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Unit 6: How Much Land Does a Man Need by Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy took refuge in queer and original behaviour. His contemporaries called him “Lyovochka Notes
the bear,” for he was always stiff and awkward.

He set off for Moscow in 1848 and for two years lived the irregular and dissipated life led by
young men of his class. The diaries of this period reveal the critical self-scrutiny with which he
regarded all his actions, and he itemized each deviation from his code of perfect behaviour.
Carnal lust and gambling were those passions most difficult for him to exorcise. As he closely
observed the life around him in Moscow, Tolstoy experienced an irresistible urge to write. This
time was the birth of the creative artist and the following year saw the publication of his first
story, Childhood.

Tolstoy began his army career in 1852, joining his brother Nicolai in the Caucasus. Garrisoned
among a string of Cossack outposts on the borders of Georgia, Tolstoy participated in occasional
expeditions against the fierce Chechenians, the Tartar natives rebelling against Russian rule.
He spent the rest of his time gambling, hunting, and fornicating.

Torn amidst his inner struggle between his bad and good impulses, Tolstoy arrived at a sincere
belief in God, though not in the formalized sense of the Eastern Church. The wild primitive
environment of the Caucasus satisfied Tolstoy’s intense physical and spiritual needs. Admiring
the free, passionate, natural life of the mountain natives, he wished to turn his back forever on
sophisticated society with its falseness and superficiality.
Soon after receiving his commission, Tolstoy fought among the defenders at Sevastopol against
the Turks. In his Sevastopol sketches, he describes with objectivity and compassion the matter-of-
fact bravery of the Russian officers and soldiers during the siege.
When the Crimean War broke out in 1853, Tolstoy was transferred to the front. During his
experience with the War in Sebastopol, he had the first of many religious awakenings, believing
that he needed to “create a new religion corresponding to the development of mankind.” After
Sebastopol capitulated in August 1855, he went to St. Petersburg to report on the battle, and then
he left the army for good. In St. Petersburg, Tolstoy was well received by the literary community,
but he also often fought with many of them, including disagreements with the great author
Turgenev (Fathers & Sons). He was elected a member of the Moscow Literary Society in February
1859.

Notes The Tolstoy family left Russia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, and Leo
Tolstoy’s descendants today live in Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and
the United States. Among them are Swedish singer Viktoria Tolstoy and Swedish landowner
Christopher Paus, Herresta. In 1884, Tolstoy wrote a book called “What I Believe”, in
which he openly confessed his Christian beliefs. He affirmed his beliefs in Jesus Christ’s
teachings and was particularly influenced by the Sermon on the Mount, and the injunction
to turn the other cheek. He understood this as a “commandment of non-resistance to evil
by force” and a doctrine of pacifism and nonviolence.

Throughout the composition of Anna Karenina and later writings including Resurrection (1899)
and the masterful short novel The Death of Ivan Ilyitch (1886), Tolstoy was heavily involved in
public works. His work in the 1880s, for example, mostly involved a stream of pamphlets and
didactic articles concerning religion, educational instruction, economics, and lifestyle. He wrote
articles praising vegetarianism, temperance, chastity, and wealth redistribution through collective
ownership of land. He underlined the importance of these lessons through personal example.
When a series of famines struck Russia in the early 1890s, for example, he and his family moved
deep into the countryside in order to set up soup kitchens - 246 of them by July 1892.

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