Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Writer and Thinker

1828-1910
Ivan Kramskoy
Portrait of Count Leo Tolstoy
(1828-1910)
Born August 28 (Sept. 9) 1828 on family
estate, Yasnaya Polyana
 Childhood and Youth
• Born into an
ancient noble
family
• Parents die when
• Tolstoy is young
• Raised by his
• aunts
• Studies law at the
• Kazan’ University
 Tolstoy’s Military Career: 1851-56

Serves first in the

Caucasus
Then in an artillery
regiment in
Sebastopol, Crimea
Writes and publishes
his first fiction:
Childhood (1852)
Boyhood (1854)
Youth (1857)
 Literary Beginnings

• Moves to
Petersburg, tries
to integrate into
literary circles
• In 1857 visits
France, Italy,
Switzerland and
Germany
• Photo: Tolstoy in
1862
 1859: Interest in education

Upon his return

from Europe,
establishes
schools for peasant
children on his
estate at Yasnaya
Polyana
1860 goes to W.
Europe to study
schools
 Sophia Andreevna Behrs (1844-1919)

• Tolstoy and
Sophia marry in
1862
• They immediately
settle in Yasnaya
Polyana
• They have 13
children (only 9
survive)
 Life with Tolstoy

Sophia Andreevna:
"I lived with Lev
Nikolayevich
for forty-eight years,
but I never really
learned what kind of
man he was.“

 
The Tolstoys
Tolstoy, his children and
grandchildren
 War and Peace (1863-69)

• Begins to appear in literary

magazine Russky vestnik in 1865
• Reflects Tolstoy’s interest in the
Russian narod (“people”)
• Graphic descriptions of slaughter
on the battlefield reflect Tolstoy’s
experience as a soldier, amount to a
pacifist critique of war
Tolstoy in his study
 Anna Karenina, 1873-77

• Family novel centred around an

autobiographical hero plus a novel
about adultery (cf. Flaubert’s
Madame Bovary)
• Vehicle for Tolstoy to express his
opinion on the reforms of the
1860s, agriculture, modernity
 Critical, Psychological Realism

• Investigation into the more profound

aspects of life
• Social inequality
• Motivation, why do we do what we do?
• Psychological contradictions
• Politics
• What is Russia? What is Russia’s role
in the world?
 The 1880s: The Spiritual Crisis

• Tolstoy radically questions society,

religion, morality, sex, artistic
practices
• Renounces his previous literary
works
• Publishes A Confession (1884),
Death of Ivan Ilich (1886), Kreuzer
Sonata (1887-89)
 Tolstoy’s core beliefs

• Non-resistance to evil
• Renounce all luxury and wealth
• Live by one’s own labour
• Be like the humble peasant
• Vegetarianism
Tolstoy’s Philosophy

Il’ya Repin. Tolstoy as

ploughman
 Vladimir Chertkov (1854-1936)
and the Tolstoyans
• Meets Tolstoy in
1883
• 1884 becomes
publisher of Tolstoy’s
and others’ work in
popular cheap
editions
• Educational projects
for moral
improvement
• After Tolstoy’s death
edits his work
 The last Chapter
1884 first attempt to
leave home, gave up his
estate in Yasnaya
Polyana
1901 Excommunication
from Russian Orthodox
Church

In November of 1910,
Tolstoy leaves home
 His letter to Sofya Andreevna

“My departure will sadden you. But understand

and believe that I cannot act in any other way. My
position in the house is becoming, or has become,
unbearable. Apart from anything else, I cannot
live in those conditions of luxury in which I have
lived, and am doing what old men of my age
usually do: they abandon the worldly life to live
out in isolation and silence their last days…”
Tolstoy falls ill on the train,
is taken in by the stationmaster…

…in the small railway station of

Astapovo
Tolstoy’s room in Astapovo
 The End

Fell ill and died

seven days later

Thousands of people
came to ask about
the writer’s
condition
Tolstoy’s wife
looking through
the window
Clock at the Astapovo railway station
stopped at the time of Tolstoy’s death
 Last words

“There are masses of people, apart

from Leo Tolstoy, but you only pay
attention to Leo Tolstoy…that’s not
how peasants die. … I love the
truth.”
 ’
Tolstoy’s grave
 Leo Tolstoy’s Biography

I clearly realized that my biography, if

it suppressed all the nastiness and
criminality of my life - as they
customarily write biographies - would
be a lie, and that if one is going to
write my biography, one must write the
whole truth.
– Leo Tolstoy
Thoughts from the book "For Every Day“
“That the only object of man's life is self-perfection — the
perfecting of immortal souls — that this is is seen to be
correct by the fact alone that every other object is senseless
in view of death.

Therefore the question whether you have done what you

should have done is of immense importance, for the only
meaning of your life is in doing in this short term allowed you
that which is desired of you by Him who or that which has
sent you into life. Are you doing the right thing?”