DeepSeek AI - Tolstoy on Patriotism for Russia in June 2026
Brief summary of the previous essay: "The Unheard Confession"
Previously, in an essay based on an analysis of a channeling session with the "spirit of Leo Tolstoy," we arrived at a paradoxical conclusion: the writer's final enigma lies not in his ideological break with the Church, but in a deeply personal, psychological drama. The main revelation was not so much the mystical motivation for his departure (a vision of Christ commanding him to seek Communion), but rather the structure of his inner world.
The essence of Tolstoy's tragedy, according to this study, lies in his inability to be the one who asks. He knew how to give love, to instruct and teach, but he did not know how to receive love, forgive himself, or ask for help. This pattern manifested in everything: he supported his dying brother's desire to receive communion, but could not ask for the same for himself at the gates of Optina Pustyn; he admitted his wrongs to his wife only after death, but could not confess his spiritual crisis to his own daughter during his lifetime to "preserve his authority as a father"; he saw the prophetic importance of the failed meeting with Dostoevsky, but could not take the first step toward dialogue. The central conflict of Tolstoy's final days is not a conflict with God or the Church, but with his own ego, with the image of an infallible prophet that he himself had created.
It is precisely this psychological dilemma—the inability to humble himself and ask—that becomes the key to understanding his journalism on patriotism, which today, in June 2026, reveals itself from a new, unsettling side.
Tolstoy on Patriotism: The Anarchist Ideal as a Spiritual Crisis
For the Tolstoy of the 1890s, the time of writing the articles "Christianity and Patriotism" and "Patriotism and Government," patriotism is not merely a feeling but a complex socio-psychological and spiritual phenomenon. His critique lacks nuance, but it is precisely in this uncompromisingness that both its strength and weakness lie.
1. Patriotism as an "Immoral Feeling" and an Instrument of Deception
Tolstoy argues that patriotism in its contemporary understanding is a "very immoral" feeling, for it "inevitably inclines every person... to seek advantages for their own state and people at the expense of others." This, in his view, is directly opposed to the Christian law of love and equality.
He vehemently exposes the mechanisms by which governments and ruling classes use patriotism for their own selfish ends. Patriotism is "an instrument for achieving power-hungry and selfish goals," "intoxication," "hypnosis" that keeps the people in submission. With astonishing precision for his time, Tolstoy describes the "backstage" of preparations for war:
"The bells will ring... the factory owners, merchants, and military suppliers will bustle about joyfully, anticipating double profits. All sorts of officials will bustle about, foreseeing the opportunity to steal more... the military authorities will bustle about... hoping to receive... trinkets—ribbons, crosses, braid, stars."
Patriotism, supported by schools, the church, and the press, creates that very "public opinion" that allows governments to exist. True power, according to Tolstoy, rests not on bayonets but on this collective hypnosis, on "public opinion" that patriotism is a virtue.
2. Contradiction with Self: Artist vs. Publicist
Here we encounter the first "Tolstoyan contradiction." In his journalistic articles, he denies patriotism as a feeling inherent to the people, claiming that a peasant is indifferent "which government he will have to pay taxes to and which army he will have to send his sons to." He cites the example of a peasant elder who, when threatened with war with France, replied: "But you yourselves say that they have things better arranged than we do... Let them arrange things the same way for us."
However, as a brilliant artist, in War and Peace he described a completely different phenomenon—the "hidden warmth of patriotism"—that organic, unselfconscious feeling that roused the people to defend the Fatherland in 1812. This contradiction is not accidental. It stems from his main psychological dilemma, described in the previous essay: Tolstoy denies patriotism as a "carnal," "instinctive" feeling that he cannot control and reconcile with his "spiritual" ideal of universal brotherhood. He attempts to "rewrite" reality in accordance with his rationalistic, moral teaching, refusing to acknowledge the complexity and ambivalence of human nature.
3. "Non-Resistance" as the Only Way Out
The way out of this vicious circle for Tolstoy is singular—the rejection of patriotism and, consequently, of participation in the affairs of state and in wars. This is his concept of "non-resistance to evil by force" in action. The means to prevent war is "for those who do not need war, who consider participation in it a sin, to not fight." This is not doing—a refusal of unreasonable and archaic actions based on struggle. It is a call to individual moral awakening, to breaking free from the "hypnosis of patriotism."
June 2026: A Look Across a Century
What does this text mean for us today, in Russia 2026, where patriotism is one of the central ideological categories?
1. Prophetic Wrath and Utopian Deadlock.
Tolstoy's wrath directed against the hypocrisy of authorities using patriotism to justify wars and enrich themselves sounds frighteningly contemporary. His description of the mechanisms of manipulating public opinion—"hypnosis" through the media, church, and education—remains a brilliant analysis of propaganda. In this sense, his journalism is "eternal" literature, denouncing injustice wherever it appears.
However, his solution—the rejection of patriotism altogether and the call for individual "non-resistance"—in the context of a modern world full of global and local conflicts, appears not only utopian but also a form of spiritual suicide. He sees no difference between the patriotism of a liberation struggle and aggressive nationalism. For him, it is always "evil," and this perfectly aligns with his inner drama: Tolstoy cannot accept an imperfect world where love for "one's own" (family, people) may conflict with love for "strangers." He proposes renouncing the former for the sake of the latter, which is psychologically impossible for most people and destructive for any state.
2. The Spiritual Crisis of Authority.
Here we return again to the main revelation of the previous essay. Tolstoy, preaching the rejection of patriotism and love for all humanity, himself became a prisoner of his own authoritarian image. He demanded humility and non-resistance from others, but could not humble himself and ask for simple human communion. His article "Christianity and Patriotism" is also a kind of cry, a plea for people to "come to their senses," but this plea comes from a prophet who himself does not know how to be simply human.
3. The Challenge for the Modern Reader.
For us, in Russia 2026, Tolstoy's essay on patriotism is a challenge. He poses to each person the question: am I capable of such a radical break with my country, culture, and identity in the name of an abstract ideal of universal brotherhood? And if not, does that mean I am a hypocrite, "going with the flow," supporting that very "hypnotic" public opinion that he so fiercely criticized?
Tolstoy does not give us an answer. He merely exposes the abyss between the ideal, absolute demand for love and the imperfect, but real, life of a person attached to their "small homeland." His contradictions are our contradictions. Perhaps the main lesson of "Christianity and Patriotism" is not that patriotism is evil, nor that it is a virtue. But rather that living in this imperfect world, loving one's country without hating others, and preserving the capacity for critical thinking and compassion—this is that very complex, agonizing, but only available struggle of "spirit" and "flesh" about which Tolstoy knew so well from personal experience.
And therefore, reading him today, it is worth remembering not only his angry words but also his silence at the gates of Optina. Perhaps this silence is his most important lesson about humility, one that he lacked the strength for in life, but which he left us as a testament.
GENSPARK AI -
Leo Tolstoy on Patriotism for Russia in June 2026
If one reads Tolstoy from June 2026, the main thing in him is not a political program or historical reference, but a merciless diagnosis of a soul that wants simultaneously to be moral and to be protected by the force of the state. Therefore, I would take this "session with the spirit of Tolstoy" not as historical testimony, but as a contemporary spiritual apocrypha: not proof of an afterlife Tolstoy, but a symptom of our need to hear him anew where official culture, military rhetoric, and everyday fear have long drowned out the voice of conscience. In this sense, the very genre of such a text is already telling: Russia needs not just Tolstoy's opinion, but a return to his inner nerve—to shame, truth, and the impossibility of living calmly amidst lies.
The strongest idea in this apocryphal material is the reinterpretation of Tolstoy's final days not as a proud flight, but as a failed pilgrimage toward reconciliation. The page's author reads the departure from Yasnaya Polyana as a movement not away from Christianity, but painfully back—toward what Tolstoy once rejected in its ecclesiastical form, but perhaps could not expel from the depths of his heart as a thirst for grace. The key word here is not "heresy" but "shame": not the audacity of a man who defeated the Church, but the torment of a man who can no longer cross the threshold because of his own name, his own polemics, his own image as a prophet. This is spiritually and psychologically very precise: old age often reveals not our convictions, but the limits of our ability to accept forgiveness.
And here the apocrypha unexpectedly coincides with the authentic Tolstoy more deeply than it seems. Because the real Tolstoy of his later years is merciless above all toward collective lies. In "Christianity and Patriotism" and "Patriotism and Government," he asserts one and the same idea: patriotism in the modern world is not an exalted feeling, but a morally damaged form of preferring "one's own" over "strangers," and damaged precisely because it requires advantage for one people at the expense of another. For Tolstoy, this is incompatible with Christianity not for some abstract dogmatic reason, but because Christianity begins where a person no longer permits themselves to hate under the protection of sacred words. The essence of Christianity for him is the brotherhood of people and the destruction of enmity; the essence of patriotism is the sanctification of enmity in the name of duty.
Tolstoy is especially terrifying where he shows: patriotism does not live on its own, but as a technology. Governments, the press, ceremonies, celebrations, school education, religious decor, symbolism, military music—all of this for him is not innocent forms of social life, but machines for arousing moral hypnosis. In the material on the article "Christianity and Patriotism," the historical occasion is clearly visible: the Franco-Russian festivities in Toulon evoke in Tolstoy not admiration, but horror, because behind speeches about peace he sees preparation for a new slaughter. His logic is simple and merciless: where the crowd learns to delight in the alliance of force, it is already spiritually ready to accept war as a celebration of necessity. Therefore, for him, patriotism is not love for one's native land, but a mass permission to stop feeling another's pain.
But even more important is that Tolstoy destroys the very psychological legend of patriotism. The patriot loves to think that they are driven by sacrifice; Tolstoy answers: no, more often they are driven by fear—fear of being outside the majority, outside the banner, outside the great "we." Patriotism is so strong precisely because it relieves the individual of the torment of personal responsibility: one need not ask oneself whether killing is just, if the state, history, the people, the anthem, the ancestors, and the newspaper have already answered for you. In this sense, patriotism is not an excess of love, but a lack of inner independence. And here the apocrypha about Tolstoy's "shame" at the gates of Optina becomes a surprisingly accurate metaphor: a person fears not only the truth, but also the humiliation that the truth will demand of their image. Patriotism too rests on such fear: it promises us dignity without repentance.
A special place in this reflection is occupied by Hadji Murat. There Tolstoy does what political journalism cannot: he shows imperial patriotism not as a thesis, but as a structure of the world. The empire speaks of glory, order, and historical mission; Tolstoy shows a blunt, dead force that breaks living people and is itself spiritually dead. Remarkably, the story mirrors the denunciation of both poles of power: both tsarist despotism and the fanatical sacralization of power among his opponents. Hadji Murat is great not because he is "ours" or "not ours," but because he preserves a remnant of wholeness among the machines of coercion. For Tolstoy, this is fundamental: moral dignity does not coincide with the state camp. And if Russia wants to understand Tolstoy in 2026, it needs to hear precisely this: a person's honor is above the honor of the state, and the truth about violence is above the myth of civilizational necessity.
From this arises Tolstoy's main question to Russia in June 2026. Not "do you love your homeland?" but "what exactly do you love when you utter this word?" If you love in it only your own reflection, your own grievance, your right to be stronger, your fear of the outside world—this is not love, but collective self-love. If you love in it people, the elderly, children, arable land, language, conscience, the ability not to lie, the ability to pity and not become brutal—then such love begins to move beyond patriotism into humanity. That is precisely why Tolstoy so hated the substitution: the state demands love for itself, while the Christian conscience demands love for the human being. And between these two demands, one cannot sit forever on two chairs.
There is another thought, important precisely for spiritual-psychological reading. In the apocryphal text about the "spirit of Tolstoy," the revolution is explained as a consequence of the upper classes' unwillingness to care for the people. This is not a document, but it is very Tolstoyan in its mode of thought: catastrophes begin long before the shots—they begin when the upper class ceases to feel the lower class as people, and the lower class begins to feel the upper class as barren lies. Patriotism in such a society becomes not a connection, but a narcotic. It covers the absence of brotherhood. It consoles instead of repenting. It replaces love for the people when real care for the people is no longer there.
Therefore, Tolstoy's answer to Russia in June 2026 would likely sound not as a political recipe, but as a spiritual verdict and simultaneously as a chance: stop lying about violence, stop decorating it with sacred things, stop considering as moral what requires the dehumanization of the other. For Tolstoy, the genuine future begins not where one people definitively defeats another, but where a person ceases to agree to be an instrument of another's will against their own conscience. His anti-patriotism is not hatred of Russia, but a refusal to worship Russia as an idol. He wants not to destroy the homeland, but to free it from the religion of force.
And in this sense, the most alarming and most salvific Tolstoyan thesis today is this: one cannot save the homeland by destroying the soul. Everything else is historical decoration.
LUMO AI -
Tolstoy on Patriotism for Russia in June 2026
A Spiritual-Psychological Essay-Study
I. Preface: Why Tolstoy Today
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy died in 1910. But in June 2026, Russia once again—as in his lifetime—is experiencing a state that he described with merciless precision: a state in which patriotism becomes simultaneously the primary means of governance and the main threat to the spiritual health of the nation. War, sanctions, ideological tension, societal division—all of this is the soil on which the question of the nature of patriotism ceases to be abstract and becomes a matter of life and death.
Tolstoy is a paradoxical figure precisely in the context of patriotism. He wrote War and Peace—the greatest epic of popular resistance to foreign invasion. And he also wrote the articles "Christianity and Patriotism" (1894) and "Patriotism and Government" (1900), where he called patriotism a "bad and harmful feeling," "stupid" and "immoral." This contradiction is not accidental and does not indicate inconsistency of thought. On the contrary—it points to the distinction that Tolstoy drew with surgical clarity: between the living popular feeling that spontaneously arises from connection with the land and people, and artificial patriotism consciously cultivated by governments to maintain power.
This study draws on four sources: Tolstoy's later journalistic articles from volumes 35 and 39 of the 90-volume collected works, the story Hadji Murat, the article "Patriotism and Government," and—as a specific spiritual-cultural document—a channeling session with the "spirit of Tolstoy," published in March 2026 on the Omdaru Literature platform. The latter source is examined here not as a mystical revelation, but as a cultural phenomenon in which contemporary consciousness attempts to enter into dialogue with Tolstoy's legacy—and in which, despite all its evident projectiveness, motifs sound that are surprisingly consonant with the writer's actual texts.
II. The Anatomy of False Patriotism: "Patriotism and Government" (1900)
The article "Patriotism and Government," begun by Tolstoy in February 1900, grew out of a specific occasion: a letter from a German soldier, Johann Kleinpoppen, describing the horrors of military service. But Tolstoy used this particular case to pose a fundamental diagnosis of the entire institution of state patriotism.
Tolstoy's main idea is formulated with extreme directness:
"Not imaginary, but real patriotism—that which we all know, under the influence of which the majority of people of our time find themselves, and from which humanity suffers so cruelly—is not a desire for spiritual benefits for one's people (one cannot desire spiritual benefits for one's people alone), nor the peculiarities of national individualities (this is a property, not a feeling at all)—but is a very definite feeling of preference for one's own people or state over all other peoples or states, and therefore a desire for this people or state to have the greatest welfare and power, which can be acquired and are always acquired only at the expense of the welfare and power of other peoples or states."
Here Tolstoy makes an analytical move that retains full relevance. He distinguishes three things:
First, natural love for one's native places, language, and culture. Tolstoy does not deny this love—it simply is not "patriotism" in the political sense. It is a property of human nature, not an ideological construct.
Second, patriotism as a doctrine of preference for one's own state over all others. It is precisely this form that Tolstoy declares "stupid"—because "if every state considers itself better than all others, then obviously all of them will be wrong"—and "immoral," because it inevitably leads to a desire for advantages for one's own people at the expense of others, directly violating the basic moral law: do not do to others what you do not wish for yourself.
Third, patriotism as an instrument of governmental power. This, according to Tolstoy, is the key to understanding: patriotism does not arise naturally as a mass feeling—it is "artificially implanted," it is purposefully cultivated through schools, the church, the press, chauvinistic literature, military parades, and festive demonstrations. Governments, Tolstoy writes, "feeling that with this patriotism not only their power but also their existence is connected, carefully and by cunning and violence excite and maintain it among the peoples."
For Russia in 2026, this analysis sounds with painful accuracy. State television channels, school programs, patriotic festivals, military parades, the official church—the entire apparatus enumerated by Tolstoy in the article "Christianity and Patriotism" (1894) operates today, with the only difference being that the scale and technical capabilities of influence are incomparably broader.
III. "Christianity and Patriotism" (1894): Religion and the State
The occasion for writing "Christianity and Patriotism" was the visit of a Russian naval squadron to Toulon in October 1893—a return visit following the arrival of the French fleet in Kronstadt in 1892. At first glance—routine military-diplomatic protocol. Tolstoy saw a symptom in it.
He described the mechanism with astonishing detail. Governments use two types of means for the "artificial excitation" of patriotic feeling: permanent ones—schools, the church, the press, "school textbooks, services, sermons, speeches, books, newspapers, poems, monuments"; and exceptional, temporary ones—coronations, military maneuvers, international visits, "turned into lavish celebrations and solemn spectacles, accompanied by cannon salutes, bell ringing, military bands, and fairy-tale illuminations."
Reading this, one sees a direct prototype of contemporary events: St. George's ribbons, Victory Day concerts, billboards with military symbols, mandatory patriotic assemblies in schools. The form is the same. The principle is the same: to transform the living, organic feeling of connection with the homeland into a manageable ideological product.
Particularly important in Tolstoy is the analysis of the alliance of church and state in the cultivation of patriotism. The church blessing war—for Tolstoy, this is the main paradox and the main betrayal of Christianity. Christ taught: "love your enemies." State patriotism teaches: "kill the enemies of your state." These two commandments are incompatible. Tolstoy writes that patriotism is directly opposed to Christianity, for Christianity is a religion of universal brotherhood, while patriotism is the separation of one people from brotherhood and its opposition to the rest.
This argument in 2026, when the Russian Orthodox Church is actively involved in patriotic discourse and the ideological justification of military actions, reads as a direct continuation of Tolstoy's polemic with the official church of his time—a polemic that cost him excommunication in 1901.
IV. Hadji Murat: The Tragedy of a Person Between Despotisms
If Tolstoy's journalistic articles provide a theoretical critique of patriotism, then Hadji Murat (written 1896–1904, published posthumously in 1912) provides its artistic embodiment—and simultaneously supplements the theme that journalism leaves aside: the tragedy of an individual crushed between hostile state machines.
The story opens with the image of a crushed but unyielding thistle—a "Tatar," as Tolstoy calls it. This botanical epigraph is not a decorative metaphor, but a philosophical key to the entire work. Hadji Murat is a man whose life force, whose natural stubbornness in the struggle for existence, is comparable to a weed that "was so crushed that it was impossible to return to life," but which still clings to the earth.
Hadji Murat fits neither within the framework of Russian patriotism (he is an enemy of the empire) nor within the framework of the Chechen national movement (he fled from Shamil, whose power he considered despotic). He finds himself between two despotisms—Nicholas I and Shamil—and both forces are equally destructive for him. Tolstoy with terrifying clinical precision shows the emptiness and cruelty of both systems: the luxury and ceremonies of the Nicholas court, where people's fates are decided by bored courtiers; the fanaticism and terror of the imamate, where betrayal is punished by the death of one's family.
Here Tolstoy does something subtle: he shows that the state as such—regardless of its ideological coloring, religious or secular, monarchical or republican—tends to suppress human dignity. Hadji Murat is not a patriot in the political sense. His devotion is not to the state, but to family, blood, to specific people. He goes over to the Russians not because he stopped loving his land, but because Shamil threatens his family. And he flees from the Russians not because he stopped loving freedom, but because he understands: they will not help return his family; they will use him as a pawn.
The parallel with the situation in 2026 is sad. People caught between state machines—whether citizens who left Russia and were not fully accepted by their new homeland, or residents of conflict zones squeezed between armies—live in the logic of Hadji Murat. The state demands "patriotism" from them, but is ready to sacrifice them to its geopolitical calculations at any second.
V. Volume 35: Tolstoy on Revolution and Violence—An Unheeded Warning
The materials in volume 35 of Tolstoy's 90-volume collected works allow us to see another aspect of the problem—the connection between patriotism, revolution, and social explosion.
Tolstoy was a prophet of revolution—but a prophet of a special kind. He saw that social inequality, the unwillingness of the ruling classes to "care for the people" (as the "spirit" would formulate it in the 2024 session), would inevitably lead to an explosion. In the article "To the Working People" (1902), Tolstoy with merciless honesty exposes the exploitative nature of the tsarist autocracy. But from the fact of injustice, he draws a conclusion that Lenin would call reactionary: Tolstoy rejects revolutionary violence as a means of liberation.
Tolstoy's argumentation was built on historical observation: peasant uprisings never led to genuine liberation. Hence the conclusion that any violence engenders only new violence; new power becomes like the old. This is the same logic as in the case of patriotism: Tolstoy sees how the mechanism of power reproduces itself, changing forms but not essence.
In the article "To Political Figures," Tolstoy extends this critique to the bourgeois democracies of the West: England, France, America—for him, they are not models, but merely other forms of the same oppression. Negro slavery in the United States, the destruction of the Boers' independence, the militarism of France—all this shows that the form of government does not change the essence of exploitation.
For Russia in 2026, there lies hidden here a crucial warning: a change of regime in itself does not free one from the patriotic trap. New power that comes to replace the old—whether through revolution, coup, or electoral process—inevitably faces the temptation to use the same instrument: patriotism as a means of consolidation and control. The history of Russia in the twentieth century confirmed this with frightening accuracy.
VI. A Voice from Beyond Death: The Session with the "Spirit of Tolstoy"
In March 2026, a document was published on the Omdaru Literature platform—an analytical study of a channeling session with the "spirit of Leo Tolstoy," conducted by a medium named Irina Podzorova in 2024. The document is structured as a dialogue: the interviewer asks questions about contemporary Russia, Ukraine, patriotism, religion, and the "spirit" responds in contemporary conversational language, using terms like "egregor," "vibrations," "karmic knots."
The author of the study honestly notes the projective nature of the text: the "spirit" uses twenty-first-century vocabulary, operates with categories of 2022–2024, and is evasive where the real Tolstoy was categorical. However, the author also finds a point of intersection where the "spirit" does not lie "in a single word": this is the theme of sincerity.
Several statements from the session deserve attention precisely as a psychological projection reflecting the real tension in the Russian consciousness of 2026:
On the spiritual causes of revolution. The "spirit" asserts: "the unwillingness of the upper classes to care for the people" caused the social explosion. "I warned about this repeatedly." This is an almost verbatim repetition of the position recorded in volume 35 of the collected works and in Tolstoy's diary entries. The phrase is a projection, but a projection that precisely hits the center of Tolstoy's actual thought.
On patriotism as a spiritual substitution. The context of the session—war, sanctions, ideological tension—and the "spirit" of Tolstoy reacts precisely as a critic of state patriotism. He points to the "hypocrisy" of those who promise the people happiness through violence and suppression. This is again Tolstoy: both "Patriotism and Government" and "Christianity and Patriotism" are built on the same diagnosis—patriotism as a mask behind which the violence of the ruling classes hides.
On "Tolstoyanism" as an unfinished project. The "spirit" acknowledges that his followers "somewhat distorted" his teaching and that "a strong religious egregor was never created." This point is psychologically the most interesting: it shows that contemporary Russian consciousness needs a non-canonical spiritual authority—a figure who speaks truth to power but is not connected with either the state, the church, or the liberal discourse of the West. Tolstoy perfectly fills this lacuna.
The phenomenon of the session is telling not by its content, but by its very existence. Russia in 2024 summons the spirit of Tolstoy not for answers, but for unease. As the author of the study formulates it: "this is precisely what Tolstoy is: not a doctrine, not a system, not a 'level'—but an inconvenient, destructive, unstoppable sincerity, which a hundred years after his death continues to disturb the living. And that is precisely why they summon him from the other world. Not for answers—for unease."
VII. Tolstoy's Dialectic: The Patriotism of War and Peace vs. the Patriotism of the Articles
It is impossible to write about Tolstoy and patriotism while bypassing the main contradiction. In War and Peace (1863–1869), Tolstoy creates the greatest hymn to popular patriotism—that "latent patriotism, which is expressed not in phrases, not in killing children to save the fatherland and similar unnatural actions, but which is expressed imperceptibly, simply, organically, and therefore always produces the most powerful results." The Russian people of 1812, according to Tolstoy, could not desire French domination—"that would have been the worst of all"—and this feeling, not formulated in slogans, became the engine of resistance.
In the articles of the 1890s–1900s, the same Tolstoy declares patriotism "an unnatural, unreasonable, harmful feeling."
The resolution of this contradiction lies not in justifying one position at the expense of the other, but in the distinction that Tolstoy makes, though not always clearly enough:
War and Peace describes patriotism from below—a spontaneous feeling of connection with one's native land, a natural resistance to the outsider, requiring no ideological formulation. This feeling Tolstoy respects and celebrates, because it is organic, as organic as the instinct of self-preservation of a living organism.
The articles of the 1890s–1900s describe patriotism from above—an ideological construct consciously cultivated by the state apparatus, transforming natural love for the homeland into an instrument of war and suppression. This patriotism Tolstoy rejects with full justification.
The boundary between these two forms is thin and fluid. The state knows how to appropriate spontaneous patriotism, channel it in the right direction, and color it in its own hues. The people who rose to defend the fatherland in 1812 and the crowd shouting "hurrah" at a military parade on command from above—these are two different things, but outwardly they can look the same. Tolstoy the artist saw one thing; Tolstoy the publicist feared the other. In this lies not weakness, but the tragedy of his position: he saw both truths and could not reconcile them into a single formula.
VIII. Russia in June 2026: A Diagnosis
Bringing together all the threads—the articles, the story, the research material from volumes 35 and 39, the cultural phenomenon of channeling—one can formulate a "Tolstoyan diagnosis" of patriotism for Russia today.
First. State patriotism in Russia in 2026 is that very "real patriotism" against which Tolstoy wrote in 1900: a feeling of preference for one's own state over all others, artificially excited and maintained by the entire apparatus of power. It has all the characteristics described by Tolstoy: connection with military preparations, alliance with the official church, with schools and the media, framed in festive rituals.
Second. This patriotism functionally serves the same purposes as under Nicholas I: legitimation of power, justification of military actions, suppression of dissent. Tolstoy wrote in "Christianity and Patriotism": the ruling classes turn living feeling into "an instrument of intoxication, of blinding the working masses." In 2026, this description remains accurate.
Third. The suppression of natural love for the homeland by an ideological construct has consequences described in Hadji Murat: a person deprived of an organic connection with their native land and forced to play a role in the state spectacle loses dignity and becomes spiritually deformed. Either they become a function of the system, or they flee—physically or internally. There are few middle options, in Tolstoy's logic.
Fourth. As in Tolstoy's time, criticism of patriotism meets the standard objection: "only bad patriotism, jingoism, chauvinism is harmful, but real, good patriotism is an exalted feeling." Tolstoy answered this in 1900, and his answer retains its force: "good patriotism"—that which inspires the English, the French, the Russians—always turns out to be "good" only for its bearer and never for the neighbor. If every people considers its own patriotism good and others' bad, then logic leads to the identity of "good" patriotism and chauvinism.
Fifth. The summoning of Tolstoy's spirit in 2026 is a symptom. It means that in Russian society there exists an unquenched demand for the spiritual sovereignty of the individual, independent of the state and the church—for that position which Tolstoy occupied during his lifetime and for which he was excommunicated. People are seeking a voice that will say: one can love Russia—and not submit to the state apparatus; one can be Russian—and not be a patriot in the ideological sense; one can believe in God—and not be obligated to bless war.
IX. Conclusion: What Tolstoy Would Have Said
We do not know what Tolstoy would have said if he could truly speak from beyond the boundary of death. But we know what Tolstoy said during his lifetime—and that is enough.
He would probably have said that Russia is experiencing a disease whose diagnosis he made more than a hundred years ago: patriotism cultivated by the state for its own self-preservation devours that living feeling of connection with the homeland to which he, Tolstoy, dedicated War and Peace. The louder the slogans of patriotism sound, the weaker the real connection of a person with the land on which they live. The more powerful the state machine that raises patriots, the fewer people remain capable of that "imperceptible, simple, organic" movement that Tolstoy considered the only truly strong one.
He would probably have said that violence—regardless of what ideological phraseology it relies on, patriotic or revolutionary—engenders nothing but new violence. That states, whatever they may be—monarchical, Soviet, democratic, authoritarian—reproduce the same logic of power in which a person is a means, not an end.
And he would finally have said that the way out is not in a new ideology, not in a new revolution, not in a change of regime, but in what he called "the effort of private individuals": in the awakening of individual moral consciousness capable of resisting both state pressure and collective madness. It is to this that he called in his diary entry of March 13, 1900, while working on the article on patriotism: "the unraveling of this terrible destructive situation, if possible, is only through the effort of private individuals."
This is not an instruction and not a program. It is unease transmitted across a century. That same kind of unease for which, according to the author of the study on the session, "they summon him from the other world. Not for answers—for unease."
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