organized around coercive punishment - and to contrast it with Jesus's command to transcend the lex talionis.
Luke 15:17 ('And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!') is the novel's psychological turning point. Nekhlyudov's moment of recognition - sitting in the courtroom and seeing in the accused woman Katyusha the girl he seduced and abandoned - is explicitly modeled on the Prodigal Son's 'coming to himself': the sudden, shattering self-awareness that begins the journey back. The Russian word Tolstoy uses for Nekhlyudov's awakening (voskreseniye - 'resurrection') is the same word as the novel's title: his spiritual rebirth mirrors the book's larger theme.
John 8:11 - 'And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more' - is the theological model for Nekhlyudov's engagement with Katyusha. Just as Jesus refuses to condemn the woman taken in adultery, Nekhlyudov must refuse to condemn Katyusha while acknowledging his own responsibility for her degradation. The Johannine pattern of non-condemnation without moral complacency is the model for Tolstoy's social ethic: neither the Pharisee's condemnation of the sinner nor the liberal's indifference to sin, but the prophetic combination of mercy and accountability.
The Sermon on the Mount as a whole (Matthew 5-7) is the novel's explicit theological reference point, invoked directly in the final chapter. Nekhlyudov, alone in Siberia after Katyusha has married someone else and released him from his proposed marriage to her, reads the Sermon on the Mount for the first time with genuine attention. The five rules he extracts from the Sermon - do not be angry, do not lust, do not take oaths, do not resist evil, do not go to war - become his personal manifesto for a new life.
Author and Context
Tolstoy wrote Resurrection in the period of his greatest social activism: the period when he was publicly supporting the Doukhobors, distributing his literary royalties, and advocating for peasant relief during the 1891 famine. His excommunication from the Orthodox Church came two years after the novel's publication (1901), but the theological positions that provoked it are fully present in the book: his rejection of the Church's sacraments as meaningless ritual (there is a sharply critical scene depicting a prison Eucharist), his identification of Jesus's ethics with nonviolent social transformation, and his contempt for the clergy as parasites on the poor.
The novel's origin was in a true story told to Tolstoy by the jurist Anatoly Koni: a nobleman named Krivolsky had seduced a servant girl, gotten her with child, and dismissed her; she had subsequently become a prostitute, been convicted of theft, and sentenced to Siberia. When Krivolsky recognized her on a jury, he sought to make amends. Tolstoy transformed this story into a vehicle for his mature theological vision.
Structure and Argument
Book I establishes the central situation: Nekhlyudov, a wealthy landowner and former military officer, is serving on a jury. He recognizes in the accused prostitute Katyusha Maslova the girl he seduced ten years earlier. The jury, through his carelessness, convicts her unjustly and sentences her to hard labor in Siberia. His recognition of his guilt and his decision to follow her to Siberia and attempt to marry her - to make amends - is the novel's initiating action.
Book II follows Nekhlyudov through the Russian prison system: the pre-trial detention centers, the prisons, the transit camps. Tolstoy draws on his own observations and on extensive research to depict the system with documentary realism. The contrast between the comfort of Nekhlyudov's world and the degradation of the prison world is the novel's central social argument.
Book III accompanies Nekhlyudov to Siberia, where he encounters political prisoners and Katyusha's final transformation. Katyusha refuses Nekhlyudov's marriage proposal (she believes it would compromise him and that she does not deserve it) and instead marries a political prisoner named Simonson. Nekhlyudov's acceptance of her decision, and his final reading of the Sermon on the Mount, constitute the novel's resolution.
Critical Reception
The novel was widely read and debated on publication. Bernard Shaw praised its social analysis. In Russia, the novel's social criticism of the judicial and prison system was taken seriously by reformers. The Church's reaction to its portrayal of the Eucharist and the clergy was severe and contributed to the excommunication of 1901.
Literary critics have generally regarded it as inferior to Tolstoy's earlier fiction. The didactic passages - including the lengthy prison statistics and the final exposition of the Sermon on the Mount - disrupt the narrative and reflect Tolstoy's declining interest in fiction as such. The Doukhobor fundraising purpose is sometimes visible in the novel's structure, which gives unusual prominence to the political prisoners rather than developing the Nekhlyudov-Katyusha relationship as fully as it deserves.
Theological Significance
The novel's theological contribution is its application of the 'coming to himself' moment - the Prodigal Son's self-awareness that initiates repentance - to the specifically social situation of class guilt. Nekhlyudov does not only recognize his personal sin against Katyusha; he recognizes that his comfortable life is structurally built on the exploitation of the poor. His journey through the prison system is both personal penance and social diagnosis.
This combination of personal repentance and social analysis is Tolstoy's most sustained attempt to give concrete social content to Jesus's ethics. The Sermon on the Mount is not only about personal virtue but about the transformation of social structures - about a society organized around mercy and non-coercion rather than around punishment and profit.
Legacy
The novel had a direct practical legacy in its funding of the Doukhobor emigration. Its social influence on Russian radical thought - its depiction of the prison system as a machine for producing criminals rather than reforming them - contributed to the reform discussions of the late Tsarist period. Its theological influence on Tolstoyan communities worldwide introduced the concept of moral repentance combined with social responsibility into the international Christian left.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study Luke 15:11-24 (the Prodigal Son's 'coming to himself'), John 8:1-11 (the woman taken in adultery), Matthew 5-7 (the Sermon on the Mount), Amos 5:21-24 (I hate your religious festivals; let justice roll down like water), and Micah 6:1-8 (what God requires: justice, kindness, humility).
Further Reading
- A.N. Wilson, Tolstoy (1988) - the best English-language biography, with detailed coverage of the later works and their theological context. - Theodore Redpath, Tolstoy (1960) - a careful literary study with good analysis of the theological dimensions of the major novels. - Leo Tolstoy, A Confession (1882) - Tolstoy's own account of his spiritual crisis and conversion to Christian anarchism, essential background for Resurrection.