The Pernicious and the Redemptive: Tolstoy's Views and Encounters with the Machine

• In Event: Tolstoy and Technology

Abstract

In his final novel Resurrection (1899) and in his pamphlet "The End of the Age" (1905), Tolstoy casts machinery and electricity as the latest and most striking instruments of coercion, an example of "the law of violence." At the same time, in his diary, as well as in his private life, he allowed for the positive aspects of the machines-—his love of cycling, fascination with the dictaphone, and occasional expressions of hope that technology may also be liberating for the workers if used properly. This paper will investigate these contradictory attitudes and impulses in the later Tolstoy.

Author

• Alexei Pavlenko, Colorado College