Resurrection

This is the last novel that Tolstoy wrote, and it covers his philosophies on land ownership, relationships, personal morality, religion and the state. It’s also an extremely accessible story. Basically, a prostitute is accused of murder, and one of the jurors at the trial turns out to be the man who initially seduced her, got her pregnant and thrown out of her home and in short set her on her way. He’s a wealthy but weak man who is horrified at what he has done. Through his attempts to help her, he discovers an entire world he never realised existed, and he begins to see his own world in a different way. The resurrection is a personal one, even though the reader is left to wonder whether it is permanent.

Tolstoy is rightly a household name, one of the most famous writers ever. He writes a clear, convincing and powerful prose. His characters are balanced and human and fascinating. The details of the prison and judicial systems are obviously well-researched and thoroughly believable. He doesn’t try to be subtle – his beliefs are very clearly stated in this book – and yet he doesn’t come across as unreasonable.

How strange that all of this – the unfairness of the courts, the bitter cruelties towards prisoners – is before the Russian Revolution! And yet, why not? It’s the basis of the KGB and the gulags to come. Solzhenitsyn argues that it was much kinder than the system of his day – if so, how terrible, how inhumanely terrible! His main argument is that there is nothing, nothing more important than human compassion – and that once this is forgotten there is no cruelty that cannot be justified.