Leo Tolstoy

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Life and career

Tolstoy was born in Yasna Polyana, a family estate 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) southwest of Tula, and 200 kilometres (120 mi) south of Moscow. He was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Tolstoy (1794–1837), a soldier of the Patriotic War of 1812, and Princess Mariya Tolstaya (née Volkonskaya; 1790–1830). His mother died when he was two and his father was nine years old when he was inexperienced. Tolstoy and his siblings were taken up by relatives. He began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University in 1844, where teachers characterized him as "both unable and unwilling to learn." Tolstoy left the University in the middle of his education, returned to Yasna Polyana, and then spent a long time in Moscow, Tula, and Saint Petersburg, enjoying a lax and leisurely lifestyle. He began writing during this period, including his first book Childhood, a fictitious account of his own youth, which was published in 1852. He and his older brother returned to the Caucasus in 1851 after accruing significant gambling debts. Tolstoy served as a young artillery officer during the Crimean War and was stationed in Sevastopol during the 11-month siege of Sevastopol, which included the Battle of the Chernaya. He was praised for his courage and promoted to lieutenant during the conflict. After the Crimean War, he was appalled by the number of casualties involved in war and left the army.

Tolstoy's transformation from a dissolute and privileged society author to a nonviolent and spiritual anarchist during his army service and two trips around Europe in 1857 and 1860-61. Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin were among those who followed the same path. Tolstoy was witness to a public execution in Paris during his 1857 stay, a frightening event that dominated the remainder of his life. "The truth is that the state is a plot designed not only to exploit, but also to deceive its civilians," Tolstoy wrote in a letter to his colleague Vasily Botkin. "I will never serve in any government either now or later." When he read a German translation of the Tirukkural, Tolstoy's notion of nonviolence or ahimsa was boosted. When young Gandhi consulted with him later in the day, he introduced the idea in Mahatma Gandhi via his A Letter to a Hindu.

When he met Victor Hugo, his European journey in 1961-61 influenced both his political and literary growth. Tolstoy read Hugo's latest Les Misérables. Hugo's novel and Tolstoy's War and Peace have evocated the similarity of battle scenes in Hugo's book and Tolstoy's War and Peace. Tolstoy's political philosophy was also influenced by a visit to French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in March 1861, who was then living in exile in Brussels under a different name. Tolstoy reviewed Proudhon's forthcoming publication, La Guerre et la Paix ("War and Peace") in French, and later used the word for his masterpiece. "If I recall this conversation with Proudhon, it will be shown that he was the only man who understood the importance of education and of the printing press in our time," Tolstoy wrote in his educational notebooks.

Tolstoy, a child of Russia's peasants who were just emancipated from serfdom in 1861, was fired by enthusiasm and established 13 schools for the children of the children of the peasants in Yasna Polyana. In his 1862 essay "The School at Yasna Polyana," Tolstoy outlined the schools' values. His educational experiences were short lived, due in part to intimidation by the Tsarist clandestine police. However, as the direct precursor to A.J. Neill's Summerhill School, the school in Yasna Polyana can now claim to be the first example of a cohesive model of democratic education.

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