Resurrection

In Resurrection, Tolstoy unflinchingly indicts the Russian judicial and penal systems. Tolstoy uses Nekhlyudov’s descent into the machinery of state punishment to reveal the full moral and structural absurdity of a society that purports to uphold justice while perpetuating cruelty, hypocrisy, and bureaucratic indifference.

The theme is introduced early in the novel, when Maslova is put on trial for murder. Her wrongful conviction—a direct consequence of official negligence—is not treated as an isolated miscarriage of justice, but as emblematic of a system in which outcomes are arbitrary, processes are dehumanizing, and the law is more about maintaining order than serving truth. Courtrooms are described not as halls of justice, but as “factories” churning through human cases without personal engagement or ethical accountability. Maslova’s trial is decided not by clear evidence, but by procedural confusion, a misplaced word, and an uninterested jury.

As Nekhlyudov attempts to secure a review of Maslova’s case, he encounters a wall of bureaucratic inertia. The officials he meets—the judges, governors, police officers, and prison inspectors—are often well-meaning individuals, but their roles in the system render them functionally callous. Tolstoy paints them as cogs in a machine that no one accepts moral responsibility for, even as it grinds people into spiritual and physical ruin. In one of the novel’s most famous reflections, Nekhlyudov observes: “No one is guilty, and yet the men have been murdered by these people who are not guilty of their death” (457). This formulation captures the ethical void created by institutional distance and compartmentalization.

Tolstoy also emphasizes how these systems do not merely fail to rehabilitate offenders but actively cultivate greater moral decay. The prisons are hotbeds of cruelty, violence, and degradation. Prisoners live in filth, are tormented by disease, and are treated more like animals than human beings. The “reform” offered by the penal system is in fact a systematic corruption of the soul. In Part 3, Nekhlyudov realizes that the system operates not to deter or correct crime, but to reproduce it on an industrial scale: “It is just as if a problem had been set: to find the best, the surest means of depraving the greatest number of people!” (541).

This critique is not limited to the penal institutions themselves. Tolstoy’s depiction of the law is deeply philosophical. He questions the very premise that flawed human beings can or should punish others, concluding that institutional justice, as practiced in Russia and elsewhere, is not moral law but a weapon of class control. The fact that laws are created and enforced by the very people who benefit most from the social order—wealthy landowners, aristocrats, and officials—renders the entire legal structure suspect. The clearest illustration of this comes when Nekhlyudov sees how petty theft and acts of survival are punished with severity, while the violence of the ruling classes—war, economic exploitation, social indifference—goes unchallenged.

Tolstoy’s critique is both political and theological. The penal system is not merely inefficient or corrupt, it is spiritually bankrupt. It represents a society that has replaced love and mercy with retribution and legality. Through Resurrection, Tolstoy calls for a radical rethinking of justice—one based not on punishment, but on moral responsibility, humility, and the transformation of the self.

Throughout Resurrection, Tolstoy explores how even seemingly small or forgotten actions ripple outward to affect others in profound, often irreversible ways. The narrative’s central conflict—Nekhlyudov’s past seduction and abandonment of Maslova—acts as a thematic microcosm for this idea. What Nekhlyudov regards at the time as a youthful indiscretion ruins Maslova’s life, ultimately sending her into poverty, sex work, and wrongful imprisonment. His later moral awakening hinges not on religious dogma or abstract ideas, but on the concrete realization of the harm he personally caused.

Maslova’s descent into social degradation is not presented as a result of innate vice or poor character. Instead, it is depicted as the logical outcome of a single selfish act made by someone with far more social and economic power. This direct cause-and-effect relationship becomes the catalyst for Nekhlyudov’s journey of repentance. Crucially, Tolstoy is not interested in simple guilt or punishment; he instead emphasizes the ethical responsibility that binds all people together. It is only by acknowledging his own role in Maslova’s suffering that Nekhlyudov begins to shed the apathy and self-interest that marked his aristocratic life.

This theme recurs throughout the novel in the lives of secondary characters as well. Fedosia’s attempted poisoning of her husband Taras results in not only her imprisonment, but also affects her family and community. However, when Taras forgives her and chooses to accompany her to Siberia, his actions likewise reverberate, shielding her from abuse on the journey and restoring her sense of dignity and purpose. Tolstoy shows that love, like harm, multiplies its influence.

Similarly, the judicial system’s depersonalized processes highlight the insidious impact of collective negligence. Maslova is wrongly sentenced not by malicious individuals, but by an indifferent judge, a distracted jury, and a system more concerned with procedure than people. Each person involved in her trial commits a small failure of attention or courage, and the cumulative result is life-altering injustice. Nekhlyudov reflects, “All this comes from the fact that all these people… consider that there are circumstances when human relations are not necessary between human beings” (40). The erosion of human connection permits moral detachment.

In Resurrection, Tolstoy insists that no action exists in isolation. Whether in the careless cruelty of a seduction or the quiet dignity of forgiveness, every choice carries weight. The novel becomes a call to conscious living, arguing that human lives are inextricably linked, and that the smallest personal action may become the turning point in another’s fate.