Alexander Suslin

Leo Tolstoy Center for Nonviolence

Aug 01, 2015

2009. As an aerospace engineer, I was involved in the design and production of components for crewed aircraft. At a certain point, a series of dual-use products appeared, forcing me to take a closer look at what I was actually doing.

2010. I began searching for people who sought to renounce bloody means and methods of protection: armies, police, security services, the justice system… Soon I discovered that no one seemed to object to maintaining “peaceful” life at the expense of threats, maiming, and killing of others.

2010-2013. Leo Tolstoy became my first guide, helping me to rediscover the New Testament and the nonviolence of Jesus Christ. Later I found contemporaries as well, the most outstanding of whom was Vitaly Adamenko – the compiler of the unique Beyond Violence library, which reveals all aspects of nonviolence from a historical perspective.

2014-2020. I collected available testimonies of the power of nonviolence, including people, events, phenomena, methods, and approaches — first in a personal blog, then on a public platform called The First Magazine on Nonviolence. My interlocutors included V. Adamenko, A. Guseynov, G. Gololob, A. Dudarev, V. Ivleva, and others.

2018-2020. A dialogue on the idea of an alternative peace tax was initiated with the Ministry of Finance, the State Duma, the Government, and the Federation Council. I also became a member of the international movement for a peace tax, CPTI – Conscience and Peace Tax International.

2021-2024. Based on the materials I had gathered, I launched a nonviolence knowledge base called Tolstoy Center. I work with like-minded translators from the USA and Canada, France, Italy, Estonia, Lithuania, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Ukraine.

2025. The book You Shall Not Kill: How to stop needing and participating in killing and maiming people was published.