Biography of ln. Brief biography of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy - childhood and adolescence, finding his place in life

In 1828 in the Yasnaya Polyana estate, on August 26, the future great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy was born. The family was well-born - his ancestor was a noble nobleman who received the count's title for his service to Tsar Peter. The mother was from the ancient noble family of the Volkonskys. Belonging to the privileged stratum of society influenced the behavior and thoughts of the writer throughout his life. A short biography of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy does not fully reveal the entire history of the ancient family of the family.

Serene life in Yasnaya Polyana

The writer's childhood was quite prosperous, despite the fact that he lost his mother early. Thanks to family stories, he kept her bright image in his memory. A short biography of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy testifies that his father was the embodiment of beauty and strength for the writer. He instilled in the boy a love for hound hunting, which was later described in detail in the novel War and Peace.

There was a close relationship with his older brother Nikolenka - he taught little Levushka different games and told him interesting stories. Tolstoy's first story, Childhood, contains many autobiographical memories of the writer's own childhood.

Youth

A serene joyful stay in Yasnaya Polyana was interrupted due to the death of his father. In 1837, the family was under the tutelage of an aunt. In this city, according to the short biography of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, the writer's youth passed. Here he entered the university in 1844 - first at the philosophy, and then at the law faculty. True, studies attracted him little, the student preferred various amusements and revelry more.

In this biography, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy characterizes him as a person who disdained people of the lower, non-aristocratic class. He denied history as a science - in his eyes it had no practical use. The writer retained the sharpness of his judgments throughout his life.

In the role of a landowner

In 1847, without graduating from the university, Tolstoy decides to return to Yasnaya Polyana and try to arrange the life of his serfs. The reality was in sharp contrast to the ideas of the writer. The peasants did not understand the master's intentions, and a short biography of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy describes his experience of farming as unsuccessful (the writer shared it in his story "The Morning of the Landowner"), as a result of which he leaves his estate.

The path of becoming a writer

The next few years, spent in St. Petersburg and Moscow, were not in vain for the future great prose writer. From 1847 to 1852, diaries are kept, in which Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy carefully verifies all his thoughts and reflections. A short biography tells that during the service in the Caucasus, work is being carried out in parallel on the story "Childhood", which will be published a little later in the magazine "Sovremennik". This marked the beginning of the further creative path of the great Russian writer.

Ahead of the writer awaits the creation of his great works "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina", and while he is honing his style, published in "Sovremennik" and basking in favorable reviews from critics.

Later years of creativity

In 1855, Tolstoy came to St. Petersburg for a short time, but literally a couple of months later he left him and settled in Yasnaya Polyana, opening a school there for peasant children. In 1862 he married Sophia Bers and was very happy in the early years.

In the years 1863-1869, the novel War and Peace was written and revised, which had little resemblance to the classic version. It lacks the traditional key elements of the time. Rather, they are present, but they are not key.

1877 - Tolstoy completed the novel "Anna Karenina", which repeatedly uses the technique of internal monologue.

Since the second half of the 60s, Tolstoy is experiencing which he managed to overcome only at the turn of the 1870s and 80s by a complete rethinking of his previous life. Then Tolstoy appears - his wife categorically did not accept his new views. The ideas of the late Tolstoy are similar to socialist doctrine, with the only difference that he was an opponent of the revolution.

In 1896-1904, Tolstoy finished his story, which was published after his death, which occurred in November 1910 at the Astapovo station of the Ryazan-Ural road.

One of the most famous writers and philosophers of the Russian Empire, he is considered an influential thinker in world history.

Childhood and youth

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 in the Tula province into a noble family. In early childhood, Leo lost his mother and the father and nannies were involved in raising all the children. But seven years after the loss of their mother, all the children became full orphans, having lost their father as well. Their closest relative, their aunt, became their guardian. The noble origin obliged Leo to study various languages ​​and science, he received education from private teachers. In 1843, the young man entered the Imperial Kazan University at the Faculty of Oriental Philology. However, Leo did not have success in studying another culture, he was forced to move to the legal direction. However, despite the change of faculty, the difficulties in studying the material that the educational institution provided did not disappear anywhere. Ultimately, Leo Tolstoy left the university in 1847 without receiving a diploma.

Passion for gambling

The first experience as a writer can be considered the diary of a young man, which he carefully filled out until the last days of his life. After leaving the university, the writer went to Moscow, where he planned to improve his knowledge of jurisprudence and re-test his strength in obtaining a diploma. However, having got involved in gambling, he was distracted from the primary task and spent long hours at the card table. Deciding to change the situation, the young man went to St. Petersburg, where the situation did not change, but only worsened. Having finally pulled himself together, Tolstoy passes exams for various types of law and passes them successfully, however, abandoning everything, he returns to his father's house. In 1849, Tolstoy opened a school for poor children where he taught students to read and write using his own primer.

Change of scenery, military service

Until 1851, the writer spent time gambling, studying at his school, and making small contributions to the novel Childhood. In the same year, his brother returned from military service, who, seeing not the most dignified way of life of his relative, invited him to become a military man. Hastily collecting things, Lev Nikolaevich went to the Caucasus. After passing the exams, he entered the service and spent a lot of time with the locals. Some of the people who were especially close to him in spirit in the future became prototypes for the heroes of the "Cossacks" narrative. Having made the decision to put everything on the line, Tolstoy sent the still unfinished manuscript of Childhood to the editorial office of Sovremennik, one of the most popular magazines of that time. The editor-in-chief was deeply impressed by the talent of the young writer. The resulting material was sent to print immediately after correction and soon flaunted on the shelves of many bookstores. It is noteworthy that Childhood was an autobiographical work of a writer, and despite all the tragedy of his early losses, he described his early years as sunny and full of joy moments.

Service in the Crimea. Completion of a military career

All this time, Lev served in the Caucasus and worked on new masterpieces of literature. After the war began in the Crimea, the young man went to the front line and completely devoted himself to the service of his fatherland. During the period spent in the thick of hostilities, the writer created such works as "Logging" and "Sevastopol in December 1854". Great advances in military affairs and a talent for writing good war stories made the perfect combination for moving up the military ladder. Despite this, the character of the writer and his special humor played a bad joke with him, and after writing several unsuccessful satirical poems, he left the service. Although everything was over with a military career, Lev Nikolaevich was not sad and completely devoted himself to the literary business. The literary community happily welcomed the new generation of writers, and Tolstoy was no exception. He wrote "Two Hussars" and "Youth", which caused an enthusiastic reaction from the public and critics.

The beginning of a black streak in life

Excessive attention, and sometimes outright impudence bothered the writer, and he decided to take a break and went on a journey. The first city visited by the writer was Paris. Filled with freedom and an extraordinary creative atmosphere, this city helped Lev Nikolaevich to open up and fall in love with literature again. However, his stay in this city was overshadowed by the political situation, Tolstoy did not accept blind worship of Napoleon and soon left Paris. His wanderings stretched across all of Europe: Germany, Italy, France inspired the creator to new feats. In the winter of 1858, the writer surprised everyone with his new brilliant story "Three Deaths". Soon the life of the writer was overshadowed by the bitterness of loss, his beloved brother died of tuberculosis. This loss led to a deep and prolonged depression, and as a result, Tolstoy went to a sanatorium to improve his health. Remoteness from secular life, delicious food and friendly locals contributed to the restoration of the writer's health.

Creation of world masterpieces

In 1863, one of the most famous works of the writer, War and Peace, was created. Readers are happy to accept this unique masterpiece, and the community of writers enthusiastically calls Tolstoy a harbinger of a new era. A surprisingly huge public interest was not only within the Russian Empire, but also beyond its borders, many public figures spoke flatteringly about the work of Leo. The writer's success was greatly influenced by his marriage to Sofya Andreevna. A practical and often more mature-minded spouse has repeatedly prevented the adoption of stupid and reckless decisions. The next stunning and tragic novel was Anna Karenina. In this work, one could feel the changes that took place in the most remote corners of the subconscious of the writer. Courage and unusual perception of the world around him allowed Tolstoy to become the first representative of the literary world who criticized Shakespeare.

Renunciation of Orthodoxy

Towards the end of the 70s, the writer began a creative crisis. Everything he did did not bring him any moral satisfaction. Raising children and writing new novels faded into the background. Even his wife, who has always been an outlet for him, began to annoy him and cause bouts of anger. In the search for truth and a solution to his inner gravities, Tolstoy comes to religion. He is deeply interested in Bible study and writes A Study in Dogmatic Theology. Smoothly, his interest moves from the study of religion to the study of religious art. Raphael, Michelangelo, as well as Dante and Beethoven come under a wave of criticism and misunderstanding on the part of the writer. Such a deep penetration into religion led to a complete denial of the judgments carried by the Bible. Church leaders condemned the harshly negative behavior on the part of Tolstoy, and he ultimately excommunicated. In an attempt to explain his decision to those around him, the writer created a "Reply to the Synod" in which he describes his thoughts about church beliefs. The public, being deeply religious, reacted very negatively to this type of activity and many insults were sent to the writer.

last years of life

Not wanting to stay in his homeland any longer, Tolstoy set off on a journey. He did not have an end point, he just decided to get on the train and go, glancing into the Caucasus and Bulgaria on the way. However, his plans were interrupted by illness, which was exacerbated by the stress caused by the long hours spent on the road. When the upper circles of society and his relatives learned about Lev Nikolaevich's illness, a commotion began in the country. In an attempt to return the writer to Orthodoxy, a priest was sent, who was not allowed to see the dying man. The family was also not admitted to Tolstoy because of their religious views. Until the end, the writer was true to himself and continued to make plans. Many ideas for creativity were conceived by him, about some, while still being able to write, he mentioned in his diary. In 1910, on November 20, Lev Nikolaevich died from a lack of air entering the heart. The world plunged into mourning, thousands of people mourned the great man, not only at home, but also abroad. Many admirers of his work staged demonstrations and marches in memory of the great writer.

• As a child, Tolstoy heard from his brother Nikolai the legend about the "green stick" - as soon as it was found on the edge of a ravine in Yasnaya Polyana, there would be no more wars and deaths on the land. This childish play greatly influenced Tolstoy's personality. The idea of ​​universal happiness and love can be traced in all the writer's work, philosophical works and publications. In his declining years, Lev Nikolaevich asked to be buried without any honors at the edge of the ravine - where, as a child, he and his brother were looking for a "green stick".
• An interesting fact is that Sofya Andreevna (Tolstoy's wife) copied almost all the works of her husband in order to send the manuscripts to the publishing house. This was necessary because no editor would have deciphered the great writer's handwriting.
• He was fluent in English, French and German. He read in Italian, Polish, Serbian and Czech. He studied Greek and Church Slavonic, Latin, Ukrainian and Tatar, Hebrew and Turkish, Dutch and Bulgarian.
• An interesting fact about Tolstoy lies in the fact that the count, by the end of his life, developed several serious principles of his world outlook. The main ones boil down to non-resistance to evil by violence, denial of private property and complete disregard of any authority, be it church, state or some other.

Awards:

• Order of Saint Anne
• Medal "For the Defense of Sevastopol"
• Medal "In Memory of the War of 1853-1856"
• Medal "In Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Defense of Sevastopol"

Leo Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 in the Tula province (Russia) into a family belonging to the noble class. In the 1860s, he wrote his first major novel, War and Peace. In 1873, Tolstoy began work on the second of his most famous books, Anna Karenina.

He continued to write fiction throughout the 1880s and 1890s. One of his most successful later works is The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Tolstoy died on November 20, 1910 in Astapovo, Russia.

The first years of life

On September 9, 1828, the future writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born in Yasnaya Polyana (Tula province, Russia). He was the fourth child in a large noble family. In 1830, when Tolstoy's mother, nee Princess Volkonskaya, died, his father's cousin took over the care of the children. Their father, Count Nikolai Tolstoy, died seven years later, and their aunt was appointed guardian. After the death of aunt Leo Tolstoy, his brothers and sisters moved to their second aunt in Kazan. Although Tolstoy experienced many losses at an early age, he later idealized his childhood memories in his work.

It is important to note that primary education in the biography of Tolstoy was received at home, lessons were given to him by French and German teachers. In 1843 he entered the Faculty of Oriental Languages ​​at the Imperial Kazan University. Tolstoy did not succeed in his studies - low grades forced him to move to an easier law faculty. Further difficulties in his studies led Tolstoy to eventually leave the Imperial Kazan University in 1847 without a degree. He returned to his parents' estate, where he was going to start farming. However, his undertaking ended in failure - he was too often absent, leaving for Tula and Moscow. What he really excelled at was keeping his own diary - it was this lifelong habit that inspired Leo Tolstoy for most of his works.

Tolstoy was fond of music, his favorite composers were Schumann, Bach, Chopin, Mozart, Mendelssohn. Lev Nikolaevich could play their works for several hours a day.

Once, the elder brother of Tolstoy, Nikolai, during his army leave, came to visit Lev, and persuaded his brother to join the army as a cadet to the south, to the Caucasus mountains, where he served. After serving as a cadet, Leo Tolstoy was transferred to Sevastopol in November 1854, where he fought in the Crimean War until August 1855.

Early publications

During his years as a cadet in the army, Tolstoy had a lot of free time. During quiet periods, he worked on an autobiographical story called Childhood. In it, he wrote about his favorite childhood memories. In 1852, Tolstoy submitted the story to Sovremennik, the most popular magazine of the time. The story was happily accepted, and it became Tolstoy's first publication. Since that time, critics have put him on a par with already famous writers, among whom were Ivan Turgenev (with whom Tolstoy made friends), Ivan Goncharov, Alexander Ostrovsky and others.

After completing Childhood, Tolstoy began writing about his daily life at an army outpost in the Caucasus. Started in the army years, the work "Cossacks", he finished only in 1862, after he had already left the army.

Surprisingly, Tolstoy managed to continue writing during the active battles in the Crimean War. During this time he wrote Boyhood (1854), a sequel to Childhood, the second book in Tolstoy's autobiographical trilogy. At the height of the Crimean War, Tolstoy expressed his views on the striking contradictions of the war through the trilogy of Sevastopol Tales. In the second book of Sevastopol Tales, Tolstoy experimented with a relatively new technique: part of the story is presented as a narrative from the person of a soldier.

After the end of the Crimean War, Tolstoy left the army and returned to Russia. Arriving home, the author was very popular on the literary scene of St. Petersburg.

Stubborn and arrogant, Tolstoy refused to belong to any particular school of thought. Declaring himself an anarchist, he left for Paris in 1857. Once there, he lost all his money and was forced to return home to Russia. He also managed to publish Youth, the third part of an autobiographical trilogy, in 1857.

Returning to Russia in 1862, Tolstoy published the first of 12 issues of the thematic magazine Yasnaya Polyana. In the same year he married the daughter of a doctor named Sofya Andreevna Bers.

Major novels

Living in Yasnaya Polyana with his wife and children, Tolstoy spent most of the 1860s working on his first famous novel, War and Peace. Part of the novel was first published in the Russian Bulletin in 1865 under the title "Year 1805". By 1868, he had released three more chapters. A year later, the novel was completely finished. Both critics and the public have argued about the historical justice of the Napoleonic Wars in the novel, combined with the development of the stories of its thoughtful and realistic, yet fictional characters. The novel is also unique in that it includes three long satirical essays on the laws of history. Among the ideas that Tolstoy also tries to convey in this novel is the conviction that a person's position in society and the meaning of human life are mainly derivatives of his daily activities.

After the success of War and Peace in 1873, Tolstoy began work on his second most famous book, Anna Karenina. It was based in part on real events during the war between Russia and Turkey. Like War and Peace, this book describes some biographical events from the life of Tolstoy himself, this is especially noticeable in the romantic relationship between the characters of Kitty and Levin, which is said to be reminiscent of Tolstoy's courtship of his own wife.

The first lines of the book "Anna Karenina" are among the most famous: "All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina was published in parts from 1873 to 1877, and was highly acclaimed by the public. The royalties received for the novel rapidly enriched the writer.

Conversion

Despite the success of Anna Karenina, after the completion of the novel, Tolstoy experienced a spiritual crisis and was depressed. The next stage in the biography of Leo Tolstoy is characterized by the search for the meaning of life. The writer first turned to the Russian Orthodox Church, but did not find answers to his questions there. He concluded that Christian churches were corrupt and, instead of an organized religion, promoted their own beliefs. He decided to express these beliefs by founding a new publication in 1883 called The Mediator.
As a result, Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church for his non-standard and conflicting spiritual beliefs. He was even watched by the secret police. When Tolstoy, led by his new conviction, wanted to give away all his money and give up everything that was superfluous, his wife was categorically against it. Not wanting to escalate the situation, Tolstoy reluctantly agreed to a compromise: he transferred the copyright to his wife and, apparently, all deductions for his work until 1881.

Late fiction

In addition to his religious treatises, Tolstoy continued to write fiction throughout the 1880s and 1890s. Among the genres of his later works were moral stories and realistic fiction. One of the most successful among his later works was the story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", written in 1886. The main character is struggling to fight the death looming over him. In short, Ivan Ilyich is horrified by the realization that he wasted his life on trifles, but this realization comes to him too late.

In 1898, Tolstoy wrote Father Sergius, a work of fiction in which he criticizes the beliefs he developed after his spiritual transformation. The following year, he wrote his third voluminous novel, Resurrection. The work received good reviews, but this success hardly matched the level of recognition of his previous novels. Other later works of Tolstoy are essays on art, a satirical play called The Living Corpse, written in 1890, and a story called Hadji Murad (1904), which was discovered and published after his death. In 1903, Tolstoy wrote a short story "After the Ball", which was first published after his death, in 1911.

Old age

During his later years, Tolstoy reaped the benefits of international recognition. However, he was still struggling to reconcile his spiritual beliefs with the tensions he created in his married life. His wife not only did not agree with his teachings, she did not approve of his students, who regularly visited Tolstoy in the family estate. In an effort to avoid the growing discontent of his wife, in October 1910, Tolstoy and his youngest daughter Alexandra embarked on a pilgrimage. Alexandra was the doctor for her elderly father during the trip. Trying not to flaunt their privacy, they traveled incognito, hoping to evade unnecessary inquiries, but sometimes to no avail.

Death and legacy

Unfortunately, the pilgrimage proved too burdensome for the aging writer. In November 1910, the head of the small Astapovo railway station opened the doors of his house for Tolstoy so that the sick writer could rest. Shortly thereafter, on November 20, 1910, Tolstoy died. He was buried in his family estate, Yasnaya Polyana, where Tolstoy lost so many people close to him.

To this day, Tolstoy's novels are considered some of the finest achievements of literary art. War and Peace is often cited as the greatest novel ever written. In the modern scientific community, Tolstoy is widely recognized as the owner of the gift of describing the unconscious motives of character, the refinement of which he defended, emphasizing the role of everyday actions in determining the character and goals of people.

Chronological table

Quest

We have prepared an interesting quest about the life of Lev Nikolaevich - go through.

Biography test

How well do you know Tolstoy's short biography - check your knowledge:

Biography score

New feature! The average rating this biography received. Show rating

Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on August 28, 1828 on the estate of his father, Yasnaya Polyana, in the Tula province. Tolstoy is an old Russian noble surname; one member of this family, the head of the Petrine secret police Peter Tolstoy, was promoted to graphs. Tolstoy's mother is the nee Princess Volkonskaya. His father and mother served as prototypes for Nikolai Rostov and Princess Marya in War and peace(see summary and analysis of this novel). They belonged to the highest Russian aristocracy, and their tribal belonging to the upper stratum of the ruling class sharply distinguishes Tolstoy from other writers of his time. He never forgot about her (even when this awareness of him became completely negative), always remained an aristocrat and kept aloof from the intelligentsia.

Leo Tolstoy's childhood and adolescence passed between Moscow and Yasnaya Polyana, in a large family with several brothers. He left unusually vivid memories of his early entourage, of his relatives and servants, in wonderful autobiographical notes that he wrote for his biographer P.I.Biryukov. His mother died when he was two years old, his father when he was nine years old. His further upbringing was in charge of his aunt, Mademoiselle Ergolskaya, who presumably served as a prototype for Sonya in War and peace.

Leo Tolstoy in his youth. Photo of 1848

In 1844 Tolstoy entered Kazan University, where he first studied oriental languages, and then law, but in 1847 he left the university without receiving a diploma. In 1849 he settled in Yasnaya Polyana, where he tried to become useful to his peasants, but soon realized that his efforts were not useful because he lacked knowledge. In his student years and after leaving the university, he, as was usual among young people of his class, led a hectic life filled with the pursuit of pleasures - wine, cards, women - somewhat similar to the life that Pushkin led before exile to the south. But Tolstoy was unable to accept life as it is with a light heart. From the very beginning, his diary (existing since 1847) testifies to an unquenchable thirst for mental and moral justification of life, a thirst that has forever remained the guiding force of his thought. The same diary was the first experience in developing that technique of psychological analysis, which later became Tolstoy's main literary weapon. His first attempt to try himself in a more purposeful and creative kind of writing dates back to 1851.

The tragedy of Leo Tolstoy. Documentary

In the same year, disgusted with his empty and useless Moscow life, he went to the Caucasus to the Terek Cossacks, where he entered the garrison artillery as a cadet (cadet means volunteer, volunteer, but of noble origin). The following year (1852) he finished his first story ( Childhood) and sent it to Nekrasov for publication in Contemporary... Nekrasov immediately accepted it and wrote about it to Tolstoy in very encouraging tones. The story was an immediate success, and Tolstoy immediately rose to prominence in literature.

On the battery, Lev Tolstoy led a rather easy and unobtrusive life of a cadet with funds; the seating area was also pleasant. He had a lot of free time, most of which he spent hunting. In those few battles in which he had to participate, he showed himself very well. In 1854 he received an officer's rank and, at his request, was transferred to the army that fought against the Turks in Wallachia (see the Crimean War), where he took part in the siege of Silistria. In the autumn of the same year, he joined the Sevastopol garrison. There Tolstoy saw a real war. He participated in the defense of the famous Fourth Bastion and in the battle on the Black River, and ridiculed the bad command in a satirical song - his only composition in verse we know of. In Sevastopol, he wrote the famous Sevastopol stories that appeared in Contemporary when the siege of Sevastopol was still going on, which greatly increased interest in their author. Soon after leaving Sevastopol, Tolstoy went on vacation to St. Petersburg and Moscow, and the next year he left the army.

Only during these years, after the Crimean War, did Tolstoy communicate with the literary world. The writers of St. Petersburg and Moscow greeted him as an outstanding master and fellow. As he later admitted, his success flattered his vanity and pride very much. But he did not get along with writers. He was too aristocratic to please this semi-bohemian intelligentsia. For him, they were too awkward plebeians, they were indignant that he clearly prefers light to their company. On this occasion, he and Turgenev exchanged sharp epigrams. On the other hand, his very mentality was not to the hearts of progressive Westernizers. He did not believe in progress or culture. In addition, his displeasure with the literary world increased due to the fact that his new works disappointed them. Everything he wrote after Childhood, did not show any movement towards innovation and development, and Tolstoy's critics failed to understand the experimental value of these imperfect works (see for more details in the article The Early Work of Tolstoy). All this contributed to his termination of relations with the literary world. The culmination was a noisy quarrel with Turgenev (1861), whom he challenged to a duel, and then apologized for this. This whole story is very typical, and in it the character of Leo Tolstoy manifested itself, with his hidden embarrassment and sensitivity to resentment, with his intolerance of the supposed superiority of other people. The only writers with whom he maintained friendly relations were the reactionary and "land lord" Fet (in whose house a quarrel with Turgenev broke out) and a democrat-Slavophile Strakhov- people who did not at all sympathize with the main direction of the then progressive thought.

Years 1856-1861 Tolstoy spent between St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yasnaya Polyana and abroad. He traveled abroad in 1857 (and again - in 1860-1861) and brought out from there aversion to selfishness and materialism of European bourgeois civilization. In 1859 he opened a school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana and in 1862 began publishing a pedagogical journal Yasnaya Polyana, in which he surprised the progressive world with the assertion that it is not the intellectuals who should teach the peasants, but rather the peasants of the intellectuals. In 1861, he assumed the post of conciliator, a post made to oversee the implementation of the emancipation of the peasants. But the unsatisfied thirst for moral strength continued to torment him. He abandoned the revelry of his youth and began to think about marriage. In 1856 he made his first unsuccessful attempt to marry (to Arsenyeva). In 1860, he was deeply shocked by the death of his brother Nikolai - this was his first encounter with the inevitable reality of death. Finally, in 1862, after long hesitation (he was convinced that since he was old - thirty-four years old! - and ugly, no woman would love him) Tolstoy proposed to Sofya Andreevna Bers, and it was accepted. They got married in September of the same year.

Marriage is one of the two main landmarks in Tolstoy's life; the second milestone was his appeal... He was always pursued by one concern - how to justify his life before his conscience and achieve stable moral well-being. When he was a bachelor, he hesitated between two opposing desires. The first was a passionate and hopeless striving for that whole and unreasoning, "natural" state that he found among the peasants and especially among the Cossacks in whose village he lived in the Caucasus: this state does not strive for self-justification, for it is free from self-awareness, this justification demanding. He tried to find such an unquestioning state in conscious submission to animal impulses, in the lives of his friends and (and here he was closest to achieving it) in his favorite pastime - hunting. But he was unable to be satisfied with this forever, and another equally passionate desire - to find a rational justification for life - led him aside every time he felt that he had already achieved self-satisfaction. Marriage was for him the gateway to a more stable and lasting "natural state." It was the self-justification of life and the solution to a painful problem. Family life, unreasoning acceptance and submission to it, now became his religion.

For the first fifteen years of his married life, Tolstoy lived in a blissful state of contented vegetation, with a pacified conscience and a pacified need for a higher rational justification. The philosophy of this plant-based conservatism is expressed with tremendous creative power in War and peace(see summary and analysis of this novel). In family life, he was extremely happy. Sofya Andreevna, almost still a girl, when he married her, easily became what he wanted to make her; he explained to her his new philosophy, and she was her indestructible stronghold and constant guardian, which eventually led to the disintegration of the family. The wife of the writer turned out to be the ideal wife, mother and mistress of the house. In addition, she became a devoted literary assistant to her husband - everyone knows that she rewrote seven times War and peace from the beginning to the end. She gave birth to many sons and daughters to Tolstoy. She did not have a personal life: she all dissolved in family life.

Thanks to Tolstoy's reasonable management of estates (Yasnaya Polyana was just a place of residence; income was brought by a large trans-Volga estate) and the sale of his works, the family's fortune increased, as did the family itself. But Tolstoy, although absorbed and satisfied with his self-justified life, although he glorified it with unsurpassed artistic force in his best novel, still was not able to completely dissolve in family life, as his wife dissolved. "Life in Art" also did not absorb him as much as his fellows. The worm of moral thirst, though reduced to a tiny size, never died. Tolstoy was constantly worried about the questions and requirements of morality. In 1866 he defended (unsuccessfully) before a military court a soldier accused of hitting an officer. In 1873 he published articles on public education, on the basis of which an astute critic Mikhailovsky managed to predict the further development of his ideas.

Role and place in literature

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is a giant of Russian and world writers. His name is familiar to every educated person in many countries. He worked in various fields: journalism, enlightenment, philosophy, religion. Thanks to his merits, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Origins and early years

Leo Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 in Russia, in the Tula province. His family came from a noble family. The future writer was a representative of the count's branch of the Tolstoy family, which began with the Petrine associate P.A. Tolstoy. Among the relatives of Leo there were many aristocratic nobility. It is interesting that A.K. Tolstoy was a second cousin to Leo Tolstoy, and Leo Tolstoy was brought together with A. Pushkin by a common ancestor - Admiral I. Golovin, who helped Peter I to create a national fleet.

Leo was already the fourth child of his parents. His father's name was Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy. He was an educated man, adhered to convictions that did not allow him to serve under Nicholas I. But in order not to end up in a hole in debt, Nicholas agreed to bureaucratic service. Also, in order to improve his financial situation, he enters into a profitable marriage with Princess Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya. However, their family life was successful, perhaps partly because Nikolai Ilyich adhered to the principle: to live an independent life with family joys. Unfortunately, Tolstoy lost his parents early. He was brought up by guardians along with brothers and sisters. The future writer treated his father's sister, Pelageya Yushkova, with special warmth. He called her his kind aunt.

Although Leo experienced many losses in childhood, later the author recalled the early years as the best in his works.

Education

Tolstoy received his first education, studying at home with hired teachers, among whom were Germans and French.

In 1843, Leo entered the Imperial Kazan University, where he studied for some time at the Faculty of Oriental Languages. But due to poor progress, he moved to an easier faculty - law. However, even here Tolstoy did not succeed, so in 1847 he left the educational institution.

After failures in his studies, Tolstoy goes to the family estate and tries to farm. And again nothing comes out. But a series of failures taught him to keep a diary, and this habit will then come in handy in his literary activity.

On the advice of his brother, Leo goes into the army and becomes a cadet. In 1854 he was sent to Sevastopol, where he became a participant in the Crimean War.

Creation

During his service as a cadet, Tolstoy began to write a lot, as he had a lot of free time. He worked on his first autobiographical story, Childhood. In 1852, the author sent the work to the Sovremennik magazine, where it was published. The first publication brought Tolstoy his first accolades.

Tolstoy knew how to write under any circumstances, even during his participation in the Crimean War. What he saw in the war became the theme for many of his works.

Because of his stubborn nature, Tolstoy never joined any philosophical school and went exclusively his own way in literature.

Major works

War and Peace is the author's first well-known novel. He worked on it when he was already living on the Yasnaya Polyana estate with his wife and children. An excerpt from the novel was published in the Russian Bulletin in 1865. In 1869 Tolstoy completed his work. The novel caused a lot of discussions, but it definitely brought success to the author. Tolstoy's main idea was to show the dependence of a person's fate on his daily life.

In 1873, Leo Tolstoy wrote the novel Anna Karenina. The author includes a historical event in the novel - the Russian-Turkish war and autobiographical moments (the hero Levin seems to have been written off from Tolstoy himself). The work was published in parts from 1873 to 1877. The novel "Anna Karenina" brought recognition and high fees to Tolstoy.

Last years

In the last 30 years of his life, Leo Tolstoy positioned himself as a spiritual and religious leader. He promoted a non-violent way of confronting evil, which was similar to the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi.

In 1910, Tolstoy went on a pilgrimage with his daughter. However, this negatively affected his health and in the same year he was gone.

Chronological table (by dates)

Interesting facts from the life of the writer

• In addition to serious works, L. Tolstoy created the "ABC" for children.
• His titanic work "War and Peace" the author sometimes rashly called "verbose rubbish."
• Tolstoy had the generic title of count.
• Leo Tolstoy tried to achieve success in high life, he loved to play cards.
• The writer sharply criticized Shakespeare's work.

Leo Tolstoy Museum

State Museum of L.N. Tolstoy is a literary museum founded in 1911 by members of the Tolstoy society.