Leo Tolstoy published The Kingdom of God Is Within You in 1894.
The book is a major statement of Tolstoy’s Christian anarchist and pacifist philosophy. It argues that people should follow Jesus’ teaching of nonresistance to evil rather than participate in violence, coercive government, or organized warfare. Tolstoy also criticized the alliance between state power and established churches.
The work was published in Germany after Russian authorities prohibited it in the Russian Empire. Its arguments later influenced pacifists and reformers, including Mahatma Gandhi, who read the book while developing his own ideas about nonviolent resistance.
The title comes from Luke 17:21, though translations differ in rendering the biblical phrase. It should not be confused with Tolstoy’s 1884 spiritual autobiography, A Confession, which describes an earlier stage of his religious crisis.