Tolstoy and Islam, Russia in Denial
28 March 2010, 17:55
--KavkazCenter--

West analysts drew attention to the fact that the Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, became a "nonperson" in Russia according to George Orwell. Mentioning his name is now a sign of political incorrectness in Russia.

The Moscow correspondent of Daily Telegraph Andrew Osborn in his report from Moscow said that Russia now is being accused of abandoning its literary past in case of the outstanding Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, because Russia ignores the 100-year anniversary of his death.

"Such emerged that the Kremlin has no plans to mark the centenary of Leo Tolstoy's death, and an acclaimed film of "Anna Karenina" has failed to find distributors", Andrew Osborn reports.

"The Kremlin has maintained a steely silence on the anniversary", the English journalist is surprised and continuing: "The director of a new film based on Tolstoy's masterpiece "Anna Karenina", starring top Russian actors, told the Ekho Moskvy radio station, he failed to find a distributor more than a year after it was made. "I do not understand", said the director.

Andrew Osborn notes that countries as disparate as Cuba and Mexico have already organized Tolstoy-related festivals this year ahead of the centenary of his death on Nov 20. New translations of Tolstoy's work are being published in Germany and the US.

"Dame Helen Mirren and Christoper Plummer were both nominated for Oscars for their starring roles in the acclaimed English-language film The Last Station, which examines the last two years of Tolstoy's life, and was released last month in Britain", Andrew Osborn reports in his report from Moscow.

It is to be mentioned that that in the end of January 2010, it became known that by a decision of a court in the Rostov region dated September 11, 2009, the writer Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, male, born in 1828, Russian, married, place of residence: Yasnaya Polyana, Shchekin district, Tula Region, was proclaimed extremist at an anti-extremist process in Taganrog.

The decision of a commission of experts placed in Internet, testified the extremist ideology of Leo Tolstoy, who aroused religious hatred according to Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code, in particular in the following words:

"I convinced myself that the doctrine of the [Russian Orthodox] church is in theory a cunning and harmful deceit, and in practice a collection of the grossest superstitions and sorcery, which completely overlaps the whole meaning of the Christian teaching".

The Court ruled that this expression of Leo Tolstoy formed negative attitude to the Russian Orthodox Church and, based on this, the article citing this expression was proclaimed an extremist material".

It is to be mentioned that Tolstoy is not just an extremist, but an relapsed extremist.

In 1901, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, male, born in 1828, Russian, married, place of residence: Yasnaya Polyana, Shchekino district, Tula Region, have been alread formally convicted of seditious thoughts with regards to the Russian Orthodox Church, excommunicated and anathematized.

In addition, the tsarist, and then the Bolshevik and the current democratic authorities of Russia still carefully conceal the fact that Leo Tolstoy converted to Islam at the sunset of his life.

Meanwhile, just a few days ago Leo Tolstoy was proclaimed extremist in Russia by a court for the third time. On March 18, 2010, at a Kirov court in Yekaterinburg during one of the multiple anti-extremist processes that are currently taking place across Russia an expert on extremism Paul Suslonov testified:

"In the leaflets by Leo Tolstoy's "A preface to instructions to a soldier" and "Instructions to an officer", which were addressed soldiers, sergeants and officers, there direct calls to form a religious hatred against the Orthodox Church according to Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code".

Department of Monitoring,
Kavkaz Center