“There was something in him that always awakened the desire in me to shout to everyone: ‘Look at what kind of person lives on Earth!'”
Maxim Gorky
Childhood
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on August 28 (according to the Russian Julian calendar) in 1828 in Yasnaya Polyana, a couple hundred kilometers from Moscow. He was a descendant of two great Russian noble families – the Tolstoys, whose ancestors were mentioned as far back as the time of Peter the Great, when one of them received the title of count from the Tsar, and the Volkonskis, who descended from the medieval Russian prince Rurik.
He was the fourth son of Maria Nikolayevna Volkonskaya and Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, and one of five children. He lost his mother at the age of two, and thus also lost his memories of her. In those early years of his life, he always remembered with nostalgia – his father, brothers, grandmother, aunts, household servants, first teachers, they were all part of that extraordinary circle that surrounded little Lev, who even then expressed an exceptional intensity of his feelings through love and devotion to and to family members. With all his senses, he passionately explored the world around him – the smell of the earth in spring, a melodic tune, the wind in the field, plants, animals, people – all of it stirred up a whirlwind of emotions within him.
“Our confusion arises from the fact that we view our animal or animal-like life as true life.”
The turning point of his childhood was the move to Moscow in 1837. His father died very soon after, and the care of the children was taken over by aunts and grandmother. In those years, he desperately wanted to stand out with some great work and be original. At the age of twelve, he contemplated his character, the destiny of man, the decay of matter, and the immortality of the soul. Sometimes he admired the Stoics, other times the Epicureans, and then he would become a skeptic. Despite his intense inner life, he was very timid and shy in front of other people.
The image portrays the way of life in Russia, depicted in Tolstoy’s epic novel “War and Peace.”
Indecisive youth.
In 1844, he enrolled in the study of ori. He studied philology at Kazan University, but at that time he was more preoccupied with his own personality – at the age of sixteen, he wrote “rules for life” for the first time, which were supposed to determine his duties towards himself, towards other people, and towards God. But why is everything so clear and wonderful in my soul, and on paper and in life… it turns out so bad? He established with a friend that a person’s destiny is to strive for moral perfection and that it is up to everyone to point it out by their example.
As for the university world – he didn’t find himself in it. Professors gave lectures in which they didn’t even believe themselves; empty words and banalities. He gave up studying Oriental philology and enrolled in law, but again he gave priority to personal work – he wrote, read Rousseau, Pushkin, Goethe, Hegel, Montesquieu… He realized that they were his true teachers, so in 1847 he left the faculty.
He returned to Jasna Poljana with the intention of improving the lives of peasants, but encountered incredible slowness and inertia. After all the reforms. As his life in the countryside became boring and uninteresting, in 1849 he goes to Petrograd, but soon returns to the countryside – only with gambling debts. In the countryside, he works again, but also discovers a passion for women, visiting Gypsy women in Tula and drinking. Dissatisfied with this life, he moves to Moscow because he realizes that all beliefs are worthless without practical application.
Shortly afterwards, together with his brother Nikolaj, he goes to the Caucasus, where Russia had been trying to suppress the rebellions of the Caucasian tribes for half a century. In direct contact with the magnificent Caucasus nature and simple Cossacks, he experienced… painful and good times. Never before or after that have I reached such heights of thought… Soon, he himself puts on a military uniform, and between deployments to the battlefield, he writes intensively, and in 1852, his Childhood is published in Suvremenik, signed with his initials. Even then, he showed what would remain a characteristic of his works, and that is wonder – as if seeing everything for the first time and discovering the object of observation himself. , accuracy and simplicity, without unnecessary and artificial expressions. His literary work intensifies, and Childhood, among many, is hailed by Turgenjev and Dostoevsky. But his stay in the Caucasus also meant a renewed struggle, moral ups and downs, a constant effort to overcome one’s own passions and weaknesses.
“The only way to progress for humanity is the development of consciousness and moral sentiment in the people.”
In 1854, he requests a transfer to Crimea where he participated in the defense of Sevastopol. Enthralled by Russian heroism, he compares it to the ancient, but soon becomes aware of the Russian army’s defeat in comparison to the French.
The following year, he writes in his Diary a “wonderful, grand idea” – the idea of a new faith that would enable the realization of the kingdom of God on earth, with its foundations based on rejecting obedience to church dogmas and returning to the original Christianity inspired by the Gospel. At that time, his writing inspiration was blooming, and his war and other stories were being published one after another. eating – his fame is growing more and more, so it impresses even the emperor. Turgenev writes to him: Your weapon is the pen, not the sword.
“Submit yourself completely to every task you undertake.”
He leaves the army and goes to Petrograd with the intention of dedicating himself solely to literary work. There, he meets great Russian writers Turgenev, Goncharov, and others, but their ideological quarrel – on one hand, Westernizers who believed that Russia should follow the European example, and on the other hand, Slavophiles who did not recognize Europe’s intellectual superiority – disappoints him because he only saw vanity and jealousy in it.
Travel and pedagogy
In Jasna Poljana, he wanted to free his serfs, but being unable to communicate with them, he abandons his intentions. He decides to travel to Europe – France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany. In Paris, he attended lectures at the Sorbonne, went to theaters, museums, libraries…, but he was extremely unpleasantly impressed by the sight of a guillotine on a Parisian square: …I understood, not with reason, but with With my entire being… it was evil, and that is why I must judge based on what is just and necessary, and not based on what people say about it…
He returns to Russia, alternately living in Moscow, where he exercises, organizes concerts, thirsts for action, for life, and in Jasna Poljana, where he would escape with the spring, drunk with causeless joy, always feeling anew that he was touching the truth then. He ponders upon faith and God, it seemed to him that the official Church diminishes God by trying to make him understandable to the human mind, while he, on the contrary, believes that He can only be understood with the heart. He spends more and more time with peasants, especially enjoying mowing with them. He opens a school for village children and dedicates himself to pedagogical work. His system is based on the freedom of students and teachers, only those who wanted to came to school, and the teacher’s moral influence had to be enough to attract students. And so it was – there were more and more children.
“Tame your sadness with work, not with entertainment.”
In 1860, he undertakes another journey to. Europe, this time visiting Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. He was most interested in pedagogical issues, so he listened to Dickensen’s lecture on education in London. He visited schools and disappointingly concluded that subjecting children to strict discipline in them fosters hypocrisy.
The following year, serfs were liberated in Russia and he returned to Jasna Poljana. He took on the role of a peace judge because it was necessary to arrange the new relationships between the nobility and the liberated serfs. He tried to be fair and thus displeased many nobles who expected that, as a noble himself, he would work in their favor. He also continued his pedagogical work – soon there were fourteen schools, he hired new teachers, and freedom remained the only criterion in his pedagogy. However, this work exhausted him greatly, so he went to the steppe to regain his strength. However, during his absence in Jasna Poljana, a search was conducted because his social and pedagogical work had become suspicious to the government. This angered him greatly. He threatened to go abroad and only the emperor’s comforting words pacified him. He doesn’t forget to criticize himself for it: “Strange, we’re not afraid to commit thousands of injustices and wrongdoings against the Lord, but the first thing that affects us seems monstrous and intolerable.”
“Why is life around us so cruel, disgusting, often shameful and inhuman? Because few think to make it better.”
In 1862, Tolstoy married Sofia Andrejevna Bers. At the beginning of their marriage, he was a happy husband and father to their growing number of children – they had thirteen children, eight of whom survived. The next few years were the peak of his literary creation, as he produced a series of smaller works, but over time, the idea and strength for a great novel – the unmatched War and Peace – were born within him.
A great writer
He began working on War and Peace in 1863 and continued for the next six years. He extensively researched the time he was describing – reading historians, philosophers, studying original documents. Everything that happened to him was meticulously recorded and then transformed into a literary masterpiece. At that time, all the people he encountered, their appearance, movements, their stories – everything became material from which he shaped his great work. Two heroes, Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky, represent Tolstoy himself – their conversations are debates that the author has with himself. Andrei’s last words are: God, that is love, but to die means for me, who is part of that love, to return to the great everything, to the eternal source… Through conversations he had with a prisoner, Platon Karataev, Pierre realizes that there is an inner freedom that does not depend on circumstances and that there is no situation in which a person cannot be perfectly happy and free. In accordance with what he writes, he also understands the mission of the artist – his role is to inspire us to love life in its countless and inexhaustible forms.
<p”It is not in my power to understand all of this, to understand the whole work of the Lord. But to fulfill His will that is written in my conscience – that is in my power. , and I know that for sure.”
He completed a great work, but his spirit was not at peace – he read Shakespeare, Goethe, Moliere, Pushkin… He starts learning Greek and in a few weeks surpasses his teacher – he reads Xenophon, Homer, Plato in Greek. After a few years break, he returns to his pedagogical plans, opens a school in his own home, and the teachers were members of his family – the little ones learned like birds pecking around for food. Eventually, he managed seventy newly opened schools.
From 1873 to 1877, he worked on Anna Karenina. Like the previous War and Peace, this new work captivated Russia. But it doesn’t make him happy, he is anxious and confused and realizes that true happiness comes from within.
The Final Turn
The late seventies and early eighties are a turning point in Tolstoy’s life. At the beginning of this period, he falls into great moral crises: What if I became more famous than Pushkin and Shakespeare – more famous than all the literary figures? If there is no hope in the world, then what? What will be the result of my life, why should I live? Why should I desire anything? Is there anything in life that could survive the death that awaits us? He no longer wanted anything, he was drawn to emptiness and often thought of death. Seeking answers, he read Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer; he wanted to know what Socrates, Solomon, Buddha had to say… He was going in circles, and his gaze stopped at the peasants: They drew courage from the simplest, blindest faith… He surrendered to devotion, regularly attending worship in a small village church, associating with pilgrims, but it didn’t take long for doubt to awaken in his heart. It was when, by order of the Holy Synod, people had to pray for victory over the enemy in the Russo-Turkish war, regardless of the Gospel that teaches to love one’s enemies! Little by little, he realized other parts of the Church service that contradicted Christ’s words – now all dogmas were being questioned. He decided to examine. He separated the true from the false Gospel and in order to be as close as possible to the original, he read it in Greek, ancient Hebrew, and Dutch (because he heard that the Dutch translation of the Bible was the best). He concluded that the Church is not in agreement with the teachings of the Gospel. The foundation of his moral system is the five commandments of Jesus from the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew – the Sermon on the Mount. He bases his ethics on the fourth commandment: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person! On the contrary, if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other cheek…”
Family and social responsibilities and the abundance in which he lived were becoming increasingly burdensome to him – it seemed to him that they were distancing him from his beliefs, and he sought solitude. It was even more difficult for him when he occasionally stayed in Moscow with his family from 1881 onwards, for the education of his grown children. He used these stays to better acquaint himself with the living conditions of the poor in the city. Dressed as a worker, he went with peasants to saw and split wood, and he- He hunted in the census and realized that the terrible moral and physical misery he saw could not be cured with money but with love.
“I want what doesn’t exist here, in this world. But it exists somewhere because I want it. Where?”
In the following years, many folk tales, dramas, and essays emerged from his pen. Each new work supported his own realizations, provoking strong reactions from the public. Due to censorship, his works could not be printed in Russia, so they spread through manuscripts and were translated and printed abroad. At the same time, he found it increasingly difficult to bear the circumstances in which he lived – wife, children, money, extravagance, visitors, eternal empty conversations. He tried to leave several times, but he would always return, agreeing to compromise. In 1892, he relinquished all his property, which his wife and children divided among themselves. The following years saw a great famine in Russia, and the people were literally dying. Tolstoy energetically participated in the construction of public with his entire family. In his essay “The Kingdom of God is Within You” written in 1893, he advocates for nonviolence, which strongly influenced Gandhi. He reminds people that their true duties in life do not stem from their social status, such as landowners, merchants, government officials, soldiers, or rulers, as all their actions derived from these duties are inevitably ephemeral and mortal. Moreover, maintaining a certain social position often requires acts of violence that are not in accordance with one’s conscience and humanity. Acting according to one’s conscience, in line with reason and heart, and always acknowledging the truth and acting in accordance with it, are the only true duties of a person and the only state in which a person is genuinely free. These duties arise from the position of being a being called into life by God’s will and which, always keeping in mind, can disappear at any moment leaving no trace. By not fulfilling his only life duty, a person misses the opportunity to act in accordance with the true meaning of his life.
In the conflict between the state and the spiritual fighters, Tolstoy, who recognized similarities between their teachings and his own, sided with them. Public opinion increasingly supported him, young people approached him on the street and expressed their admiration. Wherever he appeared, crowds of people would gather around him. They started calling him the “Second Tsar of Russia”.
“Do not react directly to any strong impression, but after you think about it, act decisively even if you are mistaken.”
In 1900, the novel “Resurrection” was published, on which he had been working intermittently for about ten years. Exhaustively preparing for this work, he visited prisons, spoke with convicts, and studied the workings of the judicial system. The result is an unrelenting indictment of the structure of society. In the modern society that struck Russia like lightning. Like in all his works, he doesn’t care about style in this one either: When someone has something to say, they must try to say it as clearly and simply as possible, and when they have nothing to say, it is best to remain silent. Chekhov wrote: “You read and see between the lines an eagle flying in the sky, who cares very little about the beauty of its feathers.”
Sharp criticism, like a surgical knife, did not bypass the Church either. Excommunication followed – in 1901, the Holy Synod issued a pastoral letter declaring that Tolstoy is no longer recognized as a member of the Church – until he repents. This caused protests throughout Russia, and Moscow itself was buzzing. He received hundreds of telegrams and letters, visitors and delegations came. His response was to formulate his own belief, which only caused a new wave of enthusiasm.
The following years were marked by great social turmoil, and for everything that happened, five continents awaited his word, wanting him to choose a side, but his response was: said is the true urgency that is beyond measure. During that time, Gandhi, Stanislavski, Edison, and many famous writers respectfully reached out to him.
During that time, his life at home became unbearable with Sophie, who had become obsessively possessive. On the night of October 28, 1910, he finally escapes from home, without a specific destination in mind. On his journey, he quickly fell ill with pneumonia and, after only a few days of suffering, he died on November 7 at the Astapovo train station.
He was buried in Jasna Poljana in the Zakaz forest, in a place he had chosen himself during his lifetime – a place where, as his brother Nikolaj had told him in his childhood, a record of achieving universal love was buried on a small green stick.
Tolstoy is an artist and philosopher who expresses thoughts through literature. And that is the greatest gift he left to humanity – great works of art, with their greatness lying in the sincerity of the thoughts they carry. Always in search of the truth, no matter what it means to speak it – he gave his all. Things need to be called by their names: The hero of my narrative, whom I adore with all the strength of my soul, whom I have strived to portray in all his beauty and who is always splendid in the past, present, and future, is – truth.