Influence

A good book is the axe for the frozen sea inside us. Franz Kafka I’ve been reading Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky lately. Both were fantastic Russian authors without parallel who lived in the later half of the 19th century. It’s fascinating that in the time period following Dostoevsky’s life and at the end of Tolstoy’s life that the Soviet state sought to abolish the Christian religion, using total control of whatever influenced the minds and lives of its citizens. As Malcom Muggeridge points out in his book, A Third Testament, “As it turns out, all its (Communist State) efforts have been frustrated by the irresistible presentation of Christ and his teachings in Dostoevsky’s and Tolstoy’s writings, which continue to be avidly read by their countrymen.” Isn’t it incredible that after almost a century of Communism, resulting in millions of Russia’s own people being slaughtered in its name, that the influence of these authors lives on but communism (in Russia) doesn’t? But maybe that isn’t so incredible since both of these men wrote about a way of life that has had withstood even harsher persecution for two thousand years. Proverbs 33 “...his intentions can never be shaken…”