Corpun file 18605

The Times, London, 2 September 1903

Count Tolstoi and Corporal Punishment.

A Reuter message from St. Petersburg says that Count Leo Tolstoi's son has written a letter to the Novosti protesting against the assertion made in Prince Mestchersky's new popular journal Friendly Discourses that Count Leo Tolstoi had in one of his works pronounced himself in favour of the maintenance of corporal punishment by flogging as a penalty for offences committed by peasants.

"Just when we are on the eve of the abolition of corporal punishment, which is quite inevitable in view of the present rise of the moral and intellectual level of the peasants, Prince Mestchersky suggests to them," says Count Leo Tolstoi's son, "that flogging is good for them, and thus not only does he irritate them against the intellectual class, which dares to say such things to them, but also he tends to brutalize and infuriate the coarse element in the rural class -- an element which is happily diminishing and losing more and more of its influence on that class."