Leo shook the throne of Nicholas II with his strength, but Nicholas II never managed to shake the royal throne of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy; the moral throne, which his readers gave him. His first work was the translation of “A Sentimental Journey in France and Italy”. In 1851 he wrote a short story entitled “The Story of Yesterday” as well as a series of other works
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy became a universal writer, to whom Russia had no power to do any harm, but the church cursed him year after year as a heretic and a denier of the Orthodox faith.
He was a novelist, essayist, playwright and philosopher. He comes from the aristocratic Tolstoy family. He is known for his two main works “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”. His mother Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya died when Tolstoy was 2 years old. His father Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy died when the future writer was not yet 9 years old. Thus, he remained under the supervision of his aunt Tatiana Alexandra Ergolska. He spent his youth in his hometown where he was educated. In 1844 he entered the University of Kazan and in 1847, before finishing his studies, he returned to his hometown due to dissatisfaction with the then tsarist university regime.
In 1854 he was transferred to the Crimea where he actively participated and showed rare bravery in the defense of Sevastopol. The heroism and selflessness of the Russian soldiers in these bloody battles impressed the author, so he wrote in his diary, “The moral strength of the Russian people is great, the fiery enthusiasm of the warriors is indescribable in any way, neither in ancient Greece, nor even in Troy was there so much heroism as the warriors of the Russian people.”
After that he made a trip abroad to countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, where he spent 6 months and after returning he began his work as a teacher of the people of Yasnaya Polyana. On a second trip, which lasted for more than 9 months, he again visited Germany, France, Italy, Belgium and England, where in London he met Herzen, one of his idols, whom he greatly appreciated as a writer and thinker. After his return to his homeland, he began with great zeal the work of creating the Yasnaya Polyana school. Under this name he began to publish a pedagogical magazine with various articles, but his ideas on free education and the activity he was developing aroused strong suspicions among the tsarist authorities. In July 1862, by order of Petersburg and in his absence, a two-day inspection was carried out in Yasnaya Polyana by government bodies. Leo Tolstoy, angered by this government action, wrote a letter to Alexander II demanding the punishment of the guilty.
In 1862 Leo married the daughter of a doctor, Sofia Andrenjeva Bers. The happy family life in the first years of marriage calmed his soul and he began to deal with his passion again: Literary creativity. In 1863 he finished the novel “Cossacks” that he had started a long time ago and in the same year he published another novel entitled “Polikushka”. Being in such a state of flowering of his forces, he began in 1864 the great and long work of writing the great work “War and Peace”, which he finished in 1869. After this work he thought about creating a historical work, but soon changed his mind and in 1873 he began work on writing the monumental work “Anna Karenina” which he finished in 1877. After finishing this book, he was seized by a deep spiritual crisis, which is also noticeable in his later works.
With great force he opposes the nobility in all ways, except that he does not preach war against institutions, but prefers peaceful ways. Under the influence of the ideas of the time, he gives up these writings and begins to write philosophical-moral works. Some of those works are “The Master and the Worker”, “Resurrection”, “Hadji Murad” etc. After 1909, Tolstoy’s personal diary increasingly contains entries in which he expresses his intention to leave the family under the pretext of disagreements with his wife. Finally, on the morning of October 28, 1910, he secretly leaves Yasnaya Polyana and a few days later, on November 7, 1910, he dies at a small railway station in Astrapovo.
His burial, according to his will, took place in a forest near Yasnaya Polyana, without the permission of the official church. Tolstoy’s death undoubtedly grieved not only his like-minded people, but the entire cultured world. The Social-Democratic deputies of the Third Duma, in a telegram sent to his friend V. Tsertkov, expressed the grief of the workers in these words: “The Social-Democratic faction of the Duma, the interpreter of the feelings of the Russian proletariat and the entire international proletariat, expresses its deep sorrow over the death of the brilliant artist, the indomitable fighter against the official church, the enemy of arbitrariness and oppression who raised his voice with force against the death penalty, the friend of the persecuted.” Even while Leo Tolstoy was alive, his fame spread beyond Russian borders.
He showed the tsarist regime and the entire dynasty of that regime how life should be built. Leo with his strength shook the throne of Nicholas II, but Nicholas II never managed to shake the royal throne of Leo Nikolajevic Tolstoy; the moral throne, which his readers gave him. His first work was the translation of “A Sentimental Journey in France and Italy”. In 1851 he wrote a short story entitled “The Story of Yesterday” as well as a series of other works.