This book describes the world-historical forces, acting on the periphery of the modern world--in Russia in the 19th century and India in the 20th century which developed the idea of nonviolence in Tolstoy and then in Gandhi. It was from Tolstoy that Gandhi first learned of this idea, but those world-historical forces acted upon and through both men. Tolstoy and Gandhi were at first agents of modern reform, in Russia and India. But then they became rebels against it and led a profound resistance--a resistance spiritually rooted in the traditionalism of myriad peasant villages.