An Appeal to Russians : 
To the Government, the Revolutionists and the People
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1906

People :
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Author : Leo Tolstoy

Translator : Louise Maude

Translator : Aylmer Maude

Text :
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I. TO THE GOVERNMENT.
[By Government I mean those who, availing themselves of 
established authority can change the existing laws and put them in 
operation. In Russia, these people were and still are: the Czar, his 
Ministers, and his nearest advisers.]
The acknowledged basis of all Governmental power is solely 
the promotion of the welfare of the people over whom the power 
IS exerted.
But what are you who now govern Russia doing? You are 
fighting the Revolutionists with shifts and cunning such as they 
employ against you; and, worst of all, with cruelty even greater 
than theirs. But of two contending parties, the conqueror is not always the more shifty, cunning, cruel, or harsh of the two, but the 
one that is nearest to the aim towards which humanity is 
advancing.
Whether the Revolutionists rightly or wrongly define the aim 
towards which they strive, they certainly aim at some new 
arrangement of life ; while your only desire is to maintain 
yourselves in the profitable position in which you are established. 
Therefore, you will be unable to resist the Revolution, with your 
banner of Autocracy, even though it be with constitutional 
amendments, with perverted Christianity called Orthodoxy, a 
renovated Patriarchate, and all sorts of mystical interpretations.
All that Is moribund, and cannot be restored. Your salvation lies 
not in Dumas, elected in this way or in that ; still less in rifle-shots, 
cannons and executions ; but it lies in confessing your sin against 
the people, and trying to redeem it and efface it while you yet 
have time to do so. Set before the people ideals of equity, goodness 
and truth, more lofty and more just than those your opponents 
advocate. Place such an ideal before the people, not to save 
yourselves, but seriously and honestly setting yourselves to 
accomplish it, and you will not only save yourselves, but will save 
Russia from those ills which already afflict or are now threatening 
her.
Nor need you invent this ideal ; it is the old, old ideal of all the 
Russian folk: the ideal of the restoration to the whole people — 
not to the peasants only, but to the whole people — of their natural 
and just right to the land.
To men unaccustomed to think with their own minds, this idea 
seems unrealizable, because it is not a repetition of what has been 
done in Europe and America. But just because this ideal has 
nowhere yet been accomplished, it is the true ideal of our day : 
and, more, it is the nearest ideal, and one which, before it is; 
accomplished in other countries, should now be accomplished in 
Russia. Wipe out your sins by a good deed ; while you still have 
the power, strive to destroy the ancient, crying, cruel injustice of 
private property in land, which is so vividly felt by the whole 
agricultural population, and from which they suffer so grievously ; 
and you will have the support of all the best people — the so-called 
"intellectuals." You will have with you all true Constitutionalists; 
who cannot but see that, before calling on the people to choose 
representatives, the people must be freed from the land-slavery in 
which it now lives. The Socialists, too, will have to admit that 
they are with you, for the ideal which they set before themselves : 
the nationalization of the implements of labor — is attainable first 
of all by the nationalization of the chief implement of labor—the land. The Revolutionists, too, will be on your side, for the 
revolution which you will be accomplishing by freeing the land from private ownership, is one of the chief points in their 
program. On your side, above all, will be the whole hundred- 
million agricultural peasantry, which alone represents the real 
Russian people. Only do what you, occupying the place of 
Government, are bound to do, and, while there is yet time, make it 
your business to establish the real welfare of the people ; and in 
place of the feeling of fear and anger which you now encounter, 
you will experience the joy of close union with the hundred-million 
Russian people ; you will know the love and gratitude of this 
kindly folk, who will not remember your sins, but will love you for 
the good you do them, as they now love him, or those, who freed 
them from slavery.
Remember that you are not czars, ministers, senators, and 
governors, but men ; and having done this, in place of grief, 
despair and terror, you will find the joy of forgiveness and of love. 
But that this may happen, you must not undertake this work 
superficially, as a means of safety, but sincerely, seriously, and with 
your soul's whole strength. Then you will see what eager, 
reasonable, and harmonious activity will be displayed in the best 
spheres of society, bringing the best men of all classes to the front, 
and depriving of all importance those who now disturb Russia. 
Do this, and all those terrible, brutal elements of revenge, anger, 
avarice, vanity, ambition, and above all of ignorance, will 
disappear, which now come to the front, infecting, agitating, and 
tormenting Russia — and of which you are guilty.
Yes, only two courses are now open to you, men of the 
Government: a fratricidal slaughter, and all the horrors of a 
revolution leading to your inevitable and disgraceful destruction; 
or the peaceful fulfillment of the ancient and just demands of the 
whole people, showing other Christian nations both that the 
injustice from which men have suffered so long and so cruelly can 
be abolished, and how to abolish it.
Whether the form of social organization under which you hold 
power has or has not outlived its day, so long as you still hold 
power, use it not to multiply the evil you have already done, and the hatred you have already provoked; but use it to accomplish a 
great and good deed not for your nation alone, but for all 
mankind. If this social organization has outlived its day, let the 
last act done under it be one not of falsehood and cruelty, but of 
goodness and truth.*

Regarding the remark in the appeal to the Government referring tosalvation *' not lying in Dumas elected in this way or that  we will allow 
ourselves to make a slight reservation taking into consideration the fact that 
separate statements by Tolstoy are so often interpreted in a perverse sense. 
By these words he does not at all desire to advise the Government not to 
concede to the demands of public opinion. On the contrary, at the very time 
when this appeal was being prepared tor publication we received from Tolstoy 
a letter in which he expresses himself thus :
". . . The general irritation cannot be overcome by force, but the 
Government, i.e., those people who constitute the Government, are bound before 
God, before men, and before themselves, to cease all acts of violence — to do all 
that which is demanded of them, to relieve themselves of their responsibility ; 
to grant legislative assembly and a ballot, universal, equal, direct, and secret, 
and an amnesty to all political offenders, and everything ..."
Hence in the passage referred to in his appeal to the Government Tolstoy 
only wishes to convey that the gist of the matter lies not in the Duma but in a 
more radical alleviation of the position of the people. — Editor,

II. TO THE REVOLUTIONISTS.
[By Revolutionists I mean those people — beginning with the most 
peaceful Constitutionalists and extending to the most militant Revolutionists — who wish to replace the present Governmental authority by another authority otherwise organized and consisting of other people.]
You, Revolutionists of all shades and denominations, consider the 
present Government harmful and in various ways—by organizing 
assemblies (allowed or prohibited by Government), by formulating 
projects, printing articles, making speeches, by unions, strikes and demonstrations, and, finally (as a natural and inevitable basis and 
consequence of all these activities) by murders, executions and 
armed insurrections—you strive to replace the existing authority by 
another, a new one.
Though you are all at variance among yourselves as to what 
this new authority should be, yet to bring about the arrangements 
proposed by each of your groups, you stop short at no crimes: 
murders, explosions, executions, or civil war.
You have no words strong enough to express your condemnation 
and contempt for those official personages who struggle against 
you; but it should not be forgotten that all the cruel acts committed 
by members of the Government in their struggle with you, are justified in their eyes, because they, from the Czar to the lowest 
policeman, having been educated in unlimited respect for the 
established order hallowed by age and tradition, when defending 
this order, feel fully convinced that they are doing what is demanded 
of them by millions of people, who acknowledge the rightfulness of 
the existing order and of their position in it. So that the moral 
responsibility for their cruel actions rests not on them alone, but is 
shared by many people. You, on the other hand: people of all 
sorts of professions — doctors, teachers, engineers, students, professors, journalists, women-students, railway-men, laborers, lawyers, 
merchants, land-owners, occupied till now with special pursuits 
which have nothing to do with Government — you, who are not 
appealed to or recognized by anyone but yourselves, having suddenly 
become indubitably aware of the precise organization needed by 
Russia, in the name of this organization (which is to be realized in 
the future, and which each of you defines in his own way) take 
upon yourselves the whole responsibility for these very terrible 
acts you commit; and you throw bombs, destroy, murder and 
execute.
Thousands have been killed ; all Russians have been reduced 
to despair, embittered and brutalized. And what is it all for? 
It is all because among a small group of people, hardly one ten-thousandth of the whole nation, some have decided that what is needed for the very best organization of the Russian Empire is 
the continuation of the Duma which lately sat; while others say 
that what is needed is a Duma chosen by universal, secret, and 
equal voting; a third party say that what is needed is a Republic : 
and yet a fourth party declare that what is needed is not an 
ordinary Republic, but a Socialist Republic. And for the sake of 
this, you provoke a civil war!
You say you do it for the people's sake, and that your chief 
aim is the welfare of the people. But the hundred-millions for 
whom you do it, do not ask it of you, and do not want all these 
things which you, by such evil means, try to obtain. The mass of 
the people do not need you at all, but always has regarded and 
still regards you, and cannot but regard you, as useless grubs who, 
in one way or another, consume the fruits of its labor and are a 
burden upon it. Only realize to yourselves clearly the life of this 
hundred-million Russian agricultural peasantry, who strictly 
speaking alone constitute the body of the Russian nation ; and 
understand that you all — professors and factory hands, doctors* 
engineers, journalists, students, land-owners, women-students 
veterinary surgeons, merchants, lawyers and railway-men : the very 
people so concerned about its welfare — are all harmful parasites 
on that body, sucking its sap, rotting upon it, and communicating 
to it your own corruption.
Only imagine vividly to yourselves these millions, ever patiently 
laboring, and supporting your unnatural and artificial lives on their 
shoulders ; imagine them possessed of all these reforms you are 
hoping to obtain, and you will see how foreign to this people is all 
that professedly for their advantage, you are aiming at. They 
have other tasks, and see more profoundly that you do the aim 
that is before them; and they express this consciousness of their 
destiny, not in newspaper articles, but by the whole life of a 
hundred-million people.
But no, you cannot understand this. You are firmly convinced 
that this coarse folk has no roots of its own, and that it will be a 
great blessing for it, if you enlighten it with the latest article you have read, and by so doing make it as pitiful, helpless, and 
perverted as yourselves.
You say you want a just organization of life, but in fact you 
can exist only under an irregular, unjust organization. Should 
a really just organization be established, with no place for those 
who live on the labor of others, you all—landlords, merchants, 
doctors, professors, and lawyers, as well as factory-hands, 
manufacturers, workshop-owners, engineers, teachers and producers 
of cannons, tobacco, spirits, looking-glasses, velvet, etc., together 
with the members of the Government — would starve to death.
What you need is not a really just order of life: for nothing 
would be more dangerous for you than an order in which everyone 
had to do work useful to all.
Only cease to deceive yourselves: consider well the place you 
hold among the Russian people and what you are doing, and it will 
be clear to you that your struggle with the Government is the struggle 
of two parasites on a healthy body, and that both contending 
parties are equally harmful to the people. Speak, therefore, of 
your own interests ; but do not speak for the people. Do not lie 
about them, but leave them in peace. Fight the Government, if 
you cannot refrain; but know that you are fighting for yourselves 
not for the people, and that in this violent struggle there is not only 
nothing noble or good, but that your struggle is a very stupid and 
harmful and, above all, a very immoral affair.
Your activity aims, you say, at making the general condition 
of the people better. But that the people's condition should be 
better, it is necessary for people themselves to be better. This is 
as much a truism, as that to heat a vessel of water, all the drops 
in it must be heated. That people may become better, it is 
necessary that they should turn their attention ever more and more 
to their inner life. But external public activity, and especially 
public strife, always diverts men's minds from the inner life; and, 
therefore, by perverting people, always and inevitably lowers the level 
of general morality, as has everywhere been the case, and as we 
now see most strikingly exemplified in Russia. This lowering of the level of general morality causes the most immoral part of 
society to come more and more to the top ; and an immoral public 
opinion is formed which not only permits, but even approves 
crimes, robberies, debauchery, and murder itself. Thus a vicious 
circle is set up: the evil elements of society, evoked by the social 
struggle, throw themselves hotly into public activity corresponding 
to the low level of their morality, and this activity again attracts 
to itself yet worse elements of society. Morality is lowered more 
and more, and the most immoral of men: the Dantons, Marats, 
Napoleons, Talleyrands, Bismarcks, become the heroes of the day. 
So that participation in public activity and strife, is not only not an 
elevated, useful and good thing (as it is customarily supposed and 
said to be by those who are engaged in this struggle) but on the 
contrary it is a most unquestionably stupid, harmful and immoral 
affair.
Reflect on this, especially you, young people, who are not yet 
immersed in the sticky mud of political activity. Shake off from 
ourself the terrible hypnotism you are under ; free yourselves 
from the lie of this pseudo-service of the people, in the name of 
which you consider that everything is permitted you ; above all, think 
of the highest qualities of your soul, demanding of you neither 
equal and secret voting, nor armed insurrections, nor legislative 
assemblies, nor any similar stupidities and cruelties, but solely that 
you should live good and true lives.
What is necessary for your good and sincere life is, first of all, 
not to deceive yourselves by supposing that by yielding to your 
petty passions : vanity, ambition, envy and bravado, or desiring to 
find an outlet for your spare energy, or to improve your own 
position, you can serve the people. No; what is necessary is to 
examine yourselves, and to endeavor to correct your own failings 
and become better men. If you wish to think of public life, think 
first of your sins against the people; try to consume as little of their 
labor as possible, and if you cannot help the peasantry, try at least 
not to mislead and confuse them, committing the terrible crime 
many of you now commit by deceiving and provoking them, inciting them to robberies and insurrections, which always end in 
suffering and the yet greater enslavement for the people.
The intricate and difficult circumstances amid which we live in 
Russia demand of you, especially at the present time, not 
newspaper articles, nor speeches in assemblies, nor promenading 
in the streets with revolvers, nor the (often dishonest) incitement 
of the peasants while you evade responsibility yourselves ; but a 
frank and strict relation to yourselves and to your own lives, which 
alone are in your power, and the improvement of which is the sole 
means by which you can improve the general condition of the 
people.

III. TO THE PEOPLE.
[By the people I mean the whole Russian people, but especially 
the working, agricultural people who by their labor support the lives 
of all the rest.]
You, Russian working people, chiefly agricultural peasants, 
now find yourselves in Russia in a specially difficult position. 
However hard it was for you to live with little land and large taxes 
and customs-duties and wars, which the Government devised, you 
lived, till quite recently, believing in the Czar, and believing that 
it was impossible to live without a Czar and without his authority ; 
and you humbly submitted to the Government.
However badly the Czar's Government ruled you, you humbly 
submitted to it as long as there was only one Government. But 
now, when it has come about that a part of the people has rebelled, 
and ceasing to obey the Czar's Government, has begun to fight 
against it: when in many places instead of one Government there 
are two, each of them demanding obedience, you can no longer 
humbly submit to the powers that be, without considering whether 
the. Government rules you well or ill; but have to choose 
which of the two you will submit to. What are you to do? Not 
those tens of thousands of workmen who bustle and are hustled about in the towns, but you, the great, real, hundred-million 
agricultural people ?
The old Government of the Czar says to you: "Do not listen 
to the rebels; they promise much, and will deceive you. Remain 
true to me, and I will satisfy all your wants."
The rebels say: "Do not believe the Czar's Government, which 
has always tormented you, and will continue to do so. Join us 
help us—and we will arrange for you a Government like that of 
the freest countries. Then you will choose your own rulers, and 
will govern yourselves, and right all your wrongs."
What are you to do ?
Support the old Government? But, as you know, the old 
Government has long promised to lighten your burdens, but 
instead of lightening them, it has only increased your greatest 
evils: lack of land, taxes and conscription.
Join the rebels? They promise to arrange for you an elected 
Government such as exists in the freest countries. But 
wherever such elected Governments exist, in the countries that 
have most freedom, in the French and American Republics for 
instance, just as among ourselves, the chief ills of the people are 
not remedied: as among us, or to an even greater degree, the land 
is in the hands of the rich; just as among us the people are laden 
with taxes and customs-duties without being asked, and as among 
us, armies are maintained and wars declared when those in power 
desire it, without the people being consulted. Moreover, our new 
Government is not yet established, and we do not know what it 
will be like.
Not only is it not to your advantage to join either Government, 
but you cannot do it conscientiously before God. To defend the 
old Government means to do what was done recently in Odessa 
Sevastopol, Kiev, Riga, the Caucasus, and Moscow, i.e. to capture, 
kill, hang, burn alive, execute, and shoot in the streets, killing 
children and women. But to join the Revolutionists means to do 
the same: to kill people, throw bombs, burn, rob, fight with 
soldiers, execute and hang.
Therefore, laboring Christian people : now that the Czar's 
Government calls on you to fight against your brothers, and the 
Revolutionists call on you to do the same, you evidently, not for 
your own benefit alone, but before God and your consciences, must 
and should join neither the old nor the new Government, and take 
no part in the unchristian doings either of the one or the other.
And not to take part in the doings of the old Government 
means not to serve as soldiers, guards, constables, town or country 
police; not to serve in any Government institutions and offices, 
County-Councils (Zemstvos), Assemblies, or Dumas. Not to take 
part in the doings of Revolutionists means: not to form meetings 
or unions, or take part in strikes ; not to burn or wreck other 
people's houses, and not to join any armed rebellion.
Two Governments hostile to one another now rule you, and 
they both summon you to take part in cruel, unchristian deeds. 
What can you do but reject all Government ?
People say that it is difficult and even impossible to live without 
a Government, but you Russian workmen — especially agriculturists—know that when you live a peaceful, laborious country life in the 
villages, cultivating the land on terms of equality, and deciding 
your public affairs in the Commune (Mir), you have no need at all 
of a Government.
The Government needs you, but you—Russian agriculturists—do not need a Government. And, therefore, in the present 
difficult circumstances, when it is equally bad to join either 
Government, it is reasonable and beneficial for you, agricultural 
Russians, not to obey any Government.
But if this is so for the agricultural folk, what should the 
factory-hands and foundry-workers do, of whom there are more 
in many lands than there are agriculturists, and whose lives are 
quite in the power of the Government.
They should do the same as the village workers: not obey any 
Government, and with all their strength try to return to agricultural 
life.
Only let the town workmen, as well as the villagers cease to obey or serve Government, and, with the abolition of its power, the 
slavish conditions in which you live will vanish of themselves, for 
they are maintained only by governmental violence. And the 
violence the Government employs is supplied by yourselves. It is 
that power alone which places customs-duties on goods imported or 
exported; it alone collects taxes on articles made in the country . 
it (the power of the Government) makes the laws which maintain 
the monopolies owned by private people, and the right of private 
property in land ; only that power, controlling the army which you 
yourselves supply, holds you in continual subjection or submission 
to itself, and to its abettors—the rich.
When you, town-workers as well as villagers, cease to obey the 
Government, it will no longer be necessary for you (town-workmen) 
to accept whatever conditions the owners of the mills and factories 
dictate to you, but you yourselves will give them your conditions, 
or will start your own cooperative manufacture of things 
needed by the people ; or, having free land, you will resume a 
natural agricultural life.
"But if we Russian folk begin at once to live like that, not 
obeying the Government—there will be no Russia," say those to 
whom it seems that the existence of Russia—that is to say, the 
union of many different nations under one Government—is 
something important, great, and useful.
In reality, this combination of many different nations, called 
Russia, is not only not important for you, Russian working men, 
but just this combination is a chief cause of your miseries.
If they oppress you with taxes and duties, as they oppressed 
your forefathers, accumulating vast debts which you have to pay ; 
if they take you as soldiers and send you to different ends of the 
earth to fight people with whom you have nothing to do, and who 
have nothing to do with you, all this is only done to maintain 
Russia, I.e. to maintain a forcible combination of Poland, the 
Caucaus, Finland, Central Asia, Manchuria, and other lands and 
peoples, under one rule. But besides the fact that all your ills 
come from this union called Russia, this union involves a great sin in which you involuntarily participate when you obey Government 
That there should be a Russia such as the existing one, the Polos? 
Finns, Letts, Georgians, Tartars, Armenians, and others, have to be 
held in subjection. And to hold them in subjection, it is necessary 
to forbid them to live as they wish to, and if they disobey this 
order, they have to be punished and killed. Why should you take 
part in these evil deeds when you yourselves suffer from them. 
Let those who have need of such a Russia, dominating Poland, 
Georgia, Finland, and other lands—let them arrange it if they can. 
But for you, working people, this is not at all necessary. What 
you need is something quite else. You only need enough land, 
and that no one should forcibly take your property, or oblige your 
sons to go as soldiers, and above all that no one should compel you 
to do evil deeds. And these evils will cease, if only you refuse to 
obey the demands of the Government—demands which ruin and 
destroy both your bodies and your souls.
"But how, without a Government, and when all live in separate 
Communes, are all large public affairs to be arranged? How will 
the ways of communication, railways, telegraphs, steamers, the post, 
the higher educational establishments, the libraries, and trade be 
managed without a Government?"
People are so accustomed to see the Government control all 
public affairs, that it seems to them that the work itself is done by 
Government, and that without Government it is impossible to 
organize High Schools, ways of communication, post-offices, 
libraries, or commercial relations. But this is not true. The 
largest public affairs, not only national but international, are 
arranged by private individuals without Governmental assistance. 
In this way all kinds of international, postal, learned, commercial 
and industrial alliances are arranged. Governments not only do 
not aid these voluntarily organized unions, but when they take part 
in them they always hinder them.
"But if you do not obey the Government, and do not pay taxes 
or supply soldiers, foreign nations will come and conquer you," add 
those who wish to rule over you. Do not believe it. Only live acknowledging the land to be common property; not going as 
soldiers, and not paying taxes (except such as you voluntarily give 
for public works) and peacefully settling your disagreements 
through your village Communes—and other nations, seeing your 
good life, will not come and conquer you; or, if they come, on 
getting to know your good life they will adopt it and, instead of 
fighting you, will unite with you. For all the nations, like you your- 
selves, have suffered and now suffer from Governments; from the 
strife fin war, trade, and industry) of different Governments against 
one another, and from the strife of classes, and of different parties. 
Among all Christian nations an inner labor is going on, the chief 
aim of which is emancipation from Governments ; but this emancipation is particularly difficult for nations in which the majority 
have abandoned agricultural life, and live an industrial town life 
employing the labor of other races. Among such nations 
emancipation is being prepared by socialism. But for you 
Russian laborers, living mainly an agricultural life, and supplying 
your own needs, this emancipation is particularly easy. Government for you has long ceased to be a necessity or even a 
convenience, and has become a great and uncompensated burden 
and misfortune.
The Government, only the Government, by its power deprives 
you of land. Only the Government collects from you in taxes and 
customs-dues a great part of what you obtain by your labor. It 
alone, deprives you of the labor of your sons, taking them for 
soldiers and sending them to be killed.
But Government is not some essential condition of human life, 
which will exist as long as mankind lasts, like the cultivation of the 
soil, marriage, the family, or human intercourse—Government 
is a human institution, and like all human institutions, is set up 
when it is needed and abolished when it becomes unnecessary.
Of old, human sacrifices, the worship of idols, divinations 
tortures, slavery, and many other things, were instituted. But they 
were all abolished when people were so far enlightened that these 
institutions became superfluous burdens and evils. So also with Governments. Governments were instituted when the nations 
were savage, cruel and coarse. The Governments set up were 
equally cruel and coarse. Nearly all the Governments took their 
laws from the heathen Romans ; and to the present day the 
Governments remain as coarse as they were in the days 
before Christianity, with their forcible requisitions, soldiers' 
prisons and executions- But the people, becoming enlightened, 
have less and less need of such Governments, and in our day most 
of the Christian nations have arrived at the stage when Government merely hinders them.
The shell is necessary for the egg until the bird is hatched. 
But when the bird is ready, the shell is but a hindrance. So it is 
with Governments ; most Christian nations feel this, and particularly Russian agricultural people now feel this acutely.
" Government is necessary, we cannot live without a Government," men say, and they are especially convinced of this now, 
when there are disturbances among the people. But who are 
these men, so concerned for the preservation of the Government ? 
They are the very men who live on the labor of the people, and, 
conscious of their sin, fear its exposure, and hope that the 
Government (being bound to them by unity of interest) will 
protect their wrong-doing by force. For these men, the Government is very necessary, but not for you — the peasantry. For you 
the Government has always been simply a burden; and now, 
that it has by its evil rule provoked riots, and brought it to pass that 
there are two rival Governments, it has become an evident 
misfortune and a great sin, which you must repudiate for your 
bodily and spiritual welfare.
Whether you, laboring Russian people, free yourselves at 
once from obedience to any Government, or whether you will yet 
have to suffer and endure at the hands of members of the old or of 
the new Government (or possibly at the hands of foreign 
Governments) you Russian laboring men have now no other 
course but to cease to obey the Government, and to begin to live 
without it.
You, country laborers as well as town workers, may at first 
have to suffer at the hands of the old as well as of the new 
Governments for your disobedience, and also from disagreements 
arising among yourselves ; but all the ills that may come from 
these causes are as nothing compared to the ills and sufferings you 
now endure and will yet have to endure from the Government, if 
(obeying one or other Government) you are drawn into participation in the murders, executions, and civil strife that are now 
being committed, and that will yet long continue to be committed 
by the contending Governments, unless you stop them by refusing 
to participate in them.
Only yield to what is demanded of you by this or that 
Government: only, for the support of the old Government, enter 
on a struggle with the Revolutionaries; serving in the army, or 
police, or joining the "Black-gang" mobs ; or, for the support 
of the Revolutionists, take part in strikes, the destruction of 
property, armed risings, or any unions, elections, or Dumas—and 
besides burdening your souls with many sins, and encountering 
much suffering, you will not have time to look round before one 
Government or other (even though you may have promoted its 
triumph) will fasten the deadly noose of slavery in which you have 
lived, and are still living, once more upon you.
Only do not submit to, and do not obey, either the one or the 
other, and you will rid yourselves of your miseries, and will be 
free.
From the present difficult circumstances you, Russian working 
people, have but one way of escape ; and that is by refusing to 
obey any force-using authority—humbly and meekly enduring 
violence, and refusing to participate in it
This way of escape is simple and easy, and undoubtedly leads 
to welfare. But to act in this way you must submit to the government of God and to His law. "He that endureth to the end will 
be saved," and your salvation is in your own hands.



     From : Wikisource.org

Events :
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     An Appeal to Russians -- Publication : November 30, 1905

     An Appeal to Russians -- Added : July 17, 2021

     An Appeal to Russians -- Updated : January 09, 2022

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