December
6 weekly readings
–58. Women / Sisters
Zhenshchiny / Sestry
Part I: Leo Tolstoy; Part II: Leo Tolstoy (adapted from Maupassant)
A devastating pairing: Tolstoy's essay on woman's calling as mother followed by a story of a girl driven to prostitution. The juxtaposition creates a sharp contrast between idealized vision and brutal
–60. Teaching of the Twelve Apostles
Uchenie dvenadtsati apostolov
Part I: Leo Tolstoy (preface); Part II: The Didache (translated by Leo Tolstoy)
A two-part meditation on early Christianity. Tolstoy introduces the *Didache*, the ancient text discovered in 1883, explaining why this first-century document confirming Christianity as ethical teachi
Love One Another
Lyubite drug druga
Leo Tolstoy
This is an address Tolstoy wrote for a circle of young people, likely one of the Tolstoyan communities that had formed around his religious and ethical teachings. Written in his later years, it repres
Garrison and His "Declaration"
Garrison i ego "Provozglashenie"
Leo Tolstoy (introduction) and William Lloyd Garrison (Declaration of Sentiments, 1838)
William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) was the leading American abolitionist and founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1838, he also helped found the New England Non-Resistance Society, whose "
The Damaged One
Povrezhdenny
Alexander Herzen (1812-1870)
This excerpt is from Herzen's semi-autobiographical work *From the Other Shore* (1850) or related travel writings. Herzen, the great Russian thinker and publisher of *The Bell* (*Kolokol*), here descr
On the Nazarene Sect
O sekte nazaren
V. Olkhovsky (from the book "The Nazarenes in Hungary," published by Posrednik)
The Nazarenes were a Christian pacifist sect that emerged in Hungary in the mid-nineteenth century, spreading to Serbia, Croatia, and other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They rejected military