Leo Tolstoy

In 1828, Tolstoy was born on the estate called Yasnaya Polyana in Tula Province, into an ancient Russian noble family. He lost both parents in early childhood and was raised in turn by aunts and other relatives; the shadow of bereavement planted early in him a searching for life and belonging. That estate would become his home and spiritual homeland for the rest of his life—however far he wandered, he always returned in the end to this soil.

The young Tolstoy was full of contradictions. He entered Kazan University but dropped out, dissatisfied with academic education; he returned home to try to improve the lives of his serfs, with little effect, and then took up a life of gambling, socializing, and indulgence in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Yet even at his most dissolute, he kept a diary and subjected himself to severe moral self-examination—this tug-of-war between indulgence and repentance was almost the ground note of his character. Later he followed his brother to the Caucasus to serve in the army, witnessed the cruelty of the Crimean War, and formally entered the literary world with the autobiographical novel Childhood and the war-themed Sevastopol Sketches.

Marriage and settled life brought the golden age of his creation. After marrying Sofya in 1862, he wrote on his estate the epic War and Peace, set against the Napoleonic Wars, and completed Anna Karenina, hailed as a model of realism. These two masterworks lifted him to the summit of world literature; with his almost omniscient insight into human nature, history, and everyday life, Russia and the world alike revered him as one of the greatest novelists.

Yet it was at the very peak of fame and fortune that he sank into a profound spiritual crisis. Success and renown only made it impossible to evade the question of 'what does man live for,' and he came close to despair. In A Confession he laid bare his change of faith, turning to seek the true meaning of primitive Christianity and gradually forming the thought known as 'Tolstoyism': nonviolence, non-resistance to evil, a simple life, and moral self-perfection. He even began to renounce part of his property and the copyright to his works, striving to live his convictions in daily life.

In his old age he became a prophet full of controversy. Excommunicated by the Orthodox Church for his open criticism of it, his philosophy of nonviolence influenced the young Gandhi through their correspondence, sowing seeds for later nonviolent movements. But ideal and reality clashed fiercely within his own home—disagreements over property, copyright, and way of life kept him in years of conflict with his wife Sofya and in inner torment. In the late autumn of 1910, past eighty, he slipped away from home in the dead of night in pursuit of a simple and sincere life of faith, fell ill on the way, and finally died at a small railway station. This giant who had written of all of human life brought his long spiritual quest to a close with an almost resolute departure.