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How Leo Tolstoy Became a Vegetarian and Jumpstarted the Vegetarian & Humanitarian Movements in the 19th Century

in Food & Drink , Literature , Philosophy , Politics , Religion | December 26th, 2016 2 Comments

Leo Tolstoy is remembered as both a towering pinnacle of Russian literature and a fascinating example of Christian anarchism, a mystical version of which the aristocratic author pioneered in the last quarter century of his life. After a dramatic conversion, Tolstoy rejected his social position, the favored vices of his youth, and the dietary habits of his culture, becoming a vocal proponent of vegetarianism in his ascetic quest for the good life. Thousands of his contemporaries found Tolstoy’s example deeply compelling, and several communes formed around his principles, to his dismay. “To speak of ‘Tolstoyism,’” he wrote, “to seek guidance, to inquire about my solution of questions, is a great and gross error.”

“Still,” writes Kelsey Osgood at The New Yorker , “people insisted on seeking guidance from him,” including a young Mahatma Gandhi, who struck up a lively correspondence with the writer and in 1910 founded a community called “Tolstoy Farm” near Johannesburg.

Though uneasy in the role of movement leader, the author of Anna Karenina invited such treatment by publishing dozens of philosophical and theological works, many of them in opposition to a contrary strain of religious and moral ideas developing in the late nineteenth century. Often called “ muscular Christianity ,” this trend responded to what many Victorians thought of as a crisis of masculinity by emphasizing sports and warrior ideals and railing against the “feminization” of the culture.

Tolstoy might be said to represent a “vegetable Christianity”—seeking harmony with nature and turning away from all forms of violence, including the eating of meat. In “ The First Step ,” an 1891 essay on diet and ethical commitment, he characterized the prevailing religious attitude toward food:

I remember how, with pride at his originality, an Evangelical preacher, who was attacking monastic asceticism, once said to me “Ours is not a Christianity of fasting and privations, but of beefsteaks.” Christianity, or virtue in general—and beefsteaks!

While he confessed himself “not horrified by this association,” it is only because “there is no bad odor, no sound, no monstrosity, to which man cannot become so accustomed that he ceases to remark what would strike a man unaccustomed to it.” The killing and eating of animals, Tolstoy came to believe, is a horror to which—like war and serfdom—his culture had grown far too accustomed. Like many an animal rights activist today, Tolstoy conveyed his horror of meat-eating by describing a slaughterhouse in detail, concluding:

[I]f he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because, to say nothing of the excitation of the passions caused by such food, its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling—killing. [W]e cannot pretend that we do not know this. We are not ostriches, and cannot believe that if we refuse to look at what we do not wish to see, it will not exist.… [Y]oung, kind, undepraved people—especially women and girls—without knowing how it logically follows, feel that virtue is incompatible with beefsteaks, and, as soon as they wish to be good, give up eating flesh.

The idea of vegetarianism of course preceded Tolstoy by hundreds of years of Hindu and Buddhist practice. And its growing popularity in Europe and America preceded him as well. “Tolstoy became an outspoken vegetarian at the age of 50,” writes Sam Pavlenko , “after meeting the positivist and vegetarian William Frey, who, according to Tolstoy’s son Sergei Lvovich, visited the great writer in the autumn of 1885.” Tolstoy’s dietary stance fit in with what Charlotte Alston describes as an “increasingly organized” international vegetarian movement taking shape in the late nineteenth century.

Like Tolstoy in “The First Step,” proponents of vegetarianism argued not only against cruelty to animals, but also against “the brutalization of those who worked in the meat industry, as butchers, slaughtermen, and even shepherds and drovers.” But vegetarianism was only one part of Tolstoy’s religious philosophy, which also included chastity, temperance, the rejection of private property, and “a complete refusal to participate in violence or coercion of any kind.” This marked his dietary practice as distinct from many contemporaries. Tolstoy and his followers “made the link between vegetarianism and a wider humanitarianism explicit.”

“How was it possible,” Alston summarizes, “to regard the killing of animals for food as evil, but not to condemn the killing of men through war and capital punishment? Not all members of the vegetarian movement agreed.” Some saw “no connection between the questions of war and diet.” Tolstoy’s philosophical argument against all forms of violence was not original to him, but it resonated all over the world with those who saw him as a shining example, including his two daughters and eventually his wife Sophia, who all adopted the practice of vegetarianism. A book of their recipes was published in 1874, and adapted by Pavlenko for his Leo Tolstoy: A Vegetarian’s Tale . (See one example here—a family recipe for macaroni and cheese .)

In her study Tolstoy and His Disciples , Alston details the Russian great’s wide influence through not only his diet but the totality of his spiritual practices and unique political and religious views. Interestingly, unlike many animal rights activists of his day and ours, Tolstoy refused to endorse legislation to punish animal cruelty, believing that punishment would only result in the perpetuation of violence. “Non-violence, non-resistance and brotherhood were the principles that lay at the basis of Tolstoyan vegetarianism,” she observes, “and while these principles meant that Tolstoyans cooperated closely with vegetarians, they also kept them in many ways apart.”

via History Buff

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In the last thirty years of his life, Leo Tolstoy developed a moral philosophy that embraced, amongst other things, vegetarianism. But how did Tolstoy’s stance compare to the wider vegetarian movement of the late-nineteenth century?

During the late nineteenth century, there was a growing organization within the vegetarian movement. The inception of the first vegetarian society occurred in Manchester in 1849, followed by the establishment of an American counterpart in 1850 and a German society in 1867. This movement gained prominence through its publications, guides, and culinary resources, as well as the emergence of vegetarian eateries across European cities. Harold Williams, a novice traveler from New Zealand during the 1890s, found himself dining at vegetarian restaurants not only in London and Berlin but also in Derby.

The arguments supporting vegetarianism during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were diverse, with origins spanning various concerns. Some arguments were based on pseudo-scientific health claims, while others emphasized animal rights and humanitarian principles. Advocates contended that vegetable-based diets were hygienic and purifying, contrasting meat consumption, which was perceived as containing toxins and waste material. They argued that meat, being the flesh of deceased animals, harbored undesirable substances like sweat, nitrogenous waste, and decay remnants. Additionally, meat was deemed unnatural for humans; if it were natural, wouldn’t people consume it raw like vegetables? Even Edward VII’s bout of appendicitis, delaying his coronation from June to August 1902, was attributed to his meat-heavy diet rather than vegetarianism.

Critics of vegetarianism often criticized the perceived lack of nutritional value in vegetarian diets. However, vegetarian advocates countered by highlighting the diversity of vegetarian cuisine and the physical prowess of vegetarians in sports. Despite their minority status, vegetarians were noted for achieving athletic honors in walking, racket sports, and cycling competitions. Furthermore, it was observed that the strongest (such as horses, oxen, and camels), fastest (like antelopes and hares), longest-lived (such as elephants), and most intelligent (including elephants and apes) animals were herbivores.

The ethical concerns surrounding the slaughter of animals for food, including the methods employed, were key arguments within the vegetarian movement. Additionally, attention was drawn to the harsh conditions endured by workers in the meat industry, such as butchers, slaughtermen, shepherds, and drovers. Some vegetarians objected to the exploitation of animals as labor, citing instances of mistreatment, cruelty, excessive workload, and negligence. Moreover, they opposed the use of animals for entertainment purposes, such as hunting, shooting, dog-fighting, or rat-worrying. While not all vegetarians agreed, some argued for consistency by abstaining from leather footwear, advocating instead for going barefoot to avoid confining the foot in uncomfortable and unventilated shoes described as “stiff, foul, unventilated prisons.”

However, finding a practical alternative to leather proved challenging. In a competition held in 1895 to discover the most suitable pair of vegetarian shoes or boots, judges concluded that none of the submissions fully met expectations. One individual expressed these concerns, along with critiques of the construction of late nineteenth-century footwear, through a poem published in The Vegetarian.

“Father,” I spoke as my dad glanced up from his work, “Why do I appear downcast amidst a crowd of cheerful faces? It’s as if my spirit is withering from within.”

“You seem troubled, my son,” he remarked.

“Yes,” I replied, “You’ve pinpointed it. It’s the boots—the Vegetarian boots.”

“I will not make a pig squeak or a great ox moan. I will never, ever eat a chop or pick a mutton bone.” My sect, which survives on bread and fruit, is growing quickly these days, but what good are we if we don’t wear vegetarian shoes?

“We’re informed that leather comes from hides, which merely conceal flesh. Therefore, if we continue to wear leather shoes, does it truly matter what we consume? The rubber soles may be practical but often attract unwelcome attention. Oh father, where can I find a pair of Vegetarian boots?”

“Ahem,” my father cleared his throat, “Though my dietary choices differ from yours, and I hold steadfast to my beliefs even in the face of opposition. Take solace in your uncomplicated nature, satisfied with nuts and fruits. As for me, I have a secret to share concerning ‘Vegetarian boots’.”

“There was a time when leather footwear was ubiquitous, but now, with the advent of ‘patent’ shoes, we consume leather, labeling it as ‘beef’ or whatever suits our fancy. I’ve transitioned to using brown paper, a material devoid of animal origin, in my creations. Consequently, anyone who purchases my products dons Vegetarian boots.”

Vegetarians embraced a broad reformist perspective, forging connections with various other movements. While closely aligned with temperance, animal rights, and anti-vivisection movements in terms of ideology and social ties, vegetarianism also found associations with a range of unconventional beliefs and practices. Vegetarians were often associated with diverse ideologies, such as alternative views on economics, participation in organizations like the Society for Psychical Research, preference for all-wool clothing, abandonment of shaving, and adoption of unconventional headwear.

Moreover, vegetarians played active roles in the establishment of reformist groups like the Humanitarian League in Britain, which aimed to unite reformers under a common principle of compassion, and the League for Total Abstention in the Netherlands. The Bulgarian Vegetarian Union pursued ambitions beyond dietary concerns, seeking to elevate the moral, intellectual, and physical well-being of its members.

Leo Tolstoy emerged as a prominent figure in the nineteenth-century vegetarian movement. His essay “The First Step” gained widespread promotion by vegetarian societies worldwide, and his writings, spanning topics beyond diet, were featured in vegetarian publications. Tolstoy’s adoption of vegetarianism was just one facet of the Christian anarchist philosophy he developed later in life. This philosophy encompassed principles such as temperance, chastity, rejection of private property and money, and an absolute aversion to violence or coercion.

The extensive scope of Tolstoy’s interests led his followers to engage with various reformist movements during the 1890s, with vegetarianism being just one of them. Tolstoyans collaborated with the vegetarian movement, sharing platforms and speakers. Vegetarian eateries served as physical gathering spaces for them, whether it was the Vegetarian Cooperative Association in Sofia, the Pomona vegetarian hotel and restaurant in The Hague, or the Central Vegetarian Restaurant in London.

Visitors to Tolstoyan communities, like the one in Purleigh, Essex, noted the absence of deprivation in the vegetarian diet. During the centenary celebrations of Tolstoy’s birth in Moscow in 1928, individuals like Charles Daniel enjoyed vegetarian fare at the Moscow Vegetarian Society’s restaurant. Edith Crosby recounted a lavish vegetarian meal shared with Tolstoyans, including Chertkov, describing a menu replete with omelette, macaroni, vegetables, fruits, dessert, salad, and cheese, highlighting the Tolstoyans’ culinary prowess compared to religious groups with more austere dietary practices.

While Tolstoy and his followers drew upon arguments from the broader vegetarian movement, they placed particular emphasis on issues related to violence against animals and humanity. Tolstoyans explicitly linked vegetarianism to a broader humanitarian ethos, advocating for the deepening of compassionate values that underlie vegetarianism and their application across all aspects of human behavior. Vladimir Chertkov, Tolstoy’s close associate residing in England during the 1890s, urged the vegetarian society to not merely advocate for the spread of vegetarianism but to foster a more profound sense of compassion that extends to all facets of consciousness and conduct.

Chertkov questioned how one could condemn the killing of animals for food while remaining indifferent to the violence of warfare and capital punishment. While not universally accepted within the vegetarian movement, Tolstoyans viewed vegetarianism as a component of a comprehensive worldview. They distinguished themselves from animal rights activists by eschewing legislative approaches or punitive measures for animal mistreatment. Instead, they advocated for the cultivation of empathy and humanitarianism among individuals involved. Non-violence, non-resistance, and brotherhood formed the foundational principles of Tolstoyan vegetarianism. While these principles fostered close cooperation with vegetarians, they also set Tolstoyans apart in many respects.

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Leo Tolstoy Archive

The First Step

Written: 1896 Source: From RevoltLib.com. Translated by Aylmer Maude in 1896. Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff Online Source: RevoltLib.com ; 2021

(An 1891 work espousing complete nonviolence, stemming from vegetarianism, this essay was translated in 1909 by Aylmer Maud. Note that there are many "slightly altered" versions of this essay floating around, and it is nearly impossible to guarantee the exactness of this version, as it is not uncommon for an extra sentence to be added or removed depending on the publisher's agenda.)

Fasting is an indispensable condition of a good life; but in fasting, as in self-control in general, the question arises, with what shall we begin—how to fast, how often to eat, what to eat, what to avoid eating? And as we can do no work seriously without regarding the necessary order of sequence, so also we cannot fast without knowing where to begin—with what to commence self-control in food.

Fasting! And even an analysis of how to fast, and where to begin! The notion seems ridiculous and wild to the majority of men.

I remember how, with pride at his originality, an Evangelical preacher, who was attacking monastic asceticism, once said to me "Ours is not a Christianity of fasting and privations, but of beefsteaks." Christianity, or virtue in general—and beefsteaks!

During a long period of darkness and lack of all guidance, Pagan or Christian, so many wild, immoral ideas have made their way into our life (especially into that lower region of the first steps toward a good life—our relation to food, to which no one paid any attention), that it is difficult for us even to understand the audacity and senselessness of upholding, in our days, Christianity or virtue with beefsteaks.

We are not horrified by this association, solely because a strange thing has befallen us. We look and see not: listen and hear not. There is no bad odor, no sound, no monstrosity, to which man cannot become so accustomed that he ceases to remark what would strike a man unaccustomed to it. Precisely so it is in the moral region. Christianity and morality with beefsteaks!

A few days ago I visited the slaughter house in our town of Toula. It is built on the new and improved system practiced in large towns, with a view to causing the animals as little suffering as possible. It was on a Friday, two days before Trinity Sunday. There were many cattle there.

Long before this, when reading that excellent book. The Ethics of Diet , I had wished to visit a slaughter-house, in order to see with my own eyes the reality of the question raised when vegetarianism is discussed. But at first I felt ashamed to do so, as one is always ashamed of going to look at suffering which one knows is about to take place, but which one cannot avert, and so I kept putting off my visit.

But a little while ago I met on the road a butcher returning to Toula after a visit to his home. He is not yet an experienced butcher, and his duty is to stab with a knife. I asked him whether he did not feel sorry for the animals that he killed. He gave me the usual answer: "Why should I feel sorry? It is necessary." But when I told him that eating flesh is not necessary, but is only a luxury, he agreed; and then he admitted that he was sorry for the animals.

"But what can I do? I must earn my bread," he said. "At first I was afraid to kill. My father, he never even killed a chicken in all his life." The majority of Russians cannot kill; they feel pity, and express the feeling by the word "fear." This man had also been "afraid," but he was so no longer. He told me that most of the work was done on Fridays, when it continues until the evening.

Not long ago I also had a talk with a retired soldier, a butcher, and he, too, was surprised at my assertion that it was a pity to kill, and said the usual things about its being ordained; but afterwards he agreed with me: "Especially when they are quiet, tame cattle. They come, poor things, trusting you. It is very pitiful."

This is dreadful! Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity—that of sympathy and pity toward living creatures like himself—and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life!

Once, when walking from Moscow, I was offered a lift by some carters who were going from Serpouhof to a neighboring forest to fetch wood. It was the Thursday before Easter. I was seated in the first cart, with a strong, red, coarse carman, who evidently drank. On entering a village we saw a well-fed, naked, pink pig being dragged out of the first yard to be slaughtered. It squealed in a dreadful voice, resembling the shriek of a man. Just as we were passing they began to kill it. A man gashed its throat with a knife. The pig squealed still more loudly and piercingly, broke away from the men, and ran off covered with blood. Being near-sighted I did not see all the details. I saw only the human-looking pink body of the pig and heard its desperate squeal; but the carter saw all the details and watched closely. They caught the pig, knocked it down, and finished cutting its throat. When its squeals ceased the carter sighed heavily. "Do men really not have to answer for such things?" he said.

So strong is man's aversion to all killing. But by example, by encouraging greediness, by the assertion that God has allowed it, and, above all, by habit, people entirely lose this natural feeling.

On Friday I decided to go to Toula, and, meeting a meek, kind acquaintance of mine, I invited him to accompany me.

"Yes, I have heard that the arrangements are good, and have been wishing to go and see it; but if they are slaughtering I will not go in."

"Why not? That's just what I want to see! If we eat flesh it must be killed."

"No, no, I cannot!"

It is worth remarking that this man is a sportsman and himself kills animals and birds.

So we went to the slaughter house. Even at the entrance one noticed the heavy, disgusting, fetid smell, as of carpenter's glue, or paint on glue. The nearer we approached, the stronger became the smell. The building is of red brick, very large, with vaults and high chimneys. We entered the gates. To the right was a spacious enclosed yard, three-quarters of an acre in extent—twice a week cattle are driven in here for sale—and adjoining this enclosure was the porter's lodge. To the left were the chambers, as they are called—i.e., rooms with arched entrances, sloping asphalt floors, and contrivances for moving and hanging up the carcasses. On a bench against the wall of the porter's lodge were seated half a dozen butchers, in aprons covered with blood, their tucked-up sleeves disclosing their muscular arms also besmeared with blood. They had finished their work half an hour before, so that day we could only see the empty chambers. Though these chambers were open on both sides, there was an oppressive smell of warm blood; the floor was brown and shining, with congealed black blood in the cavities.

One of the butchers described the process of slaughtering, and showed us the place where it was done. I did not quite understand him, and formed a wrong, but very horrible, idea of the way the animals are slaughtered; and I fancied that, as is often the case, the reality would very likely produce upon me a weaker impression than the imagination. But in this I was mistaken.

The next time I visited the slaughter house I went in good time. It was the Friday before Trinity—a warm day in June. The smell of glue and blood was even stronger and more penetrating than on my first visit. The work was at its height. The duty yard was full of cattle, and animals had been driven into all the enclosures beside the chambers.

In the street, before the entrance, stood carts to which oxen, calves, and cows were tied. Other carts drawn by good horses and filled with live calves, whose heads hung down and swayed about, drew up and were unloaded; and similar carts containing the carcasses of oxen, with trembling legs sticking out, with heads and bright red lungs and brown livers, drove away from the slaughter house. The dealers themselves, in their long coats, with their whips and knouts in their hands, were walking about the yard, either marking with tar cattle belonging to the same owner, or bargaining, or else guiding oxen and bulls from the great yard into the enclosures which lead into the chambers. These men were evidently all preoccupied with money matters and calculations, and any thought as to whether it was right or wrong to kill these animals was as far from their minds as were questions about the chemical composition of the blood that covered the floor of the chambers.

No butchers were to be seen in the yard; they were all in the chambers at work. That day about a hundred head of cattle were slaughtered. I was on the point of entering one of the chambers, but stopped short at the door. I stopped both because the chamber was crowded with carcasses which were being moved about, and also because blood was flowing on the floor and dripping from above. All the butchers present were besmeared with blood, and had I entered I, too, should certainly have been covered with it. One suspended carcass was being taken down, another was being moved toward the door, a third, a slaughtered ox, was lying with its white legs raised, while a butcher with strong hand was ripping up its tight-stretched hide.

Through the door opposite the one at which I was standing, a big, red, well-fed ox was led in. Two men were dragging it, and hardly had it entered when I saw a butcher raise a knife above its neck and stab it. The ox, as if all four legs had suddenly given way, fell heavily upon its belly, immediately turned over on one side, and began to work its legs and all its hind-quarters. Another butcher at once threw himself upon the ox from the side opposite to the twitching legs, caught its horns and twisted its head down to the ground, while another butcher cut its throat with a knife. From beneath the head there flowed a stream of blackish-red blood, which a besmeared boy caught in a tin basin. All the time this was going on the ox kept incessantly twitching its head as if trying to get up, and waved its four legs in the air. The basin was quickly filling, but the ox still lived, and, its stomach heaving heavily, both hind and fore legs worked so violently that the butchers held aloof. When one basin was full, the boy carried it away on his head to the albumen factory, while another boy placed a fresh basin, which also soon began to fill up. But still the ox heaved its body and worked its hind legs.

When the blood ceased to flow the butcher raised the animal's head and began to skin it. The ox continued to writhe. The head, stripped of its skin, showed red with white veins, and kept the position given it by the butcher; on both sides hung the skin. Still the animal did not cease to writhe. Than another butcher caught hold of one of the legs, broke it, and cut it off. In the remaining legs and the stomach the convulsions still continued. The other legs were cut off and thrown aside, together with those of other oxen belonging to the same owner. Then the carcass was dragged to the hoist and hung up, and the convulsions were over.

Thus I looked on from the door at the second, third, fourth ox. It was the same with each: the same cutting off of the head with bitten tongue, and the same convulsed members. The only difference was that the butcher did not always strike at once so as to cause the animal's fall. Sometimes he missed his aim, whereupon the ox leaped up, bellowed, and, covered with blood, tried to escape. But then his head was pulled under a bar, struck a second time, and he fell.

I afterwards entered by the door at which the oxen were led in. Here I saw the same thing, only nearer, and therefore more plainly. But chiefly I saw here, what I had not seen before, how the oxen were forced to enter this door. Each time an ox was seized in the enclosure and pulled forward by a rope tied to its horns, the animal, smelling blood, refused to advance, and sometimes bellowed and drew back. It would have been beyond the strength of two men to drag it in by force, so one of the butchers went round each time, grasped the animal's tail and twisted it so violently that the gristle crackled, and the ox advanced.

When they had finished with the cattle of one owner, they brought in those of another. The first animal of his next lot was not an ox, but a bull —a fine, well-bred creature, black, with white spots on its legs, young, muscular, full of energy. He was dragged forward, but he lowered his head and resisted sturdily. Then the butcher who followed behind seized the tail, like an engine-driver grasping the handle of a whistle, twisted it, the gristle crackled, and the bull rushed forward, upsetting the men who held the rope. Then it stopped, looking sideways with its black eyes, the whites of which had filled with blood. But again the tail crackled, and the bull sprang forward and reached the required spot. The striker approached, took aim, and struck. But the blow missed the mark. The bull leaped up, shook his head, bellowed, and, covered with blood, broke free and rushed back. The men at the doorway all sprang aside: but the experienced butchers, with the dash of men inured to danger, quickly caught the rope; again the tail operation was repeated, and again the bull was in the chamber, where he was dragged under the bar, from which he did not again escape. The striker quickly took aim at the spot where the hair divides like a star, and, notwithstanding the blood, found it, struck, and the fine animal, full of life, collapsed, its head and legs writhing while it was bled and the head skinned.

"There, the cursed devil hasn't even fallen the right way!" grumbled the butcher as he cut the skin from the head.

Five minutes later the head was stuck up, red instead of black, without skin; the eyes, that had shone with such splendid color five minutes before, fixed and glassy.

Afterwards I went into the compartment where small animals are slaughtered—a very large chamber with asphalt floor, and tables with backs, on which sheep and calves are killed. Here the work was already finished; in the long room, impregnated with the smell of blood, were only two butchers. One was blowing into the leg of a dead lamb and patting the swollen stomach with his hand; the other, a young fellow in an apron besmeared with blood, was smoking a bent cigarette. There was no one else in the long, dark chamber, filled with a heavy smell. After me there entered a man, apparently an ex-soldier, bringing in a young yearling ram, black with a white mark on its neck, and its legs tied. This animal he placed upon one of the tables, as if upon a bed. The old soldier greeted the butchers, with whom he was evidently acquainted, and began to ask when their master allowed them leave. The fellow with the cigarette approached with a knife, sharpened it on the edge of the table, and answered that they were free on holidays. The live ram was lying as quietly as the dead inflated one, except that it was briskly wagging its short little tail and its sides were heaving more quickly than usual. The soldier pressed down its uplifted head gently, without effort; the butcher, still continuing the conversation, grasped with his left hand the head of the ram and cut its throat. The ram quivered, and the little tail stiffened and ceased to wave. The fellow, while waiting for the blood to flow, began to relight his cigarette, which had gone out. The blood flowed and the ram began to writhe. The conversation continued without the slightest interruption. It was horribly revolting.

And how about those hens and chickens which daily, in thousands of kitchens, with heads cut off and streaming with blood, comically, dreadfully, flop about, jerking their wings? And see, a kind, refined lady will devour the carcasses of these animals with full assurance that she is doing right, at the same time asserting two contradictory propositions:

First, that she is, as her doctor assures her, so delicate that she cannot be sustained by vegetable food alone, and that for her feeble organism flesh is indispensable; and, secondly, that she is so sensitive that she is unable, not only herself to inflict suffering on animals, but even to bear the sight of suffering.

Whereas the poor lady is weak precisely because she has been taught to live upon food unnatural to man; and she cannot avoid causing suffering to animals — for she eats them.

I only wish to say that for a good life a certain order of good actions is indispensable; that if a man's aspirations toward right living be serious they will inevitably follow one definite sequence, and in this sequence the first thing will be self-control in food — fasting.

And in fasting, if he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because, to say nothing of the excitation of the passions caused by such food, its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling — killing;

We cannot pretend that we do not know this. We are not ostriches, and cannot believe that if we refuse to look at what we do not wish to see, it will not exist. This is especially the case when what we do not wish to see is what we wish to eat. If it were really indispensable, or, if not indispensable, at least in some way useful! But it is quite unnecessary, and only serves to develop animal feelings, to excite desire, and to promote fornication and drunkenness. And this is continually being confirmed by the fact that young, kind, undepraved people — especially women and girls — without knowing how it logically follows, feel that virtue is incompatible with beefsteaks, and, as soon as they wish to be good, give up eating flesh.

"But why, if the wrongfulness of animal food was known to humanity so long ago, have people not yet come to acknowledge this law?" will be asked by those who are accustomed to be led by public opinion rather by reason. The answer to this question is that the moral progress of humanity - which is the foundation of every other kind of progress - is always slow; but that the sign of true, not casual, progress is its uninterruptedness and its continual acceleration.

And the progress of vegetarianism is of this kind. That progress is expressed in the actual life of mankind, which from many causes is involuntarily passing more and more from carnivorous habits to vegetable food, and is also deliberately following the same path in a movement which shows evident strength, and which is growing larger and larger - viz. vegetarianism. That movement has during the last ten years advanced more and more rapidly. More and more books and periodicals on this subject appear every year; one meets more and more people who have given up meat; and abroad, especially Germany, England, and America, the number of vegetarian hotels and restaurants increases year by year.

This movement should cause special joy to those whose life lies in the effort to bring about the kingdom of God on earth, not because vegetarianism is in itself an important step towards that kingdom (all true steps are both important and unimportant), but because it is a sign that the aspiration of mankind towards moral perfection is serious and sincere, for it has taken the one unalterable order of succession natural to it, beginning with the first step.

One cannot fail to rejoice at this, as people could not fail to rejoice who, after striving to reach the upper story of a house by trying vainly and at random to climb the walls from different points, should at last assemble at the first step of the staircase and crowd towards it, convinced that there can be no way up except by mounting this first step of stairs.

The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

Notes From the Field: Bulgaria’s Tolstoyan Vegetarians

By Mary Neuburger

It seemed like a bad idea then, but I did it anyway. Maybe, just maybe, there was hope that the little museum in the Bulgarian mountain village of Yasna Polyana would be open. Established in 1998, the museum contained the intellectual remnants of the Bulgarian Tolstoyan community, who had created an agricultural commune in the village of Alan Kayryak in 1906-07. They renamed the village “Yasna Polyana” (clear meadow) after Leo Tolstoy’s famous estate, Yasnaya Polyana.

I had visited Bulgaria’s Yasna Polyana–with its shortened adjective form “yasna” (instead of “yasnaya”) before. Two summers ago I had made the long trip, braving the bumpy windy roads of the Bulgarian Strandja—a mountainous region on the SW coast of Bulgaria where the village is perched. But that summer my efforts had been in vain. The museum was closed and locked “for renovation.” As I peeked through the dusty windows in frustration, huge storks looked down on me from their nests on the nearby utility poles. They seemed to laugh at my American optimism, until I finally gave up.

And yet I returned this summer, without confirming that they were open; I could find no phone number or email online. This time google maps betrayed me, sending me down what seemed to be a sheep trail in my rental car. Still, I made it through intact and, as luck would have it, the wonderful curator of the museum was there! She generously allowed me to peruse their collection of crumbling old newspapers, carefully stacked in a back cupboard. As I gleefully thumbed through the materials, snapping pictures on my iphone, the fascinating world of the Bulgarian Tolstoyans opened up to me.

Museum pamphlet "Bulgarian Yasna Polyana" showing key members of the movement with Tolstoy hovering above them

Tolstoy was a figure of global importance in this period. It was not just his famous novels—like War and Peace and Anna Karenina —that brought him fame. He became a towering figure in global exchanges about the moral and ethical concerns of the day. His essays and other writings made him into an intellectual leader and model on a range of philosophical, spiritual, and social questions. Tolstoy cultivated contacts with like-minded people from around the world, though he never approved of the idea of a “Tolstoyan” movement.

And yet one emerged. Before and after his death in 1910, Tolstoyan communes mushroomed around the world, from the US to South Africa—where Mahatma Gandhi set up an ashram named the “Tolstoy colony” near Johannesburg. At the same time, many of the Bulgarian movement’s leaders made the pilgrimage to Tolstoy’s estate in Russia’s Tula province. Khristo Dosev, for example, spent a number of years in residence there and became extremely close to Tolstoy and his inner circle. Dosev became a direct line of contact between Tolstoy and his followers back in Bulgaria. They translated, published, and made every effort to popularize the ideas of Tolstoy in Bulgaria.

By 1907 Bulgarian Tolstoyans had broken ground on their own agricultural commune in Yasna Polyana. Its adherents established a number of agricultural communes across Bulgaria in the years that followed, but Yasna Polyana remained the movement’s epicenter. Its members set up their own printing press for its many publications, which stressed “Tolstoyan” ideas like non-violence, but also temperance, and vegetarianism. The ties to Tolstoy were so strong that many claim that he was headed to Bulgaria in his final days—when he famously left his family estate and headed south. Alas he died along the way. But if anything the Tolstoyan movement gained in strength after his death, especially in the aftermath of World War I. The massive human casualties of the war brought an even greater urgency to the Bulgarian (and global) Tolstoyan project.

In the Bulgarian Tolstoyan museum on that hot July day, I was most interested in the vegetarian strand of the commune’s intellectual and organizational work. I focused my reading (and scanning) on the Bulgarian Tolstoyan newspaper Vegetarian Review ( Vegetarianski Pregled ), edited by an important member of the movement, Stefan Andreichin. The history of vegetarianism in Bulgaria will be featured in my book on the history of food in Bulgaria. In a chapter that focuses on meat, I will explore the making of a modern meat-eating culture, but also on the vegetarian counter culture that hotly opposed this transition.

This story is best told in global context, and meat was one of the most hotly debated food sources in history—in the past as today. Is eating meat a human instinct, or a learned behavior? Is it the gold standard of fortification or will it kill us? Even if it is good for the human body, what about the ethics of killing animals, the implications of modern methods, or the environmental impacts of meat-eating?

These questions and many more were debated on the pages of Vegetarian Review , in the years between the World Wars. For philosophical grounding, its contributors looked to ideas on vegetarianism that Tolstoy’s famous 1892 essay, “The First Step,” linked to non-violence and Christian ethics (along with a range of other spiritual traditions). Bulgarian Tolstoyans also sought intellectual scaffolding for their vegetarian convictions in famous ancient, medieval and modern vegetarians—from Pythagoras to Buddha, and Henry George to George Bernard Shaw. In addition, the journal featured articles on vegetarian strictures embedded within movements of local origin–namely the Thracian worshippers of the poet, musician, and prophet Orpheus and the eleventh-century dualist Christian sect, the Bogomils.

This preoccupation with historical precursors was coupled with a pointed critique of the industrial machine of modern animal slaughter and meat processing. In Vegetarian Review , “civilization” was derided for turning people into pleasure seeking “machines,” that could “swallow muscles and gnaw on bones” of poor innocent animals. The Chicago stockyards—since the late nineteenth century the epicenter of modern meat production–were seen as a kind of mass death camp. As an article on the pages of Vegetarian Review alleged, “In just one world city, Chicago, 54 million animals, cows, lamb, sheep, pigs and others are killed a year, with enough blood flowing from them to fill a huge reservoir.”

This clear ambivalence towards “progress,” however, did not preclude the Tolstoyans from formulating a vision of the future. Indeed, far from retreating into the past, Tolstoyan authors advocated change, a “new life,” which they claimed was only possible without “the remains of death in our teeth.” Keeping up with the times, the Bulgarian Tolstoyans enlisted new streams of thought in nutritional science, economics, and ecology in their effort to convince a mass audience beyond its narrow circles. Vegetarianism was offered as a solution to a range of social ills, including the pervasive violence and self-destruction that seemed to be bringing the modern world to the brink of extinction.

Many—though perhaps not all—of their arguments still ring true today. And yet, after a day of reading in the museum, I have to admit that I could not forgo a heaping plate of grilled kebabche — spiced meat patties — to accompany my glass of wine at a restaurant in nearby Sozopol. This region of Thrace, after all, was the ancient home to the cults of Orpheus and Bacchus. And as a historian and enthusiast of food, I had to partake of the local cuisine. And let’s not forget, that I was raised amidst the American cult of meat, in which meat was both seen as necessary protein source and the height of pleasure and leisure—just pull that burger off the barbeque and enjoy. This cult had clear (although distinct) echoes—my research had shown—behind the Iron Curtain. And yet, in both contexts—as globally—there were very locally situated anti-meat schools of thought. In this region those ideas and practices went back to ancient times, but were articulated most powerfully by the interwar Tolstoyans.

Also by Mary Neuburger on Not Even Past:

The Prague Spring Archive Project Tobacco & Smoking in Bulgaria The Museum of Sour Milk: History Lessons on Bulgarian Yoghurt Cold War Smoke: Cigarettes Across Borders Notes from the Field: From Feasts to Feats (or Feet) on the Coals

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Why was tolstoy vegetarian [illustrated].

Uploaded by Elli on May 16, 2021 at 7:23 am

Philosophy returns; this time with an examination of Leo Tolstoy’s vegetarianism! Some of you may already know that the illustrious novelist was an ardent defender of so-called “Pythagorean” diets, but what is less commonly known is the underlying philosophy driving this decision. Accordingly, this video aims to provide insight into the philosophical beliefs of one of literature’s greatest writers, as well as introducing greater depth to an already well-trodden discourse on meat-based diets.

Here are the shopping links for some of the texts used in this video:

The Metaphysics of Morals (Kant) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kant-Metaphysics-Cambridge-History-Philosophy/dp/1107451353/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=metaphysics+of+morals&qid=1612610983&sr=8-3

Civil Disobedience and Other Essays (Tolstoy) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Civil-Disobedience-Non-violence-Signet-Classical/dp/0451004116/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=tolstoy+civil+disobedience&qid=1612611041&sr=8-2

The Ethics of Diet (Williams) + The First Step (Tolstoy) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ethics-Diet-Anthology-Vegetarian-Thought/dp/1907355219/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1612611127&sr=8-1

The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci (Merezhkovsky) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Romance-Leonardo-Vinci-Dmitry-Merezhkovsky-ebook/dp/B07BRWQVR9/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1612611191&sr=8-1

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (Diogenes) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0190862173?psc=1&pf_rd_p=ec5245e1-8398-42cd-9f0a-0763f6f6b840&pf_rd_r=DWA6X7Z3AKV0QHEXS06C&pd_rd_wg=ZKZ11&pd_rd_i=0190862173&pd_rd_w=LgOH9&pd_rd_r=d108ede0-54cf-4e6b-a485-8e5bb5d40164&ref_=pd_luc_rh_di_ci_all_prf_huc_d_01_03_t_img_lh

Man’s Place in Nature (Twain) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Speeches-Essays-Sketches-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140434178/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=twain+essays&qid=1612610913&sr=8-1

Here is a link to the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s ‘Meat Atlas’: https://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/files/publications/foee_hbf_meatatlas_jan2014.pdf

[Music: Beautiful Oblivion by Scott Buckley – www.scottbuckley.com.au]

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A Brief History of Plant-Based Diets

From ancient Buddhist practices to Pythagorean philosophy and Romantic-era literature, plant-based diets have been a choice made by individuals and communities for thousands of years.

Plant-based diets are often thought of as modern contrivances, arising as a reaction to industrial agriculture and large-scale animal farming, and advocated for by animal welfare movements and twenty-first century health trends. In January of 2022, 1 in 10 Americans over the age of 18 considered themselves to be either vegan or vegetarian, there are an estimated 79 million vegans globally , and six percent of U.S. adults claimed to be vegetarian and/or vegan. These numbers continue to grow. However, while the push for plant-based diets is perhaps the largest it has ever been in history, it has not been confined to modern centuries. Various societies have chosen to forgo meat and other animal-based products for hundreds of years, and in some cases, thousands. Plant-based diets have had various origins throughout history, ranging from non-violent doctrines and religious beliefs to health and personal choice. Following plant-based diets’ progression through time and cultures reveals interesting insights into communities’ and individuals’ choices, some of them older than one might imagine.

Religion, Culture, and Plant-Based Diets

The earliest evidence of vegetarianism dates over 9,000 years ago to the Indus river civilization , in a town called Mehrgarh, located in modern-day Pakistan. This civilization is thought to be from the 3rd–2nd millennium BCE, and where Hinduism , one of the oldest religions on earth, originated, making it also the oldest example of vegetarian diets in religious practices.

One of the most prominently practiced religions in the world, Buddhism, has followed plant-based diets for some 2,500 years as part of religious and cultural practices. The belief of reincarnation plays a part in these dietary choices, as well as the doctrine of ahimsa . Ahimsa literally means ‘non-injury’, and includes refraining from any type of violence to people, animals, and plants. This includes using cloth made from animal-based materials (such as silk or leather), cutting down trees, eating and/or trading meat, honey, or eggs, and holding animals in captivity at zoos.

This doctrine is followed in Jainism and Hinduism as well. According to Mahavira , a Jaina teacher who lived in the 500s BCE, “there is no quality of soul more subtle than non-violence and no virtue of spirit greater than reverence for life.” It is this reverence of life and these deep-rooted spiritual beliefs that have led to India having the lowest rate of meat consumption in the world, with around 30% of the country and 400 million people identifying as vegetarian. While these choices are largely due to spiritual beliefs and cultural practices, they also reflect the ethical dilemmas that many other people grapple with today in regards to the treatment and respect for animal life.

Centuries after the birth of Buddhism, plant-based diets began gaining popularity from the teachings of Pythagoras of Samos, the Ionian Greek philosopher who lived from 570 BCE to 490 BCE, around 1,400 years ago. While well-known for his creation of the geometric rule many high school students have dreaded, the Pythagorean Theorem, Pythagoras was also the originator of new schools of thought. He created a community, called a philosophical school but functioning more as a monastery or a religious brotherhood, in Kroton in the early 6th century that lived by a strict set of rules.

According to 4th century follower Porphyry in his book “ The Life of Pythagoras ,” Pythagoras believed that souls were immortal, transmigrating (reincarnating) into other animated bodies after death, and that that all living beings, including animals, were related and should be considered part of one family in a ‘kinship of all life.’ Through this belief of all animals being interrelated, Pythagoras abstained from eating animal-based food and urged his followers to do so as well. Interestingly, this belief extended into a less obvious form of life: legumes.

Pythagoras found that new-growing beans were shaped like human fetuses , and therefore were also part of the cycle of transmigration. Eating them was akin to cannibalism, for beans contained the souls of the dead. Pythagoras and his brotherhood maintained a diet of bread, honey, and vegetables (excluding beans), for “he was satisfied,” says Porphyry , “with honey or the honeycomb, or with bread only, and he did not taste wine from morning to night; or his principal dish was often kitchen herbs, cooked or uncooked. Fish he ate rarely.” Abstaining from eating meat and prohibiting the harm of innocent creatures (including plants and trees) was a personal and moral decision for Pythagoras more than it was a compassionate one, yet many of his ideas still hold a similar tenor to modern animal ethics in regard to the value of all living things being equally deserving of life, much like Buddhist teachings. The name for his followers, Pythagoreans, even became synonymous with ‘vegetarian’ up until the 1840s .

Ancient Protein Alternative: Tofu

One of the staples of plant-based diets today is tofu . Tofu originated in China an estimated 2,000 years ago, its original name being dòufǔ in Mandarin Chinese (its current name coming from a Japanese word for bean curd). Tofu is made from soybeans (don’t tell Pythagoras!), a crop which has been cultivated for 5,000 or so years, and is similar to cheese in terms of its production (soy milk is curdled with calcium sulfate to create tofu blocks of varying firmness).t is used in a variety of dishes such as tofu pad thai , Agedashi tofu , and mapo tofu , and can be found in many forms: silken, firm, pressed, smoked, grilled, and more. It became a staple of Buddhist monks’ vegetarian diets, as it is high in protein, as well as iron and calcium.

There is much debate as to the origins and history of tofu. Some legends credit Liu An of the Han Dynasty, and that he discovered the process in an attempt to cure his mother of illness. Others think it may have been created by accident, or that Mongolian tribes brought their methods of culturing dairy products as they migrated from north central Asia into China, an idea called The Mongolian Import Theory . However it was first created, tofu has proved to be a staple of vegetarian diets in Asia throughout history, and now in the modern age, across the world. The first European to mention tofu was in 1613 when British Captain John Saris , a merchant, made the first English voyage to Japan. Tofu was not introduced to the United States until 1896 , and did not become popular until the 1960s, when vegetarian diets were on the rise and younger generations began following new diets for personal health. There was also a burgeoning interest in alternative proteins as a way to cut down on waste. Today, tofu is a well-known alternative to meat and is used in vegetarian and vegan diets across the world.

Literature and Vegetarianism

Several hundred years or so years after Pythagoras created his brotherhood, there lived a man called Abu ‘L’Ala Ahmad ibn ‘Abdallah al-Ma’arri , in the south of Aleppo in what is now known as Syria. At a young age al-Ma’arri was blinded by chicken pox, but his blindness did not deter him from pursuing his talents in poetry and writing of his views on the sanctity of life. He became a vegan at the age of 30, believing that it was evil to physically harm animals, as well as steal their milk and eggs.

In one of his most famous poems “ I No Longer Steal from Nature ”, al-Ma’arri wrote of the injustice of taking fish from the water, the flesh from living creatures, milk from lactating animals meant to feed their babies, honey from industrious bees, and eggs from unsuspecting birds. Al-Ma’arri also was not afraid to mention his lack of income and his diet of beans and lentils as a result (don’t tell Pythagoras!). His beliefs, however, remained strong, though he did not follow any specific doctrine of religious belief, which was rare for his time.

The Romantic Era of 19th century Europe was one of the sublime, of literature and beauty, and of nature. It;s humanitarian ideas led to an increased number of plant-based diets and opinions about animal welfare, as well as increased meat prices and profit-driven markets–much like today. Several writers of now-classic Romantic literature followed a vegetarian diet, such as Percy Bysshe Shelley , who wrote in his “ A Vindication of a Natural Diet ,” an essay written in 1813, “by all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth, to give a fair trial to the vegetable system…[and] it is only among the enlightened and benevolent, that so great a sacrifice of appetite and prejudice can be expected.”

Percy Shelley also believed that meat caused diseases, and encouraged his wife Mary Shelley, to follow a meatless diet. Mary Shelley advocated for the welfare of animals through her writing. Her well-known Gothic novel “ Frankenstein ” has been thought to have humanitarian tones in terms of animal treatment, as the Creature in her book says: “I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment.” The Creature, while a murderer and monster of Victor Frankenstien’s grisly making, still refuses to eat living creatures or rely on them for nourishment, instead turning to the berries and nuts of the woods.

Other literary vegetarians include Franz Kafka , author of “Metamorphosis,” who followed health fads and certain lacto-vegetarian diets for his digestive troubles . Leo Tolstoy, Russian philosopher and writer of “Anna Karenina” was a pacifist who rejected harm or violence against animals and people, believing that all sentient creatures had souls, and that the Christian Commandment “thou shalt not kill” applied to all living things, not only humans.

Tolstoy had an influence on vegetarianism in Russia, and wrote an article called “ The First Step, ” which advocated for vegetarianism and the rights of animals. In this essay, Tolstoy writes of a conversation he had with a butcher, who he asked if he felt sorry for the animals he killed. The butcher replied, “why should I feel sorry? It is necessary”, but changed his answer when Tolstoy said that eating meat is not necessary, but is only a luxury. The butcher then said he was sorry for the animals, but “what can I do? I must earn my bread.” These are sentiments that hold true for many slaughterhouse workers today , where factory workers have little choice but to work in such places to survive and feed their families.

Industrialization and Vegetarian Etymology

Until the Industrial Revolution and the Agricultural Revolution, agriculture functioned with little change for some 13,000 years. There was a shift toward efficiency in work and cost, a focus on specialized farming, mechanization, chemical pesticides and fertilizers, market concentration, and high yields for higher profits. However, it was before the 1900s that the word ‘vegetarian’ rose to the public eye. It is a combination of the word ‘vegetable’ and ‘agrarian’ , which means ‘relating to the land.’ ‘Pythagorean’ was officially replaced when the first vegetarian society was formed in Ramsgate, England in 1847 (other synonyms had previously included ‘anti-carnivorous’). Only a few years later the American Vegetarian Society was born. Many abolitionists and women’s rights activists attended meetings , including Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Amelia Bloomer. A detailed report was kept of the first meeting. Vegetarian churches, vegetarian physicians, and vegetarian communes also started to become popular.

With the turn of the 20th century, as agriculture moved towards mechanized animal farming and large-scale factories, these trends continued. Upton Sinclair turned many Americans away from eating meat because of his vivid depictions of the meat packing industry in his book “The Jungle”, published in 1906. John Harvey Kellog , the creator of cornflakes, experimented with health treatments at the Battle Creek Medical Surgical Sanitorium, and decided that diets of vegetables and grains reduced health issues. By the 1920s, large scale chicken farming was on the rise, and the wide-spread use of animal antibiotics in the 1940s allowed for animals to be kept in less than desirable confinement – because there’s nothing a little overusing of antibiotics won’t fix, right? By the 1980s, the majority of farmed animals were raised in factory farms. Now, in 2023, 99% of farmed animals in the U.S. are raised on factory farms. More than ever people may find themselves contemplating their daily meal choices and its impact on the world, or on personal and religious philosophies.

Into the Future: Modern Movements into Plant-Based Diets

With such a high percentage of vegetarians in the world currently, companies have arisen to cater to these choices. Food delivery programs such as Thistle and Trifecta send plant-based boxes of ingredients and prepared foods to subscribers, while companies such as Beyond Meat make vegan, plant-based protein alternatives to meat. Most restaurants have a vegetarian or vegan option, or are fully plant-based, such as Veggie Grill . And it is not only food that is going plant-based, either, but other products such as cosmetics and clothing, with companies such as Pangaia and Pacifica Beauty gaining popularity. The luxury brand Hermès even began crafting their leather products with fabric made from fungus .

Plant-based diets have been a common occurrence throughout history. In our 21st century world we tend not to think about Pythagorean theorems or Romantic horror stories in connection to modern health and animal welfare trends, but they have more bearing on the present than we might think, and offer interesting insights into the timeline of plant based diets through history. Not only that, but these philosophies of the past have informed and helped structure the way animal rights movements operate today, from the origin of the word ‘vegetarian’ to world-wide issues of factory farming and endeavors to promote a more just food system for all.

Shay Schmida is a teller of tales, dreamer of dreams, and writer of all things. She is a college advocate at FFAC, and is interested in illuminating the issues of our food system through her writing.

1110 N Virgil Ave, Suite 98280 Los Angeles, CA 90029

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Growing up as a vegetarian in rural England in the ’90s, I was sometimes under the impression that my lifestyle was unusual—if not radical. In recent years, vegetarianism (and reduced-meat diets) have become more mainstream even in rural areas.

With time I’ve come to realize that there have always been vegetarians and vegetarian communities. Perhaps the more interesting ones for me are the artists and thinkers who go against the grain, choosing to think and live differently from the people around them. There is sometimes difficulty in ascertaining the validity of claims that certain historical figures actually followed a vegetarian lifestyle. For Da Vinci we have both Giorgio Vasari ’s accounts and the letters between Andrea Corsali and Da Vinci’s patron Giuliano de’ Medici as convincing sources; for Pythagoras we have a number of ancient sources, as well as his enduring legacy. My awareness of Albert Einstein ’s vegetarianism comes from primary sources—letters to Hans Muehsam and Max Kariel .

Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness, don’t work against God’s intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you—alas, it is true of almost every one of us!

We can follow the historic alliance of feminism and vegetarianism in Utopian writings and societies, antivivisection activism, the temperance and suffrage movements, and twentieth century pacifism. Hydropathic institutes in the nineteenth century, which featured vegetarian regimens, were frequented by Susan B. Anthony , Elizabeth Cady Stanton , Sojourner Truth , and others. At a vegetarian banquet in 1853, the gathered guests lifted their alcohol-free glasses to toast: “Total Abstinence, Women’s Rights, and Vegetarianism.”

While far from exhaustive, I shall discuss some among them here.

Suddenly he began to speak to the fish in their illuminated tanks, “Now at last I can look at you in peace, I don’t eat you any more.” … Among my notes I find something else that Kafka said about vegetarianism…He compared vegetarians with the early Christians, persecuted everywhere, everywhere laughed at, and frequenting dirty haunts. “What is meant by its nature for the highest and the best, spreads among the lowly people.”

In a letter from Brod to Kafka’s fiancee Felice Bauer , Brod writes:

After years of trial and error Franz has at last found the only diet that suits him, the vegetarian one. For years he suffered from his stomach; now he is as healthy and as fit as I have ever known him. Then along come his parents, of course, and in the name of love try to force him back into eating meat and being ill—it is just the same with his sleeping habits. At last he has found what suits him best, he can sleep, can do his duty in that senseless office, and get on with his literary work. But then his parents…This really makes me bitter.

Eating Animals is essentially his own denunciation of factory farming, but it is also a reflection on the culture that surrounds meat eating: the history of ambivalence toward carnism; societal hypocrisies; the myth of consent and other stories cultures create for themselves to justify slaughter; the language we use to devalue some animals but place value in others that we love as companions.

In several places, Safran Foer refers back to that moment when Kafka looks at fish at the Berlin aquarium. He uses Walter Benjamin ’s interpretation of Kafka’s animal tales to frame this part of his own story. Benjamin tells us how Kafka’s animals are “receptacles of forgetting,” while shame—as paraphrased by Safran Foer—is “a response and a responsibility before invisible others.”

“What had moved Kafka to become vegetarian?” asks Safran Foer:

A possible answer lies in the connection Benjamin makes, on the one hand, between animals and shame, and on the other, between animals and forgetting. Shame is the work of memory against forgetting. Shame is what we feel when we almost entirely—yet not entirely—forget social expectations and our obligations to others in favor of our immediate satisfaction.

Shame doesn’t just prompt forgetting about the animals we harm. “What we forget about animals,” writes Safran Foer, “we begin to forget about ourselves.”

During the spring of 2007, Safran Foer lived in Berlin with his family, and they would visit the aquarium Kafka had visited the previous century—and like him, they would stare into the tanks at the sea life. “As a writer aware of that Kafka story, I came to feel a certain kind of shame at the aquarium,” he writes. Among the various manifestations of shame he experienced: shame at feeling “grossly inadequate” compared to his hero, shame at being a Jew in Berlin:

And then there was the shame in being human: the shame of knowing that twenty of the roughly thirty-five classified species of seahorse worldwide are threatened with extinction because they are killed “unintentionally” in seafood production. The shame of indiscriminate killing for no nutritional necessity or political cause or irrational hatred or intractable human conflict.

For Safran Foer, remembering thwarts forgetting when he visits the kill floor of Paradise Locker Meats and looks into the eyes of a pig who is minutes away from being slaughtered; he didn’t quite feel at ease being the pig’s last sight, though what he felt wasn’t quite shame either. “The pig wasn’t a receptacle of my forgetting,” he writes. “The animal was a receptacle of my concern. I felt—I feel—relief in that. My relief doesn’t matter to the pig. But it matters to me.”

Though Walker acknowledges the difficulty of this comparison, she concludes that she agrees with Spiegel’s line of reason: “The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men. This is the gist of Spiegel’s cogent, humane and astute argument, and it is sound.”

Vegetarianism, or veganism, is something to which Walker seems to aspire, though. To an audience at Emory University, the author talks about her love of cows and says she is glad she doesn’t eat them. She then recites a short poem she wrote for an Italian friend who wanted help giving up meat, “La Vaca”:

Look into her eyes and know: She does not think of herself as steak.

4. Isaac Bashevis Singer The comparison between human and animal slavery is not the only dreaded comparison; the Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer has become the classic reference for comparisons between intensive farming and the Holocaust. In “ The Letter Writer ,” he wrote, “In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.”

Yoneih Meir no longer slept at night. If he dozed off, he was immediately beset by nightmares. Cows assumed human shape, with beards, and skullcaps over their horns. Yoineh Meir would be slaughtering a calf, but it would turn into a girl. Her neck throbbed, and she pleaded to be saved. She ran to the study house and splattered the courtyard with her blood. He even dreamed that he had slaughtered [his wife] instead of a sheep.

Yoineh Meir extends his love toward all animals when he realizes what it means to kill one. Later in the narrative, Singer writes that “when you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.”

The people who lived in the countryside around Treblinka—Poles, for the most part—said that they did not know what was going on in the camp; said that, while in a general way they might have guessed what was going on, they did not know for sure; said that, while in a sense they might have known, in another sense they did not know, could not afford to know, for their own sake. … I return one last time to the places of death all around us, the places of slaughter to which, in a huge communal effort, we close our hearts. Each day a fresh holocaust, yet, as far as I can see, our moral being is untouched. … It was from the Chicago stockyards that the Nazis learned how to process bodies.

We know Coetzee is a vegetarian and active animal rights advocate, though in The Lives of Animals it becomes difficult to distinguish between Elizabeth Costello’s views and J. M. Coetzee’s. He has written several op-eds for the Sydney Herald about beliefs we can safely say are his own.

In one article , Coetzee criticizes the manner in which consumers tend to idealize family farms:

It would be a mistake to idealize traditional animal husbandry as the standard by which the animal products industry falls short. Traditional animal husbandry is brutal enough, just on a smaller scale. A better standard by which to judge both practices would be the simple standard of humanity: is this truly the best that humans are capable of?

In another , Coetzee expresses his optimism concerning the compassion of children: “It takes but one glance into a slaughterhouse to turn a child into a lifelong vegetarian.”

For many Hindus who follow a lacto-vegetarian diet, the ideological reasons for not eating animals are still ever present—for others, it is merely a distinction inherited from the cultural context into which they were born. I don’t know which category Naipaul fits into. He has, to the best of my knowledge, never spoken openly about any ideological reason for his vegetarianism.

7. Leo Tolstoy Vegetarianism was the focal point of several of his essays and tied in with his pre-existing beliefs in the benefits of abstinence. In On Civil Disobedience , for example, Tolstoy writes, “A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”

Four years after Tolstoy’s death, his private secretary Valentin Bulgakov wrote an article for London-based The Vegetarian News to celebrate Tolstoy’s “great service to the vegetarian movement” during the last 23 years of his life. The article ends like this:

I close what I have to say with the words of Leo Tolstoy himself: “Here, indeed, outwardly, are we met but inwardly we are bound to every living creature. Already are we conscious of many of the motions of the spiritual world, but others have not yet been borne in upon us. Nevertheless they come, even as the earth presently comes to see the light of the stars, which to our eyes at this moment is invisible.”

Image: Flickr/ ilovebutter

Elizabeth Sulis Kim graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an MA in Modern Languages. She is a freelance journalist and writer. Her other by-lines include the Guardian, the New Orleans Review and Positive News.

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Leo Tolstoy Was The Greatest Vegetarian Of His Time

Published on 9/9/2014 at 5:18 PM

Tuesday marks the 186th birthday of Russian philosopher and writer Leo Tolstoy. While the Google doodle gives a poignant look at art depicting his most famous works, there's another side to Tolstoy.

Tolstoy was a noted thinker on vegetarianism, and even made it the subject of several philosophical essays. He gives impassioned, eloquent moral arguments not to eat animals - ones that any modern eater should consider.

Here are a sampling of Tolstoy's best passages on eating animals:

If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.

- The First Step

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.

- On Civil Disobedience

The vegetarian movement ought to fill with gladness the souls of those who have at heart the realization of God's kingdom upon earth, not because vegetarianism itself is such an important step towards the realization of this kingdom (all real steps are equally important or unimportant), but because it serves as a criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of man is genuine and sincere.

- News Review, 1892 It's worth noting that Tolstoy is far from the first great thinker to adopt vegetarianism for reasons of morality - several texts suggest that Leonardo da Vinci gave up meat , and Nikola Tesla, Mahatma Gandhi, George Bernard Shaw and Franz Kafka were all known vegetarians as well.

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Here’s Tolstoy’s recipe for macaroni and cheese (AKA Mac & Peace).

All delicious mac and cheese recipes are alike; each gross mac and cheese recipe is gross in its own way. Or something. I haven’t actually prepared Leo Tolstoy’s family recipe for macaroni and cheese, but it involves only one cheese (parmesan) something called vegetable sauce, so… you be the judge!

The recipe comes from a cookbook that Tolstoy’s brother-in-law, Stepan Andreevich Bers, published and gifted to his sister, Tolstoy’s wife, Sophia Andreevna Tolstaya. The book was translated and adapted by Sergei Beltyukov a few years ago, under the title Leo Tolstoy: A Vegetarian’s Tale: Tolstoy’s Family Vegetarian Recipes Adapted for the Modern Kitchen .

Tolstoy became a vegetarian in the latter half of his life, and wrote in his essay “The First Step” (a preface to the Russian translation of The Ethics of Diet by Howard Williams) that eating meat “is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling—killing; and is called forth only by greediness and the desire for tasty food.” (Tough but fair, honestly.)

So today, on this, Tolstoy’s birthday, you can honor him by eating some (vegetarian) mac and cheese—that is, if you can figure out which vegetables, exactly, go into vegetable sauce.

Bring water to a boil, add salt, then add macaroni and leave boiling on light fire until half tender; drain water through a colander, add butter and start putting macaroni back into the pot in layers—layer of macaroni, some grated Parmesan and some vegetable sauce, macaroni again and so on until you run out of macaroni. Put the pot on the edge of the stove, cover with a lid and let it rest in light fire until the macaroni are soft and tender. Shake the pot occasionally to prevent them from burning.

As with all great literature, plenty of room for interpretation.

[h/t Open Culture ]

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Why was vegetarianism so popular in Tsarist Russia?

“It was dinnertime and we entered the dining room. There was a huge kitchen knife on my aunt’s side of the table and a live chicken was tied to the leg of a chair. The poor bird was kicking and pulling the chair. ‘See?’ the father said to his sister. ‘Knowing that you like to eat living things, we brought a chicken. None of us can kill it, so we left this deadly task for you. Do it yourself.’ ‘Another one of your jokes!’ exclaimed Aunt Tanya, laughing. ‘Tanya, Masha, now untie the poor bird and give her back her freedom.

We hurried to fulfill Auntie’s wish. Having freed the chicken, we served pasta, vegetables and fruits. Auntie ate everything with a great appetite.”

This is an excerpt from the memoirs of Tatiana, Leo Tolstoy’s daughter. She herself, her sister Masha and their father were convinced vegetarians. But, Sofya Andreyevna, the writer’s wife, complained about the writer’s vegetarianism, which for her caused “the complication of a double dinner, extra costs and extra work for people.” In addition, Sophia felt a vegetarian meal “does not nourish him enough.” But Tolstoy persisted and did not eat meat. In Russia, however, he was not the only vegetarian.

'The local population is easily disposed to vegetarianism'

Vegetarian canteen on Nikitsky boulevard, Moscow, the 1910s

Nutritionist Jenny Schultz, who opened Hungary’s first vegetarian canteen in 1896, launched one in Moscow in 1903. Having studied Russian attitudes toward vegetarianism, Schultz, who had specifically studied “vegetarian gastronomy” in Switzerland, wrote: “Numerous, mostly long periods of fasting are observed by rich and poor people, in town and in the countryside, with great conscientiousness. This is the reason why the local population is so easily disposed to vegetarianism.”

Indeed, in Russia, fasting has always been given special importance. As Peter Brang, a scholar of Russian vegetarianism, writes: “For Russian monasticism, unlike Western monasticism (with the exception of the Trappists and Carthusians), qualitative fasting – abstaining from eating meat – is a basic provision.” Good monks fasted year-round, only occasionally allowing themselves to eat fish. As for ordinary believers, the four main fasts – the Great Lent , Peter’s, Dormition and Christmas fasts, together with the “usual” fasting days (each Wednesday and Friday) gave a total of about 220 days of fasting a year, which believers also tried to observe.

The Primary Chronicle mentions under year 1074: “Lenten time purifies the mind of man.” And the hagiography of the great Russian saint Sergius of Radonezh mentions that, even as a baby, he did not even touch his mother’s breasts during Lent, thus, his holiness manifested itself in his infancy.

Vegetarian canteen in Gazetny lane, Moscow

It turns out that the spiritual ground for vegetarianism in Russia was already prepared. However, the Russian Orthodox Church condemned vegetarianism. In Russia, there were certain Christian sects that completely rejected meat – the Khlysts and the Skoptzy. Since the church actively opposed these sects, vegetarianism also received this bad attitude. The very readiness of someone to abstain from meat aroused the suspicion of church officials that sectarian aspirations might be behind it.

In 1913, Nikolai Lapin, a peasant from Saratov region, submitted his article ‘Why I Became a Vegetarian’ to the Vegetarian Review magazine. Lapin gave up meat at the age of 18, because, since childhood, he was disgusted to see cattle being slaughtered. Soon, his fellow villagers, Lapin wrote, began to question whether he could do the hard farm work and when there was no problem with that, they began to say that he had been seduced by the devil. So, the vegetarian diet raised questions among the common people, as well, not only Tolstoy’s wife, who reproached the count that because he taught his daughters "not to eat meat – they eat vinegar and oil, they became green and thin.”

Leo Tolstoy and the ‘slaughter-free’ food

Leo Tolstoy and Ilya Repin in Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy family estate

Count Tolstoy said that he rejected meat around 1883-1884, when he met aristocrat and retired military officer Vladimir Chertkov, who was already a vegetarian. In 1885, the writer was already in conflict with his wife, because of his refusal to eat meat and, in 1892, he wrote an essay titled ‘The First Step’ – a passionate manifesto of vegetarianism. “How is it possible to kill a cow that has been feeding milk to you and your children for years? The sheep that warmed you with its warm wool? Take it – and kill! Cut the throat and eat it?” Tolstoy asked.

Leo Tolstoy, "The First Step"

‘The First Step’ had a huge impact – many intellectuals turned to vegetarianism. Artist Ilya Repin enthusiastically described his vegetarianism: “The eggs were thrown away (the meat had already been left before). Salads! What a charm! What a life (with olive oil!) Soup from hay, from roots, from herbs — that’s the elixir of life. Fruits, red wine, dried fruits, olives, prunes… nuts are energy. Is it possible to list all the luxuries of a vegetable table?” In 1900, Repin married Natalia Nordman, one of the famous Russian propagandists of vegetarianism, who, in addition to refusing “slaughter” in food, did not wear furs, which completely shocked the noble society.

How many vegetarian canteens were there in Russia?

Leo Tolstoy and his wife Sofya at a dinner table

“Here, vegetarianism is mostly viewed from the ideal side; the hygienic side is still little known," Jenny Schultz noted in her article. Indeed, the first Russian vegetarians underlined not the harm of meat for health. Protest against murder was at the core of their ideas, that’s why the vegetarian food was dubbed “slaughter-free”.

Vegetarianism in Russia appeared even before Tolstoy. Tolstoy’s follower Yuri Yakubovsky wrote that, in 1888-1889, the first vegetarian society called ‘Neither Fish nor Meat’ celebrated its 25th anniversary in St. Petersburg. So, already in the 1860s, vegetarians were united among themselves – but, so far, without scientific justification. It appeared in 1878, when an article titled ‘Human nutrition in its present and future’ was published by the rector of St. Petersburg University, botanist Andrey Beketov. The author argued that man is naturally adapted to plant-based nutrition, pointed out the high cost of meat and also reminded that the slaughterhouse is “a disgusting, stinking and bloody place where they cut, tear, chop and drain blood from veins”. “The future belongs to vegetarians,” concluded Beketov. But, even the rector’s authority could not convince the public – several mocking refutations came out on Beketov’s article.

Leo Tolstoy with his friend Vladimir Chertkov, who probably introduced him to vegetarianism

However, after the publication of ‘The First Step’, attitude towards Beketov changed. His article was reprinted twice, with a total circulation of about 15,000 copies, in the publishing house of Vladimir Chertkov ‘Posrednik’. In 1903, a collection compiled by Tolstoy, ‘Slaughter-free nutrition, or vegetarianism. Thoughts of different writers’, which contained 250 quotes about the benefits of vegetarianism, was published there.

The first private vegetarian canteen of English couple Mr. and Mrs. Mood opened in Moscow in 1896 – but almost immediately closed. In 1904, there were already four such canteens. Portraits of the “sun of Russian vegetarianism” – Leo Tolstoy – hung on the walls. By 1914, according to Brang’s calculations, there were 73 vegetarian canteens in 37 cities, most of all in St. Petersburg (nine) and seven each in Kiev and Moscow.

"Vegetarianskiy vestnik" ('The Vegetarian Herald') magazine

Canteens were quite popular – one Moscow canteen in Gazetny Lane served up to 1,300 people a day. Statistics on visits to the canteens of the Moscow Vegetarian Society showed an increase in the number of guests from 11 thousand in 1909 to more than 642 thousand in 1914. And, for example, the Kiev Public Vegetarian Canteen in 1911 served 489,163 meals to 200,326 visitors. The magazines ‘Vegetarian Review’ and ‘Vegetarian Bulletin’, as well as the almanac ‘Natural Life and vegetarianism’ were published.

It was in the last years before the revolution that vegetarianism in Russia became widespread and commonplace. But, this development was broken by the offensive of Soviet power. In the first years after the revolution, the Bolsheviks did not pay attention to vegetarians, but, in 1929, the Moscow Vegetarian Society was banned and a number of its members were exiled – for the Soviet government, these were “Tolstoyans”, carriers of the ideology of non-resistance and nonviolence, which had to be eradicated and which was done throughout the country under the pretext of fighting the “Tolstoyans” like with fists. In the USSR, as the Great Soviet Encyclopedia claimed in 1951, vegetarianism “has no adherents”. The vegetarian society in Moscow was registered again only in 1989.

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Vegetarianism in russia: the tolstoy(an) legacy.

Ronald D. LeBlanc , University of New Hampshire - Main Campus Follow

The collapse of communist rule in Russia at the beginning of the 1990s revived a whole series of social, cultural, and ideological phenomena that had either lain dormant or been almost entirely absent during the Soviet period, phenomena ranging from pornography and prostitution to religion and real estate. Vegetarianism, which had been demonized under Stalin as a pernicious and insidiously "anti-scientific" doctrine promulgated by the ideologues of the exploitative classes in the capitalist West, experienced a revival that began during the glasnost' years; it has continued to remain popular in post communist Russia as well. The Vegetarian Society of the USSR, which was created in the late 1980s under Gorbachev, helped to bring together-and, more importantly, to bring out of the proverbial closet-Russian vegetarians of various hues, organizing health groups in different cities across the former Soviet Union.

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LeBlanc, Ronald D. “Vegetarianism in Russia: The Tolstoy(an) Legacy.” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, No. 1507, (2001)

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Leo Tolstoy Quotes About Vegetarian

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If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because ...its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling - killing.

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.

What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty.

Flesh eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to moral feeling: By killing, man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity, that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel." "As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.

'Thou shalt not kill' does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings and this commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai.

As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefields. A vegetarian diet is the acid test of humanitarianism.

A human can be healthy without killing animals for food.

Vegetarianism serves as the criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of humanity is genuine and sincere.

The vegetarian movement ought to fill with gladness the souls of those who have at heart the realization of God's kingdom upon earth, not because vegetarianism itself is such an important step towards the realization of this kingdom (all real steps are equally important or unimportant), but because it serves as a criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of man is genuine and sincere.

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There's more to Tolstoy than War and Peace

This is the anniversary year for Tolstoy's death – a century ago he fled his ancestral home, Yasnaya Polyana , and went on the road with a friend (his private doctor) to become a kind of wandering monk. He died only a couple of weeks later, in a remote railway station called Astapovo. He was estranged from his wife of nearly five decades, cut off from all of his children except one daughter, who had become a devoted "Tolstoyan". It was a strange end, and the story itself was (to me) so compelling that I wrote a novel about it, The Last Station, in 1990. It has now been made into a film , with Helen Mirren as the Countess and Christopher Plummer as the great man himself.

Needless to say, the anniversary is going to draw a lot of readers to Tolstoy. This is certainly a good thing. I would assume that most readers who have read Tolstoy seriously will know the important novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. These are certainly masterpieces that rank among the great works of western European literature. I go back to them myself every few years, just to sink into their worlds, which are endlessly informative, stimulating, and convincing. I love these books.

But there is a vast shelf of books by Leo Tolstoy, and these contain some very intriguing and much less widely read works. It's not, as popularly thought, that Tolstoy abandoned writing fiction after Anna Karenina. The Death of Ivan Ilych is a late piece of writing, or relatively so, and it's as good as anything Tolstoy ever wrote: a vivid account of the dying process, as harrowing as anything I have ever read. He also wrote any number of wonderful late tales that read a bit like folktales, but they are self-assured, vital, unforgettable. I like especially a very late tale called " Alyosha Gorshak ". And then, indeed, there is a fine historical novel, Hadji Murat – not a book easily bypassed by anyone seriously interested in Tolstoy's accomplishment as a writer.

Tolstoy became a kind of prophet in his old age, during the last few decades. He turned to Christianity, but he did so with a twist. It was his Christianity. That is, he had a vision of Christ that did not include supernatural trappings. He learned New Testament Greek and spent a great deal of time rewriting the Gospels, taking out the miracles, all the supernatural bits. He saw Jesus as a great man who had a special relationship with God, and he spent decades elaborating this idea in essay after essay. The Kingdom of God Is Within You is a whole book that puts forward his ideas on Jesus, faith, God, pacifism, and the moral life. I myself collected bits and pieces from his last four decades in a new volume out from Penguin Classics called Last Steps: The Late Writings of Leo Tolstoy .

This volume also contains some of Tolstoy's later writings on vegetarianism, sex, and literature. Oddly, Tolstoy wrote a very long essay – almost a small book – on Shakespeare only a few years before he died. It's a deeply eccentric book but still fascinating. Tolstoy hated Shakespeare because he didn't take a stand. He could see things from endless viewpoints. There was no moral centre, or so Tolstoy believed.

Isaiah Berlin once wrote an essay called "The Hedgehog and the Fox" where he classified Tolstoy as a hedgehog because he was devoted to one big idea. That idea was God. Tolstoy was saturated in the idea of God, and he felt the presence of God in all things. In a sense, Tolstoy had an Oriental viewpoint here: he was deeply versed in eastern philosophy and religion, and he really combines that sense of a pervasively interconnected, timeless world with western ideas of God. I would direct readers who want to know more about Tolstoy to these later essays – especially the religious ones. It was not for nothing that such figures as Gandhi and Martin Luther King looked to Tolstoy as a kind of moral hero, a man in touch with the inner workings of the spirit.

Tolstoy was a writer who could not write a line that did not come from a deep centre. He wrote with power and conviction, and his work is everlasting.

Leo Tolstoy

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The two brothers, - by leo tolstoy.

"Untitled" by Samuel Zeller is in the public domain.

Once upon a time, in the days long since gone by, there dwelt at Jerusalem two brothers; the name of the elder was Athanasius, the name of the younger John. They dwelt on a hill not far from the town, and lived upon what people gave to them. Every day the brothers went out to work. They worked not for themselves, but for the poor. Wherever the overworked, the sick were to be found-wherever there were widows and orphans, thither went the brothers, and there they worked and spent their time, taking no payment. Thus the brothers went about separately the whole week, and only met together in the evening of the Sabbath at their own dwelling. Only on Sunday did they remain at home, praying and conversing together. And the Angel of the Lord came down to them and blessed them. On the Monday they separated again, each going his own way. Thus did the brothers live for many years, and every week the Angel of the Lord came down to them and blessed them. One Monday, when the brothers had gone forth to work, and had parted their several ways, the elder brother, Athanasius, felt sorry at having had to part from his beloved brother, and he stood still and glanced after him. John was walking with bent head, and he did not look back. But suddenly John also stopped as if he perceived something and continued to gaze fixedly at it. Presently he drew near to that which he had been looking upon, and then suddenly leaped aside, and, not stopping for another instant, ran towards the mountain and up the mountain, right away from the place, just as if some savage beast were pursuing him. Athanasius was astonished, and turned back to the place to find out what his brother had been so afraid of. At last he approached the spot, and then he saw something glistening in the sun. He drew nearer-on the grass, as if poured out from a measure, lay a heap of gold. And Athanasius was still more astonished, both at the sight of the gold and at the leaping aside of his brother. "What was he afraid of, and what did he run away from?" thought Athanasius. "There is no sin in gold, sin is in man. You may do ill with gold, but you may also do good. How many widows and orphans might not be fed therewith, how many naked ones might not be clothed, how many poor and sick might not be cared for and cured by means of this gold? Now, indeed, we minister to people, but our ministration is but little, because our power is small, and with this gold we might minister to people much more than we do now." Thus thought Athanasius, and would have said so to his brother, but John was by this time out of hearing, and looked no bigger than a cockchafer on the further mountain. And Athanasius took off his garment, shovelled as much gold into it as he was able to carry, threw it over his shoulder, and went into the town. He went to an inn, gave the gold to the innkeeper, and then went off to fetch the rest of it. And when he had brought in all the gold he went to the merchants, bought land in that town, bought stones, wood, hired labourers, and set about building three houses. And Athanasius abode in the town three months, and built the three houses in that town; one of the houses was an asylum for widows and orphans, the second house was a hospital for the sick, the third house was a hospice for the poor and for pilgrims. And Athanasius sought him out three God-fearing elders, and the first elder he placed over the refuge, the second over the hospital, and the third over the hospice for pilgrims. And Athanasius had three thousand gold pieces still left. And he gave a thousand to each of the elders that they might have wherewith to distribute among the poor. And all three houses began to be filled with people, and the people began to praise Athanasius for all that he had done. And Athanasius rejoiced thereat, so that he had no desire to depart from the town. But Athanasius loved his brother, and, taking leave of the people, and not keeping for himself a single coin of all this money, he went back to his dwelling in the selfsame old garment in which he had come to town. Athanasius was drawing near to his mountain, and he thought to himself: "My brother judged wrongly when he leaped aside from the gold and ran away from it. Haven't I done much better?" And Athanasius had no sooner thought this than suddenly he beheld standing in his path the Angel who had been sent to bless them, but now looked threateningly upon him. And Athanasius was aghast and could only say: "Wherefore, my Lord?" And the Angel opened his mouth and said: "Depart from hence! Thou art not worthy to dwell with thy brother. That one leap aside of thy brother's was worth more than all that thou hast done with thy gold." Athanasius began to talk of how many poor and how many pilgrims he had fed, and of how many orphans he had cared for. And the Angel said to him: "That same Devil who placed the gold there in order to corrupt thee, hath also put these big words into thy mouth. And then the conscience of Athanasius upbraided him, and he understood that what he had done was not done for God, and he wept and began to repent. Then the Angel stepped aside from the road, and left free for him the path in which John was already standing awaiting his brother. And from thenceforth Athanasius yielded no more to the wiles of the Devil who had strewn the gold in his path, and he understood that not by gold, but by good works only, could he render service to God and his fellow-man. And the brethren dwelt together as before.

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This Easy, Make-Ahead Easter Brunch Only Feels Expensive

This spring menu — a showstopping frittata, a snappy salad and a chewy cookie from a celebrated restaurant chef — isn’t just surprising. It’s surprisingly simple.

In an overhead photo, a bowl of salad, a pea green frittata and a plate of golden cookies are shown on a white surface.

By Clare de Boer

No matter what’s going on outside, by the end of March, it can be pretty much spring in the kitchen. It’ll probably be a few weeks until the season’s produce trickles in, but this shouldn’t stop you from making a meal that feels jubilantly of the moment.

The recipes here — you could call it an Italian-esque Easter brunch or a shotgun celebration of spring — don’t rely on the farmers’ market, but call on color, texture, bacon-offsets and frozen peas to conjure the season we’ve been so patiently waiting for.

Recipe: Pea and Ricotta Frittata

Each part is most delicious eaten at or above room temperature, so — rather conveniently — they can be prepared in advance. Make this menu before you referee an egg hunt or before the sun draws you outside.

Its centerpiece is a lavishly tender, pastel-green frittata filled with pea purée, mint and ricotta. But it’s not a frittata as you know it: It’s neither health food nor the flat, rubbery result of quickly rounded up leftovers — quite the opposite! It’s a tall, quivering custard, cooked ever-so-slowly and mosaicked with mint leaves. Its wobbly texture manifests the giddy vulnerability of spring and is dramatic enough to replace ham or lamb.

It’s not something to eat straight from the oven. Undercooked by a hair, the heat trapped in the custard will carry it over to that perfect state of just-cooked as it cools. I like to put it out on the table, tucked under a clean dishcloth, so it’s ready and waiting for a casual reveal when we’re ready to eat.

Recipe: Greens and Peas Salad With Bacon

It goes with a snap pea and bacon salad for sweetness and crunch. A vinaigrette whisked with the warm, rendered bacon fat gives a savory contrast that makes all green things taste greener. This is a salad to evolve as the season does: Add slivered asparagus, favas or English peas — even their shoots — as they arrive; leave out the bacon if you don’t need it to make things taste sweet and new.

Recipe: Chewy Lemon Cookies

And for dessert, it’s worth steering clear of anything eggy or sliced. This lemon, polenta and rosemary cookie is an ideal foil to our soft and crisp start, and is most chewy and fragrant after it cools. If there was such a thing as a spring cookie, this would be it: It’s pale yellow and brightly flavored, easy to grab as you head outside, officially closing the door on winter.

Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram , Facebook , YouTube , TikTok and Pinterest . Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice .

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IMAGES

Why was Tolstoy vegetarian? [Illustrated]
Leo Tolstoy Quote: “Vegetarianism serves as the criterion by which we
Leo Tolstoy Quote: “Vegetarianism serves as the criterion by which we
Leo Tolstoy words on vegetarianism
Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian novelist regarded as one of the greatest of
How Leo Tolstoy Became a Vegetarian and Jumpstarted the Vegetarian

VIDEO

Что вы скажете в свое оправдание?
Т.Толстая о культурной столице, сыне и ветеранах
"First Step". An Insightful Essay on Compassion by Leo Tolstoy
10 Lines on Leo Tolstoy in English
David Foster Wallace on Leo Tolstoy
Unusual Painting Techniques and Art Papers. Alex Tolstoy discusses her Art Series (Mar-May '24)

COMMENTS

The First Step (essay)
The First Step (essay) " The First Step " (AKA: "The Morals of Diet") [1] is an article by Leo Tolstoy primarily advocating for vegetarianism, but at the same time also briefly mentioning themes relating to anarchism and pacifism. It was Tolstoy's preface to a book by Howard Williams ( The Ethics of Diet ), which Tolstoy translated into Russian ...
How Leo Tolstoy Became a Vegetarian and Jumpstarted the Vegetarian
How Leo Tolstoy Became a Vegetarian and Jumpstarted the Vegetarian & Humanitarian Movements in the 19th Century. in Food & Drink, Literature, ... including the eating of meat. In "The First Step," an 1891 essay on diet and ethical commitment, he characterized the prevailing religious attitude toward food:
History of Vegetarianism
Tolstoy and his Problems (PDF 6mb): by Aylmer Maude, essays, 2nd edition 1902 (date of 1st edition no given). p.20 Tolstoy became a strict vegetarian, eating only the simplest food and avoiding stimulants. A Letter to a Hindu (plain text 50k) by Tolstoy, December 1908, with an intro by Gandhi 1909.
History of Vegetarianism
THE FIRST STEP (originally written, in Russian, as the Preface to the Russian translation of The Ethics of Diet by Howard Williams, first published 1883, Russian version from 1892.). I. If a man is not making a pretence of work, but is working in order to accomplish the matter he has in hand, his actions will necessarily follow one another in a certain sequence determined by the nature of the ...
Tolstoy and Vegetarianism
Leo Tolstoy emerged as a prominent figure in the nineteenth-century vegetarian movement. His essay "The First Step" gained widespread promotion by vegetarian societies worldwide, and his writings, spanning topics beyond diet, were featured in vegetarian publications. Tolstoy's adoption of vegetarianism was just one facet of the Christian ...
The First Step, by Leo Tolstoy
(An 1891 work espousing complete nonviolence, stemming from vegetarianism, this essay was translated in 1909 by Aylmer Maud. Note that there are many "slightly altered" versions of this essay floating around, and it is nearly impossible to guarantee the exactness of this version, as it is not uncommon for an extra sentence to be added or removed depending on the publisher's agenda.)
Tolstoy and the natural world
Vegetarianism became an important aspect of Tolstoy's teaching, but his only writing about it is The First Step (1892), included in Essays and recollections. This was an introduction to a Russian edition of The Ethics of Diet by Howard Williams. Tolstoy approaches his condemnation of the slaughter of animals by a somewhat oblique and ponderous ...
Notes From the Field: Bulgaria's Tolstoyan Vegetarians
These questions and many more were debated on the pages of Vegetarian Review, in the years between the World Wars. For philosophical grounding, its contributors looked to ideas on vegetarianism that Tolstoy's famous 1892 essay, "The First Step," linked to non-violence and Christian ethics (along with a range of other spiritual traditions).
Why was Tolstoy vegetarian? [Illustrated]
Why was Tolstoy vegetarian? [Illustrated] Philosophy returns; this time with an examination of Leo Tolstoy's vegetarianism! Some of you may already know that the illustrious novelist was an ardent defender of so-called "Pythagorean" diets, but what is less commonly known is the underlying philosophy driving this decision.
5 Russian vegetarian writers
After Frey's visit Tolstoy wrote his essay, The First Step (1891), which contemporaries referred to as the "Bible of Vegetarianism." In it Tolstoy sees the choice of vegetarianism as the ...
A Brief History of Plant-Based Diets
Tolstoy had an influence on vegetarianism in Russia, and wrote an article called "The First Step," which advocated for vegetarianism and the rights of animals. In this essay, Tolstoy writes of a conversation he had with a butcher, who he asked if he felt sorry for the animals he killed.
What the Caged Bird Feels: A List of Writers in Support of Vegetarianism
Leo Tolstoy Vegetarianism was the focal point of several of his essays and tied in with his pre-existing beliefs in the benefits of abstinence. In On Civil Disobedience, for example, Tolstoy writes, "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the ...
Leo Tolstoy Was The Greatest Vegetarian Of His Time
Tuesday marks the 186th birthday of Russian philosopher and writer Leo Tolstoy. While the Google doodle gives a poignant look at art depicting his most famous works, there's another side to Tolstoy. Tolstoy was a noted thinker on vegetarianism, and even made it the subject of several philosophical essays. He gives impassioned, eloquent moral ...
Here's Tolstoy's recipe for macaroni and cheese (AKA Mac & Peace)
Tolstoy became a vegetarian in the latter half of his life, and wrote in his essay "The First Step" (a preface to the Russian translation of The Ethics of Diet by Howard Williams) that eating meat "is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling—killing; and is called forth only by ...
Tolstoyan movement
Tolstoy became a prominent influence on the movement. He became vegetarian, along with his two daughters, in 1885. His relevant essay The First Step (1891), and others were promoted by vegetarian societies internationally. His vegetarianism was part of a Christian philosophy of non-violence that he developed.
Why was vegetarianism so popular in Tsarist Russia?
In 1903, a collection compiled by Tolstoy, 'Slaughter-free nutrition, or vegetarianism. Thoughts of different writers', which contained 250 quotes about the benefits of vegetarianism, was ...
Vegetarianism in Russia: The Tolstoy (an) Legacy
The collapse of communist rule in Russia at the beginning of the 1990s revived a whole series of social, cultural, and ideological phenomena that had either lain dormant or been almost entirely absent during the Soviet period, phenomena ranging from pornography and prostitution to religion and real estate. Vegetarianism, which had been demonized under Stalin as a pernicious and insidiously ...
History of Vegetarianism
Leo Tolstoy Speaks. The following selection from Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910) is from his article "The First Step". ... Great novel and a challenging read to complete in a mere week, but I never realized until much later that Tolstoy was a vegetarian and was a strong voice for both compassion for humans and non-human animals. I'm still surprised ...
Leo Tolstoy Quotes About Vegetarian
Leo Tolstoy. Philosophical, Compassion, Animal. As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefields. A vegetarian diet is the acid test of humanitarianism. Leo Tolstoy. Peace, Passion, Vegetarian Diet. A human can be healthy without killing animals for food. Leo Tolstoy. Food, Animal, Meat Consumption.
There's more to Tolstoy than War and Peace
This volume also contains some of Tolstoy's later writings on vegetarianism, sex, and literature. Oddly, Tolstoy wrote a very long essay - almost a small book - on Shakespeare only a few years ...
Vegetarianism in Russia: The Tolstoy(an) Legacy
The Vegetarian Society of the USSR, which was created in the late 1980s under Gorbachev, helped to bring together-and, more importantly, to bring out of the proverbial closet-Russian vegetarians of various hues, organizing health groups in different cities across the former Soviet Union. ... Search 212,600,815 papers from all fields of science ...
THE TWO BROTHERS By Leo Tolstoy
Both men also believed in the merits of vegetarianism, the subject of several of Tolstoy's essays.[63] The Boxer Rebellion stirred Tolstoy's interest in Chinese philosophy.[64] He was a famous sinophile, and read the works of Confucius[65][66][67] and Lao Zi. Tolstoy wrote Chinese Wisdom and other texts about China.
How Many Literary Allusions Do You Recognize in This 12-Question Quiz
Use Your Allusion: See How Many Literary References You Recognize. Lines from poems and plays frequently serve as inspiration for later literary allusions. This 12-question quiz is crafted from a ...
Kitchen Magic for Big Weeknight Flavor
March 27, 2024, 11:30 a.m. ET. Kay Chun's honey-and-soy-glazed chicken. Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Some ingredient combinations are positively alchemical ...
Easy, Budget-Friendly Recipes for Easter Brunch
This Easy, Make-Ahead Easter Brunch Only Feels Expensive. This spring menu — a showstopping frittata, a snappy salad and a chewy cookie from a celebrated restaurant chef — isn't just ...
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy at age 20, c. 1848. Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, a family estate 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) southwest of Tula, and 200 kilometres (120 mi) south of Moscow. He was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy (1794-1837), a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, and Princess Mariya Tolstaya (née Volkonskaya; 1790 ...