The Life of Russia's Greatest Realist Writer
 
 

~Tolstoy's home Yasnaya Polyana









Leo Tolstoy one of the worlds greatest realist writers was born to Nikolai llyich Tolstoy and Marya Nikolaevitch Volkonski on his family's estate, Yasnaya Polyana in Russia.Leo was brought up in the Russian aristocracy, but despite his wealth he maintained a fairly regular childhood filled with all the wonders of the forests around him and the company of his nine siblings.Yet his mothers', fathers', and grandmothers' death all within a very short expanse of time would plague him, and throughout his writing you can see the contrasts of life and death.  At the age of nine Leo's family moved frome their estate, Yasnaya Polyana, to the city of Moscow.Upon arriving their Leo was stricken with the place for it was not a lush forest haven like Yasnaya Polyana, but a dirty bustling metropolis. Also shortly after the move is when his father was murdered. After this the children  were orphaned,(Leo mother had died when he was two) and went to live with an aunt in Kazan (Russia). Leo did very little with his life while in residence at Kazan and was semi-obssessed with suffering and enduring pain. For he believed that " if one is too endure suffering they can never be happy". Leo also was a self conscience child and found his brooding features horrid and would pray to god to make him as good looking as his older brother.  After about four years time of no direction and social bewilderment Leo's aunt finally pressured him at 16 into taking a university entrance exam in which he passed.He was going to receive the level of education and stimulus that he had been yearning first studying langauges then law. Tolstoy was rather shy and his social differences distanced him from others. Women often found him boring and impish, and he had few close friends one of which was Dmitiri Dyakov. Dyakov and Tolstoy would talk on political, social and religious issues that would intrigue him for years to come. He often in old age he would recall his conversations with Dmitiri. Also Tolstoy was a rather promiscuous man and slept with many women, his moral and sexual beliefs constantly conflicting, this all stemming from when his brothers took him to a brothel in which he would lose his virginity;this had a profound effect on him.  Tolstoy left university influenced by the writings of the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. He had become dissatisfied with formal study and in 1847 left without a degree and returned to Yasnaya Polyana for solitude and also tried freeing the serfs that worked the land their, but failing he moved again to Moscow in which he developed a strict gambling habit.  Tolstoy moved to St. Petersburg and because his gambling debts were so immense he was forced to sell parts of Yasnaya Polyana, log his forests and sell his own watch. The virtous life Tolstoy seeks was not his reality and he spent many nights drinking his life away. Yet two years later he  enlisted in the military with his brother and is transfered to Caucuses to fight the cossacks. During this time he wrote between battles he wrote the novels "The Cossacks" "Boyhood", "Childhood" and "Youth". After the war Tolstoy returned to St. Petersburg and became interested in the welfare of the poor, he even opened up a village school at Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy became interested in the fundamentals of education. In 1852 Tolstoy married novelist Sonya (Sofya) Andreyevna Bers, a member of a cultured Moscow family she later became his secretary and bore him 13 children. In the next 15 years he raised a large family, successfully managed his estate, and wrote his two greatest novels, War and Peace (1865-69) and Anna Karenina (1875-77), along with these Tolstoy wrote various plays, philosophical and political essays and short stories. Yet After writing these two works Tolstoy started to see himself more as a sage and moral leader than an artist. In 1884 left his home. He gave up his estate to his family, and tried to live as a poor, celibate commoner. Attracted by Tolstoy's writings, Yasnaya Polyana was visited by hundreds of people from all over the globe. In 1901 the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated the author. Tolstoy became seriously ill and he recuperated in Crimea.After leaving his estate with his disciple Vladimir Chertkov on the urge to live as a wandering sage Tolstoy died of pneumonia on November 7  in 1910, at a remote railway junction.