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Leo Tolstoy

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy[note 1] (/ˈtlstɔɪ, ˈtɒl-/;[1] Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой,[note 2] IPA: [ˈlʲef nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ tɐlˈstoj] ; 9 September [O.S. 28 August] 1828 – 20 November [O.S. 7 November] 1910),[2] usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential authors of all time.[3][4] He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909.

"Tolstoy" and "Lev Tolstoy" redirect here. For other uses, see Tolstoy (disambiguation) and Lev Tolstoy (disambiguation).

Leo Tolstoy
Лев Толстой

(1828-09-09)9 September 1828
Yasnaya Polyana, Tula Governorate, Russian Empire

20 November 1910(1910-11-20) (aged 82)
Astapovo, Ryazan Governorate, Russian Empire

Yasnaya Polyana

  • Writer
  • religious thinker

Modern

1847–1910

(m. 1862)

14

Born into an aristocratic family, Tolstoy's notable works include the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1878),[5] often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction,[2] and two of the greatest books of all time.[3][4] He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852–1856), and Sevastopol Sketches (1855), based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. His fiction includes dozens of short stories such as "After the Ball" (1911), and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), Family Happiness (1859) and Hadji Murad (1912). He also wrote plays and essays concerning philosophical, moral and religious themes.


In the 1870s, Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work Confession (1882). His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist.[2] His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), had a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi,[6] Martin Luther King Jr.[7] and Ludwig Wittgenstein.[8] He also became a dedicated advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George, which he incorporated into his writing, particularly in his novel Resurrection (1899).


Tolstoy received praise from countless authors and critics, both during his lifetime and after. Virginia Woolf called Tolstoy "the greatest of all novelists",[9] and Gary Saul Morson referred to War and Peace as the greatest of all novels.[10] Tolstoy never having won a Nobel Prize was a major Nobel Prize controversy, and remains one.[11][12]

(1863–1947), composer and ethnomusicologist

Count Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy

(1864–1950), wife of Mikhail Sergeevich Sukhotin

Countess Tatyana Lvovna Tolstaya

(1866–1933), writer

Count Ilya Lvovich Tolstoy

(1869–1945), writer and sculptor

Count Lev Lvovich Tolstoy

Countess Maria Lvovna Tolstaya (1871–1906), wife of

Nikolai Leonidovich Obolensky

Count Peter Lvovich Tolstoy (1872–1873), died in infancy

Count Nikolai Lvovich Tolstoy (1874–1875), died in infancy

Countess Varvara Lvovna Tolstaya (1875–1875), died in infancy

Count Andrei Lvovich Tolstoy (1877–1916), served in the

Russo-Japanese War

Count Michael Lvovich Tolstoy (1879–1944)

Count Alexei Lvovich Tolstoy (1881–1886)

(1884–1979)

Countess Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya

Count Ivan Lvovich Tolstoy (1888–1895)

The death of his brother Nikolay in 1860 had an impact on Tolstoy, and led him to a desire to marry.[21] On 23 September 1862, Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs, who was sixteen years his junior and the daughter of a court physician. She was called Sonya, the Russian diminutive of Sofia, by her family and friends.[30] They had 13 children, eight of whom survived childhood:[31]


The marriage was marked from the outset by sexual passion and emotional insensitivity when Tolstoy, on the eve of their marriage, gave her his diaries detailing his extensive sexual past and the fact that one of the serfs on his estate had borne him a son.[30] Even so, their early married life was happy and allowed Tolstoy much freedom and the support system to compose War and Peace and Anna Karenina with Sonya acting as his secretary, editor, and financial manager. Sonya was copying and hand-writing his epic works time after time. Tolstoy would continue editing War and Peace and had to have clean final drafts to be delivered to the publisher.[30][32]


However, their later life together has been described by A.N. Wilson as one of the unhappiest in literary history. Tolstoy's relationship with his wife deteriorated as his beliefs became increasingly radical. This saw him seeking to reject his inherited and earned wealth, including the renunciation of the copyrights on his earlier works.


Some members of the Tolstoy family left Russia in the aftermath of the 1905 Russian Revolution, or after the establishment of the Soviet Union following the 1917 October Revolution, and many of Leo Tolstoy's relatives and descendants today live in Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and the United States. Tolstoy's son, Count Lev Lvovich Tolstoy, settled in Sweden and married a Swedish woman, and their descendants with family names including Tolstoy, Paus and Ceder still live in Sweden. The Paus branch of the family is also closely related to Henrik Ibsen.[33] Leo Tolstoy's last surviving grandchild, Countess Tatiana Tolstoy-Paus, died in 2007 at Herresta manor in Sweden, which is owned by Tolstoy's descendants.[34] Swedish writer Daria Paus and jazz singer Viktoria Tolstoy are among Leo Tolstoy's Swedish descendants.[35]


One of his great-great-grandsons, Vladimir Tolstoy (born 1962), has been a director of the Yasnaya Polyana museum since 1994 and an adviser to the President of Russia on cultural affairs since 2012.[36][37] Ilya Tolstoy's great-grandson, Pyotr Tolstoy, is a well-known Russian journalist and TV presenter as well as a State Duma deputy since 2016. His cousin Fyokla Tolstaya (born Anna Tolstaya in 1971), daughter of the acclaimed Soviet Slavist Nikita Tolstoy (ru) (1923–1996), is also a Russian journalist, TV and radio host.[38]

Critical appraisal by other authors

Tolstoy's contemporaries paid him lofty tributes. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who died thirty years before Tolstoy, admired and was delighted by Tolstoy's novels (and, conversely, Tolstoy also admired Dostoyevsky's work).[48] Gustave Flaubert, on reading a translation of War and Peace, exclaimed, "What an artist and what a psychologist!" Anton Chekhov, who often visited Tolstoy at his country estate, wrote, "When literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone. What he does serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature." The 19th-century British poet and critic Matthew Arnold opined that "A novel by Tolstoy is not a work of art but a piece of life."[2] Isaac Babel said that "if the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy."[2]


Later novelists continued to appreciate Tolstoy's art, but sometimes also expressed criticism. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, "I am attracted by his earnestness and by his power of detail, but I am repelled by his looseness of construction and by his unreasonable and impracticable mysticism."[49] Virginia Woolf declared him "the greatest of all novelists."[2] James Joyce noted that, "He is never dull, never stupid, never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical!" Thomas Mann wrote of Tolstoy's seemingly guileless artistry: "Seldom did art work so much like nature." Vladimir Nabokov heaped superlatives upon The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Anna Karenina; he questioned, however, the reputation of War and Peace, and sharply criticized Resurrection and The Kreutzer Sonata. However, Nabokov called Tolstoy the "greatest Russian writer of prose fiction".[50] Critic Harold Bloom called Hadji Murat "my personal touchstone for the sublime in prose fiction, to me the best story in the world."[51] When William Faulkner was asked to list what he thought were the three greatest novels, he replied: "Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, and Anna Karenina".[9] Critic Gary Saul Morson referred to War and Peace as the greatest of all novels.[10]

Anarchism and religion

Christian vegetarianism

Leo Tolstoy bibliography

Leo Tolstoy and Theosophy

List of peace activists

Tolstoyan movement

Henry David Thoreau

War & Peace (2016 TV series)

Bayley, John (1997). . Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-07463-0744-1.

Leo Tolstoy

Bloom, Harold, ed. (2009) [2003]. . Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-14381-1328-9.

Leo Tolstoy

Dillon, Emile Joseph (1934). . Hutchinson.

Count Leo Tolstoy: A New Portrait

Moulin, Daniel (2014). . Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-14725-0484-5.

Leo Tolstoy

Rowe, William W. (1986). . Twayne Publishers. ISBN 978-08057-6623-3.

Leo Tolstoy

Simmons, Ernest Joseph (1946). . Little, Brown and Company.

Leo Tolstoy

Zorin, Andrei (2020). . Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-17891-4256-3.

Leo Tolstoy

Craraft, James. Two Shining Souls: Jane Addams, Leo Tolstoy, and the Quest for Global Peace (Lanham: Lexington, 2012). 179 pp.

Lednicki, Waclaw (April 1947). . The Slavonic and East European Review. 25 (65).

"Tolstoy through American eyes"

Leon, Derrick (1944). Tolstoy His Life and Work. London: Routledge.

Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

Trotsky's 1908 tribute to Leo Tolstoy

by Aylmer Maude, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1911 at Internet Archive

The Life of Tolstoy: Later years

by Robert Hunter, The Macmillan Company, 1919 at Wikiquote

Why We Fail as Christians

by Robert Hunter, The Macmillan Company, 1919 at Google Books

Why we fail as Christians

at Internet Archive

The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy (28 volumes published by Dana Estes & Company

at Curlie

Leo Tolstoy

at Standard Ebooks

Works by Leo Tolstoy in eBook form

at Project Gutenberg

Works by Leo Tolstoy

at Internet Archive

Works by or about Leo Tolstoy

at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Works by Leo Tolstoy

at the Internet Book List

Leo Tolstoy

open digital version of 90 volumes of Tolstoy works

Online project (readingtolstoy.ru) to create

in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Newspaper clippings about Leo Tolstoy

(1911). "Tolstoy, Leo" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 1053–1061.

Wright, Charles Theodore Hagberg

(Page on Russian Wikipedia), Tolstoy's only known musical composition.

Waltz in F major