Tolstoy, Count Leo Nikolayevich 1828-1910
Russian writer, aesthetic philosopher, moralist and mystic

Tolstoy was born on the family estate of Yasnaya Polyana in Tula province, and was educated privately. He read law and oriental languages at Kazan University, but returned to his estate, which he inherited in 1847, without graduating. According to his own account, the young Tolstoy led a dissolute life in town and played the gentleman farmer. Finally, in 1851, he accompanied his elder brother Nikolai to the Caucasus, where he joined an artillery regiment and there began his literary career. His first published work, Istoria vcherashchnevo dnya (1851, 'An Account of Yesterday'), was followed by the remarkable autobiographical trilogy Detstvo (1852, 'Childhood'), Otrochestvo (1854, 'Boyhood') and Yunost (1856, 'Youth').

He received a commission at the outbreak of the Crimean War (1854), and commanded a battery during the defence of Sebastopol (1854-55). The horrors of war inspired Tales of Army Life and Sevastopolskiye rasskazy (1855-56, Eng trans Sebastopol, 1887), sketches which show the influence of Stendhal; afterwards he left the army, was welcomed into the literary circle in St Petersburg (1856), and travelled abroad. In 1862 he married Sophie Andreyevna Behrs and settled into domestic life, raising a family of 13 children.

He settled on his Volga estate, devoting himself to the duties of a progressive landlord and to writing his greatest work, Voinya i mir (1863-69, Eng trans War and Peace, 1866). This is both an epic and a domestic tale, a depiction of Russia's struggle, defeat and victory over Napoleon I, set against the fortunes of two notable families, the Rostovs and the Bolkonskis. The proud, shy, duty-conscious Prince Andrew and the direct, friendly, pleasure-loving but introspective, morally questing Pierre reflect the dualism in Tolstoy's own character. On his vivid description of military life Tolstoy mounts his conception of history, which demotes great men to mere creatures of circumstance and ascribes victory in battle to the confused chance events which make up the unpredictable fortunes of war. In Pierre's association with freemasonry, Tolstoy expressed his criticism of the established autocratic order.

His second great work, Anna Karenina (1874-76), in which the passion felt by a married woman for a young army officer has tragic consequences for her, stems from Tolstoy's personal crisis between the claims of the creative novelist and the propagation of his own ethical code. This conflict found further expression in Ispoved' (1884, Eng trans A Confession, 1885) and the dialectical pamphlets and stories such as Smert' Ivana Ilicha (1886, Eng trans The Death of Ivan Ilyitch, 1887), Kreutserova sonata (1889, Eng trans The Kreutzer Sonata, 1890) and V chom moya vera? (1884, Eng trans My Religion, 1885). Christianity is purged of its mysticism and transformed into a severe asceticism based on the doctrine of non-resistance to evil. Other works in this vein, Tsarstvo Bozhye vnutri vas (2 vols, 1893-94, Eng trans The Kingdom of God is within You, 1894), Khosyain i rabotnik (1894, Eng trans Master and Man, 1895), the play Plody prosveshcheniya (1889, Eng trans The Fruits of Enlightenment, 1891) and Voskreseniye (1899, Eng trans Resurrection, 1899), were considered so unorthodox that the Holy Synod excommunicated him (1901).

In Chto takoye iskusstvo? (1898, Eng trans What is Art?, 1898) Tolstoy argued that only simple works, such as the parables of the Bible, constitute great art. Everything sophisticated, stylized and detailed, such as his own great novels, he condemned as worthless. Eventually he gave up his material possessions to his wife, who refused to participate in his asceticism, and lived as a peasant under her roof. Domestic quarrels made him leave home secretly one October night, accompanied only by his youngest daughter Alexandra and his personal physician, to seek refuge elsewhere. He died of pneumonia in a siding at Astapovo railway station, refusing to the last to see his waiting wife.

Yasnaya Polyana became a place of pilgrimage for those who subscribed to his ethical doctrines. Mahatma Gandhi, who had corresponded with him, adopted the doctrine of non-resistance. But Tolstoy is best known as the consummate master of the psychological novel. Many of his works were illustrated by Boris Pasternak's father, Leonid.

Bibliography: A N Wilson, Tolstoy: A Biography (1988); I Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History (1953); A Maude, The Life of Tolstoy (1910).