Tolstoy's verdict on Pussy Riot.

Please read the Russian version of this post, including the quote, on "Тетрадки" here.

'No one present seemed conscious that all that was going on here was the greatest blasphemy and a supreme mockery of that same Christ in whose name it was being done.'

This passage is from Chapter XL of The Resurrection, or the Awakening, translation is by Louise Maude. (The full text of the Chapter is here.) This chapter and many other passages deemed harmful to the prestige of the Russian government and the Orhtodox Church were banned by the tsar's censors and were not published until 1917. 

From the passage below, you can see how relevant Tolstoy's train of thought is to what's happening today around the feminist punk group Pussy Riot condemned to two years in a colony for 'hooliganism', i.e. doing a few jumps and hand-waves while dressed in brightly colored balaklavas, dresses and leggings. They were filmed and the footage was made into a YouTube hit 'punk-prayer' with the title 'Virgin Mary, rid us of Putin.'  

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Mariya Alekhina and Ekaterina Samutsevitch, two of them with small children, had already spent nearly half a year in pre-trial detention. They were denied bail. 

This is the quote:

'And none of those present, from the inspector down to Maslova, seemed conscious of the fact that this Jesus, whose name the priest repeated such a great number of times, and whom he praised with all these curious expressions, had forbidden the very things that were being done there; that He had prohibited not only this meaningless much-speaking and the blasphemous incantation over the bread and wine, but had also, in the clearest words, forbidden men to call other men their master, and to pray in temples; and had ordered that every one should pray in solitude, had forbidden to erect temples, saying that He had come to destroy them, and that one should worship, not in a temple, but in spirit and in truth; and, above all, that He had forbidden not only to judge, to imprison, to torment, to execute men, as was being done here, but had prohibited any kind of violence, saying that He had come to give freedom to the captives.

No one present seemed conscious that all that was going on here was the greatest blasphemy and a supreme mockery of that same Christ in whose name it was being done. No one seemed to realise that the gilt cross with the enamel medallions at the ends, which the priest held out to the people to be kissed, was nothing but the emblem of that gallows on which Christ had been executed for denouncing just what was going on here. That these priests, who imagined they were eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine, did in reality eat and drink His flesh and His blood, but not as wine and bits of bread, but by ensnaring "these little ones" with whom He identified Himself, by depriving them of the greatest blessings and submitting them to most cruel torments, and by hiding from men the tidings of great joy which He had brought. That thought did not enter into the mind of any one present.'

The painting by Ilya Repin 'Tolstoy Barefoot' was painted in Pussy Riot colours by Tetradki/©Anichkin.