Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy Writer and Thinker

The last Chapter

• 1884 first attempt to
• leave home, gave up his
• estate in Yasnaya
• Polyana
• 1901 Excommunication
• from Russian Orthodox
• Church
• In November of 1910,
• Tolstoy leaves home

His letter to Sofya Andreevna

• “My departure will sadden you. But understand and believe that I cannot act in any other way. My position in the house is becoming, or has become, unbearable. Apart from anything else, I cannot live in those conditions of luxury in which I have lived, and am doing what old men of my age usually do: they abandon the worldly life to live out in isolation and silence their last days…”

Tolstoy falls ill on the train, is taken in by the stationmaster…

• …in the small railway station of Astapovo

Tolstoy’s room in Astapovo

The End

• Fell ill and died
• seven days later

• Thousands of people came to ask about the writer’s condition

Tolstoy’s wife looking through the window

• Tolstoy’s wife looking through the window

Clock at the Astapovo railway station stopped at the time of Tolstoy’s death

Last words

• “There are masses of people, apart from Leo Tolstoy, but you only pay attention to Leo Tolstoy…that’s not how peasants die. … I love the truth.”

’ Tolstoy’s grave

Leo Tolstoy’s Biography

• I clearly realized that my biography, if
• it suppressed all the nastiness and
• criminality of my life - as they
• customarily write biographies - would
• be a lie, and that if one is going to
• write my biography, one must write the
• whole truth.
• – Leo Tolstoy