Anna Karenina. Leo Tolstoy

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      Leo Tolstoy

      Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on 9th September 1828, at Yasnaya Polyana, a family estate located seventy miles from Tula, Russia.

      A master of realistic fiction, Tolstoy is widely considered one of the greatest novelists of all time. He is best known for his two longest novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), though he also penned short stories, plays and philosophical essays on Christianity, nonviolent resistance, art and pacifism.

      The Tolstoys were a well-known family of old Russian nobility, and Leo was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, and Countess Mariya Tolstaya. Tolstoy's parents died when he was young however, so he and his siblings were brought up by relatives. In 1844, he began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University (the second oldest of the Russian universities). Surprisingly, Tolstoy was not known as a promising student, and was described by one lecturer as 'both unable and unwilling to learn.'

      Tolstoy left university in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and then spent much of his time in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he went with his older brother to the Caucasus and joined the army. It was about this time that he started writing. Tolstoy served as Second Lieutenant in an artillery regiment during the Crimean War, recounted in his Sevastopol Sketches. His experiences in battle helped stir his subsequent pacifism and gave him material for realistic depiction of the horrors of war in his later work.

      His conversion from a dissolute and privileged society author to the non-violent and spiritual anarchist of his latter days was brought about by his experience in the army as well as two trips around Europe in 1857 and 1860–61. During his 1857 visit, Tolstoy witnessed a public execution in Paris, a traumatic experience that would mark the rest of his life. Writing in a letter to his friend Vasily Botkin, he stated:

      The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens . . . Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere.

      Tolstoy's European trip in 1860–61 further shaped both his political and literary development when he met Victor Hugo, whose literary talents Tolstoy praised after reading Hugo's newly finished novel Les Misérables.

      Tolstoy's political philosophy was also influenced by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, then living in exile under an assumed name in Brussels. Apart from reviewing Proudhon's forthcoming publication, La Guerre et la Paix (War and Peace in French), whose title Tolstoy would borrow for his masterpiece, the two men discussed education and its significance for modern culture. Fired by enthusiasm, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana and founded thirteen schools for the children of Russia's peasants, who had just been emancipated from serfdom in 1861. СКАЧАТЬ