Russian writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 in Yasnaya Polyana, Tula province, the fourth child in a wealthy aristocratic family. Tolstoy lost his parents early; his further upbringing was carried out by his distant relative T. A. Ergolskaya. In 1844, Tolstoy entered Kazan University at the Department of Oriental Languages ​​of the Faculty of Philosophy, but because... classes did not arouse any interest in him, in 1847. submitted his resignation from the university. At the age of 23, Tolstoy, together with his older brother Nikolai, left for the Caucasus, where he took part in hostilities. These years of the writer's life were reflected in the autobiographical story "Cossacks" (1852-63), in the stories "Raid" (1853), "Cutting Wood" (1855), as well as in the later story "Hadji Murat" (1896-1904, published in 1912). In the Caucasus, Tolstoy began to write the trilogy “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth”.

During the Crimean War he went to Sevastopol, where he continued to fight. After the end of the war, he left for St. Petersburg and immediately joined the Sovremennik circle (N. A. Nekrasov, I. S. Turgenev, A. N. Ostrovsky, I. A. Goncharov, etc.), where he was greeted as " the great hope of Russian literature" (Nekrasov), published "Sevastopol Stories", which clearly reflected his outstanding writing talent. In 1857, Tolstoy went on a trip to Europe, which he was later disappointed with.

In the fall of 1856, Tolstoy, having retired, decided to interrupt his literary activity and become a landowner, went to Yasnaya Polyana, where he was engaged in educational work, opened a school, and created his own system of pedagogy. This activity fascinated Tolstoy so much that in 1860 he even went abroad to get acquainted with the schools of Europe.

In September 1862, Tolstoy married the eighteen-year-old daughter of a doctor, Sofya Andreevna Bers, and immediately after the wedding he took his wife from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana, where he completely devoted himself to family life and household concerns, but by the fall of 1863 he was captured by a new literary plan, as a result of which the world was born. the fundamental work “War and Peace” appeared. In 1873-1877 created the novel Anna Karenina. During these same years, the writer’s worldview, known as Tolstoyism, was fully formed, the essence of which is visible in the works: “Confession”, “What is my faith?”, “The Kreutzer Sonata”.

Admirers of the writer’s work came to Yasnaya Polyana from all over Russia and the world, whom they treated as a spiritual mentor. In 1899, the novel “Resurrection” was published.

The writer’s latest works were the stories “Father Sergius”, “After the Ball”, “ Posthumous notes Elder Fyodor Kuzmich" and the drama "The Living Corpse".

In the late autumn of 1910, at night, secretly from his family, 82-year-old Tolstoy, accompanied only by his personal doctor D.P. Makovitsky, left Yasnaya Polyana, fell ill on the road and was forced to get off the train at the small Astapovo railway station of the Ryazan-Ural Railway. Here, in the house of the station chief, he spent the last seven days of his life. November 7 (20) Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy died.

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is one of the most famous and great writers in the world. During his lifetime he was recognized as a classic of Russian literature; his work paved a bridge between the flow of two centuries.

Tolstoy proved himself not just as a writer, he was an educator and humanist, thought about religion, and took a direct part in the defense of Sevastopol. The writer's legacy is so great, and his life itself is so ambiguous, that they continue to study him and try to understand him.

Tolstoy himself was a complex person, for which evidence is at least his family relationships. So numerous myths appear, both about Tolstoy’s personal qualities, his actions, and about his creativity and the ideas put into it. Many books have been written about the writer, but we will try to debunk at least the most popular myths about him.

Tolstoy's flight. It is a well-known fact that 10 days before his death, Tolstoy ran away from his home in Yasnaya Polyana. There are several versions about why the writer did this. They immediately began to say that this was how the elderly man tried to commit suicide. The communists developed the theory that Tolstoy expressed his protest against the tsarist regime in this way. In fact, the reasons for the writer’s flight from his native and beloved home were quite everyday. Three months earlier, he wrote a secret will, according to which he transferred all copyrights to his works not to his wife, Sofya Andreevna, but to his daughter Alexandra and his friend Chertkov. But the secret became clear - the wife learned about everything from the stolen diary. A scandal immediately broke out, and Tolstoy’s life became a real hell. His wife's hysterics prompted the writer to do something he had planned 25 years ago - to escape. During these difficult days, Tolstoy wrote in his diary that he could no longer tolerate this and hated his wife. Sofya Andreevna herself, having learned about Lev Nikolaevich’s escape, became even more enraged - she ran to drown herself in the pond, beat herself in the chest with thick objects, tried to run somewhere and threatened to never let Tolstoy go anywhere in the future.

Tolstoy had a very angry wife. From the previous myth, it becomes clear to many that only his evil and eccentric wife is to blame for the death of a genius. In fact, Tolstoy’s family life was so complex that numerous studies are still trying to understand it today. And the wife herself felt unhappy in it. One of the chapters of her autobiography is called “Martyr and Martyr.” Little was known about Sofia Andreevna’s talents; she was completely in the shadow of her powerful husband. But the recent publication of her stories has made it possible to understand the depth of her sacrifice. And Natasha Rostova from War and Peace came to Tolstoy straight from his wife’s youthful manuscript. In addition, Sofya Andreevna received an excellent education, she knew a couple of foreign languages ​​and even translated herself complex work her husband. The energetic woman still managed to manage the entire household, the accounting of the estate, as well as sheathing and tying up the entire considerable family. Despite all the hardships, Tolstoy’s wife understood that she was living with a genius. After his death, she noted that for almost half a century life together she could never understand what kind of person he was.

Tolstoy was excommunicated and anathematized. Indeed, in 1910 Tolstoy was buried without a funeral service, which gave rise to the myth of excommunication. But in the commemorative act of the Synod of 1901, the word “excommunication” is not present in principle. Church officials wrote that with his views and false teachings the writer had long ago placed himself outside the church and was no longer perceived by it as a member. But society understood the complex bureaucratic document with ornate language in its own way - everyone decided that it was the church that abandoned Tolstoy. And this story with the definition of the Synod was actually a political order. This is how Chief Prosecutor Pobedonostsev took revenge on the writer for his image of the man-machine in “Resurrection.”

Leo Tolstoy founded the Tolstoyan movement. The writer himself was very cautious, and sometimes even disgusted, towards those numerous associations of his followers and admirers. Even after escaping from Yasnaya Polyana, the Tolstoy community turned out to be not the place where Tolstoy wanted to find shelter.

Tolstoy was a teetotaler. As you know, in adulthood the writer gave up alcohol. But he did not understand the creation of temperance societies throughout the country. Why do people gather if they are not going to drink? After all big companies and involve drinking.

Tolstoy fanatically adhered to his own principles. Ivan Bunin wrote in his book about Tolstoy that the genius himself was sometimes very cool about the tenets of his own teaching. One day, the writer with his family and close family friend Vladimir Chertkov (he was also the main follower of Tolstoy’s ideas) were eating on the terrace. It was a hot summer and mosquitoes were flying everywhere. One particularly annoying one sat on Chertkov’s bald head, where the writer killed him with the palm of his hand. Everyone laughed, and only the offended victim noted that Lev Nikolaevich took the life of a living creature, shaming him.

Tolstoy was a big womanizer. The writer’s sexual adventures are known from his own records. Tolstoy said that in his youth he led a very bad life. But most of all he is confused by two events since then. The first is a relationship with a peasant woman before marriage, and the second is a crime with his aunt’s maid. Tolstoy seduced an innocent girl, who was then driven out of the yard. That same peasant woman was Aksinya Bazykina. Tolstoy wrote that he loved her as never before in his life. Two years before his marriage, the writer had a son, Timofey, who over the years became a huge man, like his father. In Yasnaya Polyana, everyone knew about the master’s illegitimate son, about the fact that he was a drunkard, and about his mother. Sofya Andreevna even went to look at her husband’s former passion, not finding anything interesting in her. And Tolstoy’s intimate stories are part of his diaries of his youth. He wrote about the voluptuousness that tormented him, about the desire for women. But something like this was commonplace for Russian nobles of that time. And remorse for their past relationships never tormented them. For Sofia Andreevna, the physical aspect of love was not at all important, unlike her husband. But she managed to give birth to Tolstoy 13 children, losing five. Lev Nikolaevich was her first and only man. And he was faithful to her throughout their 48 years of marriage.

Tolstoy preached asceticism. This myth appeared thanks to the writer’s thesis that a person needs little to live. But Tolstoy himself was not an ascetic - he simply welcomed a sense of proportion. Lev Nikolaevich himself thoroughly enjoyed life, he simply saw joy and light in simple things that were accessible to everyone.

Tolstoy was an opponent of medicine and science. The writer was not an obscurantist at all. On the contrary, he spoke about the fact that one should not return to the plow, about the inevitability of progress. At home Tolstoy had one of Edison's first phonographs and an electric pencil. And the writer rejoiced like a child at such achievements of science. Tolstoy was a very civilized man, understanding that humanity pays for progress with hundreds of thousands of lives. And the writer fundamentally did not accept such a development associated with violence and blood. Tolstoy was not cruel to human weaknesses; he was outraged that vices were justified by the doctors themselves.

Tolstoy hated art. Tolstoy understood art, he simply used his own criteria to evaluate it. And didn't he have the right to do this? It is difficult to disagree with the writer that a simple man is unlikely to understand Beethoven's symphonies. For unprepared listeners, much of classical music sounds like torture. But there is also art that is excellently perceived by both simple rural residents and sophisticated gourmets.

Tolstoy was driven by pride. They say that it was this inner quality that was manifested in the author’s philosophy, and even in everyday life. But should the non-stop search for truth be considered pride? Many people believe that it is much easier to join some teaching and serve it. But Tolstoy could not change himself. And in everyday life the writer was very attentive - he taught his children mathematics, astronomy, and conducted physical education classes. When they were little, Tolstoy took children to the Samara province so that they learned and fell in love with nature better. It’s just that in the second half of his life the genius was preoccupied with a lot of things. This includes creativity, philosophy, and work with letters. So Tolstoy could not give himself, as before, to his family. But this was a conflict between creativity and family, and not a manifestation of pride.

Because of Tolstoy, a revolution occurred in Russia. This statement appeared thanks to Lenin’s article “Leo Tolstoy, as a mirror of the Russian revolution.” In fact, one person, be it Tolstoy or Lenin, simply cannot be to blame for the revolution. There were many reasons - the behavior of the intelligentsia, the church, the king and the court, the nobility. It was all of them who gave old Russia to the Bolsheviks, including Tolstoy. They listened to his opinion as a thinker. But he denied both the state and the army. True, he was precisely against the revolution. The writer generally did a lot to soften morals, calling on people to be kinder and serve Christian values.

Tolstoy was an unbeliever, denied faith and taught this to others. Statements that Tolstoy was turning people away from the faith greatly irritated and offended him. On the contrary, he stated that the main thing in his works is the understanding that there is no life without faith in God. Tolstoy did not accept the form of faith that the church imposed. And there are many people who believe in God, but do not accept modern religious institutions. For them, Tolstoy’s quest is understood and not at all scary. Many people generally come to church after being immersed in the writer’s thoughts. This was especially common in Soviet times. Even before, Tolstoyans turned towards the church.

Tolstoy constantly taught everyone. Thanks to this deep-rooted myth, Tolstoy appears as a self-confident preacher, telling whom and how to live. But when studying the writer’s diaries, it becomes clear that he spent his whole life sorting himself out. So where could he teach others? Tolstoy expressed his thoughts, but never imposed them on anyone. Another thing is that a community of followers, Tolstoyans, formed around the writer, who tried to make the views of their leader absolute. But for the genius himself, his ideas were not fixed. He considered the presence of God absolute, and everything else was the result of trials, torment, and searches.

Tolstoy was a fanatical vegetarian. At a certain point in his life, the writer completely abandoned meat and fish, not wanting to eat the disfigured corpses of living beings. But his wife, taking care of him, added meat to his mushroom broth. Seeing this, Tolstoy was not angry, but only joked that he was ready to drink meat broth every day, if only his wife did not lie to him. Other people's beliefs, including in the choice of food, were above all else for the writer. At their house there were always those who ate meat, the same Sofya Andreevna. But there were no terrible quarrels over this.

To understand Tolstoy, it is enough to read his works and not study his personality. This myth prevents a real reading of Tolstoy's works. Without understanding how he lived, one cannot understand his work. There are writers who say everything in their texts. But Tolstoy can only be understood if you know his worldview, his personal traits, relationships with the state, church, and loved ones. Tolstoy's life is a fascinating novel in itself, which sometimes spilled over into paper form. An example of this is “War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina”. On the other hand, the writer’s work influenced his life, including his family life. So there is no escape from studying Tolstoy’s personality and interesting aspects of his biography.

Tolstoy's novels cannot be studied at school - they are simply incomprehensible to high school students. It is generally difficult for modern schoolchildren to read long works, and “War and Peace” is also filled with historical digressions. Give our high school students shortened versions of novels tailored to their intelligence. It’s difficult to say whether this is good or bad, but in any case they will at least get an idea of ​​Tolstoy’s work. Thinking that it is better to read Tolstoy after school is dangerous. After all, if you don’t start reading it at that age, then later the children will not want to immerse themselves in the writer’s work. So the school works proactively, deliberately teaching more complex and intelligent things than the child’s intellect can perceive. Perhaps later there will be a desire to return to this and understand it to the end. And without studying at school, such a “temptation” will definitely not appear.

Tolstoy's pedagogy has lost its relevance. Tolstoy the teacher is treated differently. His teaching ideas were perceived as the fun of a master who decided to teach children according to his original method. In fact spiritual development a child directly affects his intelligence. The soul develops the mind, and not vice versa. And Tolstoy’s pedagogy works in modern conditions. This is evidenced by the results of the experiment, during which 90% of children achieved excellent results. Children learn to read according to Tolstoy's ABC, which is built on many parables with their own secrets and archetypes of behavior that reveal human nature. Gradually the program becomes more complicated. A harmonious person with a strong moral principle emerges from the walls of the school. And today about a hundred schools in Russia practice this method.

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Date of birth:
Place of birth:	Yasnaya Polyana, Tula Governorate, Russian Empire
Date of death:
Place of death:	Astapovo station, Tambov province, Russian Empire
Type of activity:	Prose writer, publicist, philosopher
Nicknames:	L.N., L.N.T.
Citizenship:	Russian Empire
Years of creativity:
Direction:
Autograph:

Biography

Origin

Education

Military career

Traveling around Europe

Pedagogical activity

Family and offspring

Creativity flourishes

"War and Peace"

"Anna Karenina"

Other works

Religious quest

Excommunication

Philosophy

Bibliography

Translators of Tolstoy

World recognition. Memory

Film adaptations of his works

Documentary

Movies about Leo Tolstoy

Portrait gallery

Translators of Tolstoy

Graph Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy(August 28 (September 9) 1828 - November 7 (20), 1910) - one of the most widely known Russian writers and thinkers. Participant in the defense of Sevastopol. Educator, publicist, religious thinker, whose authoritative opinion provoked the emergence of a new religious and moral movement - Tolstoyism.

The ideas of nonviolent resistance, which L. N. Tolstoy expressed in his work “The Kingdom of God is Within You,” influenced Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Biography

Origin

He came from a noble family, known, according to legendary sources, since 1353. His paternal ancestor, Count Pyotr Andreevich Tolstoy, is known for his role in the investigation of Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich, for which he was put in charge of the Secret Chancellery. The traits of Pyotr Andreevich’s great-grandson, Ilya Andreevich, are given in “War and Peace” to the good-natured, impractical old Count Rostov. The son of Ilya Andreevich, Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy (1794-1837), was the father of Lev Nikolaevich. In some character traits and biographical facts, he was similar to Nikolenka’s father in “Childhood” and “Adolescence” and partly to Nikolai Rostov in “War and Peace.” However, in real life, Nikolai Ilyich differed from Nikolai Rostov not only in his good education, but also in his convictions, which did not allow him to serve under Nikolai. Participant foreign trip Russian army, including participating in the “Battle of the Nations” near Leipzig and being captured by the French; after peace was concluded, he retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel of the Pavlograd Hussar Regiment. Soon after his resignation, he was forced to go into bureaucratic service in order not to end up in debtor's prison because of the debts of his father, the Kazan governor, who died under investigation for official abuses. For several years, Nikolai Ilyich had to save. The negative example of his father helped Nikolai Ilyich develop his ideal of life - a private, independent life with family joys. To put his upset affairs in order, Nikolai Ilyich, like Nikolai Rostov, married an ugly and no longer very young princess from the Volkonsky family; the marriage was happy. They had four sons: Nikolai, Sergei, Dmitry and Lev and a daughter Maria.

Tolstoy's maternal grandfather, Catherine's general, Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky, had some resemblance to the stern rigorist - the old Prince Bolkonsky in War and Peace, however, the version that he served as the prototype of the hero of War and Peace is rejected by many researchers of Tolstoy's work. Lev Nikolayevich's mother, similar in some respects to Princess Marya depicted in War and Peace, had a remarkable gift for storytelling, for which, with her shyness passed on to her son, she had to lock herself with the large number of listeners who gathered around her in a dark room.

In addition to the Volkonskys, L.N. Tolstoy was closely related to several other aristocratic families: the princes Gorchakovs, Trubetskoys and others.

Childhood

Born on August 28, 1828 in the Krapivensky district of the Tula province, on his mother’s hereditary estate - Yasnaya Polyana. Was the 4th child; his three older brothers: Nikolai (1823-1860), Sergei (1826-1904) and Dmitry (1827-1856). In 1830, Sister Maria (1830-1912) was born. His mother died when he was not yet 2 years old.

A distant relative, T. A. Ergolskaya, took up the task of raising orphaned children. In 1837, the family moved to Moscow, settling on Plyushchikha, because the eldest son had to prepare to enter university, but soon his father suddenly died, leaving affairs (including some litigation related to the family’s property) in an unfinished state, and the three younger ones The children again settled in Yasnaya Polyana under the supervision of Ergolskaya and their paternal aunt, Countess A. M. Osten-Sacken, who was appointed guardian of the children. Here Lev Nikolaevich remained until 1840, when Countess Osten-Sacken died and the children moved to Kazan, to a new guardian - their father's sister P. I. Yushkova.

The Yushkov house, somewhat provincial in style, but typically secular, was one of the most cheerful in Kazan; All family members highly valued external shine. "My good aunt, - says Tolstoy, - the purest being, always said that she would like nothing more for me than for me to have a relationship with a married woman: rien ne forme un jeune homme comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut" (« Confession»).

He wanted to shine in society, to earn a reputation young man; but he did not have the external qualities for this: he was ugly, it seemed to him awkward, and, in addition, he was hampered by natural shyness. Everything that is told in " adolescence" And " Youth"about the aspirations of Irtenyev and Nekhlyudov for self-improvement, Tolstoy took from the history of his own ascetic attempts. The most varied, as Tolstoy himself defines them, “philosophies” about the most important questions of our existence - happiness, death, God, love, eternity - painfully tormented him in that era of life when his peers and brothers were completely devoted to the cheerful, easy and carefree pastime of the rich and noble people. All this led to the fact that Tolstoy developed a “habit of constant moral analysis,” which, as it seemed to him, “destroyed the freshness of feeling and clarity of reason” (“ Youth»).

Education

Was his education first under the guidance of the French tutor Saint-Thomas? (Mr. Jerome "Boyhood"), who replaced the good-natured German Reselman, whom he portrayed in "Childhood" under the name Karl Ivanovich.

At the age of 15, in 1843, following his brother Dmitry, he became a student at Kazan University, where Lobachevsky and Kovalevsky were professors at the Faculty of Mathematics. Until 1847, he was preparing here to enter the only Oriental Faculty in Russia at that time in the category of Arabic-Turkish literature. In the entrance exams, in particular, he showed excellent results in the compulsory “Turkish-Tatar language” for admission.

Because of a conflict between his family and his teacher Russian history and German, a certain Ivanov, based on the results of the year, had poor performance in the relevant subjects and had to re-take the first-year program. To avoid repeating the course completely, he transferred to the Faculty of Law, where his problems with grades in Russian history and German continued. The latter was attended by the outstanding civil scientist Meyer; Tolstoy at one time became very interested in his lectures and even took on a special topic for development - a comparison of Montesquieu’s “Esprit des lois” and Catherine’s “Order”. However, nothing came of this. Leo Tolstoy spent less than two years at the Faculty of Law: “It was always difficult for him to have any education imposed by others, and everything that he learned in life, he learned himself, suddenly, quickly, with intense work,” writes Tolstaya in her “Materials for biography of L.N. Tolstoy."

It was at this time, while in a Kazan hospital, that he began to keep a diary, where, imitating Franklin, he sets goals and rules for self-improvement and notes successes and failures in completing these tasks, analyzes his shortcomings and train of thoughts and motives for his actions. In 1904 he recalled: “... for the first year... I did nothing. In the second year I started studying. .. there was Professor Meyer, who ... gave me a work - a comparison of Catherine’s “Order” with Montesquieu’s “Esprit des lois”. ... this work fascinated me, I went to the village, began to read Montesquieu, this reading opened up endless horizons for me; I started reading Rousseau and dropped out of university precisely because I wanted to study.”

Beginning of literary activity

Having dropped out of the university, Tolstoy settled in Yasnaya Polyana in the spring of 1847; his activities there are partly described in “The Morning of the Landowner”: Tolstoy tried to establish a new relationship with the peasants.

I followed journalism very little; although his attempt to somehow attenuate the guilt of the nobility before the people dates back to the same year when Grigorovich’s “Anton the Miserable” and the beginning of Turgenev’s “Notes of a Hunter” appeared, but this is a simple accident. If there were literary influences here, they were of much older origin: Tolstoy was very fond of Rousseau, a hater of civilization and a preacher of a return to primitive simplicity.

In his diary, Tolstoy sets himself a huge number of goals and rules; Only a small number of them were able to follow. Among those who succeeded were serious studies in English, music, and law. In addition, neither the diary nor the letters reflected the beginning of Tolstoy's studies in pedagogy and charity - in 1849 he first opened a school for peasant children. The main teacher was Foka Demidych, a serf, but L.N. himself often conducted classes.

Having left for St. Petersburg, in the spring of 1848 he began to take the exam for a candidate of rights; He passed two exams, from criminal law and criminal proceedings, successfully, but he did not take the third exam and went to the village.

Later he came to Moscow, where he often succumbed to his passion for gambling, greatly upsetting his financial affairs. During this period of his life, Tolstoy was especially passionately interested in music (he played the piano quite well and was very fond of classical composers). The author of the “Kreutzer Sonata” drew an exaggerated description in relation to most people of the effect that “passionate” music produces from the sensations excited by the world of sounds in his own soul.

Tolstoy's favorite composers were Bach, Handel and Chopin. In the late 1840s, Tolstoy, in collaboration with his acquaintance, composed a waltz, which in the early 1900s he performed with the composer Taneev, who made a musical notation of this piece of music(the only one composed by Tolstoy).

The development of Tolstoy’s love for music was also facilitated by the fact that during a trip to St. Petersburg in 1848, he met in a very unsuitable dance class setting with a gifted but lost German musician, whom he later described in Alberta. Tolstoy came up with the idea of ​​saving him: he took him to Yasnaya Polyana and played a lot with him. A lot of time was also spent on carousing, gaming and hunting.

In the winter of 1850-1851. started writing "Childhood". In March 1851 he wrote “The History of Yesterday.”

This is how 4 years passed after leaving the university, when Tolstoy’s brother Nikolai, who served in the Caucasus, came to Yasnaya Polyana and began inviting him there. Tolstoy did not give in to his brother’s call for a long time, until a major loss in Moscow helped the decision. In order to pay off, it was necessary to reduce his expenses to a minimum - and in the spring of 1851, Tolstoy hastily left Moscow for the Caucasus, at first without any specific purpose. Soon he decided to enlist in military service, but obstacles arose in the form of a lack of necessary papers, which were difficult to obtain, and Tolstoy lived for about 5 months in complete solitude in Pyatigorsk, in a simple hut. He spent a significant part of his time hunting, in the company of the Cossack Epishka, the prototype of one of the heroes of the story “Cossacks”, who appears there under the name Eroshka.

In the fall of 1851, Tolstoy, having passed the exam in Tiflis, entered the 4th battery of the 20th artillery brigade, stationed in the Cossack village of Starogladov, on the banks of the Terek, near Kizlyar, as a cadet. With a slight change in details, she is depicted in all her semi-wild originality in “Cossacks”. The same “Cossacks” will also give us a picture of the inner life of Tolstoy, who fled from the capital’s whirlpool. The moods that Tolstoy-Olenin experienced were of a dual nature: here is a deep need to shake off the dust and soot of civilization and live in the refreshing, clear bosom of nature, outside the empty conventions of urban and, especially, high society life, here and the desire to heal the wounds of pride, brought out of the pursuit of success in this “empty” life, there is also a grave consciousness of transgressions against the strict requirements of true morality.

In a remote village, Tolstoy began to write and in 1852 he sent the first part of the future trilogy: “Childhood” to the editors of Sovremennik.

The relatively late start of his career is very characteristic of Tolstoy: he was never a professional writer, understanding professionalism not in the sense of a profession that provides a means of living, but in the less narrow sense of the predominance of literary interests. Purely literary interests always stood in the background for Tolstoy: he wrote when he wanted to write and the need to speak out was ripe, and in ordinary times he socialite, officer, landowner, teacher, world mediator, preacher, teacher of life, etc. He never took the interests of literary parties to heart, was far from willing to talk about literature, preferring conversations about issues of faith, morals, public relations. Not a single work of his, in the words of Turgenev, “stinks of literature,” that is, did not come out of a bookish mood, out of literary isolation.

Military career

Having received the manuscript of “Childhood”, the editor of Sovremennik Nekrasov immediately recognized its literary value and wrote a kind letter to the author, which had a very encouraging effect on him. He sets about continuing the trilogy, and plans for “The Morning of the Landowner,” “The Raid,” and “The Cossacks” are swarming in his head. “Childhood,” published in Sovremennik in 1852, signed with the modest initials L.N.T., was extremely successful; the author immediately began to be ranked among the luminaries of the young literary school, along with Turgenev, Goncharov, Grigorovich, Ostrovsky, who already enjoyed great literary fame. Criticism - Apollo Grigoriev, Annenkov, Druzhinin, Chernyshevsky - appreciated the depth of psychological analysis, the seriousness of the author's intentions, and the bright prominence of realism with all the truthfulness of the vividly captured details of real life, alien to any vulgarity.

Tolstoy remained in the Caucasus for two years, participating in many skirmishes with the mountaineers and being exposed to all the dangers of combat life in the Caucasus. He had rights and claims to the St. George Cross, but did not receive it, which apparently upset him. When the Crimean War broke out at the end of 1853, Tolstoy transferred to the Danube Army, participated in the battle of Oltenitsa and the siege of Silistria, and from November 1854 to the end of August 1855 he was in Sevastopol.

Tolstoy lived for a long time on the terrible 4th bastion, commanded a battery in the battle of Chernaya, and was during the hellish bombardment during the assault on Malakhov Kurgan. Despite all the horrors of the siege, Tolstoy at this time wrote a battle story from Caucasian life, “Cutting Wood,” and the first of three “Sevastopol stories,” “Sevastopol in December 1854.” He sent this last story to Sovremennik. Immediately printed, the story was eagerly read throughout Russia and made a stunning impression with its picture of the horrors that befell the defenders of Sevastopol. The story was noticed by Emperor Nicholas; he ordered to take care of the gifted officer, which, however, was impossible for Tolstoy, who did not want to become the hated “staff officer.”

For the defense of Sevastopol, Tolstoy was awarded the Order of St. Anne with the inscription “For bravery” and the medals “For the defense of Sevastopol 1854-1855” and “In memory of the war of 1853-1856.” Surrounded by the brilliance of fame and enjoying the reputation of a very brave officer, Tolstoy had every chance of a career, but he “ruined” it for himself. Almost the only time in his life (except for the “Combination of different versions of epics into one” made for children in his pedagogical works) he dabbled in poetry: he wrote a satirical song, in the manner of soldiers, about an unfortunate case 4 (August 16, 1855, when General Read, misunderstanding the order of the commander-in-chief, unwisely attacked the Fedyukhinsky heights. Song (As on the fourth, it was not easy for us to take away the mountains), which affected a number of important generals, was a huge success and, of course, harmed the author Immediately after the assault on August 27 (8. September) Tolstoy was sent by courier to St. Petersburg, where he completed “Sevastopol in May 1855” and wrote “Sevastopol in August 1855.”

“Sevastopol Stories” finally strengthened his reputation as a representative of a new literary generation.

Traveling around Europe

In St. Petersburg he was warmly welcomed both in high society salons and in literary circles; He became especially close friends with Turgenev, with whom he lived in the same apartment for a while. The latter introduced him to the circle of Sovremennik and other literary luminaries: he became on friendly terms with Nekrasov, Goncharov, Panaev, Grigorovich, Druzhinin, Sologub.

“After the hardships of Sevastopol, life in the capital had a double charm for a rich, cheerful, impressionable and sociable young man. Tolstoy spent whole days and even nights on drinking and gambling, carousing with gypsies” (Levenfeld).

At this time, “Blizzard”, “Two Hussars” were written, “Sevastopol in August” and “Youth” were completed, and the writing of the future “Cossacks” continued.

The cheerful life was not slow to leave a bitter aftertaste in Tolstoy’s soul, especially since he began to have a strong discord with the circle of writers close to him. As a result, “people became disgusted with him and he became disgusted with himself” - and at the beginning of 1857, Tolstoy left St. Petersburg without any regret and went abroad.

On his first trip abroad, he visited Paris, where he was horrified by the cult of Napoleon I (“The idolization of a villain, terrible”), at the same time he attends balls, museums, and is fascinated by the “sense of social freedom.” However, his presence at the guillotine made such a grave impression that Tolstoy left Paris and went to places associated with Rousseau - to Lake Geneva. At this time, Albert was writing a story and a story by Lucerne.

In the interval between the first and second trips, he continued to work on “Cossacks”, wrote Three Deaths and Family Happiness. It was at this time that Tolstoy almost died while on a bear hunt (December 22, 1858). He has an affair with the peasant woman Aksinya, and at the same time the need for marriage matures.

On his next trip, he was mainly interested in public education and institutions aimed at raising the educational level of the working population. He closely studied issues of public education in Germany and France, both theoretically and practically, and through conversations with specialists. Of the outstanding people in Germany, he was most interested in Auerbach, as the author of the “Black Forest Stories” dedicated to folk life and the publisher of folk calendars. Tolstoy paid him a visit and tried to get closer to him. During his stay in Brussels, Tolstoy met Proudhon and Lelewell. In London he visited Herzen and attended a lecture by Dickens.

Tolstoy’s serious mood during his second trip to the south of France was also facilitated by the fact that his beloved brother Nikolai died of tuberculosis in his arms. The death of his brother made a huge impression on Tolstoy.

Pedagogical activity

He returned to Russia soon after the liberation of the peasants and became a peace mediator. At that time they looked at the people as a younger brother who needed to be lifted up; Tolstoy thought, on the contrary, that the people are infinitely higher than the cultural classes and that the gentlemen need to borrow the heights of spirit from the peasants. He actively began setting up schools in his Yasnaya Polyana and throughout the Krapivensky district.

The Yasnaya Polyana school is one of the original pedagogical attempts: in the era of boundless admiration for the latest German pedagogy, Tolstoy resolutely rebelled against any regulation and discipline in school; the only method of teaching and education that he recognized was that no method was needed. Everything in teaching should be individual - both the teacher and the student, and their mutual relationships. At the Yasnaya Polyana school, the children sat where they wanted, as much as they wanted, and as they wanted. There was no specific teaching program. The teacher's only job was to get the class interested. The classes were going great. They were led by Tolstoy himself with the help of several regular teachers and several random ones, from his closest acquaintances and visitors.

Since 1862, he began publishing the pedagogical magazine “Yasnaya Polyana”, where he, again, was the main employee. In addition to theoretical articles, Tolstoy also wrote a number of stories, fables and adaptations. Combined together, Tolstoy's pedagogical articles made up an entire volume of his collected works. Hidden away in a very rarely circulated special magazine, they remained little noticed at the time. On the sociological basis of Tolstoy’s ideas about education, on the fact that Tolstoy saw only simplified and improved ways of exploiting the people in education, science, art and technological success upper classes, no one paid attention. Moreover, from Tolstoy’s attacks on European education and on the concept of “progress” that was favorite at that time, many seriously concluded that Tolstoy was a “conservative.”

This curious misunderstanding lasted for about 15 years, bringing closer to Tolstoy such a writer as organically opposite to him as N. N. Strakhov. Only in 1875, N.K. Mikhailovsky, in the article “The Hand and Shuyts of Count Tolstoy,” striking with the brilliance of his analysis and prediction of Tolstoy’s future activities, outlined the spiritual appearance of the most original of Russian writers in the present light. The little attention that was paid to Tolstoy's pedagogical articles is partly due to the fact that little attention was paid to it at that time.

Apollo Grigoriev had the right to title his article about Tolstoy (Time, 1862) “Phenomena modern literature, missed by our criticism." Having extremely cordially greeted Tolstoy’s debits and credits and “Sevastopol Tales”, recognizing in him the great hope of Russian literature (Druzhinin even used the epithet “genius” in relation to him), critics then 10-12 years before the appearance of “War and Peace” not only ceases to recognize him as a very important writer, but somehow grows cold towards him.

The stories and essays he wrote in the late 1850s include “Lucerne” and “Three Deaths.”

Family and offspring

At the end of the 1850s, he met Sofia Andreevna Bers (1844-1919), the daughter of a Moscow doctor from the Baltic Germans. He was already in his fourth decade, Sofya Andreevna was only 17 years old. On September 23, 1862, he married her, and the fullness of family happiness fell to his lot. In his wife, he found not only his most faithful and devoted friend, but also an irreplaceable assistant in all matters, practical and literary. For Tolstoy, the brightest period of his life begins - the rapture of personal happiness, very significant thanks to the practicality of Sofia Andreevna, material well-being, outstanding, easily given tension of literary creativity and, in connection with it, unprecedented fame all-Russian, and then worldwide.

However, Tolstoy's relationship with his wife was not cloudless. Quarrels often arose between them, including in connection with the lifestyle that Tolstoy chose for himself.

• Sergei (July 10, 1863 - December 23, 1947)
• Tatiana (October 4, 1864 - September 21, 1950). Since 1899 she has been married to Mikhail Sergeevich Sukhotin. In 1917-1923 she was the curator of the Yasnaya Polyana museum-estate. In 1925 she emigrated with her daughter. Daughter Tatyana Mikhailovna Sukhotina-Albertini 1905-1996
• Ilya (May 22, 1866 - December 11, 1933)
• Leo (1869-1945)
• Maria (1871-1906) Buried in the village. Kochety, Krapivensky district. Since 1897 married to Nikolai Leonidovich Obolensky (1872-1934)
• Peter (1872-1873)
• Nicholas (1874-1875)
• Varvara (1875-1875)
• Andrey (1877-1916)
• Mikhail (1879-1944)
• Alexey (1881-1886)
• Alexandra (1884-1979)
• Ivan (1888-1895)

Creativity flourishes

During the first 10-12 years after his marriage, he created War and Peace and Anna Karenina. At the turn of this second era of Tolstoy’s literary life stand the works conceived back in 1852 and completed in 1861-1862. "Cossacks", the first of the works in which Tolstoy's great talent reached the proportions of a genius. For the first time in world literature, the difference between brokenness and cultured person, the absence of strong, clear moods in it - and the spontaneity of people close to nature.

Tolstoy showed that the peculiarity of people close to nature is not that they are good or bad. The heroes of Tolstoy’s works, the dashing horse thief Lukashka, a kind of dissolute girl Maryanka, and the drunkard Eroshka, cannot be called good. But they cannot be called bad either, because they do not have the consciousness of evil; Eroshka is directly convinced that “there is no sin in anything”. Tolstoy's Cossacks are simply living people, in whom not a single mental movement is clouded by reflection. "Cossacks" were not assessed in a timely manner. At that time, everyone was too proud of “progress” and the success of civilization to be interested in how a representative of culture gave in to the force of the immediate spiritual movements of some semi-savages.

"War and Peace"

Unprecedented success befell War and Peace. Excerpt from a novel entitled "1805" appeared in the Russian Messenger of 1865; in 1868 three of its parts were published, which were soon followed by the remaining two.

Recognized by critics around the world as the greatest epic work new European literature, “War and Peace” amazes from a purely technical point of view with the size of its fictional canvas. Only in painting can one find some parallel in the huge paintings of Paolo Veronese in the Venetian Doge's Palace, where hundreds of faces are also painted with amazing clarity and individual expression. In Tolstoy's novel all classes of society are represented, from emperors and kings to the last soldier, all ages, all temperaments and throughout the entire reign of Alexander I.

"Anna Karenina"

The endlessly joyful rapture of the bliss of existence is no longer present in Anna Karenina, dating back to 1873-1876. There is still a lot of joyful experience in the almost autobiographical novel of Levin and Kitty, but there is already so much bitterness in the depiction of Dolly’s family life, in the unhappy ending of the love of Anna Karenina and Vronsky, so much anxiety in Levin’s mental life that in general this novel is already a transition to the third period Tolstoy's literary activity.

In January 1871, Tolstoy sent a letter to A. A. Fet: “How happy I am... that I will never write verbose rubbish like “War” again”.

On December 6, 1908, Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “People love me for those trifles - “War and Peace”, etc., which seem very important to them.”

In the summer of 1909, one of the visitors to Yasnaya Polyana expressed his delight and gratitude for the creation of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Tolstoy replied: “It’s the same as if someone came to Edison and said: “I really respect you because you dance the mazurka well.” I attribute meaning to completely different books of mine (religious ones!).”.

In the sphere of material interests, he began to say to himself: “Well, okay, you will have 6,000 acres in the Samara province - 300 heads of horses, and then?”; in the literary field: “Well, okay, you will be more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, all the writers in the world - so what!”. As he began to think about raising children, he asked himself: "For what?"; reasoning “about how the people can achieve prosperity,” he “suddenly said to himself: what does it matter to me?” In general, he “I felt that what he stood on had given way, that what he had lived on was no longer there”. The natural result was thoughts of suicide.

“I, a happy man, hid the cord from myself so as not to hang myself on the crossbar between the cabinets in my room, where I was alone every day, undressing, and stopped going hunting with a gun so as not to be tempted by too easy a way to rid myself of life. I myself didn’t know what I wanted: I was afraid of life, I wanted to get away from it and, meanwhile, I hoped for something else from it.”

Other works

In March 1879, in the city of Moscow, Leo Tolstoy met Vasily Petrovich Shchegolenok and in the same year, at his invitation, he came to Yasnaya Polyana, where he stayed for about a month and a half. The Goldfinch told Tolstoy many folk tales and epics, of which more than twenty were written down by Tolstoy, and Tolstoy, if he didn’t write them down on paper, remembered the plots of some (these notes are published in volume XLVIII of the Anniversary edition of Tolstoy’s works). Six works written by Tolstoy are based on legends and stories of Shchegolenok (1881 - “ How people live", 1885 - " Two old men" And " Three elders", 1905 - " Korney Vasiliev" And " Prayer", 1907 - " Old man in church"). In addition, Count Tolstoy diligently wrote down many sayings, proverbs, individual expressions and words told by the Goldfinch.

Literary criticism of Shakespeare's works

In his critical essay “On Shakespeare and Drama,” based on a detailed analysis of some of the most popular works Shakespeare, in particular: “King Lear”, “Othello”, “Falstaff”, “Hamlet”, etc. - Tolstoy sharply criticized Shakespeare’s abilities as a playwright.

Religious quest

To find an answer to the questions and doubts that tormented him, Tolstoy first of all took up the study of theology and wrote and published in 1891 in Geneva his “Study of Dogmatic Theology,” in which he criticized the “Orthodox Dogmatic Theology” of Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov). He had conversations with priests and monks, went to the elders in Optina Pustyn, and read theological treatises. To know the original sources in the original Christian teaching studied ancient Greek and Hebrew (the Moscow rabbi Shlomo Minor helped him in studying the latter). At the same time, he looked closely at the schismatics, became close to the thoughtful peasant Syutaev, and talked with the Molokans and Stundists. Tolstoy also sought the meaning of life in the study of philosophy and in becoming familiar with the results of the exact sciences. He made a number of attempts at greater and greater simplification, striving to live a life close to nature and agricultural life.

Gradually he gives up whims and conveniences rich life, does a lot of physical labor, dresses in simple clothes, becomes a vegetarian, gives his entire large fortune to his family, and renounces literary property rights. On this basis of unalloyed pure impulse and desire for moral improvement, the third period of Tolstoy’s literary activity is created, the distinctive feature of which is the denial of all established forms of state, social and religious life. A significant part of Tolstoy’s views could not receive open expression in Russia and were presented in full only in foreign editions of his religious and social treatises.

No unanimous attitude was established even in relation to Tolstoy’s fictional works written during this period. Yes, in a long line short stories and legends intended primarily for folk reading(“How People Live,” etc.), Tolstoy, in the opinion of his unconditional admirers, reached the pinnacle of artistic power - that elemental mastery that is given only to folk tales, because they embody the creativity of an entire people. On the contrary, according to people who are indignant at Tolstoy for turning from an artist into a preacher, these artistic teachings, written for a specific purpose, are grossly tendentious. The lofty and terrible truth of “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, according to fans, placing this work along with the main works of the genius of Tolstoy, according to others, is deliberately harsh, deliberately sharply emphasizes the soullessness of the upper strata of society in order to show the moral superiority of the simple “kitchen peasant” Gerasim. Explosion of the most opposite feelings caused by analysis marital relations and the indirect demand for abstinence from married life, in the “Kreutzer Sonata,” made me forget about the amazing brightness and passion with which this story was written. Folk drama“The Power of Darkness,” according to Tolstoy’s admirers, is a great manifestation of his artistic power: within the tight framework of an ethnographic reproduction of Russian peasant life, Tolstoy was able to fit so many universal human traits that the drama went around all the stages of the world with tremendous success.

In his last major work, the novel “Resurrection,” he condemned judicial practice and high society life, caricatured the clergy and worship.

Critics of the last phase of Tolstoy’s literary and preaching activity find that his artistic power certainly suffered from the predominance of theoretical interests and that creativity is now only needed by Tolstoy in order to propagate his socio-religious views in a publicly accessible form. In his aesthetic treatise (“On Art”) one can find enough material to declare Tolstoy an enemy of art: in addition to the fact that Tolstoy here in part completely denies, in part significantly belittles artistic value Dante, Raphael, Goethe, Shakespeare (at the performance of Hamlet he experienced “special suffering” for this “false likeness of works of art”), Beethoven and others, he directly comes to the conclusion that “the more we surrender to beauty, the more The more we move away from good.”

Excommunication

Belonging by birth and baptism to Orthodox Church, Tolstoy, like most representatives of the educated society of his time, in his youth and youth was indifferent to religious issues. In the mid-1870s, he showed increased interest in the teachings and worship of the Orthodox Church. The turning point for him from the teachings of the Orthodox Church was the second half of 1879. In the 1880s, he took a position of unambiguously critical attitude towards church doctrine, the clergy, and official church life. The publication of some of Tolstoy's works was prohibited by spiritual and secular censorship. In 1899, Tolstoy’s novel “Resurrection” was published, in which the author showed the life of various social strata contemporary Russia; the clergy were depicted mechanically and hastily performing rituals, and some took the cold and cynical Toporov for a caricature of K. P. Pobedonostsev, Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod.

In February 1901, the Synod finally decided to publicly condemn Tolstoy and declare him outside the church. Metropolitan Anthony (Vadkovsky) played an active role in this. As it appears in the Chamber-Fourier journals, on February 22, Pobedonostsev visited Nicholas II in the Winter Palace and talked with him for about an hour. Some historians believe that Pobedonostsev came to the Tsar directly from the Synod with a ready-made definition.

On February 24 (Old Art.), 1901, in the official organ of the Synod, “Church Gazette published under the Holy Governing Senod” was published “Decree of the Holy Synod of February 20-22, 1901 No. 557, with a message to the faithful children of the Greek Orthodox Church about Count Leo Tolstoy”:

A world-famous writer, Russian by birth, Orthodox by baptism and upbringing, Count Tolstoy, in the seduction of his proud mind, boldly rebelled against the Lord and against His Christ and against His holy property, clearly before everyone renounced the Mother who fed and raised him, the Church. Orthodox, and dedicated his literary activity and the talent given to him from God to the dissemination among the people of teachings contrary to Christ and the Church, and to the destruction in the minds and hearts of people of the fatherly faith, the Orthodox faith, which established the universe, by which our ancestors lived and were saved, and by which Until now, Holy Rus' had held out and was strong. In his writings and letters, scattered in large numbers by him and his disciples all over the world, especially within our dear Fatherland, he preaches, with the zeal of a fanatic, the overthrow of all the dogmas of the Orthodox Church and the very essence of the Christian faith; denies the personal living God, glorified in the Holy Trinity, the Creator and Provider of the universe, denies the Lord Jesus Christ - the God-man, Redeemer and Savior of the world, who suffered for us for the sake of men and ours for the sake of salvation and rose from the dead, denies the seedless conception of Christ the Lord for humanity and virginity until Nativity and after the Nativity of the Most Pure Theotokos, Ever-Virgin Mary, does not recognize the afterlife and retribution, rejects all the sacraments of the Church and the grace-filled action of the Holy Spirit in them and, scolding the most sacred objects of faith of the Orthodox people, did not shudder to mock the greatest of the sacraments, the Holy Eucharist. Count Tolstoy preaches all this continuously, in word and in writing, to the temptation and horror of the entire Orthodox world, and thus undisguisedly, but clearly before everyone, he consciously and intentionally rejected himself from all communication with the Orthodox Church. The previous attempts, to his understanding, were not crowned with success. Therefore, the Church does not consider him a member and cannot consider him until he repents and restores his communion with her. Therefore, testifying to his falling away from the Church, we pray together that the Lord will grant him repentance into the mind of truth (2 Tim. 2:25). We pray, merciful Lord, do not want the death of sinners, hear and have mercy and turn him to Your holy Church. Amen.

In his “Response to the Synod,” Leo Tolstoy confirmed his break with the Church: “The fact that I renounced the church, which calls itself Orthodox, is absolutely fair. But I renounced it not because I rebelled against the Lord, but on the contrary, only because I wanted to serve him with all the strength of my soul.” However, Tolstoy objected to the charges brought against him in the resolution of the synod: “The resolution of the synod in general has many shortcomings. It is illegal or deliberately ambiguous; it is arbitrary, unfounded, untruthful and, in addition, contains slander and incitement to bad feelings and actions.” In the text of his “Response to the Synod,” Tolstoy reveals these theses in detail, recognizing a number of significant discrepancies between the dogmas of the Orthodox Church and his own understanding of the teachings of Christ.

The Synodal definition caused outrage among a certain part of society; Numerous letters and telegrams were sent to Tolstoy expressing sympathy and support. At the same time, this definition provoked a flow of letters from another part of society - with threats and abuse.

At the end of February 2001, the count's great-grandson Vladimir Tolstoy, manager of the writer's museum-estate in Yasnaya Polyana, sent a letter to Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Rus' with a request to revise the synodal definition; in an unofficial interview on television, the Patriarch said: “We cannot reconsider now, because after all, it is possible to reconsider if a person changes his position.” In March 2009, Vl. Tolstoy expressed his opinion about the significance of the synodal act: “I studied documents, read newspapers of that time, and became acquainted with the materials of public discussions around excommunication. And I had the feeling that this act gave a signal for a total split in Russian society. The reigning family, the highest aristocracy, the local nobility, the intelligentsia, the common strata, and the common people split. A crack has passed through the body of the entire Russian, Russian people.”

Moscow census of 1882. L. N. Tolstoy - census participant

The 1882 census in Moscow is famous for the fact that the great writer Count L.N. Tolstoy took part in it. Lev Nikolaevich wrote: “I proposed to use the census in order to find out poverty in Moscow and help it with deeds and money, and make sure that there are no poor people in Moscow.”

Tolstoy believed that the interest and significance of the census for society is that it gives it a mirror into which, like it or not, the whole society and each of us can look. He chose one of the most difficult and difficult sites, Protochny Lane, where the shelter was located; among the Moscow chaos, this gloomy two-story building was called “Rzhanova Fortress.” Having received the order from the Duma, Tolstoy, a few days before the census, began to walk around the site according to the plan that was given to him. Indeed, the dirty shelter, filled with beggars and desperate people who had sunk to the very bottom, served as a mirror for Tolstoy, reflecting the terrible poverty of the people. Under the fresh impression of what he saw, L. N. Tolstoy wrote his famous article"About the census in Moscow." In this article he writes:

The purpose of the census is scientific. The census is a sociological survey. The goal of the science of sociology is the happiness of people." This science and its methods differ sharply from other sciences. The peculiarity is that sociological research is not carried out through the work of scientists in their offices, observatories and laboratories, but is carried out by two thousand people from society. Another feature , that the research of other sciences is carried out not on living people, but here on living people. The third feature is that the goal of other sciences is only knowledge, but here the good of people can be explored alone, but to study Moscow you need 2000 people. of the foggy spots is only to find out everything about the foggy spots, the purpose of the study of the inhabitants is to derive the laws of sociology and, on the basis of these laws, to establish a better life for the people. The foggy spots do not care whether they are studied or not, they have waited and are ready to wait for a long time, but for the residents. Moscow cares, especially to those unfortunate people who make up the most interesting subject of the science of sociology. The accountant comes to the shelter, to the basement, finds a man dying from lack of food and politely asks: title, name, patronymic, occupation; and after a slight hesitation about whether to add him to the list as alive, he writes it down and moves on.

Despite the good goals of the census declared by Tolstoy, the population was suspicious of this event. On this occasion, Tolstoy writes: “When they explained to us that people had already learned about the bypass of the apartments and were leaving, we asked the owner to lock the gate, and we ourselves went into the yard to persuade the people who were leaving.” Lev Nikolaevich hoped to arouse sympathy among the rich for urban poverty, collect money, recruit people who wanted to contribute to this cause and, together with the census, go through all the dens of poverty. In addition to fulfilling the duties of a copyist, the writer wanted to enter into communication with the unfortunate, find out the details of their needs and help them with money and work, expulsion from Moscow, placing children in schools, old men and women in shelters and almshouses.

According to the census results, the population of Moscow in 1882 was 753.5 thousand people and only 26% were born in Moscow, and the rest were “newcomers”. Of the Moscow residential apartments, 57% faced the street, 43% faced the courtyard. From the 1882 census we can find out that in 63% the head of the household is a married couple, in 23% it is the wife, and only in 14% it is the husband. The census noted 529 families with 8 or more children. 39% have servants and most often they are women.

Last years of life. Death and funeral

In October 1910, fulfilling his decision to live his last years in accordance with his views, he secretly left Yasnaya Polyana. He began his last journey at Kozlova Zaseka station; On the way, he fell ill with pneumonia and was forced to make a stop at the small station of Astapovo (now Leo Tolstoy, Lipetsk region), where he died on November 7 (20).

On November 10 (23), 1910, he was buried in Yasnaya Polyana, on the edge of a ravine in the forest, where as a child he and his brother were looking for a “green stick” that held the “secret” of how to make all people happy.

In January 1913, a letter from Countess Sophia Tolstoy dated December 22, 1912 was published, in which she confirms the news in the press that his funeral service was performed at the grave of her husband by a certain priest (she refutes rumors that he was not real) in her presence. In particular, the countess wrote: “I also declare that Lev Nikolaevich never once before his death expressed a desire not to be buried, and earlier he wrote in his diary in 1895, as if a will: “If possible, then (bury) without priests and funeral services. But if this will be unpleasant for those who will bury, then let them bury as usual, but as cheaply and simply as possible."

There is also an unofficial version of the death of Leo Tolstoy, stated in emigration by I.K. Sursky from the words of a Russian police official. According to it, the writer, before his death, wanted to reconcile with the church and came to Optina Pustyn for this. Here he awaited the order of the Synod, but, feeling unwell, was taken away by his arriving daughter and died at the Astapovo post station.

Philosophy

Tolstoy's religious and moral imperatives were the source of the Tolstoyanism movement, one of the fundamental theses of which is the thesis of “non-resistance to evil by force.” The latter, according to Tolstoy, is recorded in a number of places in the Gospel and is the core of the teachings of Christ, as well as Buddhism. The essence of Christianity, according to Tolstoy, can be expressed in a simple rule: “ Be kind and do not resist evil with force».

The position of non-resistance, which gave rise to controversy in the philosophical community, was opposed, in particular, by I. A. Ilyin in his work “On Resistance to Evil by Force” (1925)

Criticism of Tolstoy and Tolstoyism

• Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod Pobedonostsev, in his private letter dated February 18, 1887, to Emperor Alexander III, wrote about Tolstoy’s drama “The Power of Darkness”: “I have just read L. Tolstoy’s new drama and cannot come to my senses from horror. And they assure me that they are preparing to perform it at the Imperial Theaters and are already learning the roles. I don’t know anything like this in any literature. It is unlikely that Zola himself reached the level of crude realism that Tolstoy reaches here. The day on which Tolstoy's drama will be presented at the Imperial Theaters will be the day decisive fall our scene, which has already fallen very low.”

• The leader of the extreme left wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin), after the revolutionary unrest of 1905-1907, wrote, while in forced emigration, in the work “Leo Tolstoy as a Mirror of the Russian Revolution” (1908): “Tolstoy ridiculous, like a prophet who discovered new recipes for the salvation of mankind - and therefore the foreign and Russian “Tolstoyites” who wanted to turn into dogma the very weak side his teachings. Tolstoy is great as an exponent of those ideas and those moods that had developed among millions of the Russian peasantry at the time of the offensive bourgeois revolution in Russia. Tolstoy is original, because the totality of his views, taken as a whole, expresses precisely the features of our revolution, as a peasant bourgeois revolution. The contradictions in Tolstoy's views, from this point of view, are a real mirror of the contradictory conditions in which the historical activity of the peasantry was placed in our revolution. "
• Russian religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote at the beginning of 1918: “L. Tolstoy must be recognized as the greatest Russian nihilist, the destroyer of all values ​​and shrines, the destroyer of culture. Tolstoy triumphed, his anarchism, his non-resistance, his denial of state and culture, his moralistic demand for equality in poverty and non-existence and subordination to the peasant kingdom and physical labor triumphed. But this triumph of Tolstoyism turned out to be less meek and beautiful-hearted than Tolstoy imagined. It is unlikely that he himself would have rejoiced at such a triumph. The godless nihilism of Tolstoyism, its terrible poison that destroys the Russian soul, is exposed. To save Russia and Russian culture, Tolstoy’s morality, low and destructive, must be burned out of the Russian soul with a hot iron.”

His article “Spirits of the Russian Revolution” (1918): “There is nothing prophetic in Tolstoy, he did not foresee or predict anything. As an artist, he is drawn to the crystallized past. He did not have that sensitivity to the dynamism of human nature that Dostoevsky had to the highest degree. But in the Russian revolution, it is not Tolstoy’s artistic insights that triumph, but his moral assessments. There are few Tolstoyans in the narrow sense of the word who share Tolstoy’s doctrine, and they represent an insignificant phenomenon. But Tolstoyism in the broad, non-doctrinal sense of the word is very characteristic of Russian people; it determines Russian moral assessments. Tolstoy was not a direct teacher of the Russian left-wing intelligentsia; Tolstoy’s religious teaching was alien to them. But Tolstoy grasped and expressed the peculiarities of the moral make-up of the majority of the Russian intelligentsia, perhaps even the Russian intellectual, perhaps even the Russian person in general. And the Russian revolution represents a kind of triumph of Tolstoyism. It is imprinted both by Russian Tolstoyan moralism and Russian immorality. This Russian moralism and this Russian immorality are interconnected and are two sides of the same disease moral consciousness. Tolstoy managed to instill in the Russian intelligentsia a hatred of everything historically individual and historically divergent. He was an exponent of that side of Russian nature that had an aversion to historical power and historical glory. It was he who taught us to moralize over history in an elementary and simplified way and to transfer the moral categories of individual life to historical life. By doing this, he morally undermined the opportunity for the Russian people to live a historical life, to fulfill their historical destiny and historical mission. He morally prepared the historical suicide of the Russian people. He clipped the wings of the Russian people as a historical people, morally poisoned the sources of any impulse towards historical creativity. World War Russia lost because Tolstoy’s moral assessment of the war prevailed. The Russian people, in a terrible hour of world struggle, were weakened by Tolstoy’s moral assessments, in addition to betrayals and animal egoism. Tolstoy’s morality disarmed Russia and gave it into the hands of the enemy.”

• V. Mayakovsky, D. Burliuk, V. Khlebnikov, A. Kruchenykh, called for “throwing L.N. Tolstoy and others from the ship of modernity” in the 1912 Futurist manifesto “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste”
• George Orwell defended W. Shakespeare against criticism of Tolstoy

• Researcher of the history of Russian theological thought and culture Georgy Florovsky (1937): “There is one decisive contradiction in Tolstoy’s experience. He undoubtedly had the temperament of a preacher or a moralist, but he had no religious experience at all. Tolstoy was not religious at all, he was religiously mediocre. Tolstoy did not derive his “Christian” worldview from the Gospel. He already checks the Gospel with his own view, and that is why he cuts it down and adapts it so easily. For him, the Gospel is a book compiled many centuries ago by “poorly educated and superstitious people,” and it cannot be accepted in its entirety. But Tolstoy does not mean scientific criticism, but simply personal choice or selection. In some strange way, Tolstoy seemed to be mentally late in the 18th century, and therefore found himself outside of history and modernity. And he deliberately leaves modernity for some far-fetched past. All his work is in this regard some kind of continuous moralistic Robinsonade. Annenkov also called Tolstoy's mind sectarian. There is a striking discrepancy between the aggressive maximalism of Tolstoy's socio-ethical denunciations and denials and the extreme poverty of his positive moral teaching. For him, all morality comes down to common sense and everyday prudence. “Christ teaches us exactly how we can get rid of our misfortunes and live happily.” And this is what the whole Gospel boils down to! Here Tolstoy’s insensibility becomes terrible, and “common sense” turns into madness... The main contradiction of Tolstoy is precisely that for him the untruths of life can be overcome, strictly speaking, only abandonment of history, only by leaving the culture and simplifying, that is, by removing questions and abandoning tasks. Tolstoy's moralism turns around historical nihilism.»

• The holy righteous John of Kronstadt sharply criticized Tolstoy (see “Response of Father John of Kronstadt to Count L.N. Tolstoy’s appeal to the clergy”), and in his dying diary (August 15 - October 2, 1908) he wrote:

"24 August. How long, O Lord, do you tolerate the worst atheist who has confused the whole world, Leo Tolstoy? How long do you not call him to Thy Judgment? Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward will be with Me, and will He reward everyone according to his deeds? (Rev. 22:12) Where, the earth is tired of tolerating his blasphemy. -»
"September 6. Where, do not allow Leo Tolstoy, the heretic who surpassed all heretics, to reach the feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, whom he terribly blasphemed and blasphemes. Take him from the ground - this stinking corpse, which stinks the whole earth with its pride. Amen. 9pm."

• In 2009, as part of a court case regarding the liquidation of the local religious organization Jehovah's Witnesses "Taganrog", a forensic examination was carried out, in the conclusion of which Leo Tolstoy's statement was cited: "I am convinced that the teaching of the [Russian Orthodox] Church is theoretically an insidious and harmful lie, practically “the same collection of the grossest superstitions and witchcraft, completely hiding the entire meaning of Christian teaching,” which was characterized as forming a negative attitude towards the Russian Orthodox Church, and L.N. Tolstoy himself was described as “an opponent of Russian Orthodoxy.”

Expert assessment of individual statements of Tolstoy

• In 2009, as part of a court case on the liquidation of the local religious organization Jehovah's Witnesses "Taganrog", a forensic examination of the organization's literature was carried out to determine whether it contained signs of inciting religious hatred, undermining respect and hostility towards other religions. The expert report noted that the Awake! contains (without specifying the source) a statement by Leo Tolstoy: “I am convinced that the teaching of the [Russian Orthodox] Church is theoretically an insidious and harmful lie, practically a collection of the grossest superstitions and witchcraft, hiding the entire meaning of Christian teaching,” which was characterized as formative a negative attitude and undermining respect for the Russian Orthodox Church, and L.N. Tolstoy himself - as an “opponent of Russian Orthodoxy.”

• In March 2010, in the Kirov Court of Yekaterinburg, Leo Tolstoy was accused of “inciting religious hatred against the Orthodox Church.” An expert on extremism, Pavel Suslonov, testified: “Leo Tolstoy’s leaflets “Preface to the “Soldier’s Memo” and “Officer’s Memo”,” directed to soldiers, sergeant majors and officers, contain direct calls to incite interreligious hatred directed against the Orthodox Church.”

Bibliography

Translators of Tolstoy

World recognition. Memory

Museums

In the former Yasnaya Polyana estate there is a museum dedicated to his life and work.

The main literary exhibition about his life and work is in the State Museum of L. N. Tolstoy, in former house Lopukhinykh-Stanitskaya (Moscow, Prechistenka 11); its branches also: at Lev Tolstoy station (former Astapovo station), memorial museum-estate of L. N. Tolstoy “Khamovniki” (Lva Tolstoy Street, 21), exhibition hall on Pyatnitskaya.

Scientists, cultural figures, politicians about L. N. Tolstoy

Film adaptations of his works

• "Resurrection"(English) Resurrection, 1909, UK). 12 minute silent film novel of the same name(filmed during the writer’s lifetime).
• "Power of Darkness"(1909, Russia). Silent film.
• "Anna Karenina"(1910, Germany). Silent film.
• "Anna Karenina"(1911, Russia). Silent film. Dir. - Maurice Maitre
• "Living Corpse"(1911, Russia). Silent film.
• "War and Peace"(1913, Russia). Silent film.
• "Anna Karenina"(1914, Russia). Silent film. Dir. - V. Gardin
• "Anna Karenina"(1915, USA). Silent film.
• "Power of Darkness"(1915, Russia). Silent film.
• "War and Peace"(1915, Russia). Silent film. Dir. - Y. Protazanov, V. Gardin
• "Natasha Rostova"(1915, Russia). Silent film. Producer - A. Khanzhonkov. Starring: V. Polonsky, I. Mozzhukhin
• "Living Corpse"(1916). Silent film.
• "Anna Karenina"(1918, Hungary). Silent film.
• "Power of Darkness"(1918, Russia). Silent film.
• "Living Corpse"(1918). Silent film.
• "Father Sergius"(1918, RSFSR). Silent film film by Yakov Protazanov, in leading role Ivan Mozzhukhin
• "Anna Karenina"(1919, Germany). Silent film.
• "Polikushka"(1919, USSR). Silent film.
• "Love"(1927, USA. Based on the novel “Anna Karenina”). Silent film. As Anna - Greta Garbo
• "Living Corpse"(1929, USSR). Starring: V. Pudovkin
• "Anna Karenina"(Anna Karenina, 1935, USA). Sound film. As Anna - Greta Garbo
• « Anna Karenina"(Anna Karenina, 1948, UK). As Anna - Vivien Leigh
• "War and Peace"(War & Peace, 1956, USA, Italy). As Natasha Rostova - Audrey Hepburn
• "Agi Murad il diavolo bianco"(1959, Italy, Yugoslavia). As Hadji Murat - Steve Reeves
• "People too"(1959, USSR, based on a fragment of “War and Peace”). Dir. G. Danelia, starring V. Sanaev, L. Durov
• "Resurrection"(1960, USSR). Dir. - M. Schweitzer
• "Anna Karenina"(Anna Karenina, 1961, USA). As Vronsky - Sean Connery
• "Cossacks"(1961, USSR). Dir. - V. Pronin
• "Anna Karenina"(1967, USSR). In the role of Anna - Tatiana Samoilova
• "War and Peace"(1968, USSR). Dir. - S. Bondarchuk
• "Living Corpse"(1968, USSR). In ch. roles - A. Batalov
• "War and Peace"(War & Peace, 1972, UK). Series. As Pierre - Anthony Hopkins
• "Father Sergius"(1978, USSR). Feature film by Igor Talankin, starring Sergei Bondarchuk
• « Caucasian story» (1978, USSR, based on the story “Cossacks”). In ch. roles - V. Konkin
• "Money"(1983, France-Switzerland, based on the story “False Coupon”). Dir. - Robert Bresson
• "Two Hussars"(1984, USSR). Dir. - Vyacheslav Krishtofovich
• "Anna Karenina"(Anna Karenina, 1985, USA). As Anna - Jacqueline Bisset
• "A Simple Death"(1985, USSR, based on the story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”). Dir. - A. Kaidanovsky
• "Kreutzer Sonata"(1987, USSR). Starring: Oleg Yankovsky
• "For what?" (Za co?, 1996, Poland / Russia). Dir. - Jerzy Kawalerowicz
• "Anna Karenina"(Anna Karenina, 1997, USA). In the role of Anna - Sophie Marceau, Vronsky - Sean Bean
• "Anna Karenina"(2007, Russia). In the role of Anna - Tatiana Drubich

For more details, see also: List of film adaptations of “Anna Karenina” 1910-2007.

• "War and Peace"(2007, Germany, Russia, Poland, France, Italy). Series. In the role of Andrei Bolkonsky - Alessio Boni.

Documentary

• "Leo Tolstoy." Documentary. TsSDF (RTSSDF). 1953. 47 minutes.

Movies about Leo Tolstoy

• "The Passing of the Great Elder"(1912, Russia). Director - Yakov Protazanov
• "Leo Tolstoy"(1984, USSR, Czechoslovakia). Director - S. Gerasimov
• "The Last Station"(2008). In the role of L. Tolstoy - Christopher Plummer, in the role of Sofia Tolstoy - Helen Mirren. A film about the last days of the writer's life.

Portrait gallery

Translators of Tolstoy

• On Japanese- Konishi Masutaro
• On French- Michel Aucouturier, Vladimir Lvovich Binshtok
• In Spanish - Selma Ancira
• Into English - Constance Garnett, Leo Wiener, Aylmer and Louise Maude
• In Norwegian - Martin Gran, Olaf Broch, Marta Grundt
• Into Bulgarian - Sava Nichev, Georgi Shopov, Hristo Dosev
• Into Kazakh - Ibray Altynsarin
• Into Malay - Viktor Pogadaev
• In Esperanto - Valentin Melnikov, Viktor Sapozhnikov
• Into Azerbaijani - Dadash-zade, Mammad Arif Maharram oglu

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is one of the five most readable writers. His work made Russian literature recognizable abroad. Even if you haven’t read these works, you probably know Natasha Rostova, Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky at least from films or jokes. The biography of Lev Nikolaevich can be of interest to every person, because his personal life is always of interest famous person, parallels are drawn with his creative activity. Let's try to trace the life path of Leo Tolstoy.

The future classic came from a noble family known since the 14th century. Peter Andreevich Tolstoy, the writer’s paternal ancestor, earned the favor of Peter I by investigating the case of his son, who was suspected of treason. Then Pert Andreevich headed the Secret Chancellery, and his career took off. Nikolai Ilyich, the father of the classic, received good education. However, it was combined with unshakable principles that did not allow him to advance at court.

The fortune of the father of the future classic was upset due to the debts of his parent, and he married the middle-aged but wealthy Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya. Despite the initial calculation, they were happy in marriage and had five children.

Childhood

Lev Nikolaevich was born fourth (there was also the youngest Maria and the elders Nikolai, Sergei and Dmitry), but after his birth he received little attention: his mother died two years after the birth of the writer; the father moved with the children to Moscow for a short time, but soon died too. The impressions from the trip were so strong that young Leva created his first essay, “The Kremlin.”

The children were raised by several guardians at once: first T.A. Ergolskaya and A. M. Osten-Sacken. A. M. Osten-Sacken died in 1840, and the children went to Kazan to live with P. I. Yushkova.

Boyhood

Yushkova’s house was secular and cheerful: receptions, evenings, external splendor, high society - all this was very important for the family. Tolstoy himself strived to shine in society, to be “comme il faut,” but shyness did not allow him to unfold. Real entertainment for Lev Nikolaevich was replaced by reflection and introspection.

The future classicist studied at home: first under the guidance of the German tutor Saint-Thomas, and then with the Frenchman Reselman. Following the example of the brothers, Lev decides to enter the Imperial Kazan University, where Kovalevsky and Lobachevsky worked. In 1844, Tolstoy began to study at the Oriental Faculty ( admissions committee was amazed by the knowledge of the “Turkish-Tatar language”), and later transferred to the Faculty of Law.

Youth

The young man had a conflict with his home history teacher, so the grades in the subject were unsatisfactory, and he had to take the course again at the university. In order to avoid repeating what had happened, Lev transferred to law school, but did not finish, left the university and went to Yasnaya Polyana, his parents’ estate. Here he is trying to run a household using new technologies, he tried, but was unsuccessful. In 1849, the writer went to Moscow.

During this period, keeping a diary begins; entries will continue until the death of the writer. They are the most important document; in Lev Nikolaevich’s diaries he describes the events of his life, and engages in introspection, and reasons. It also described the goals and rules that he tried to follow.

Success story

The creative world of Leo Tolstoy took shape in his adolescence, in his emerging need for constant psychoanalysis. Systematically, this quality was manifested in diary entries. It was as a result of constant self-analysis that Tolstoy’s famous “dialectics of the soul” appeared.

First works

The children's work was written in Moscow, and the real works were also written there. Tolstoy creates stories about gypsies, about his daily routine (unfinished manuscripts have been lost). In the early 50s, the story “Childhood” was also written.

Leo Tolstoy – participant in the Caucasian and Crimean wars. Military service gave the writer many new plots and emotions, described in the stories “Raid”, “Cutting Wood”, “Demoted”, in the story “Cossacks”. “Childhood”, which brought fame, was also completed here. Impressions from the battle for Sevastopol helped write the cycle “Sevastopol Stories”. But in 1856, Lev Nikolaevich left the service forever. The personal history of Leo Tolstoy taught him a lot: having seen enough bloodshed in the war, he realized the importance of peace and true values ​​- family, marriage, his people. It is these thoughts that he will subsequently put into his works.

Confession

The story “Childhood” was created in the winter of 1850-51, and published a year later. This work and its sequels “Adolescence” (1854), “Youth” (1857) and “Youth” (never written) were supposed to form the novel “Four Epochs of Development” about the spiritual formation of man.

Trilogies tell about the life of Nikolenka Irtenyev. He has parents, an older brother Volodya and a sister Lyubochka, he is happy in his home world, but suddenly his father announces his decision to move to Moscow, Nikolenka and Volodya go with him. Their mother dies just as unexpectedly. A severe blow of fate ends childhood. In adolescence, the hero conflicts with others and with himself, trying to comprehend himself in this world. Nikolenka’s grandmother dies, he not only grieves for her, but also bitterly notes that some people only care about her inheritance. During the same period, the hero begins to prepare for university and meets Dmitry Nekhlyudov. Having entered the university, he feels like an adult and rushes into the pool of secular pleasures. This pastime leaves no time for studying, the hero fails his exams. This event led him to the idea that the chosen path was wrong, leading to self-improvement.

Personal life

It is always difficult for the families of writers: a creative person may not be able to live in everyday life, and besides, he always has no time for earthly things, he is overwhelmed by new ideas. What was life like for Leo Tolstoy’s family?

Wife

Sofya Andreevna Bers was born into a doctor's family, she was smart, educated, simple. The writer met his future wife when he was 34 and she was 18. The clear, bright and pure girl attracted the experienced Lev Nikolaevich, who had already seen a lot and was ashamed of his past.

After the wedding, the Tolstoys began to live in Yasnaya Polyana, where Sofya Andreevna took care of the house, children and helped her husband in all matters: she rewrote manuscripts, published works, was a secretary and translator. After the opening of a hospital in Yasnaya Polyana, she helped there too, examining patients. Tolstoy’s family relied on her care, because it was she who carried out all the economic activities.

During a spiritual crisis, Tolstoy came up with a special charter of life and decided to renounce his property, depriving his children of his fortune. Sofya Andreevna opposed this, family life began to crack. However, Lev Nikolaevich has only one wife, and she made a great contribution to his work. He had an ambivalent attitude towards her: on the one hand, he respected and idolized her, on the other, he blamed her for being more involved in material matters than spiritual ones. This conflict was continued in his prose. For example, in the novel “War and Peace” the surname negative hero, angry, indifferent and obsessed with hoarding, - Berg, which is very consonant with his wife’s maiden name.

Children

Leo Tolstoy had 13 children, 9 boys and 4 girls, but five of them died in childhood. The image of the great father lived in his children, all of them were connected with his work.

Sergei was involved in his father’s work (he founded a museum, commented on works), and also became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. Tatyana was a follower of her father's teachings and also became a writer. Ilya led a chaotic life: he dropped out of school, did not find a suitable job, and after the revolution he emigrated to the USA, where he lectured on the worldview of Lev Nikolaevich. Leo, too, at first followed the ideas of Tolstoyism, but later became a monarchist, so he also emigrated and was engaged in creativity. Maria shared her father’s ideas, abandoned the light and was engaged in educational work. Andrei highly valued his noble origins and participated in Russian-Japanese war, then stole his wife from the boss, and soon died suddenly. Mikhail was musical, but became a military man and wrote memoirs about life in Yasnaya Polyana. Alexandra helped her father in all matters, then became the keeper of his museum, but due to emigration, they tried to forget her achievements in Soviet times.

Creative crisis

In the second half of the 60s and early 70s, Tolstoy experienced a painful spiritual crisis. For several years the writer was accompanied by panic attacks, thoughts of suicide, and fear of death. Lev Nikolaevich could not find the answer to the questions of existence that tormented him anywhere, and he created his own philosophical teaching.

Change of worldview

The path to victory over the crisis was unusual: Leo Tolstoy created his own moral teaching. His thoughts were expressed in books and articles: “Confession”, “So what should we do”, “What is art”, “I cannot remain silent”.

The writer’s teaching was anti-Orthodox in nature, since Orthodoxy, according to Lev Nikolaevich, distorted the essence of the commandments, its dogmas are not acceptable from a moral point of view, and were imposed by centuries-old traditions forcibly instilled in the Russian people. Tolstoyism found a response among the common people and the intelligentsia; pilgrims from different classes began to come to Yasnaya Polyana for advice. The Church reacted sharply to the spread of Tolstoyism: in 1901 the writer was excommunicated from it.

Tolstoyism

Morality, ethics and philosophy are combined in Tolstoy's teachings. God is the best in man, his moral center. That is why one cannot follow dogmas and justify any violence (which the Church did, according to the author of the teaching). The brotherhood of all people and victory over world evil are the ultimate goals of humanity, which can be achieved through self-improvement of each of us.

Lev Nikolaevich took a different look not only at his personal life, but also at his work. Only the common people are close to the truth, and art should only separate good and evil. And this role is fulfilled by folk art alone. This leads Tolstoy to abandon his past works and simplify his new works as much as possible, adding edification to them (“Kholstomer”, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, “Master and Worker”, “Resurrection”).

Death

Since the beginning of the 80s, family relations have become strained: the writer wants to give up the copyright on his books, his property and give everything to the poor. The wife sharply opposed it, promising to accuse her husband of being crazy. Tolstoy realized that the problem could not be solved peacefully, so he came up with the idea of ​​leaving his home, going abroad and becoming a peasant.

Accompanied by Dr. D.P. Makovitsky, the writer left the estate (later his daughter Alexandra joined). However, the writer’s plans were not destined to come true. Tolstoy's temperature rose and he stopped at the head of the Astapovo station. After ten days of illness, the writer died.

Creative heritage

Researchers distinguish three periods in the work of Leo Tolstoy:

1. Creativity of the 50s (“young Tolstoy”)- during this period, the writer’s style, his famous “dialectic of the soul” takes shape, he accumulates impressions, military service also helps with this.
2. Creativity of the 60s-70s ( classical period) - it was at this time that the most famous works writer.
3. 1880-1910 (Tolstoyan period)- bear the imprint of a spiritual revolution: renunciation of past creativity, new spiritual principles and problems. The style is simplified, as are the plots of the works.

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Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Born: September 9, 1828
Died: November 10, 1910

Biography

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy born on August 28 (September 9 n.s.) in the Yasnaya Polyana estate, Tula province. By origin he belonged to the oldest aristocratic families in Russia. Received home education and upbringing.

After the death of his parents (his mother died in 1830, his father in 1837), the future writer with three brothers and a sister moved to Kazan, to live with his guardian P. Yushkova. As a sixteen-year-old boy, he entered Kazan University, first at the Faculty of Philosophy in the category of Arabic-Turkish Literature, then studied at the Faculty of Law (1844 - 47). In 1847, without completing the course, he left the university and settled in Yasnaya Polyana, which he received as property as his father's inheritance.

The future writer spent the next four years in search: he tried to reorganize the life of the peasants of Yasnaya Polyana (1847), lived a social life in Moscow (1848), took exams for the degree of candidate of law at St. Petersburg University (spring 1849), decided to serve as a clerical employee in the Tula Noble Society parliamentary meeting (autumn 1849).

In 1851 he left Yasnaya Polyana for the Caucasus, the place of service of his older brother Nikolai, and volunteered to take part in military operations against the Chechens. Episodes of the Caucasian War were described by him in the stories "Raid" (1853), "Cutting Wood" (1855), and in the story "Cossacks" (1852 - 63). Passed the cadet exam, preparing to become an officer. In 1854, being an artillery officer, he transferred to the Danube Army, which operated against the Turks.

In the Caucasus Tolstoy started studying seriously literary creativity, writes the story "Childhood", which was approved by Nekrasov and published in the magazine "Sovremennik". Later the story "Adolescence" (1852 - 54) was published there.

Soon after the start of the Crimean War Tolstoy at his personal request, he was transferred to Sevastopol, where he participated in the defense of the besieged city, showing rare fearlessness. Awarded the Order of St. Anna with the inscription "For bravery" and medals "For the defense of Sevastopol". In "Sevastopol Stories" he created a mercilessly reliable picture of the war, which made a huge impression on Russian society. During these same years, he wrote the last part of the trilogy - "Youth" (1855 - 56), in which he declared himself not just a "poet of childhood", but a researcher of human nature. This interest in man and the desire to understand the laws of mental and spiritual life will continue in his future work.

In 1855, having arrived in St. Petersburg, Tolstoy became close to the staff of the Sovremennik magazine, met Turgenev, Goncharov, Ostrovsky, Chernyshevsky.

In the fall of 1856 he retired (“A military career is not mine...” he writes in his diary) and in 1857 he went on a six-month trip abroad to France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany.

In 1859 he opened a school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana, where he himself taught classes. Helped open more than 20 schools in surrounding villages. In order to study the organization of school affairs abroad in 1860 - 1861, Tolstoy made a second trip to Europe, inspecting schools in France, Italy, Germany, and England. In London he met Herzen and attended a lecture by Dickens.

In May 1861 (the year of the abolition of serfdom) he returned to Yasnaya Polyana, took office as a peace mediator and actively defended the interests of the peasants, resolving their disputes with the landowners about land, for which the Tula nobility, dissatisfied with his actions, demanded his removal from office. In 1862, the Senate issued a decree dismissing Tolstoy. Secret surveillance of him began from Section III. In the summer, the gendarmes carried out a search in his absence, confident that they would find a secret printing house, which the writer allegedly acquired after meetings and long communications with Herzen in London.

In 1862 life Tolstoy, his life was streamlined into for many years: he married the daughter of a Moscow doctor, Sofya Andreevna Bers, and began patriarchal life on his estate as the head of an ever-increasing family. Fat raised nine children.

The 1860s - 1870s were marked by the publication of two works by Tolstoy, which immortalized his name: "War and Peace" (1863 - 69), "Anna Karenina" (1873 - 77).

In the early 1880s, the Tolstoy family moved to Moscow to educate their growing children. From this time of winter Tolstoy spent in Moscow. Here in 1882 he took part in the census of the Moscow population and became closely acquainted with the life of the inhabitants of the city slums, which he described in the treatise “So what should we do?” (1882 - 86), and concluded: “...You can’t live like that, you can’t live like that, you can’t!”

New worldview Tolstoy expressed in his work “Confession” (1879), where he spoke about a revolution in his views, the meaning of which he saw in a break with the ideology of the noble class and a transition to the side of the “simple working people.” This fracture led Tolstoy to the denial of the state, the state church and property. The awareness of the meaninglessness of life in the face of inevitable death led him to faith in God. He bases his teaching on the moral commandments of the New Testament: the demand for love for people and the preaching of non-resistance to evil through violence constitute the meaning of the so-called “Tolstoyism,” which is becoming popular not only in Russia, but also abroad.

During this period, he came to a complete denial of his previous literary activity, took up physical labor, plowed, sewed boots, and switched to vegetarian food. In 1891 he publicly renounced copyright ownership of all his works written after 1880.

Under the influence of friends and true admirers of his talent, as well as personal need for literary activity Tolstoy in the 1890s he changed his negative attitude towards art. During these years he created the drama "The Power of Darkness" (1886), the play "The Fruits of Enlightenment" (1886 - 90), and the novel "Resurrection" (1889 - 99).

In 1891, 1893, 1898 he participated in helping peasants in starving provinces and organized free canteens.

IN last decade I was engaged, as always, in intense creative work. The story "Hadji Murat" (1896 - 1904), the drama "The Living Corpse" (1900), and the story "After the Ball" (1903) were written.

At the beginning of 1900, he wrote a number of articles exposing the entire system of public administration. The government of Nicholas II issued a resolution according to which the Holy Synod (the highest church institution in Russia) excommunicated Tolstoy from the church, which caused a wave of indignation in society.

In 1901 Tolstoy lived in Crimea, was treated after a serious illness, often met with Chekhov and M. Gorky.

In the last years of his life, when Tolstoy was drawing up his will, he found himself at the center of intrigue and contention between the “Tolstoyites,” on the one hand, and his wife, who defended the well-being of her family and children, on the other. Trying to bring his lifestyle into line with his beliefs and being burdened by the lordly way of life on the estate. Tolstoy secretly left Yasnaya Polyana on November 10, 1910. The health of the 82-year-old writer could not withstand the journey. He caught a cold and, falling ill, died on November 20 on the way at the Astapovo station of the Ryazan-Ural Railway.

He was buried in Yasnaya Polyana.

Novels

1859 - Family happiness
1884 - Decembrists
1873 - War and Peace
1875 - Anna Karenina

Trilogy: Childhood, Adolescence and Youth

1852 - Childhood
1854 - Boyhood
1864 - Youth

Stories

1856 - Two Hussars
1856 - Morning of the landowner
1858 - Albert
1862 - Idyll
1862 - Polikushka
1863 - Cossacks
1886 - Death of Ivan Ilyich
1903 - Notes of a Madman
1891 - Kreutzer Sonata
1911 - Devil
1891 - Mother
1895 - Master and Worker
1912 - Father Sergius
1912 - Hadji Murad

Stories

1851 - History of Yesterday
1853 - Raid
1853 - Yule night
1854 - Uncle Zhdanov and gentleman Chernov
1854 - How Russian soldiers die
1855 - Notes of a marker
1855 - Wood cutting
1856 - Cycle “Sevastopol Stories”
1856 - Blizzard
1856 - Demoted
1857 - Lucerne
1859 - Three deaths
1887 - Surat coffee shop
1891 - Francoise
1911 - Who is right?
1894 - Karma
1894 - The Dream of a Young Tsar
1911 - After the ball
1911 - Fake coupon
1911 - Alyosha Pot
1905 - Poor people
1906 - Korney Vasiliev
1906 - Berries
1906 - For what?
1906 - Divine and Human
1911 - What I saw in my dreams
1906 - Father Vasily
1908 - The power of childhood
1909 - Conversation with a passerby
1909 - Traveler and Peasant
1909 - Songs in the village
1909 - Three days in the country
1912 - Khodynka
1911 - Accidentally
1910 - Grateful soil