Tolstoy was a rebel, as he could never accept the exploitative Russian system in force. Tolstoy’s model of an ideal society never justified the existing state of affairs. The most unfortunate part, however, was that at that time, the prevailing condition, with all its inherent defects, remained firmly entrenched and hence could not be dislodged very easily. People themselves, despite knowing about all the fallacies in the system, did little to redeem the fallacious system. They strangely resigned themselves to whatever wrong they could discern around them and had little option than to accept it.

Those who served the army, deep inside acknowledged the gruesomeness of the cruelty involved in the service that they rendered. The floggings, the murders that they committed on poor victims definitely stirred their conscience. Tolstoy himself had seen on a journey, enroute the famine-ridden Tula province, where he met a band of soldiers earnestly trying to subdue the defaulting peasants of the province. Moreover, the malign that these soldiers faced on the train by the contemptuous public made them clearly uncomfortable and embarrassed. However as it was, that could not deter them from their duty of killing people. No way could they stop the bloodshed. Nor did they give up the practice of oppressing the poor defaulters. Thus, the soldiers, albeit not without conscience, were a hypnotised lot- unable to shake off the existing oppressing system whose efficacy they had been brain washed into believing in, inspite of realizing its barbarity. The old system therefore was sustained by a hypnotised brainwashed public opinion which had become defunct yet was continuing by sheer inertia. If the benefactors of the system supported it, to secure their own advantageous position in society, the victims too would comply with all its unfair demands simply because they were not equipped enough or were not in a position to avert it. Yet a latent public opinion bristling with a latent contempt for the existing order of affairs was steadily becoming more and more discernible with time, threatening to challenge the unreasonable age long system. This development was largely due to a growth noticeable in the power of the public conscience and then again, Russian people’s resigned attitude towards the unfair state of affairs was changing to sneers and contempt too.

 However, a major impediment in the way of emergence of a healthy and fair public opinion which would have the power to harness most effectively the evil tendencies of a defunct and socially harmful system, lay in the fact that men lived in hypocrisy. Yet they never actively got involved and thus tacitly supported that system that perhaps their conscience never supported. Therefore the foremost requisite for the most ideally structured human world remains that men cease to be hypocrites and wholeheartedly devote themselves to serve the cause of truth with single minded devotion. “Falsehood” must be totally shunned. One must, on the other hand, be completely devoted to the cause of “Truth”. Thus he must refuse to participate in military conscription or refuse to pay the unjust oppressive exactions or even refrain from justifying acts of violence in the false name of patriotism- all because none of these have truth any basis and are based upon false justifications of a non-egalitarian exploitative society

Basically, a man’s primary duty is to usher in an ideal state of human coexistence, to maintain a fair and righteous living, to serve others and follow the five commandment laws. Tolstoy believed that the “changing” character of the public opinion could act as a very effective vehicle aiding the transformation of human society from a defunct to a progressive one, from an imperfect and oppressive order of things to a ‘Kingdom of God’. However, the most important factor that would remain the most effective instrument in the entire reconstruction process would be, according to Tolstoy, sporadic ‘individual’ efforts. Thus Tolstoy gives more importance to individual effort than a general public endeavour. He writes ‘Once a drop of water oozes through a dam, once a brick falls out from a great building, once a mesh comes loose in the strongest net-the dam bursts, the building falls, the net unweaves.” Thus what is needed is actually a single man’s courage to uphold the truth and act in accordance with it against thousands who say and act otherwise. It is of utmost necessity that any order of life that runs contrary to a man’s conscience should be changed and the man has to clearly and boldly express this opinion for others to follow. However in Tolstoy’s view, transformation of human life would not come solely by any single man alone but would come consciously and separately assimilating a “Christian public opinion” –“definite and comprehensible”.

Christ had indeed said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” Accordingly Tolstoy writes, “..................peace is already with us and it depends on us to secure it.” It is an individual’s endeavour and courage that would lead to a collective effort to secure peace, harness belligerence and uphold truth, serving humanity and thereby serving True God, which would ultimately reconstruct human society into an ideal Kingdom Of God. Indeed Christianity and God's ideal was Tolstoy's faith.

 The man behind the dream was no ordinary man. Tolstoy was a tremendously intense character and searched for perfection in every discipline that fascinated him. Music was a matter of great love for the extraordinarily talented Russian thinker. He often, as a result, expressed unusually strong reactions to “music”. Aylmer Maude observes that strangely sometimes he even felt intensely tensed and scared that a stupendously beautiful and complex piece would lose its intensity of beauty by chance.  At the same time Tolstoy felt elated whenever the “phrase was harmoniously resolved”. Thus, Tolstoy was the man who had the ability to be one with something that he cherished this with his heart and soul. Harmony everywhere was a matter of great importance for him.

Tolstoy wanted a peaceful world where truth, peace, and happiness would gift human society with the finest fibre and a righteous social reconstruction that would curb all degradation to usher in a wonderfully happy world. There was a strong desire in Tolstoy for a world enriched with joy and happiness. As Maude very rightly pointed out, this probably was to be attributed to a remarkably happy childhood that the great thinker had had. Perhaps being so intently engrossed in such a happy setup, Tolstoy could not accept the consequent degradation that had set into contemporary Russian society of that time. He was equally disturbed by the poverty of the poor, irreligious behaviour of the rich, the pathetic condition of the urban culture as well as the marked degradation of the rural peasantry. He was infact a simple soul, who did not particularly belong to the urban sophisticated society nor was he tempered by materialistic considerations in life. At the same time, he wanted all to have free access to his estate. “Freedom” meant a lot to him. Hence Maude, his most ardent fan reflected Tolstoy’s view in the following words, “Chain a man to a heavily laden car of social progress and he can only advance very slowly.....Detach him from that car and he may easily and pleasantly fly away on the wings of speculation to the uttermost realms of the highest heaven without its producing any perceptible result on the lives of his fellow men”

Tolstoy had always been a dreamer but his dreams used to get shattered very easily but they refused to die completely for a fighter’s diligence is always ultimately paid with some achievements, though not perhaps realised to the fullest. Tolstoy’s achievements perhaps fell far short of his aim, but it could not belittle his strenuous efforts to conform in his life to the principles that he really believed in. Notwithstanding his shortcomings, however, there is very little doubt that he was one of the forerunners of the time who could create a stir and influence the minds and conscience of the people of that time, though very few understood the model of his ideal world. However those who did or at least attempted to do, became a devoted and ardent admirer of the thinker. The great yet simple message nearest to his heart was that the most important thing in life is for man to unite with man and the worst thing in life is to go apart from one another. Thus the ultimate ideal in his ideal model society, the “Kingdom of God” is the communion of man with man through spreading of love, peace, happiness where freedom, truth and God would prevail to usher in a society of beauty, harmony and lack of discord that would prevent any degeneration and lead to a beautiful and happy human society. It is a pity man failed to consequently conform to what he believed in, otherwise the human society would have seen in consequent years a lot happier and peaceful years and a lot of unfortunate developments that had taken place in the name of so called progressive social changes could have been averted. One could have really breathed happily in that “Kingdom of God”. Alas! Man failed to accede to the ideals of Tolstoy, the dreamer of an ideal society and ended up in a lot more complicated and unhappier world.

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