Ivan the Fool and Three Shorter Tales for Living Peaceably. Leo Tolstoy

for war and yet also make themselves a target for attack. Thus the ‘Christian’ state is a contradiction in terms.” 5 These bold stances stemmed from Tolstoy’s reading of the gospel, which led him to despise hierarchical structures and power imbalances.

Let us remember, Tolstoy’s subversive tale of Ivan the Fool (a peasant hero of Russian folklore6) was dreamed and embellished inside an imperial context. Tolstoy published this tale in 1886. Twenty-five years earlier, 20 million serfs were emancipated from a feudal system by the liberal reforms of Emperor Alexander II, which led to a surge of radical social analysis and revolutionary action. Two decades later, and five years before Ivan the Fool was published, Emperor Alexander II was assassinated, and imperial power transferred to his son Alexander III. This new tzar was an anti-Semitic nationalist who reversed his father’s initiatives through repressive action; he forced the widespread adoption of one language and a solitary orthodox religion in order to squelch revolutionary unrest. The Russian Orthodox Church, awash in state power, officially excommunicated Tolstoy in 1901.

      Tolstoy connected the wisdom of these folk tales to the subversive wisdom of the gospel, which, according to Tolstoy’s reading, indicated that there should be no ruler. In the story of Ivan the Fool, Ivan’s brothers, tempted by money and military power, seem destined to have the upper hand. Yet innocent Ivan, with his simple and unsuspecting ways, defeats the treacherous “devils” and gains a position of power as the fool king. The moral of these tales suggests that if there has to be a ruler, then it needs to be someone who doesn’t have money, doesn’t have an army, allows anybody in, helps his brothers even after they transgress, and rewards the meek. It is the world turned upside down. It is no spoiler to share that Ivan triumphs within this story; that is the way of most fairy tales. But we would be amiss to simplify this narrative into a children’s morality tale and neglect its nuanced political implications.

      In many folk tales, including the ones in this volume, the fool is pitted against characters who act as personifications of the dominant culture. It is important, therefore, to unpack the narrative function not only of Ivan’s brothers, but also of the devil and his servants, the imps. The Christian church after Constantine derived many of its images of the Devil from ancient pagan representations of animal gods, in order to seed mistrust and doubt in those traditions. We think it is better to understand the “devil” and his “imps” in Tolstoy’s tales as personifications of systemic injustice. Walter Wink’s work on the biblical “principalities and powers” helps us see the spiritual significance of political and societal institutions and their role in the personal and political oppression.

In Ivan’s adventures, we can glimpse the truth that “personal redemption cannot take place apart from the redemption of our social structures,” as Wink writes.7 He goes on to say: “The gospel, then, is not a message about the salvation of individuals from the world, but news about a world transfigured, right down to its basic structures.”8

      Ivan the Fool, like many other old folk tales, carries a legacy of longing for another world and offers an invitation for another way to be. We are grateful to be able to lean into these stories and listen again to the wisdom of the fool!

      Tevyn East and Jay Beck

      April 2018

      Philadelphia

1. Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? & Wherein is Truth in Art? (Meditations on Aesthetics & Literature) trans. Aylmer Maude, Louise Maude, Nathan Haskell Dole, & Isabel Hapgood (Musaicum Books, June 21, 2017), Kindle Edition.

2. Eugene Vodolazkin, “Russian ‘Umberto Eco’ demystifies the Holy Fool” Russia Beyond, June 6, 2013, https://www.rbth.com/literature/2013/06/06/russian_umberto_eco_demystifies_the_holy_fool_26401.html

3. Wes Nisker, The Essential Crazy Wisdom (Toronto: Ten Speed Press, 2001), 54.

4. Wes Nisker, The Essential Crazy Wisdom (Toronto: Ten Speed Press, 2001), 31.

5. Giles Fraser, “Tolstoy’s Christian anarchism was a war on both church and state.” The Guardian, Jan, 21, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2016/jan/21/tolstoy-war-peace-christian-anarchism-church-state.

6. Andrei Sinyavsky, Ivan the Fool: Russian Folk Belief: A Cultural History (London/Moscow: GLAS New Russian Writing, 2007).

7. Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 98.

8. Walter Wink, The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium (New York: Doubleday, April 1998), 36.

      Introduction

      It is quite an irony that an author who produced titanic novels such as War and Peace and Anna Karenina could, in later years, write simple folk tales for young readers. On one hand Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) exposed humanity’s darkest motives and duplicities, while on the other hand he elevated the human capacity for living simply and peaceably in a better future. One way to make sense of this tension is to distinguish phases in his literary vocation. Much has been made of Tolstoy’s spiritual ‘turn’ in his later years which resulted in writings characterized by a moralistic and didactic tone. It appears at some point that he forsook his earlier, nuanced view of human nature to promote a more idealistic vision of what society could become.

A case for continuity, however, can be made, as Raymond Rosenthal did in his introduction to Leo Tolstoy: Fables and Fairy Tales (1962).9 He noted Tolstoy’s indebtedness to his eldest brother Nikolai who steeped the younger in a world of virtue-ladened fairy-tale. This fantasy world included a buried green stick near Tolstoy’s boyhood home. His brother would speak of a secret message written on the stick that would destroy all evils and make all people happy. Love would someday turn the world into a golden age. One sign of Tolstoy’s lifelong devotion to this ideal is that he requested to be buried by this green stick in the Zakaz Forest.

      Whether or not the aging Tolstoy can be understood as a contradiction with his past selves is best left to the scholars. What is evident is that in the years following his completion of Anna Karenina (1886) he decidedly took on stronger commitments to a number of radical orientations, including asceticism, anarchism, pacifism, anti-institutionalism (of both religion and government), and the rejection of private land ownership. These themes increasingly found expression in his non-fictional writings. Nevertheless, Tolstoy did manage to infuse his growing radicalism into a set of tales geared for peasants and school children.

      The tales in this volume hang on two social critiques aimed at militarism and materialism. Ivan the Fool (1886) combines both critiques as represented by the pursuits of Ivan’s two brothers. Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (1903) echoes the judgment on military power, and A Grain as Big as a Hen’s Egg (1866) does the same for unsustainable economies. Ivan the Fool is also significant in its connection to the older Russian tradition of the Holy Fool. The final story, Three Questions (1885; 1903), serves to enrich the role of the Holy Fool in this collection.

Rosenthal points out an interesting contrast between classic fairy tales and Tolstoy’s tales. In the former, main characters rely on their evolving inner virtues