Leo Tolstoy fabulist biography for children. Lev Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on August 28 (September 9), 1828 in the estate of his mother Yasnaya Polyana Krapivensky district, Tula province. Among the ancestors of the writer on the paternal side is an associate of Peter I - P. A. Tolstoy, one of the first in Russia to receive the title of count. Member of the Patriotic War of 1812 was the father of the writer gr. N. I. Tolstoy. On the maternal side, Tolstoy belonged to the family of the princes Bolkonsky, related by kinship with the princes Trubetskoy, Golitsyn, Odoevsky, Lykov and others. noble families. On his mother's side, Tolstoy was a relative of A. S. Pushkin. By the time Leo was born, the family already had three eldest sons: - Nikolai (1823-1860), Sergey (1826 -1904) and Dmitry (1827 - 1856), and in 1830 she was born younger sister Leo Maria.

When Tolstoy was in his ninth year, his father took him to Moscow for the first time, the impressions of the meeting with which were vividly conveyed by the future writer in children's essay"Kremlin". The first period of young Tolstoy's life in Moscow lasted less than four years. He was orphaned early, having lost first his mother and then his father. With his sister and three brothers, young Tolstoy moved to Kazan. Here lived one of the father's sisters, who became their guardians. In Tolstoy's autobiographical "Childhood" Irtenyev's mother dies when the boy is 10-12 years old and he is quite conscious. However, the portrait of the mother is described by the writer exclusively from the stories of his relatives. After the death of their mother, the orphaned children were taken in by a distant relative, T. A. Ergolskaya. She is represented by Sonya from War and Peace.

Living in Kazan, Tolstoy spent two and a half years preparing to enter the university, where he studied from 1844, first at the Oriental Faculty, and then at the Faculty of Law. Studied Turkish and Tatar languages from the famous Turkologist Professor Kazembek.

Classes in government programs and textbooks weighed heavily on Tolstoy the student. He got carried away independent work above historical theme and, leaving the university, he left Kazan for Yasnaya Polyana, which he received under the division of his father's inheritance. Then he went to Moscow, where at the end of 1850 he began his writing activity: an unfinished story from the gypsy life (the manuscript has not been preserved) and a description of one day lived ("The History of Yesterday"). Then the story "Childhood" was started. Soon Tolstoy decided to go to the Caucasus, where his older brother, Nikolai Nikolaevich, an artillery officer, served in the army. Having entered the army as a cadet, he later passed the exam for a junior officer rank. Writer's impressions Caucasian war reflected in the stories "The Raid" (1853), "Cutting the Forest" (1855), "Degraded" (1856), in the story "Cossacks" (1852-1863). In the Caucasus, the story "Childhood" was completed, which was published in 1852 in the journal Sovremennik.

When the Crimean War began, Tolstoy was transferred from the Caucasus to the Danube army, which acted against the Turks, and then to Sevastopol, besieged by the combined forces of England, France and Turkey.

In the autumn of 1856 he retired and soon went on a six-month trip abroad, visiting France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. In 1859, Tolstoy opened a school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana, and then helped open more than 20 schools in the surrounding villages.

One of the first works of the writer were the stories "Childhood", "Adolescence" and "Youth", "Youth" (which, however, was not written). As conceived by the author, they were to compose the novel "Four Epochs of Development".

In the early 1860s for decades, the order of Tolstoy's life, his way of life, is established. In 1862, he married the daughter of a Moscow doctor, Sofya Andreevna Bers.

The writer is working on the novel "War and Peace" (1863-1869). After completing War and Peace, Tolstoy spent several years studying materials about Peter I and his time. However, after writing several chapters of the "Petrine" novel, Tolstoy abandoned his plan.

In St. Petersburg, L.N. Tolstoy met the staff of the Sovremennik magazine with N.A. Nekrasov, I.S. Turgenev, I.A. Goncharov, N.G. Chernyshevsky.

At the beginning of 1857 Tolstoy went abroad. On the road in Germany, Switzerland, England, Italy, France, he spends a year and a half. Travel does not bring him pleasure. Your disappointment European life he expressed in the story "Lucerne". And returning to Russia, Lev Nikolaevich took up the improvement of schools in Yasnaya Polyana.

In the late 1850s, Tolstoy met Sophia Andreevna Bers, born in 1844, the daughter of a Moscow doctor from Baltic Germans. He was almost 40 years old, and Sophia was only 17. It seemed to him that this difference was too great and sooner or later Sophia would fall in love with a young guy who had not become obsolete. These experiences of Lev Nikolaevich are set forth in his first novel, Family Happiness.

In September 1862, Leo Tolstoy nevertheless married 18-year-old Sofya Andreevna Bers. For 17 years life together they had 13 children. During the same period, "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" were created. In 1861-62. finishes his story "The Cossacks", the first of the works in which great talent Tolstoy was recognized as a genius.

In the early 70s, Tolstoy again showed interest in pedagogy, wrote the ABC and the New ABC, composed fables and stories that made up four Russian books for reading.

In the spring of 1873, Tolstoy began and four years later completed work on a large novel about modernity, naming it by name main character— Anna Karenina.

At the beginning of 1880s. Tolstoy moved with his family from Yasnaya Polyana to Moscow, taking care to educate his growing children. In 1882, a census of the Moscow population took place, in which the writer took part. He saw the inhabitants of the city's slums up close and described their terrible life in an article on the census and in the treatise "So what shall we do?" (1882-1886).

On the basis of social and psychological contrast, Tolstoy's story "The Master and the Worker" (1895) is built, stylistically connected with the cycle of his folk stories written in the 80s.

To answer the questions and doubts that tormented him religious nature Lev Nikolaevich began to study theology. In 1891, in Geneva, the writer writes and publishes a Study of Dogmatic Theology, in which he criticizes Bulgakov's Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. He first had conversations with priests and monarchs, read theological treatises, studied ancient Greek and Hebrew.

All the writer's works are united by the thought of the inevitable and close in time "decoupling" of social contradictions, of replacing the obsolete social "order". “What the denouement will be, I don’t know,” wrote Tolstoy in 1892, “but that things are coming to it and that life cannot go on like this, in such forms, I am sure.” This idea inspired largest work of all the work of the "late" Tolstoy - the novel "Resurrection" (1889-1899).

Leo Tolstoy wrote: “The people of our world live without any faith. One part of the people, an educated, wealthy minority, freed from church suggestion, does not believe in anything, because they consider all faith either stupidity, or only a useful tool for dominating the masses. The vast poor, uneducated majority, with few exceptions of people who really believe, being under the influence of hypnosis, thinks that they believe in what is suggested to them under the guise of faith, but that it is not faith, because it not only does not explain to a person his position in world, but only obscures
his. From this position and the mutual relationship of the unbelieving, pretending minority and the hypnotized majority, the life of our world, called Christian, is composed. And this life, both of the minority holding the means of hypnotization in their hands, and of the hypnotized majority, is terrible both in terms of the cruelty and immorality of those in power, and in terms of the oppression and stupidity of the large working masses.

In the early 1900s Holy Synod Lev Nikolaevich was excommunicated from the Orthodox Church. L. N. Tolstoy lost all interest in life, he was tired of enjoying the prosperity he had achieved. He is fond of simple physical labor, becomes a vegetarian, gives his family all his fortune, renounces literary property rights.

In the last decade of his life, the writer worked on the story "Hadji Murad" (1896-1904), in which he sought to compare the "two poles of imperious absolutism" - the European, personified by Nicholas I, and the Asian, personified by Shamil. article "I can not be silent", in which he protested against the repression of participants in the events of 1905-1907. The writer's stories "After the Ball" and "For What?" belong to the same period.

Burdened by the way of life in Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy more than once intended and for a long time did not dare to leave it. But he could no longer live according to the "together-apart" principle, and on the night of October 28 (November 10) he secretly left Yasnaya Polyana. On the way, he fell ill with pneumonia and was forced to make a stop at the small station Astapovo (now Leo Tolstoy), where he died. On November 10 (23), 1910, the writer was buried in Yasnaya Polyana, in the forest, on the edge of a ravine, where, as a child, he and his brother searched for a "green stick" that kept the "secret" of how to make all people happy.

(1828-1910)

A short message about the personal life and work of L.N. Tolstoy for children in grades 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Tolstoy was born in 1828 at the Yasnaya Polyana estate in big family nobles. His mother and father died early, and he was raised by a relative who had a great influence on the boy. But Lev Nikolaevich remembered the appearance of his parents well and later reflected in the heroes of his works. In short, Tolstoy spent his childhood quite happily. In the future, he recalled that time with warmth, it repeatedly served as material for his work.

At the age of 13, Tolstoy moved with his family to Kazan. There he entered the university, where he first studied oriental languages, and then law. But the young man never graduated from the university and returned to Yasnaya Polyana. There, however, he decided to take up his education and independently study many different sciences. Nevertheless, he spent only one summer in the village and soon moved to St. Petersburg in order to pass exams at the university.

short biography Tolstoy in his younger years is reduced to an intense search for himself and his vocation. Either he went headlong into festivities and revels, then he led the life of an ascetic, indulging in religious reflections. But during these years, the young count already felt in himself a love for literary creativity.

In 1851, together with his elder brother, an officer, he went to the Caucasus, where he took part in hostilities. The time spent there left an indelible impression on Tolstoy. During these years, he worked on the story "Childhood", which later, together with two other stories, brought great fame to the novice writer. Further, Tolstoy was transferred to serve first in Bucharest, and then in Sevastopol, where he participated in the Crimean campaign and showed great courage.

After the end of the war, Tolstoy went to St. Petersburg and became a member of the famous Sovremennik circle, but he did not take root in it and soon went abroad. Returning to the family nest, the writer opened a well-known school there, intended for peasant children. The cause of education was very fascinated by Tolstoy, and he became interested in the organization of schools in Europe, for which he again went abroad. Soon Lev Nikolaevich married the young S.A. Bers. A brief biography of Tolstoy during this period was marked by quiet family happiness.

At the same time, the writer first began work on his great work "War and Peace", and then - on another, no less famous novel- Anna Karenina.
The 1880s became sometimes serious for Lev Nikolayevich spiritual crisis. This was reflected in a number of his works of that time, such as, for example, "Confession". Tolstoy thinks a lot about faith, about the meaning of life, about social inequality, criticizes state institutions and achievements of civilization. He also works on religious treatises. The writer wanted to see Christianity as a practical religion, cleansed of any kind of mysticism. He criticized the Orthodox Church and its rapprochement with the state, and then completely departed from it. At the beginning of the 20th century, he was officially excommunicated from the Church. Lev Nikolaevich reflected the whole gamut of his emotional experiences of those years in his latest novel, Resurrection.

Tolstoy's drama was expressed in the rupture of relations not only with the Church, but also with his own family. In the autumn of 1910, the elderly writer secretly left home, but, already in poor health, fell ill on the road and died a week later, on November 7. They buried Lev Nikolaevich in Yasnaya Polyana. One can briefly say this about Tolstoy - he was a truly great literary genius. Readers fell in love with his work so much that the writer's departure became a great grief for millions of people who lived not only in Russia, but also in the most different corners peace.

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on August 28 (September 9), 1828 in the estate of his mother Yasnaya Polyana, Krapivensky district, Tula province. Tolstoy's family belonged to a wealthy and noble family of counts. By the time Leo was born, the family already had three eldest sons: - Nikolai (1823-1860), Sergey (1826 -1904) and Dmitry (1827 - 1856), and in 1830 Lev's younger sister Maria was born.

A few years later, the mother died. In Tolstoy's autobiographical "Childhood" Irtenyev's mother dies when the boy is 10-12 years old and he is quite conscious. However, the portrait of the mother is described by the writer exclusively from the stories of his relatives. After the death of their mother, a distant relative, T. A. Ergolskaya, took care of the orphaned children. She is represented by Sonya from War and Peace.

In 1837, the family moved to Moscow, because. older brother Nikolai had to prepare for entering the university. But a tragedy suddenly occurred in the family - the father died, leaving things in a bad state. Three younger children were forced to return to Yasnaya Polyana under the upbringing of T. A. Ergolskaya and his father's aunt, Countess A. M. Osten-Saken. Here Leo Tolstoy remained until 1840. This year, Countess A. M. Osten-Saken died and the children were moved to Kazan to their father's sister P. I. Yushkova. L. N. Tolstoy quite accurately conveyed this period of his life in his autobiography Childhood.

Tolstoy at the first stage was educated under the guidance of a rude French tutor Saint-Thomas. He is portrayed by a certain M-r Jérôme of Boyhood. In the future, he was replaced by a good-natured German Reselman. His Lev Nikolaevich lovingly portrayed in "Childhood" under the name of Karl Ivanovich.

In 1843, following his brother Tolstoy, he entered Kazan University. There, until 1847, Leo Tolstoy was preparing to enter the only Oriental Faculty in Russia in the category of Arabic-Turkish literature. During the year of study, Tolstoy showed himself how best student this course. However, between the poet's family and the teacher Russian history and German, a certain Ivanov, there was a conflict. This led to the fact that, according to the results of the year, Leo Tolstoy had poor progress in the relevant subjects and had to re-take the first year program. To avoid a complete repetition of the course, the poet is transferred to the Faculty of Law. But even there the problems with the teacher of German and Russian continue. Soon Tolstoy loses all interest in learning.

In the spring of 1847, Lev Nikolaevich left the university and settled in Yasnaya Polyana. Everything that Tolstoy did in the countryside can be found out by reading The Morning of the Landowner, where the poet introduces himself in the role of Nekhlyudov. There, a lot of time was spent on revelry, games and hunting.

In the spring of 1851, on the advice of his elder brother Nikolai, in order to cut costs and pay off his debts, Lev Nikolayevich left for the Caucasus.

In the fall of 1851, he became a cadet of the 4th battery of the 20th artillery brigade, stationed in the Cossack village of Starogladovo near Kizlyar. Soon L.N. Tolstoy became an officer. When the Crimean War began at the end of 1853, Lev Nikolaevich transferred to the Danube army, participated in the battles of Oltenitsa and Silistria. From November 1854 to August 1855 he participated in the defense of Sevastopol. After the assault on August 27, 1855, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was sent to Petersburg. A noisy life began there: drinking parties, cards and carousing with gypsies.

In St. Petersburg, L.N. Tolstoy met the staff of the Sovremennik magazine with N.A. Nekrasov, I.S. Turgenev, I.A. Goncharov, N.G. Chernyshevsky.

At the beginning of 1857 Tolstoy went abroad. On the road in Germany, Switzerland, England, Italy, France, he spends a year and a half. Travel does not bring him pleasure. He expressed his disappointment with European life in the story "Lucerne". And returning to Russia, Lev Nikolaevich took up the improvement of schools in Yasnaya Polyana.

In the late 1850s, Tolstoy met Sophia Andreevna Bers, born in 1844, the daughter of a Moscow doctor from the Baltic Germans. He was almost 40 years old, and Sophia was only 17. It seemed to him that this difference was too great and sooner or later Sophia would fall in love with a young guy who had not become obsolete. These experiences of Lev Nikolaevich are set forth in his first novel, Family Happiness.

In September 1862, Leo Tolstoy nevertheless married 18-year-old Sofya Andreevna Bers. For 17 years of marriage, they had 13 children. During the same period, "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" were created. In 1861-62. finishes his story "The Cossacks", the first of the works in which Tolstoy's great talent was recognized as a genius.

In the early 70s, Tolstoy again showed interest in pedagogy, wrote the ABC and the New ABC, composed fables and stories that made up four Russian books for reading.

In order to answer the questions and doubts of a religious nature that tormented him, Lev Nikolayevich began to study theology. In 1891, in Geneva, the writer writes and publishes a Study of Dogmatic Theology, in which he criticizes Bulgakov's Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. He first began to talk with priests and monarchs, read theological treatises, studied ancient Greek and Hebrew. Tolstoy gets acquainted with schismatics, adjoins sectarian peasants.

In the early 1900s By the Holy Synod, Lev Nikolayevich was excommunicated from the Orthodox Church. L. N. Tolstoy lost all interest in life, he was tired of enjoying the achieved prosperity, the thought of suicide arose. He is fond of simple physical labor, becomes a vegetarian, gives his family all his wealth, renounces literary property rights.

On November 10, 1910, Tolstoy secretly left Yasnaya Polyana, but on the way he became very ill. November 20, 1910 at the Astapovo station of the Ryazan-Uralskaya railway Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy is dead.

Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on August 28, 1828 at his father's estate, Yasnaya Polyana, in the Tula province. Thick - old Russian noble family; one representative of this family, the head of the Petrine secret police Petr Tolstoy, was promoted to graphs. Tolstoy's mother was born Princess Volkonskaya. His father and mother served as models for Nikolai Rostov and Princess Marya in War and peace(see summary and analysis of this novel). They belonged to the highest Russian aristocracy, and tribal belonging to the highest stratum ruling class sharply distinguishes Tolstoy from other writers of his time. He never forgot about it (even when this realization of his became completely negative), he always remained an aristocrat and kept aloof from the intelligentsia.

The childhood and adolescence of Leo Tolstoy passed between Moscow and Yasnaya Polyana, in a large family, where there were several brothers. He left unusually vivid memories of his early environment, of his relatives and servants, in wonderful autobiographical notes that he wrote for his biographer P. I. Biryukov. His mother died when he was two years old, his father when he was nine years old. His further upbringing was in charge of his aunt, Mademoiselle Yergolskaya, who supposedly served as the prototype for Sonya in War and peace.

Leo Tolstoy in his youth. Photo 1848

In 1844 Tolstoy entered Kazan University, where he first studied oriental languages ​​and then law, but in 1847 he left the university without receiving a diploma. In 1849, he settled in Yasnaya Polyana, where he tried to be useful to his peasants, but soon realized that his efforts were of no use, because he lacked knowledge. In his student years and after leaving the university, he, as was usual with young people of his class, led a hectic life filled with the pursuit of pleasures - wine, cards, women - somewhat similar to the life that Pushkin led before his exile to the south. But Tolstoy was incapable of with a light heart accept life as it is. From the very beginning, his diary (existing since 1847) testifies to an unquenchable thirst for the intellectual and moral justification of life, a thirst that has forever remained the guiding force of his thought. The same diary was the first experience in the development of the technique of psychological analysis, which later became the main literary weapon Tolstoy. His first attempt to try himself in a more purposeful and creative kind of writing dates back to 1851.

The tragedy of Leo Tolstoy. Documentary

In the same year, disgusted by his empty and useless Moscow life, he went to the Caucasus to the Terek Cossacks, where he entered the garrison artillery cadet (junker means volunteer, volunteer, but noble birth). On next year(1852) he finished his first story ( Childhood) and sent it to Nekrasov for publication in Contemporary. Nekrasov immediately accepted it and wrote about it to Tolstoy in very encouraging tones. The story was an immediate success, and Tolstoy immediately rose to prominence in literature.

On the battery, Leo Tolstoy led a rather easy and unburdensome life of a cadet with means; the place to stay was nice too. He had a lot of free time, most of which he spent hunting. In the few fights in which he had to participate, he showed himself very well. In 1854, he received an officer's rank and, at his request, was transferred to the army that fought the Turks in Wallachia (see Crimean War), where he took part in the siege of Silistria. In the autumn of that year, he joined the Sevastopol garrison. There Tolstoy saw real war. He participated in the defense of the famous Fourth Bastion and in the battle on the Black River and ridiculed bad command in a satirical song - the only work of his in verse known to us. In Sevastopol, he wrote the famous Sevastopol stories that appeared in Contemporary when the siege of Sevastopol was still ongoing, which greatly increased interest in their author. Shortly after leaving Sevastopol, Tolstoy went on vacation to St. Petersburg and Moscow, and the next year he left the army.

Only in these years, after the Crimean War, Tolstoy communicated with literary world. The writers of St. Petersburg and Moscow met him as an outstanding master and colleague. As he later admitted, success was very flattering to his vanity and pride. But he did not get along with writers. He was too aristocratic to like this semi-bohemian intelligentsia. For him, they were too awkward plebeians, they were indignant that he clearly preferred the light to their company. On this occasion, he and Turgenev exchanged sharp epigrams. On the other hand, his very mindset was not to the liking of progressive Westerners. He did not believe in progress or culture. In addition, his dissatisfaction with the literary world intensified due to the fact that his new works disappointed them. Everything he wrote after Childhood, did not show any movement towards innovation and development, and Tolstoy's critics failed to understand the experimental value of these imperfect works (for more details, see the article Tolstoy's Early Works). All this contributed to his termination of relations with the literary world. The culmination was a noisy quarrel with Turgenev (1861), whom he challenged to a duel, and then apologized for this. This whole story is very typical, and it showed the character of Leo Tolstoy, with his secret embarrassment and sensitivity to insults, with his intolerance for the imaginary superiority of other people. The only men of letters with whom he retained friendly relations, there was a reactionary and "land lord" Fet (in whose house a quarrel with Turgenev broke out) and a democrat-Slavophile Strakhov- people who did not sympathize with the main direction of the then progressive thought.

The years 1856-1861 Tolstoy spent between St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yasnaya Polyana and abroad. He traveled abroad in 1857 (and again in 1860-1861) and brought back a disgust for the selfishness and materialism of European bourgeois civilization. In 1859 he opened a school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana and in 1862 he began publishing a pedagogical journal Yasnaya Polyana, in which the progressive world was surprised by the assertion that it is not the intellectuals who should teach the peasants, but rather the peasants the intellectuals. In 1861 he accepted the post of conciliator, a post introduced to oversee how the emancipation of the peasants was carried out. But the unsatisfied thirst for moral strength continued to torment him. He abandoned the revelry of his youth and began to think about marriage. In 1856 he made his first unsuccessful attempt to marry (Arsenyeva). In 1860, he was deeply shocked by the death of his brother Nicholas - it was his first encounter with the inevitable reality of death. Finally, in 1862, after long hesitation (he was convinced that since he was old - thirty-four years old! - and ugly, not a single woman would love him) Tolstoy made an offer to Sofya Andreevna Bers, and it was accepted. They got married in September of the same year.

Marriage is one of the two main milestones in Tolstoy's life; the second milestone was his appeal. He was always pursued by one concern - how to justify his life before his conscience and achieve lasting moral well-being. When he was a bachelor, he oscillated between two opposing desires. The first was a passionate and hopeless striving for that integral and unreasoning, “natural” state that he found among the peasants and especially among the Cossacks, in whose village he lived in the Caucasus: this state does not strive for self-justification, for it is free from self-consciousness, this justification demanding. He tried to find such an unquestioning state in conscious obedience to animal impulses, in the lives of his friends, and (and here he came closest to achieving it) in his favorite pastime, hunting. But he was unable to be satisfied with this forever, and another equally passionate desire - to find a rational justification for life - led him aside every time he seemed to have already achieved contentment with himself. Marriage was for him the gateway to a more stable and lasting "state of nature." It was the self-justification of life and the solution of a painful problem. Family life, unreasoning acceptance of it and submission to it, henceforth became his religion.

The first fifteen years of his married life Tolstoy lived in a blissful state of contented vegetation, with a peaceful conscience and a hushed need for a higher rational justification. The philosophy of this plant conservatism is expressed with great creative power in War and peace(see summary and analysis of this novel). IN family life he was exceptionally happy. Sofya Andreevna, almost still a girl, when he married her, without difficulty became what he wanted to make her; he explained to her new philosophy, and she was her indestructible stronghold and unchanging guardian, which eventually led to the breakup of the family. The writer's wife was perfect wife, mother and mistress of the house. In addition, she became a devoted assistant to her husband in literary work- everyone knows that she copied seven times War and peace from the beginning to the end. She bore Tolstoy many sons and daughters. She had no personal life: all of it was dissolved in family life.

Thanks to Tolstoy's prudent management of estates (Yasnaya Polyana was just a place of residence; a large Zavolzhsky estate brought income) and the sale of his works, the family's fortune increased, as did the family itself. But Tolstoy, although absorbed and satisfied with his self-justified life, although he glorified it with unsurpassed artistic power in his best novel, was still not able to completely dissolve in family life, as his wife dissolved. "Life in Art" also did not absorb him as much as his brothers. The worm of moral lust, though reduced to a tiny size, never died. Tolstoy was constantly worried about the questions and demands of morality. In 1866 he defended (unsuccessfully) before a military court a soldier accused of hitting an officer. In 1873 he published articles on public education, on the basis of which the insightful critic Mikhailovsky managed to predict further development his ideas.

Brief biography of Leo Tolstoy. Born in 1828 into an aristocratic family. Father, Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy - a retired lieutenant colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars, a participant in World War II. Mother - Princess Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya.

The parents of the future writer died early, his mother - when he was 2 years old, his father - at 9 years old. The orphaned five children were raised by guardian relatives.

In 1844-46. Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy tried to study at the university, but study was given to him with great difficulty, and educational institution he quit. After that, the count lived for four years on his estate, trying to build relations with the peasants in a new way; contributed to the opening of new schools in the villages.

At the same time, he occasionally came to Moscow, where he indulged gambling which undermined his financial situation more than once. After another major loss, in 1851 he left for the army in the Caucasus, where his elder brother served at that time.

It was in the Caucasus that Lev Nikolayevich discovered in himself the need for creativity. Created autobiographical story"Childhood" and sent the manuscript (signing simply: "LNT") to the court of Nikolai Nekrasov, famous poet and publisher of the authoritative literary monthly Sovremennik. He published the story, calling Tolstoy "a new and reliable talent" in Russian literature.

For five years Tolstoy has served as an artillery officer. First, he participates in the Chechen campaign, then in battles with the Turks on the Danube, then in the Crimea, where he heroically showed himself during the defense of Sevastopol, for which he was awarded the Order of St. Anna.

He devotes all his free time to creativity. "Boyhood" and "Youth", the next parts autobiographical trilogy, were also published in Sovremennik and became very popular. Few writers have been able to explore so subtly mental life of a person and at the same time convey all this in such a simple and easy style.

Bright and interesting scenes from the army and military life of Tolstoy are reflected in his Cossacks, Hadji Murad, Woodcutting, Raid, and especially in the magnificent Sevastopol Tales.

After his resignation, Tolstoy went on a long journey through Europe. Returning home, he devoted himself entirely to public education. He helped in the opening of 20 rural schools in the Tula province, at the school in Yasnaya Polyana he taught himself, compiled alphabets and educational books for children. In 1862 he married 18-year-old Sophia Bers, and in 1863 he returned to literary activity and started working on my the greatest work- epic novel "War and Peace".

Tolstoy approached his work extremely responsibly, having studied thousands of sources about Patriotic war 1812: memoirs, letters of contemporaries and participants in the events. The first part was published in 1865, and the writer finished the novel only in 1869.

The novel amazed and continues to amaze readers with a combination of an epic picture historical events with the living destinies of people, deep penetration into soul feelings and throwing people. The novel "Anna Karenina" (1873-77) became the second world-renowned work of the writer.

IN recent decades 19th century Tolstoy philosophized a lot on the topic of faith and the meaning of life. These searches were reflected in his religious treatises, in which he tried to understand the essence of Christianity and convey its principles in an understandable language.

Tolstoy put the moral purification and self-improvement of the individual at the forefront, as well as the principle of non-resistance to evil by violence. The writer criticized the official Orthodox Church for her dogmatism and close connection with the state, for which the Synod excommunicated him from the church.

But, despite this, until the end of his life, followers of his religious and moral teachings came to Tolstoy from all over the country. The writer did not stop his work to support rural schools.

IN last years life, Leo Tolstoy decided to give up all private property, which caused dissatisfaction with his wife and children. Offended by them, at the age of 82 he decided to leave home, boarded a train, but soon caught a bad cold and died. It happened in 1910.

Lev Nikolaevich went down in history not only as a brilliant world famous writer, but also as a great teacher, theologian and preacher of Christianity.