24 events in 19th century Russia: the Napoleonic Wars, the December Revolution and the Crimean War. The Russian writer is convinced that history is doomed by some unspecified power. The executors of this doom are masses of people and the ruler who is able to organize and use them in such a way that together they can fulfil some kind of historical mission. Tolstoy assigns this role to the tsar who, in order to execute this doom – mission, may turn to using power. The author of the Russian national epic also recognizes the idea of a just war. Based on the Gospel, Tolstoy believes that war is justifiable only when it is waged to defend land and people. He condemns a war to capture land or to satisfy the ruler’s ambitions, which does not guarantee long-term success and peace. An image of the Russian soul emerges from the novel. There is no shortage of mad love, pride and ambition. You also have envy, wickedness and pettiness. An image of the condition of the Russian soul can be found not only in Tolstoy’s work. Among numerous Russian writers and thinkers, it is enough to mention Fyodor Dostoevsky who perfectly characterizes the spiritual condition of his contemporaries – not only Russians. His insightful analyses can be found in such works as: The Gambler, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment. A life of misery, envy, full of lies, overpowering laziness, meanness, exploitation, mental and physical suffering, unrepented crime, the consequences and punishment of which will be another crime. All this adds up to the pain of a spirit in the dark searching for mercy. And so on through the centuries. One can get the impression that Russia’s greatness, usurped or not, is disproportionate to the condition of its spirit, which does not even try to rise above blind fate that supposedly, no one can influence. However, what is hidden beneath blind fate? What power, despite brilliant spiritual insights, pushes a Russian man to choose the worse options which bring suffering to himself and others? Where does this inability to do good come from? Where does cruelty and the desire to dominate everyone come from? Isn’t it similar to the state of man described by the famous desert father, Evagrius Ponticus as acedia – the noonday demon? In this way, Evagrius characterises a situation in which man is subject to complete numbness of the psyche, powerlessness of soul and body. It is an inability to undertake any struggle for oneself, to save the greatness of humanity which can understand and accept itself only through an authentic relation to someone far superior to us and at the same time close to us – a personal God.
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