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Birth of the great Russian writer and thinker, one of the world's greatest novelists, Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy was born on August 28 (September 9), 1828 in the family estate Yasnaya Polyana (now the Leo Tolstoy Museum-Estate in the Shchekinsky district of Tula Region). On his father’s side he came from the Tolstoy family, and on his mother’s side from the family of the Volkonsky princes. He spent his childhood in the family estate, and after the death of his parents (his mother died in 1830, and his father in 1837), he and his three brothers and sister moved to Kazan, to live with their guardian P. Yushkova. Subsequently, he gave Princess Marya Bolkonskaya the features of her mother and her portrait resemblance, and the image of her father served as the prototype for Nikolai Rostov (“War and Peace”).
From 1844 to 1847 he studied at Kazan University: first at the Faculty of Philosophy and then at the Faculty of Law. Without completing his education, he returned to Yasnaya Polyana with the intention of improving the life of his serfs, as well as engaging in self-education. Disappointed by the unsuccessful management experience, in the autumn of 1847 he moved to Moscow and then to St. Petersburg, where he alternated education with entertainment. These years were accompanied by intense introspection and struggle with oneself, which was reflected in the diary that Leo Tolstoy kept throughout his life. It was then that an interest in writing arose.
In April 1851 he left for the Caucasus, and in January 1852 he entered military service in the artillery. He took part in the battles of the Caucasian War (1817–1864), worked on the story “Childhood”, which was published in 1852 in Sovremennik magazine and brought its first success. Then the magazine published sequels: the stories “Boyhood” (1854) and “Youth” (1857), based on autobiographical material. Directly Caucasian impressions of this period were reflected in the stories and short stories “The Cossacks” (1852–1863), “The Raid” (1853), “The Cutting of the Forest” (1855), “Hadji Murat” (1896–1904, published in 1912).
In 1854, Tolstoy was appointed to the Danube Army, and then was transferred to the Crimean Army, in which, as an artillery officer, he took part in the defense of Sevastopol (1854–1855), showing rare personal courage. Written under the impression of the experience, the cycle “Sevastopol Sketches” (“Sevastopol in December”, “Sevastopol in May” (both 1855) and “Sevastopol in August 1855” (1856) depicted the harsh everyday life of the city’s defenders. The key motive of the work is unnaturalness and the madness of war.
In 1855 he came to St. Petersburg, where he joined the Sovremennik circle (N. A. Nekrasov, I. S. Turgenev, A. N. Ostrovsky, I. A. Goncharov) and was greeted as “the great hope of the Russian literature" (N. A. Nekrasov). However, already in May 1856 he escaped from the hectic life of the capital to Yasnaya Polyana. On the family estate he opened a school for peasant children and taught them history himself, publishing 12 issues of the Yasnaya Polyana magazine, dedicated to educational issues.
On September 23 (October 5), 1862, he married the daughter of a Moscow doctor, Sofya Andreevna Bers, who for many years became her husband’s faithful assistant in his writing. In 1856–1863 Tolstoy is hard at work on a novel about the Decembrists, from which the idea of “War and Peace” was born - a work covering the period from 1805 to 1812 (the work on the novel took place in 1863–1869, publication in 1865–1869). The epic novel is based on the spiritual evolution and moral quest of the heroes, taking place against the backdrop of epoch-making historical events. In the work, the writer developed the ideas of a fatalistic philosophy of history, according to which the movement of history is determined by Providence, and not by the will of people.
In the 1870s he worked on the novel “Anna Karenina” (published in 1875–1877). Dedicated to the life of modern society, he touched on many burning topics of the era: the collapse of the patriarchal structure, the destruction of family foundations, peasant and military reform, the introduction of an independent court, etc. In the lifestyle, beliefs and psychological portrait of the young landowner Konstantin Levin, traits characteristic of the writer himself can be traced.
At the turn of the 1870s–80s Tolstoy overcame a spiritual crisis, which was expressed in the fear of death, a feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness of life. The religious and philosophical teaching developed by the writer absorbed the ideas of Buddhism and other Eastern teachings, the gospel commandments, and the moral principles of the German philosophers I. Kant and A. Schopenhauer. Tolstoy called for social service to others (the poor and disadvantaged), direct and immediate adherence to Christian commandments, non-resistance to evil through violence, and criticized church institutions, for which he was excommunicated by the Synod in 1901.
Having rethought his life, Tolstoy came to the conclusion that the main moral guidelines of a person should be moderation of desires, rejection of luxury, physical labor, and liberation from passions. The writer’s spiritual quests were reflected in many works and articles of this period: “How do people live?” (1881), “On the census in Moscow” (1882), “Confession” (1884), “What is my faith?” (1884), “Kholstomer” (1885), “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (1886), “The Kreutzer Sonata” (1891), “What is art?” (1897–1898), “Resurrection” (1899), “Do not kill anyone” (1907), “Father Sergius” (1911), “The Living Corpse” (1911), etc. Under the influence of the writer’s teachings, a movement of his followers arose - “Tolstoyans” who created communes and worked the land together.
In the last years of his life, a conflict was brewing between Tolstoy and his wife Sofia Andreevna, related to the writer’s refusal to receive income for publishing works and the desire to live according to his own teaching. Early in the morning of October 28 (November 10), 1910, together with his doctor Makovitsky, he secretly left Yasnaya Polyana, intending to go south and start farming. The road turned out to be too much for the 82-year-old writer. He fell ill and was forced to get off the train heading to Rostov-on-Don at the Astapovo station of the Ryazan-Ural Railway. In the stationmaster's house on November 7 (20), 1910, Tolstoy died of pneumonia. The funeral in Yasnaya Polyana became an event on a nationwide scale.
The career of Leo Tolstoy had a huge influence not only on domestic but also on foreign literature, and the epic novel “War and Peace” he created became a model of the genre. Outstanding foreign writers of his time admired and considered Tolstoy their teacher: G. de Maupassant, G. Flaubert, R. Rolland, A. France, B. Shaw, T. Mann. The theory of non-resistance to evil through violence had a profound impact on M. Gandhi. In the modern world, Leo Tolstoy remains one of the most famous and readable Russian writers.
Лит.: Бирюков П. И. Биография Л. Н. Толстого. 3-е изд. М.; П., 1922–1923; Ранчин А. М. Толстой Лев Николаевич // Большая российская энциклопедия; Русские писатели и поэты. Краткий биографический словарь. М., 2000; Соболев Л. И. Путеводитель по книге Л. Н. Толстого «Война и мир». М., 2012. Ч. 1–2; Эйхенбаум Б. М. Л. Толстой: Исследования, статьи. СПб., 2009.
based on the Presidential Library's materials: