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] '''Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy''' ({{OldStyleDate|September 9|1828|August 28}} – {{OldStyleDate|November 20|1910|November 7}}) ({{lang-ru|Лев Никола́евич Толсто́й}}, {{IPARus|lʲɛv nʲɪkɐˈlaɪvʲɪtɕ tɐlˈstoj}} {{Audio|Ru-Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy.ogg|listen}}), commonly referred to in ] as '''Leo (Lyof, Lyoff) Tolstoy''', was a ]n ] – ], ], ] and ] – as well as ] ] and ]. He was the most influential member of the ] ]. ] '''Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy''' ({{OldStyleDate|September 9|1828|August 28}} – {{OldStyleDate|November 20|1910|November 7}}) ({{lang-ru|Лев Никола́евич Толсто́й}}, {{IPARus|lʲɛv nʲɪkɐˈlaɪvʲɪtɕ tɐlˈstoj}} {{Audio|Ru-Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy.ogg|listen}}), commonly referred to in ] as '''Leo (Lyof, Lyoff) Tolstoy''', was a ]n ] – ], ], ] and ] – as well as ] ] and ]. He was the most influential member of the ] ].


ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssKingdom of God is Within You" and the shorter "Patriotism and Government" and "Thou Shalt not Kill".
As a fiction writer, Tolstoy is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all novelists, particularly noted for his masterpieces '']'' and '']''. In their scope, breadth and realistic depiction of 19th-century Russian life, the two books stand at the peak of ]. As a moral philosopher Tolstoy was notable for his ideas on ] through works such as '']'', which in turn influenced such twentieth-century figures as ]<ref name=ResistNotEvil>, retrieved on 14 December 2006]</ref> and ]

==Biography==
Leo Tolstoy was born ], ], ], Central Russia. The Tolstoys are a well-known family of old Russian nobility; Tolstoy was connected to the grandest families of Russian aristocracy; ] was his fourth cousin. He always remained a class-conscious nobleman who cherished his impeccable French pronunciation and kept aloof from the ].

=== Early life ===sdsdsdsdsdsds


Resurrection]]'', published in 1899, which told the story of a nobleman seeking redemption for a sin committed years earlier and incorporated many of Tolstoy's refashioned views on life. An additional short novel, ''Hadji Murat'', was published posthumously in 1912.

Tolstoy's later work is often criticized as being overly didactic and patchily written, but derives a passion and verve from the depth of his austere moral views. The sequence of the temptation of Sergius in ''Father Sergius'', for example, is among his later triumphs. ] relates how Tolstoy once read this passage before himself and Chekhov and that Tolstoy was moved to tears by the end of the reading. Other later passages of rare power include the crises of self faced by the protagonists of '']'' and ''Master and Man'', where the main character (in ''After the Ball'') or the reader (in ''Master and Man'') is made aware of the foolishness of the protagonists' lives. ''The Death of Ivan Ilyich'' is perhaps the greatest fictional meditation on death ever written.

Tolstoy had an abiding interest in children and children's literature and wrote tales and fables. Some of his fables are free adaptations of fables from ] and from ] tradition.

=== Reputation ===
Tolstoy's contemporaries paid him lofty tributes: ] thought him the greatest of all living writers and ], on reading ''War and Peace'' for the first time in translation, compared him to ] and gushed: "What an artist and what a psychologist!". ] called Tolstoy a "great writer of the Russian land"<ref name=HandbookRussianLiterature>Victor Terras ed., ''Handbook of Russian Literature'', p. 476-480, Yale University Press, 1985 (retrieved on 14 December 2006 from )</ref> and on his deathbed implored Tolstoy not to abandon literature . ], who often visited Tolstoy at his country estate, wrote: "When literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone. What he does serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature."

Later critics and novelists continue to bear testaments to his art: ] went on to declare him "greatest of all novelists", and ], defending him from criticism, noted: "He is never dull, never stupid, never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical". ] wrote of his seemingly guileless artistry — "Seldom did art work so much like nature" — sentiments shared in part by many others, including ] and ]. ], himself a Russian and an infamously harsh critic, placed him above all other Russian fiction writers, even ], and equalled him with ] among Russian writers.

==Religious and political beliefs==
] (1887)]]

At about age 50, Tolstoy experienced a spiritual crisis, at which point he was so agonized about discovering life's meaning as to seriously contemplate ending his life. He relates the story of this spiritual crisis in '']'', and the conclusions of his studies in '']'', '']'' and ''The ] in Brief''.

=== Social Christianity ===

The teaching of mature Tolstoy concentrated exclusively on the moral teaching of the Gospels. Tolstoy's Christian beliefs were based on the ], and particularly on the phrase "]", which he saw as a justification for pacifism, ] and ]. Of the moral teaching of ], the words "Resist not evil" were taken to be the principle out of which all the rest follows. He condemned the State, which sanctioned violence and corruption, and rejected the authority of the Church, which sanctioned the State. His condemnation of every form of compulsion authorizes many to classify Tolstoy's later teachings, in its political aspect, as ].

=== Christian anarchism ===
{{main|Christian anarchism}}
Although he did not call himself an ] because he applied the term to those who wanted to change society through violence,<ref>Woodcock, George. Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements, Broadview Press, 2004, p. 185</ref> Tolstoy is commonly regarded as an anarchist. His doctrine of nonresistance (nonviolence) when faced by conflict is another distinct attribute of his philosophy based on Christ's teachings. By directly influencing ] with this idea through his work ''The Kingdom of God is Within You'', Tolstoy has had a huge influence on the nonviolent resistance movement to this day. He opposed private property and the institution of marriage and valued the ideals of ] and ] (as discussed in ''Father Sergius'' and his preface to '']''), ideals also held by the young Gandhi.
]]]
In hundreds of essays over the last twenty years of his life, Tolstoy reiterated the anarchist critique of the State and recommended books by ] and ] to his readers, while rejecting anarchism's espousal of violent revolutionary means, writing in the 1900 essay, "On Anarchy":
{{Quotation|The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without Authority, there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power…There can be only one permanent revolution - a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man. }}

=== Pacifism ===
]]]
Despite his misgivings about anarchist violence, Tolstoy took risks to circulate the prohibited publications of anarchist thinkers in Russia, and corrected the proofs of Peter Kropotkin's "Words of a Rebel", illegally published in St Petersburg in 1906. Two years earlier, during the ], Tolstoy publicly condemned the war and wrote to the ] priest ] in a failed attempt to make a joint pacifist statement.

A letter Tolstoy wrote in 1908 to an ]n newspaper entitled "]" resulted in intense correspondence with Mohandas Gandhi, who was in ] at the time and was beginning to become an activist. Reading "]" made a strong impression on Gandhi in terms of his public commitment to ], a debt Gandhi acknowledged in his autobiography, calling Tolstoy "the greatest apostle of non-violence that the present age has produced". The correspondence between Tolstoy and Gandhi would only last a year, from October 1909 until Tolstoy's death in November 1910, but led Gandhi to give the name the Tolstoy Colony to his second ] in South Africa. Besides non-violent resistance, the two men shared a common belief in the merits of ], the subject of several of Tolstoy's essays (see ]).

Along with his growing idealism, Tolstoy also became a major supporter of the ] movement. Tolstoy was impressed by the pacifist beliefs of the ]s and brought their persecution to the attention of the international community, after they burned their weapons in peaceful protest in 1895. He aided the Doukhobors in migrating to ]. In 1908, he was also the founding president of the International Union of Vegetarian Esperantists (''Internacia Vegetarana Unuiĝo'').<ref></ref>

<!-- Tolstoy harbored particular views of other religious traditions as well, which shed some light on his worldview. Tolstoy referred to the ] as "that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring, and fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religious. The Jew is the pioneer of liberty. The Jew is the pioneer of civilization. The Jew is the emblem of eternity." -- I don't think that the quotation is particularly revealing of Tolstoy's worldview and deserves a place in a general encyclopaedia --> <!--==Trivia==
{{Trivia|date={{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}}}
{{unreferenced|date=July 2006}}
*While Tolstoy and ]—the other giant of 19th century Russian literature—both praised each other and were equally influenced by each other's works, they never met in person. Tolstoy reportedly burst into tears when he learned of Dostoevsky's death. At the time, both were considered by both critics and the public to be Russia's greatest novelists.
*Tolstoy escaped arrest by the Tsarist secret police during a raid on his house in 1862 when Maria Tolstoy concealed a sheaf of letters from the banned thinker Alexander Herzen by sitting down on them and refusing to move until the police left. A novelized account of Tsarist harassment of Tolstoy's schools is given by Bulat Okudzhava in "The Extraordinary Adventures of Secret Agent Shipov in Pursuit of Count Leo Tolstoy, in the Year 1862", Abelard-Schuman, London 1973.
*Knowing of his vegetarian convictions, Tolstoy's aunt wrote to him before visiting Yasnaya Polyana to insist that meat be served during her stay. When she came down for her first dinner, she found a meat-cleaver on the table and a live chicken tied to her chair.
*Many of Tolstoy's supporters fled to Britain to escape persecution and founded utopian colonies from 1900-1910, playing a considerable role in the later creation of the Peace Pledge Union.
*Many of Tolstoy's political essays from this period were prohibited in Russia and were only published in the UK by his exiled supporters, notably his former secretary Vladimir Tchertkoff, who was the "cut-out" for contacts between Kropotkin and Tolstoy. The original publications are in the British Library; a useful compilation of these otherwise unpublished political essays is "Government is Violence - essays on anarchism and pacifism", Leo Tolstoy, Phoenix Press, London 1990, ISBN 0-948984-15-5. Other compilations of essays, both political and non-political, were published in the 1920s and 1930s by the Oxford University Press; these blue cloth-backed pocketbooks can be found in the "Essays" or "Pocketbooks" sections of British second-hand bookshops. The most interesting essays from a libertarian perspective are the long essays "The End of the Age", "The Slavery of Our Times" and "The Kingdom of God is Within You" and the shorter "Patriotism and Government" and "Thou Shalt not Kill".
*Tolstoy's grandniece-in-law ] was married to ] 1951-57. *Tolstoy's grandniece-in-law ] was married to ] 1951-57.
*Tolstoy is the great-great-grandfather of ] ]-singer ].{{fact}} *Tolstoy is the great-great-grandfather of ] ]-singer ].{{fact}}

Revision as of 13:52, 16 April 2008

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Leo Tolstoy
OccupationNovelist
GenreRealist
Notable worksWar and Peace
Anna Karenina

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (September 9 [O.S. August 28] 1828 – November 20 [O.S. November 7] 1910) (Template:Lang-ru, Template:IPARus listen), commonly referred to in English as Leo (Lyof, Lyoff) Tolstoy, was a Russian writer – novelist, essayist, dramatist and philosopher – as well as pacifist Christian anarchist and educational reformer. He was the most influential member of the aristocratic Tolstoy family.

ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssKingdom of God is Within You" and the shorter "Patriotism and Government" and "Thou Shalt not Kill".

  • Tolstoy's grandniece-in-law Pati Behrs was married to John Derek 1951-57.
  • Tolstoy is the great-great-grandfather of Swedish jazz-singer Viktoria Tolstoy.
  • Tolstoy means fat in Russian. Lev means lion in Russian.
  • In Episode 14, Season 5 of Seinfeld titled "The Marine Biologist," Jerry falsely informs Elaine that Tolstoy originally intended for his book "War and Peace" to be entitled "War, What is it Good For?" but that his mistress disagreed with the former title. --and so what? -->

References

 This article incorporates text from D.S. Mirsky's "A History of Russian Literature" (1926-27), a publication now in the public domain.

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