Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Biographies Leo Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy was a Russian author, one of the greatest authors of all time. Leo Tolstoy was born at Yasnya Polyana, in Tula Province, the fourth of five children. His parents died when he was young, and he was brought up by relatives. In 1844 Tolstoy started to study law and oriental languages at Kazan University, but he never earned a degree. Dissatisfied with the standard of education, he returned in the middle of his studies back to Yasnaya Polyana, and then spent much of his time in Moscow and St. Petersburg. After contracting heavy gambling debts, Tolstoy accompanied his older brother to the Caucasus in 1851, and joined an artillery regiment. In the 1850s Tolstoy also began his literary career, publishing the autobiographical trilogy Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. During the Crimean War, Tolstoy commanded a battery, and was at the siege of Sebastopol . In 1857 he visited France, Switzerland, and Germany to learn more about society and how to improve it. After traveling for a time, Tolstoy settled in Yasnaja Polyana, where he started a school for poor children. He saw that the secret of changing the world was in education. He investigated during his travels to Europe educational theory and practice, and published magazines and textbooks on the subject. In 1862 he married Sonya Andreyevna Behrs, and they had 13 children. Sonya also acted as Tolstoy’s secretary. Tolstoy's fiction originally came out of his diaries, in which he tried to understand his own feelings and actions so as to control them. He read avidly, both in literature and philosophy. In the Caucasus he read Plato and Rousseau, Dickens and Sterne; through the 1850s he also read and admired Goethe, Stendhal, Thackeray, and George Eliot. Tolstoy was convinced that philosophical principles can only be understood in their concrete expression in history. Tolstoy's major work, War and Peace, appeared between the years 1865 and 1869. The epic tale depicted the story of five families against the background of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Its vast canvas includes 580 characters, many historical, others fictional. The story moves from family life to the headquarters of Napoleon, from the court of Alexander to the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. War and Peace reflected Tolstoy's view that destiny controls everything, but we cannot live unless we imagine that we have free will. The harshest judgement is reserved for Napoleon, who thinks he controls events, but is mistaken. Pierre Bezukhov, who wanders on the battlefield of Borodino, and sees only the confusion, comes closer to the truth. Great men are for him ordinary human beings who are vain enough to accept responsibility for the life of society, but unable to recognise their own impotence in the cosmic flow. Tolstoy's other masterpiece, Anna Karenina, told a tragic story of a married woman, who follows her lover, but finally at a station throws herself in front of an incoming train. Tolstoy joined the crises of family life with the quest for the meaning of life. Anna's love affair with Vronskii parallels with another plot, Konstantin Levin's courtship and marriage to Kitty Shcherbatskaia. After finishing Anna Karenina Tolstoy renounced all his earlier works and wrote Conversion to explain his doctrines. Voskresenia (Reseurrection) was Tolstoy's last major novel. The novel affirmed Tolstoy's belief in the primacy of the individual conscience over the collective morality of the group. In the 1880s Tolstoy wrote philosophical books such as A Confession and What I Believe, which was banned in 1884. He started to see himself more as a sage and moral leader than an artist. In 1884 occurred his first attempt to leave home. He gave up his estate to his family, and tried to live as a poor, celibate peasant. Attracted by Tolstoy's writings, Yasnaya Polyana was visited by hundreds of people from all over the world. In 1901 the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated the author. Tolstoy became seriously ill and he recuperated in Crimea. Tolstoy's teachings influenced Gandhi in India, and the kibbutz movement in Palestine, and in Russia his moral authority rivaled that of the tsar. After leaving his estate with his disciple Vladimir Chertkov on the urge to live as a wandering ascetic, Tolstoy died of pneumonia on November 7 in 1910, at a remote railway junction. His collected works, which were published in the Soviet Union in 1928-58, consists of 90 volumes. Bibliography: Word Count: 726
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