The Life of Leo Tolstoy

Though Russian writer Leo Tolstoy struggled against himself for decades, he poured his angst and doubt into books of uncanny brilliance.

An 80-year-old Leo Tolstoy in his study, in 1908. Public Domain

Matthew Arnold once said that a novel by Tolstoy isn’t a work of art but a piece of life. It’s hard to conceive of higher praise than that for a novelist, whose difficult task is to distill the human experience into the pages of a book.

Many readers and critics agree with Arnold and consider the praise to be justified. Indeed, many consider Tolstoy to be the greatest novelist of all time. “War and Peace” is often pronounced the greatest novel ever written.

How did this literary giant achieve such status? His life story is a tale of loss, upheaval, and spiritual sojourning. His own experiences of war, love, vice, and virtue, alongside his keen observation of others, allowed him to pen works that penetrate into the core of human nature and human life in a way that resonates universally.

A close-up of the portrait of Leo Tolstoy, 1882, by Nikolai Ge. Public Domain

A Life of Ups and Downs

Tolstoy was born in 1828 on his family’s estate in the Tula province of the Russian Empire. His parents died by the time the boy was 10 years old. The string of misfortunes didn’t end there: Tolstoy’s grandmother died 11 months after his father, and his aunt Aleksandra passed away not long after his grandmother.

Tolstoy and his four siblings finally ended up with another aunt in western Russia. Despite these many losses, Tolstoy had a happy childhood, and he treasured the memory of it so much so that his first published work, “Childhood,” was a fictionalized account of those golden years.

Tolstoy was educated at home by German and French tutors until he enrolled in an Oriental languages program at the University of Kazan in 1843. However, the young Tolstoy was no academician; he perpetuated the tradition among college students throughout the world and throughout the ages by spending his time drinking.

He frittered away his time for four years drinking, gambling, and womanizing. So poor were his grades that he had to transfer to an easier program, which he still failed to complete. He left the university in 1847 with no degree.

Kazan University, seen here in a depiction from 1832. Public Domain

By this time, Tolstoy had acquired a taste for literature and philosophy, relishing the works of Laurence Sterne, Charles Dickens, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He returned to Yasnaya Polyana, the family estate, with hopes of educating himself as well as dedicating himself to managing the estate. Yet his dissolute ways continued, in spite of his resolutions to end them. His self-indulgent trips to Moscow and St. Petersburg interfered with his plans to manage the estate and assist the serfs.

Around this time, he began to keep a detailed journal of daily life. It proved to be the seed of his later literary genius. Among other things, the journal included elaborate sets of rules for social and moral life—many of which Tolstoy failed to hold himself to. He would rewrite them and again fail to follow them, leading to frustration and self-reprimands. Tolstoy kept the journal meticulously throughout most of his life, which has since provided deep insights into his career and personal life.

In 1851, Tolstoy joined the army, convinced by his older brother Nikolay and prompted by his gambling debts. This placed Tolstoy squarely in the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856. He served as an artillery officer during the siege of Sevastopol from 1854 to 1855. Though he displayed courage and capability as an officer, he detested the violence and gore of combat and left the army as soon as the war ended.

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy in 1848, at 20 years old. (Pavel Biryukov)  

However, the experience provided him with fodder for further literary works. He managed to write a sequel to “Childhood,” while dodging the bullets and blasts of the war. He also penned the “Sevastopol Tales,” a meditation on the nature of war, in which he experimented with the technique of stream-of-consciousness narration. The “Sevastopol Tales” includes one of Tolstoy’s most famous lines: “The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.”

These works had already gained some notoriety by the time Tolstoy returned to Russia after the war. He found himself a part of the St. Petersburg literary scene. However, he soon repudiated it—refusing to join any popular intellectual camp of the day—in favor of the gambling scene in Paris. After wasting all his money there, he had to return to Russia, where he published the third part of his autobiographical trilogy in 1857.

A Troubled Family Life

Now in his 30s, Tolstoy turned his eye to marriage, after the death of one of his brothers caused him to reconsider his life’s direction. However, he feared that he was too old and ugly for any woman to want him. Nevertheless, he proposed to Sofia Andreyevna Behrs, the youngest daughter of a doctor at the court. She was just 18 and he was 34. But she said yes and they married in 1862. They had 13 children together.

"Sophia Tolstaya, Leo Tolstoy's wife, and their daughter Alexandra Tolstaya," 1886, by Nikolai Ge. Oil on canvas. Leo Tolstoy Memorial Estate, Russia. Public Domain

In the beginning, their marriage was alive with joy and passion, though Sonya disapproved of her husband’s wild past. She worked away as a dedicated wife and mother, even copying out her husband’s massive tome “War and Peace” seven times to assist him in his work.

But over time, the marriage became strained, especially when Tolstoy began to develop unconventional religious beliefs. Among these was a conviction to give away all his money. His wife adamantly opposed the idea. As a compromise, Tolstoy signed over to her the rights to much of his literary oeuvre. The later years of the marriage became increasingly unhappy.

His Greatest Works

In the early 1860s, Tolstoy entered the period of his greatest literary accomplishments. In a staggering pair of achievements, the twin pillars of his enduring legacy, he wrote two of the world’s finest novels, “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina,” in the space of the next dozen years

“War and Peace” includes historical accounts of the Napoleonic Wars, essays on the laws of history, and stories of highly realistic fictional characters. “Anna Karenina” tells of the tragic consequences when a woman seeks happiness in an extramarital affair. Both works are rooted in the understanding that the quality and meaning of someone’s life depends on the nature of his or her day-to-day activities.

The central conflict in "Anna Karenina" is Anna's extramarital affair with a dashing soldier. Public Domain

After finishing “Anna Karenina,” Tolstoy experienced a spiritual crisis characterized by existential despair, which he recorded in his 1884 work “My Confession.” In the depths of this crisis, death seemed to render everything meaningless. But Tolstoy found solace in the simple faith of common people, and he at last turned toward religion to find a solution to his desolation. He first explored the Russian Orthodox church into which he’d been born but quickly became disillusioned with it. In fact, he came to reject organized religion entirely, believing that all churches were corrupt.

Instead, he developed a personal, heterodox form of Christianity, which led to his excommunication from the Orthodox church in 1901. Along with his unorthodox doctrinal beliefs, he created a set of moral tenets, one of the most notable being a strict teaching on nonviolence. Tolstoy attracted followers as a religious leader. His pacifism proved highly influential on Gandhi. He combined his idea of Christianity with stringent moral ideals, such as non-participation in all government activity, a refusal to make promises, and total sexual abstinence. But Tolstoy didn’t  always live up to his own moral precepts.

Tolstoy continued to write fiction and nonfiction into his old age. One of his most notable later works was “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” a novella that realistically portrays the psychological turmoil of a man who’s approaching death and who realizes his life has been wasted.

In addition, Tolstoy’s later fiction included moral tales or fables directed at a wider range of readers. Many of these are quite profound. James Joyce even praised one of these stories, “How Much Land Does a Man Need,” as “the greatest story that the literature of the world knows.”

In attempt to temporarily escape his bad marriage and the difficulty of adhering to his own principles, Tolstoy took a trip in 1910 with his daughter Aleksandra and his doctor. He hoped to avoid the incessant attention of the press by traveling incognito, but had only limited success. At last, worn out by the travels, Tolstoy stopped in Astapovo, Russia, in the home of a stationmaster. He died of pneumonia and heart failure there on Nov. 20, 1910. He was buried on his family’s estate.

The grave of Leo Tolstoy is well tended in this 2015 photograph. Velbes/CC BY-SA 4.0

He left the world multiple literary monuments that stand at the pinnacle of world literature, and he continues to be praised for the ability to depict the mental life of characters with remarkable detail and realism. In many ways a troubled soul, Tolstoy nevertheless transformed his life from one of hedonistic pleasure-seeking to that of a deeply spiritual man committed to self-restraint. He profoundly understood humanity’s need for the transcendent.

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