Background

Leo Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana, his family's estate in Russia's Tula Province, about 210 kilometers south of Moscow, the youngest of four sons. His mother, Mariya Nikolayevna, née Princess Volkonskaya, died before he was two years old, whereupon his father's distant cousin Tatyana Ergolsky took charge of the children. His father Count Nikolay Ilich Tolstoy, a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, died in 1837. His grandmother died 11 months later, and then his next guardian, his aunt Aleksandra, in 1841. Tolstoy and his four siblings were then transferred to the care of another aunt in Kazan, in western Russia. Tolstoy remembered a cousin who lived at Yasnaya Polyana, Tatyana Aleksandrovna Yergolskaya ("Aunt Toinette," as he called her), as the greatest influence on his childhood, and later, as a young man, Tolstoy wrote some of his most-touching letters to her. Despite the constant presence of death, Tolstoy remembered his childhood in idyllic terms. His first published work, Detstvo (1852; Childhood), was a fictionalized and nostalgic account of his early years.

Education

Tolstoy was educated at home by German and French tutors. He was not a particularly exceptional student but he was good at games. In 1843 he entered Kazan University. Planning on a diplomatic career, he entered the faculty of Oriental languages. Finding these studies too demanding, he switched two years later to studying law, where he wrote a comparison of the French political philosopher Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws and Catherine the Great’s Nakaz (instructions for a law code). Interested in literature and ethics, he was drawn to the works of the English novelists Laurence Sterne and Charles Dickens and, especially, to the writings of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau; in place of a cross, he wore a medallion with a portrait of Rousseau. But he spent most of his time trying to be comme il faut (socially correct), drinking, gambling, and engaging in debauchery. Tolstoy spoke more than fifteen languages at the age of 19. He thoroughly studied history and literature too. Tolstoy left the university in 1847 without taking his degree.

Career

After leaving the university in 1847 without a degree, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana, where he planned to educate himself, to manage his estate, and to improve the lot of his serfs. His charity failed because of his foolishness in dealing with the peasants and because he continued his loose life during stays in Tula, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. In 1847, Tolstoy began keeping a diary, which became his laboratory for experiments in self-analysis and, later, for his fiction. With some interruptions, Tolstoy kept his diaries throughout his life, and he is therefore one of the most copiously documented writers who ever lived.

Nikolay, Tolstoy's eldest brother, visited him in 1848 at Yasnaya Polyana while on leave from military service in the Caucasus. Leo greatly loved his brother, and when he asked him to join him in the south, Tolstoy agreed. After a long journey, he reached the mountains of the Caucasus, where he sought to join the army as a Junker, or gentleman-volunteer. Tolstoy's habits on a lonely outpost consisted of hunting, drinking, sleeping, chasing the women, and occasionally fighting. During the long lulls he first began to write. In 1852, he sent the autobiographical sketch "Childhood" to the leading journal of the day, the Contemporary. Nikolai Nekrasov, its editor, was ecstatic, and when it was published (under Tolstoy's initials), so was all of Russia.

Tolstoy now began "The Cossacks" (finished in 1862), a thinly veiled account of his life in the outpost. From November 1854 to August 1855, Tolstoy served in the battered fortress at Sevastopol. He had requested a transfer to this area, where one of the bloodiest battles of the Crimean War was in process. As he directed fire from the 4th Bastion, the hottest area in the conflict for a long while, Tolstoy managed to write "Youth", the second part of his autobiographical trilogy. He also wrote the three "Sevastopol Tales" at this time. When the city fell, Tolstoy was asked to make a study of the artillery action during the final assault and to report with it to the authorities in St. Petersburg. His reception in the capital was triumphal. Because of his name, he was welcomed into the most brilliant society. Because of his stories, he was lionized by the cream of literary society. During the same year Tolstoy visited Moscow, garnering there both success in society and esteem among authors. By the time he returned to St. Petersburg, he was beginning to tire of his new literary acquaintances. He felt that they were insincere talkers. He offended both camps of what soon became a war within the Contemporary group-with the opposing points of view represented by the aristocratic Ivan Turgenev and the radical Nikolai Chernyshevsky.

In 1856, Tolstoy left the service (as a lieutenant) to look after his affairs at Yasnaya Polyana; he also worked on "The Snowstorm" and "Two Hussars." In the following year he made his first trip abroad. He did not like Western Europe, as his stories of this period, Lucerne and Albert, show. He was becoming increasingly interested in education, however, and he talked with experts in this field wherever he went. In the summer he returned to Yasnaya Polyana and set up a school for peasant children, where he began his pedagogic experiments. In 1860-1861, Tolstoy went abroad again, seeking to learn more about education; he also gambled heavily and returned after having gambled away his money. After the freeing of the serfs in 1861, Tolstoy became a mediator, an official who arbitrated land disputes between serfs and their former masters. In April he had a petty quarrel with Turgenev, actually challenging him to a duel. Turgenev declined, but the two men were on bad terms for years. Tolstoy's school at Yasnaya Polyana went forward, using pioneering techniques that were later adopted by progressive educationists. In 1862, Tolstoy started a journal "Yasnaya Polyana" (1862–1863) to propagate his pedagogical ideas. He also took the first of his koumiss cures, traveling to Samara, living in the open, and drinking fermented mare's milk. These cures eventually became an almost annual event. And indeed Tolstoy was. Since 1861, he had been trying to write a historical novel about the Decembrist uprising of 1825. But the more he worked, the farther back in time he went.

In September 1862, Tolstoy married Sofya (Sonya) Andreyevna Bers and soon transferred all his energies to his marriage and the composition of "War and Peace." The first decade of their marriage brought Tolstoy the greatest happiness; never before or after was his creative life so rich or his personal life so full. He devoted the remaining years of the 1860s to writing "War and Peace." The first portion was published in 1865 (in the Russian Messenger) as "The Year 1805." In 1868 three more chapters appeared, and in 1869 he completed the novel. Tolstoy had been somewhat neglected by critics in the preceding few years because he had not participated in the bitter literary politics of the time. But his new novel created a fantastic outpouring of popular and critical reaction.

In the midst of all his happiness, in 1869, Tolstoy experienced a deep and mysterious personal trauma. Traveling to buy an estate in Penza Province, he stopped overnight in Arzamas. Awakened by a nightmare, he felt that he was dying. Once again, as when Nikolay had died, he was reminded of his mortality, and his so-called conversion of 1880 may, in a sense, be traced back to this experience. Tolstoy's next 10 years were equally crowded. He published "The Primer" and the first four "Readers" (1872 - 1875), his attempts to appeal to an audience that would include children and the newly literate peasantry. From 1873 to 1877, he worked on the second of his masterworks, "Anna Karenina", which also created a sensation upon its publication. Tolstoy's family continued to grow, and his royalties (money earned from sales) were making him an extremely rich man.

In 1879-1880, Tolstoy wrote his "Confession" (published in 1884) and his "Critique of Dogmatic Theology." From this point on, his life was dominated by a burning desire to achieve social justice and a rationally acceptable ethic. Tolstoy was a public figure now, and in 1881 he asked Alexander III, in vain, to spare the lives of those who had assassinated the Czar's father. He visited Optina again, this time disguised as a peasant, but his trip failed to bring him peace. In September the family moved to Moscow in order to further the education of the older sons. The following year Tolstoy participated in the census, visiting the worst slums of Moscow, where he was freshly appalled. Tolstoy had not gone out of his way to propagate his new convictions, but in 1883 he met V. G. Chertkov, a wealthy guards officer who soon became the moving force behind an attempt to start a movement in Tolstoy's name.

In the next few years a new publication was founded (the Mediator) in order to spread Tolstoy's word in tract and fiction, as well as to make good reading available to the poor. In 6 years almost 20 million copies were distributed. Tolstoy had long been under surveillance by the secret police, and in 1884 copies of "What I Believe" were seized from the printer. He abstained from cigarettes, meat, white bread, and hunting. His image as a white-bearded patriarch in a peasant's blouse dates from this period. Tolstoy's relations with his family were becoming increasingly strained. The more of a saint he became in the eyes of the world, the more of a devil he seemed to his wife. He wanted to give his wealth away, but she would not hear of it. An unhappy compromise was reached in 1884, when Tolstoy assigned to his wife the copyright to all his works before 1881. In 1886 Tolstoy worked on what is possibly his most powerful story, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", and his drama of peasant life, "The Power of Darkness" (which could not be produced until 1895). In 1888 he finished his sweeping indictment of carnal love, "The Kreutzer Sonata."

In 1892 Tolstoy's estate, valued at the equivalent of $1.5 million, was divided among his wife and his nine living children. Tolstoy was now perhaps the most famous man in the world; people came from all over the globe to Yasnaya Polyana. His activity was unabated. In 1891 and in 1893 he organized famine relief in Ryazan Province. He also worked on some of his finest stories: "The Devil" (1890, published posthumously) and "Father Sergius" (1890). In order to raise money for transporting a dissenting religious sect (the Doukhobors) to Canada, Tolstoy published the third, and least successful, of his three long novels, "Resurrection" (1899). From 1896 to 1904, he worked on the story that was his personal favorite, "Hadji Murad", the tale of a Caucasian mountaineer. Tolstoy's final years were filled with worldwide acclaim and great unhappiness, as he was caught in the strife between his convictions, his followers, and his family. The Holy Synod excommunicated him in 1901. Unable to endure the quarrels at home he set out on his last pilgrimage in October 1910, accompanied by his youngest daughter, Alexandra, and his physician. The trip proved too much, and he died in the home of the stationmaster of the small depot at Astapovo on November 9, 1910. He was buried at Yasnaya Polyana.

Achievements

• Leo Tolstoy is widely considered one of the greatest authors of all time. His masterpieces "War and Peace", "Anna Karenina" and "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" stand at the peak of realistic fiction and are amongst the world's top literary works even today. In addition to writing novels, Tolstoy also authored short stories, essays and plays. Also a moral thinker and a social reformer, Tolstoy held severe moralistic views. In later life, he became a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His non-violent resistance approach towards life has been expressed in his works such as "The Kingdom of God is Within You", which is known to have a profound effect on important 20th-century figures, particularly, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi.

Works

More photos

• novel

  • Resurrection

    (This powerful novel, Tolstoy's third major masterpiece, a...)

    1899
  • War and Peace

    (Tolstoy's epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of priva...)

    1869
  • The Cossacks

    (The Cossacks is a short novel by Leo Tolstoy, published i...)

    1863
  • Anna Karenina

    (Leo Tolstoy's great modern novel of an adulterous affair ...)

    1877

• novella

  • The Death of Ivan Ilyich

    (Tolstoy’s most famous novella is an intense and moving ex...)

    1886
  • Family Happiness and Other Stories

    (Each of the tales in this collection exhibits the rich de...)

    1886

• Other Work

  • My Confession

    ("My Confession" is a book by Leo Tolstoy and belongs to h...)

    1884

Religion

Upon completing "Anna Karenina", Tolstoy fell into a profound state of existential despair, which he describes in his "My Confession" (1884). All activity seemed utterly pointless in the face of death, and Tolstoy, impressed by the faith of the common people, turned to religion. Drawn at first to the Russian Orthodox church into which he had been born, he rapidly decided that it, and all other Christian churches, were corrupt institutions that had thoroughly falsified true Christianity. Having discovered what he believed to be Christ’s message and having overcome his paralyzing fear of death, Tolstoy devoted the rest of his life to developing and propagating his new faith. He was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox church in 1901.

In the early 1880s Tolstoy wrote three closely related works, "An Examination of Dogmatic Theology" (written 1880), "Union and Translation of the Four Gospels" (written 1881), and "What I Believe" (written 1884); he later added "The Kingdom of God Is Within You" (1893) and many other essays and tracts. In brief, Tolstoy rejected all the sacraments, all miracles, the Holy Trinity, the immortality of the soul, and many other tenets of traditional religion, all of which he regarded as obfuscations of the true Christian message contained, especially, in the Sermon on the Mount. He rejected the Old Testament and much of the New, which is why, having studied Greek, he composed his own "corrected" version of the Gospels. For Tolstoy, "the man Jesus," as he called him, was not the son of God but only a wise man who had arrived at a true account of life. Tolstoy’s rejection of religious ritual contrasts markedly with his attitude in Anna Karenina, where religion is viewed as a matter not of dogma but of traditional forms of daily life.

Stated positively, the Christianity of Tolstoy’s last decades stressed five tenets: be not angry, do not lust, do not take oaths, do not resist evil, and love your enemies.

Politics

Because governments rely on the threat of violence to enforce their laws, Tolstoy became a kind of anarchist. He enjoined his followers not only to refuse military service but also to abstain from voting or from having recourse to the courts. With all the might of his talent, Tolstoy made (especially in "The Kingdom of God Is Within You") a powerful criticism of the church, the state and law altogether, and especially of the present property laws. He described the state as the domination of the wicked ones, supported by brutal force. He wrote that robbers are far less dangerous than a well-organized government. Tolstoy made a searching criticism of the prejudices concerning the benefits conferred upon men by the church, the state, and the existing distribution of property, and from the teachings of Jesus he deduced the rule of non-resistance and the absolute condemnation of all wars. His religious arguments were, however, so well combined with arguments borrowed from a dispassionate observation of the present evils, that the anarchist portions of his works appeal to the religious and the non-religious reader alike.

In hundreds of essays over the last 20 years of his life, Tolstoy reiterated the anarchist critique of the state and recommended books by Kropotkin and Proudhon to his readers, whilst rejecting anarchism's espousal of violent revolutionary means. In the 1900 essay, "On Anarchy", he wrote; "The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without Authority, there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power ... There can be only one permanent revolution - a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man." Despite his misgivings about anarchist violence, Tolstoy took risks to circulate the prohibited publications of anarchist thinkers in Russia, and corrected the proofs of Kropotkin's "Words of a Rebel", illegally published in St. Petersburg in 1906. His exposition of pacifism and non-violence had a profound influence on others – most notably Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

During the Boxer Rebellion in China, Tolstoy praised the Boxers. He was harshly critical of the atrocities committed by the Russians, Germans, Americans, Japanese, and other western troops. He accused them of engaging in slaughter when he heard about the lootings, rapes, and murders, in what he saw as Christian brutality. Tolstoy also named the two monarchs most responsible for the atrocities; Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany. The Eight-Nation Alliance intervention in the Boxer Rebellion was denounced by Tolstoy as were the Philippine - American War and the Second Boer War between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics. The words "terrible for its injustice and cruelty" were used to describe the Tsarist intervention in China by Tolstoy. Confucius's works were studied by Tolstoy. The attack on China in the Boxer Rebellion was railed against by Tolstoy. To the Chinese people, an epistle, was written by Tolstoy as part of the criticism of the war by intellectuals in Russia. The activities of Russia in China by Nicholas II were described in an open letter where they were slammed and denounced by Leo Tolstoy in 1902. Tolstoy corresponded with Gu Hongming and they both opposed the Hundred Day's Reform by Kang Youwei and agreed that the reform movement was perilous. Tolstoys' ideology on nonviolence shaped the anarchist thought of the Society for the Study of Socialism in China. Lao Zi and Confucius's teachings were studied by Tolstoy. Chinese Wisdom' was a text written by Tolstoy. The Boxer Rebellion stirred Tolstoy's interest in Chinese philosophy. The Boxer and Boxer wars were denounced by Tolstoy.

Tolstoy was enthused by the economic thinking of Henry George, incorporating it approvingly into later works such as Resurrection (1899), the book that played a major factor in his ex-communication.

In 1908, Tolstoy wrote "A Letter to a Hindu" outlining his belief in non-violence as a means for India to gain independence from British colonial rule. In 1909, a copy of the letter was read by Gandhi, who was working as a lawyer in South Africa at the time and just becoming an activist. Tolstoy's letter was significant for Gandhi, who wrote Tolstoy seeking proof that he was the real author, leading to further correspondence between them.

Tolstoy also became a major supporter of the Esperanto movement. He was impressed by the pacifist beliefs of the Doukhobors and brought their persecution to the attention of the international community, after they burned their weapons in peaceful protest in 1895. He aided the Doukhobors in migrating to Canada. In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, Tolstoy condemned the war and wrote to the Japanese Buddhist priest Soyen Shaku in a failed attempt to make a joint pacifist statement.

Views

In 1847, Tolstoy began keeping a diary, which became his laboratory for experiments in self-analysis and, later, for his fiction. With some interruptions, Tolstoy kept his diaries throughout his life, and he is therefore one of the most copiously documented writers who ever lived. Reflecting the life he was leading, his first diary begins by confiding that he may have contracted a venereal disease. The early diaries record a fascination with rule-making, as Tolstoy composed rules for diverse aspects of social and moral behaviour. They also record the writer’s repeated failure to honour these rules, his attempts to formulate new ones designed to ensure obedience to old ones, and his frequent acts of self-castigation.

Towards the end of his life, Leo Tolstoy became increasingly interested in a version of pacifist Christianity with support for a strand of Anarchist Communism. His exposition of pacifism and non-violence had a profound influence on others – most notably Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Nonresistance to evil, the doctrine that inspired Gandhi, meant not that evil must be accepted but only that it cannot be fought with evil means, especially violence. Thus, Tolstoy became a pacifist. Because governments rely on the threat of violence to enforce their laws, Tolstoy also became a kind of anarchist. He enjoined his followers not only to refuse military service but also to abstain from voting or from having recourse to the courts. He therefore had to go through considerable inner conflict when it came time to make his will or to use royalties secured by copyright even for good works. In general, it may be said that Tolstoy was well aware that he did not succeed in living according to his teachings.

Tolstoy based the prescription against oaths (including promises) on an idea adapted from his early work: the impossibility of knowing the future and therefore the danger of binding oneself in advance. The commandment against lust eventually led him to propose (in his afterword to "The Kreutzer Sonata", a dark novella about a man who murders his wife) total abstinence as an ideal. His wife, already concerned about their strained relations, objected. In defending his most-extreme ideas, Tolstoy compared Christianity to a lamp that is not stationary but is carried along by human beings; it lights up ever new moral realms and reveals ever higher ideals as mankind progresses spiritually.

Both "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" advance the idea that ethics can never be a matter of timeless rules applied to particular situations. Rather, ethics depends on sensitivity, developed over a lifetime, to particular people and specific situations. Tolstoy’s preference for particularities over abstractions is often described as the hallmark of his thought.

Tolstoy, a famous sinophile, also read the works of Chinese thinker and philosopher, Confucius. Tolstoy corresponded with the Chinese intellectual Gu Hongming and Gandhi and recommended that China remain an agrarian nation and warned against reform like what Japan implemented.

Tolstoy’s conversion led him to write a treatise and several essays on art. Sometimes he expressed in more-extreme form ideas he had always held (such as his dislike for imitation of fashionable schools), but at other times he endorsed ideas that were incompatible with his own earlier novels, which he rejected. "What Is Art?" (1898) he argued that true art requires a sensitive appreciation of a particular experience, a highly specific feeling that is communicated to the reader not by propositions but by "infection." In Tolstoy’s view, most celebrated works of high art derive from no real experience but rather from clever imitation of existing art. They are therefore "counterfeit" works that are not really art at all. Tolstoy further divides true art into good and bad, depending on the moral sensibility with which a given work infects its audience. Condemning most acknowledged masterpieces, including William Shakespeare’s plays as well as his own great novels, as either counterfeit or bad, Tolstoy singled out for praise the biblical story of Joseph and, among Russian works, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s "The House of the Dead" (1861–1862) and some stories by his young friend Anton Chekhov. He was cool to Chekhov’s drama, however, and, in a celebrated witticism, once told Chekhov that his plays were even worse than Shakespeare’s.

Towards the end of his life, Tolstoy became more and more occupied with the economic theory and social philosophy of Georgism. He spoke of great admiration of Henry George, stating once that "People do not argue with the teaching of George; they simply do not know it. And it is impossible to do otherwise with his teaching, for he who becomes acquainted with it cannot but agree." He also wrote a preface to George's Social Problems. Tolstoy and George both rejected private property in land (the most important source of income of the passive Russian aristocracy that Tolstoy so heavily criticized) whilst simultaneously both rejecting a centrally planned socialist economy. Some assume that this development in Tolstoy's thinking was a move away from his anarchist views, since Georgism requires a central administration to collect land rent and spend it on infrastructure. However, anarchist versions of Georgism have also been proposed since. Tolstoy's 1899 novel "Resurrection" explores his thoughts on Georgism in more detail and hints that Tolstoy indeed had such a view. It suggests the possibility of small communities with some form of local governance to manage the collective land rents for common goods; whilst still heavily criticising institutions of the state such as the justice system.

Quotations: "The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth."

"Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here." - from "War and Peace"

"All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." – from "Anna Karenina"

"I cannot recall those years without horror, loathing, and heart-rending pain. I killed people in war, challenged men to duels with the purpose of killing them, and lost at cards; I squandered the fruits of the peasants’ toil and then had them executed; I was a fornicator and a cheat. Lying, stealing, promiscuity of every kind, drunkenness, violence, murder — there was not a crime I did not commit… Thus I lived for ten years." - from his "Confessions"

"The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people." – from "What Is To Be Done?"

"The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase." – from "Help for the Starving"

"The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man." - from "The Kingdom of Heaven is within You."

"Condemn me if you choose — I do that myself, — but condemn me, and not the path which I am following, and which I point out to those who ask me where, in my opinion, the path is." – from "Letter to N.N."

"In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful. The government assures the people that they are in danger from the invasion of another nation, or from foes in their midst, and that the only way to escape this danger is by the slavish obedience of the people to their government. This fact is seen most prominently during revolutions and dictatorships, but it exists always and everywhere that the power of the government exists. Every government explains its existence, and justifies its deeds of violence, by the argument that if it did not exist the condition of things would be very much worse. After assuring the people of its danger the government subordinates it to control, and when in this condition compels it to attack some other nation. And thus the assurance of the government is corroborated in the eyes of the people, as to the danger of attack from other nations." - from "Christianity and Patriotism"

"Tell people that war is an evil, and they will laugh; for who does not know it? Tell them that patriotism is an evil, and most of them will agree, but with a reservation. "Yes," they will say, "wrong patriotism is an evil; but there is another kind, the kind we hold." But just what this good patriotism is, no one explains." – from "Patriotism, or Peace?"

"The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. "To establish Anarchy." "Anarchy will be instituted." But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power." – from "On Anarchy", in Pamphlets

"All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do." – from "The Law of Love and the Law of Violence"

"Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait."

"The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience."

"Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source." – from "Thoughts of Prince Andrew"

"To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings."

"Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be." – from "Anna Karenina"

Personality

Leo Tolstoy was one of the great rebels of all time, a man who during a long and stormy life was at odds with Church, government, literary tradition, and his own family. He was no prude, but he was awkward and proud, being known to his friends as the "Bear."

In his early life, he struggled with his studies and drifted through life ending up with large gambling debts. Fed up with his aimless and empty life he volunteered to serve in the Russian army. However, these experiences as a soldier led him to become a pacifist in later life.

Despite the success of his greatest novels "War and Piece" and "Anna Karenina", Tolstoy faced a spiritual crisis which made him depressed and gloomy to the extent of being suicidal. His outlook on life and what he thought morally upright to do was juxtaposed, which led him to be over-critical of himself. In 1879-1880, Tolstoy wrote his "Confession" (published 1884) and his "Critique of Dogmatic Theology." From this point on, his life was dominated by a burning desire to achieve social justice and a rationally acceptable ethic. He abstained from cigarettes, meat, white bread, and hunting. His image as a white-bearded patriarch in a peasant's blouse dates from this period. In the last phase of his life, Tolstoy established himself as a moral and religious leader.

He had a large following of disciples who were devoted to him and his believes which they named as Tolstoyism. Furthermore, Tolstoy rejected his inherited and earned wealth including the copyrights of his works due to his new beliefs. The decision was not accepted by his wife who strongly objected to the same and attained the copyrights and the royalties of Tolstoy’s work from him. As Tolstoy’s interest in spiritual matters grew, his interest in his family waned, leaving wife Sophia to shoulder the burden of running their ever-increasing businesses and navigating Tolstoy’s ever-fluctuating moods. By the 1880s, with Tolstoy’s disciples living on the family estate and the author cobbling his own shoes and wearing peasant clothing, an increasingly angry Sophia demanded he sign over control of his publishing royalties, lest he bankrupt his family. With the notable exception of his daughter Aleksandra, whom he made his heir, Tolstoy’s family remained aloof from or hostile to his teachings. His wife especially resented the constant presence of disciples, led by the dogmatic V.G. Chertkov, at Yasnaya Polyana. Their once happy life had turned into one of the most famous bad marriages in literary history. The story of his dogmatism and her penchant for scenes has excited numerous biographers to take one side or the other. Because both kept diaries, and indeed exchanged and commented on each other’s diaries, their quarrels are almost too well documented.

Reading Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God Is Within You" convinced Gandhi to avoid violence and espouse nonviolent resistance, a debt Gandhi acknowledged in his autobiography, calling Tolstoy "the greatest apostle of non-violence that the present age has produced". The correspondence between Tolstoy and Gandhi would only last a year, from October 1909 until Tolstoy's death in November 1910, but led Gandhi to give the name Tolstoy Colony to his second ashram in South Africa. Besides nonviolent resistance, the two men shared a common belief in the merits of vegetarianism, the subject of several of Tolstoy's essays.

Physical Characteristics: Tolstoy's photographs show a coarse-looking young man with piercing eyes, spatulate nose, and mustache. He was not tall but very strong.

Quotes from others about the person

• Gandhi: "One need not accept all that Tolstoy says - some of his facts are not accurately stated - to realize the central truth of his indictment of the present system, which is to understand and act upon the irresistible power of the soul over the body, of love, which is an attribute of the soul, over the brute or body force generated by the stirring in us of evil passions. There is no doubt that there is nothing new in what Tolstoy preaches. But his presentation of the old truth is refreshingly forceful. His logic is unassailable. And above all he endeavours to practice what he preaches. He preaches to convince. He is sincere and in earnest. He commands attention."
  
  Gandhi: "Tolstoy's life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of non­resistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in self­suffering. He admits of no exception to whittle down this great and divine law of love. He applies it to all the problems that trouble mankind. When a man like Tolstoy, one of the clearest thinkers in the western world, one of the greatest writers, one who as a soldier has known what violence is and what it can do, condemns Japan for having blindly followed the law of modern science, falsely so-­called, and fears for that country "the greatest calamities", it is for us to pause and consider whether, in our impatience of English rule, we do not want to replace one evil by another and a worse."
  
  Anton Chekhov in a letter to M.O. Menshikov: "I fear Tolstoy's death. His death would leave a large empty space in my life. First, I have loved no man the way I have loved him. I am not a believer, but of all beliefs I consider his the closest to mine and most suitable for me. Second, when literature has a Tolstoy, it is easy and gratifying to be a writer. Even if you are aware that you have never accomplished anything, you don't feel so bad, because Tolstoy accomplishes enough for everyone. His activities provide justification for the hopes and aspirations that are usually placed on literature. Third, Tolstoy stands firm, his authority is enormous, and as long as he is alive bad taste in literature, all vulgarity in its brazen-faced or lachrymose varieties, all bristly and resentful vanity will remain far in the background. His moral authority alone is enough to maintain what we think of as literary trends and schools at a certain minimal level. If not for him, literature would be a flock without a shepherd or an unfathomable jumble."
  
  James Joyce: "He is never dull, never stupid, never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical."
  
  Martin Luther King Jr.: "The measured words of Leo Tolstoi's confession in My Religion reflect an experience many have shared: Five years ago faith came to me; I believed in the doctrine of Jesus, and my whole life underwent a sudden transformation. What I had once wished for I wished for no longer, and I began to desire what I have never desired before. What had once appeared to me right now became wrong and the wrong of the past I beheld as right... My life and my desires were completely changed; good and evil interchanged meanings. Herein we find the answer to a perplexing question. Evil can be cast out not by a man alone, not by a dictatorial God who invades our lives, but when we open the door and invite God through Christ to enter."
  
  Ernest Hemingway: "I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I’ve fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody’s going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I’m crazy or I keep getting better."
  
  F. Scott Fitzgerald: "People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher — a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity."
  
  Isaak Babel: "If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy."

Interests

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Brahmanism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Islam, Socrates, later Stoics, Kant, Schopenhauer

• Writers

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Pushkin, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, George Eliot

• Sport & Clubs

  Chess, cycling, lawn-tennis, swimming, skating, gymnastics

• Music & Bands

  Bach, Handel, Chopin

Connections

On September 23, 1862, Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs (Bers), the daughter of a court physician. She was 16 years junior at the time of marriage. They had 13 children, eight of whom survived childhood.

The marriage was marked from the outset by sexual passion and emotional insensitivity when Tolstoy, on the eve of their marriage, gave her his diaries detailing his extensive sexual past and the fact that one of the serfs on his estate had borne him a son. Even so, their early married life was happy and allowed Tolstoy much freedom and the support system to compose "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" with Sonya acting as his secretary, editor, and financial manager. Sonya was copying and handwriting his epic works time after time. The family was prosperous, owing to Tolstoy's efficient management of his estates and to the sales of his works, making it possible to provide adequately for the family. However, their later life together has been described by A. N. Wilson as one of the unhappiest in literary history. Tolstoy's relationship with his wife deteriorated as his beliefs became increasingly radical. This saw him seeking to reject his inherited and earned wealth, including the renunciation of the copyrights on his earlier works.

Father:

Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy

Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy was a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812.

Mother:

Countess Mariya Tolstaya (Volkonskaya)

Wife:

Countess Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya

Sophia Tolstaya (nee Behrs) was one of three daughters of a German physician, Andrey Evstafievich Behrs, and his Russian wife, Liubov Alexandrovna. Sophia acted as copyist of "War and Peace", copying and editing the manuscript seven times from beginning to end at home at night by candlelight after the children and servants had gone to bed, using an inkwell pen and sometimes needing a magnifying glass to read her husband's notes.

In 1887, she took up the relatively new art of photography. She took over a thousand photographs that documented her life, including with Tolstoy, and the decline of pre-Soviet Tsarist Russia. She was a diarist and documented her life with Leo Tolstoy in a series of diaries. Tolstaya wrote her memoirs as well, which she titled "My Life."

After many years of an increasingly troubled marriage (the couple argued over Tolstoy's desire to give away all his private property) Leo left Sophia abruptly in 1910, aged 82, with their daughter Alexandra, and his doctor. He died 10 days later. Following the death of her husband, Sophia continued to live at Yasnaya Polyana and survived the Russian Revolution in relative peace. She died in 1919.

Son:

Count Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy

Count Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy was a composer and ethnomusicologist who was among the first Europeans to make an in-depth study of the music of India. He was also an associate of the Sufi mystic, Inayat Khan, and participated in helping the Doukhobors move to Canada.

Daughter:

Countess Tatiana Lvovna Sukhotina-Tolstaya

She was a painter and memoirist.

Son:

Count Ilya Lvovich Tolstoy

Count Ilya Lvovich Tolstoy is best known for his book of memoirs about his father "Reminiscences of Tolstoy." He also wrote the short novel "The Corpse" in 1890 (published posthumously), and the story "One Bastard Less" which was published in the journal Russian Thought in 1905.

Son:

Lev Tolstoy

Lev Lvovich, whom his father once called "Leo Tolstoy, Junior" was a fairly well known and respected belletristic author and playwright in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Although he had enjoyed good relations with his parents, by the 1890s Lev Lvovich had come to doubt his father’s religious and moral teachings, eventually becoming an ardent monarchist and Russian patriot.

While living in exile after the Russian Revolution in Sweden, he became a vocal and sometimes harsh critic of his father’s teachings. He continued to write there, but also received attention as an artist and sculptor: he participated in numerous exhibits, where his busts of his father, Benito Mussolini, and Herbert Hoover brought renown.

Daughter:

Countess Maria Lvovna Tolstaya

She helped her father as a secretary, was engaged in translations. Sharing her father’s views, she refused to participate in public life.

Son:

Count Peter Lvovich Tolstoy

died in infancy

Son:

Count Nikolai Lvovich Tolstoy

died in infancy

Daughter:

Countess Varvara Lvovna Tolstaya

died in infancy

Son:

Count Andrei Lvovich Tolstoy

He served in the Russo-Japanese War.

Son:

Count Michael Lvovich Tolstoy

Son:

Count Alexei Lvovich Tolstoy

Daughter:

Countess Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya

Countess Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya was the youngest daughter and secretary of Tolstoy. Although Alexandra Lvovna shared with her father the doctrine of non-violence, she felt it was her duty to take part in the events of World War I. For her courage, the Russian government awarded her three St George Medals and the rank of colonel.

The Bolsheviks imprisoned Alexandra in 1920, but she was installed as the director of the Tolstoy museum at Yasnaya Polyana the next year. She left the Soviet Union in 1929, and settled in the United States, where she founded the Tolstoy Foundation. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1941.

Son:

Count Ivan Lvovich Tolstoy

Friend:

Vladimir Chertkov

Vladimir Chertkov was the editor of the works of Leo Tolstoy, and one of the most prominent Tolstoyans.

Friend:

Mahatma Gandhi

In 1908, Tolstoy wrote "A Letter to a Hindu" outlining his belief in non-violence as a means for India to gain independence from British colonial rule. In 1909, a copy of the letter was read by Gandhi, who was working as a lawyer in South Africa at the time and just becoming an activist. Tolstoy's letter was significant for Gandhi, who wrote Tolstoy seeking proof that he was the real author, leading to further correspondence between them.

Reading Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God Is Within You" convinced Gandhi to avoid violence and espouse nonviolent resistance, a debt Gandhi acknowledged in his autobiography, calling Tolstoy "the greatest apostle of non-violence that the present age has produced". The correspondence between Tolstoy and Gandhi would only last a year, from October 1909 until Tolstoy's death in November 1910, but led Gandhi to give the name Tolstoy Colony to his second ashram in South Africa. Besides nonviolent resistance, the two men shared a common belief in the merits of vegetarianism, the subject of several of Tolstoy's essays.

Friend:

Anton Chekhov

They were friends but Tolstoy was cool to Chekhov’s drama, however, and, in a celebrated witticism, once told Chekhov that his plays were even worse than Shakespeare’s.

opponent:

Pyotr Stolypin

The Stolypin family and the Tolstoy family were friends, but later Leo Tolstoy strongly critisized Stolypin and his reforms.

Friend:

Afanasy Fet

Tolstoy and Fet were lifelong friends.

References

• Tolstoy: A Russian Life In this biography of Tolstoy, Rosamund Bartlett draws extensively on key Russian sources, including much fascinating material made available since the collapse of the Soviet Union. She sheds light on Tolstoy’s remarkable journey from callow youth to writer to prophet; discusses his troubled relationship with his wife, Sonya; and vividly evokes the Russian landscapes Tolstoy so loved and the turbulent times in which he lived. Above all, Bartett gives us an eloquent portrait of the brilliant, maddening, and contrary man who has once again been discovered by a new generation of readers.
  2000
• Tolstoy: A Biography In this landmark biography of Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, A. N. Wilson narrates the complex drama of the writer’s life: his childhood of aristocratic privilege but emotional deprivation, his discovery of his literary genius after aimless years of gambling and womanizing, and his increasingly disastrous marriage. Wilson sweeps away the long-held belief that Tolstoy’s works were the exact mirror of his life, and instead traces the roots of Tolstoy’s art to his relationship with God, with women, and with Russia. He also breaks new ground in recreating the world that shaped the great novelist’s life and art - the turmoil of ideas and politics in nineteenth-century Russia and the incredible literary renaissance that made Tolstoy’s work possible.
  1988
• Tolstoy by Henri Troyat
  1965
• Lev Tolstoy As well as the events of Tolstoy's life, Shklovsky gives the story of his creative development, the writing of his major works, his philosophy, his religion, his objective role in history.
  1963
• Lev and Sonya: The Story of the Tolstoy Marriage by Louise Smoluchowski
  1988
• Tolstoy, The inconstant genius: A Biography
  1929