Bliss on earth
Count Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist and philosopher, rejected the modern state and all efforts to roganise the ecternal condition of peoples' lives, which he believed were a divergence from the inner needs of mankind.
He called for an organic society based on self-government and co-operation of free men working in federated groups: small communities with as close a connection to nature as possible, and animated by a form of Christianity purged of dogmas and mysticism, 'not promising future bliss, but giving bliss on earth.'1
Tolstoyan communities in England
In 1894 his followers established the Brotherhood Trust and set up a grocery and vegetable co-operative in Downham Road, Kingsland, in North London - all the profits including the customer dividend were to be used to purchase land to establish communities.
In 1897 a community was established at Purleigh on a twenty-three-acre estate, with fruit trees and a kitchen garden, and a printing press. It foundered over debates about whether or not to admit homeless vagrants, and internal dissension was compounded by the mental instability of some of its leaders.
Other communities were formed in Essex, Leeds, and Blackburn, and also at Leicester where in Braunstone in 1899 five vegetarians acquired half an acre of land and formed a land society to acquire more.
Another Tolstoyan colony at Stroud near Whiteway quarrelled over the question of land ownership. One member wanted the land to be reconveyed to the 'Real and Eternal Owner', but as this did not meet the requirements of the law they registered under the names if three members, then ceremoniously burnt the land deeds: 'we had a very merry time burining the deeds', they reported.
1 W H G Armytage, Heavens Below: Utopian Experiments in England 1560-1960, 1961, pp. 342-358.
