The Russian government has made use of all the weapons it had at command - police measures for making arrests, for prohibiting people from place to place, for forbidding all intercourse with one another, the interception of letters, espionage, the probition to publish in newspapers information about any and everything concerning the Doukhobors, calumnies printed in the papers, bribery, flogging, imprisonment, exile, and the ruin of families.

The Doukhobors have, on their part, employed their one religious weapon, namely, gentle intelligence and patient firmness; and they say ‘One must not obey men rather than God. Therefore, whatever you may do to us, we cannot and will not obey you!‘

Two Wars (August 15, 1898)

Leo Tolstoy (left) playing chess with Vladimir Chertkov's son

(photograph by Vladimir Chertkov, Tolstoy's friend and publisher)