Resurrection (pre-reform Russian: Воскресеніе; post-reform Russian: Воскресение, romanized: Voskreséniye, also translated as The Awakening), first published in December 1899, was the last novel written by Leo Tolstoy. The book is the final of his major long fiction works published in his lifetime. Tolstoy intended the novel as a panoramic view of Russia at the end of the 19th century from the highest to the lowest levels of society and as an exposition of the injustice of man-made laws and the hypocrisy of the institutionalized church. The novel also explores the economic philosophy of Georgism, of which Tolstoy had become a very strong advocate towards the end of his life, and explains the theory in detail. The publication of Resurrection led to Tolstoy's excommunication by the Holy Synod from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901.
Contents
Background
The theme for the new novel had been supplied by Tolstoy's friend Anatoly Koni. He told Tolstoy the story of a man who had come to him for legal aid. As a youth this man had seduced a pretty orphan girl of sixteen who had been taken into the home of a relative of the young man when her parents died. Once her benefactress observed the girl's pregnant condition, she drove her away. Abandoned by her seducer, the girl, after hopeless attempts to earn an honest livelihood, became a prostitute. Caught stealing money from one of her drunken "guests" in a brothel, the girl was arrested. By accident of fate, the jury that tried the case included her seducer. His conscience awakened to the injustice of his behaviour, he decided to marry the girl, who was sentenced to four months in prison. Koni concluded his story by relating that the couple did actually marry, but shortly after her sentence expired, the girl died from typhus.