Toward Prefigurative Pacifism: The Case of the Bulgarian Tolstoyans and the Proslav Vegetarian Intentional Community

Abstract This paper proposes a conceptual bridge between pacifism and prefigurative politics through the introduction of the notion of prefigurative pacifism. While pacifism is often viewed as apolitical or utopian, the paper argues for a prefigurative framing of pacifism as an active mode of political resistance. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature, the paper suggests that ascetic forms of pacifism embody a distinct mode of political engagement—one that enacts alternative socio-political relations in the present rather than pursuing change through strategic confrontation. This argument is grounded in a historical case study of Bulgaria’s early twentieth-century Tolstoyan and vegetarian–pacifist movement and one of its ideologues, Iliya Enchev, whose doctrine of “scientific vegetarianism” informed the creation of an intentional community committed to pacifist ethics. The paper contributes to renewed efforts to theorize pacifism’s political relevance by reframing it as a practice of world-building, offering new directions for research on nonviolence, ethics, and resistance.