II.

Early Life and Works

Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born into a family of aristocratic landowners at Yasnaya Polyana, the family estate south of Moscow. His early education came from tutors at home, but after the deaths of his parents in the 1830s he was raised by relatives. Tolstoy entered Kazan’ State University when he was 16 but preferred to educate himself independently, and in 1847 he gave up his studies without finishing his degree.

Tolstoy’s next 15 years were very unsettled. He returned to manage the family estate, with the determination to improve himself intellectually, morally, and physically and to better the lot of his peasant serfs. After less than two years, however, he abandoned rural life for the pleasures of Moscow. In 1851 Tolstoy traveled to the Caucasus, a region then part of southern Russia, where his brother was serving in the army. He enlisted as a volunteer, serving with distinction in the Crimean War (1853-1856).

Tolstoy began his literary career during his army service, and his first work, the semi-autobiographical short novel Detstvo (1852; translated as Childhood, 1886), brought him acclaim. A series of other stories followed, and when he left the army in 1856 he was acknowledged as a rising new talent in literature. Tolstoy was never comfortable in the literary world, however, and in 1859 he returned to Yasnaya Polyana to manage the estate, set up a school for peasant children, and write about his progressive theories of education.

Tolstoy’s Childhood and its successors Otrochestvo (1854; Boyhood, 1886) and Iunost’ (1857; Youth, 1886) focus on the psychological and moral development of the hero from age ten to his late teens. Childhood in particular presents a lyrical and charming picture of the innocence and joys of childhood through the fresh and acute observations of the child, along with the mature reflections of the adult narrator. Experiences in the Crimean War provided the material for his three Sevastopolskie rasskazy (1855-1856; Sebastopol Tales, 1888), which pay tribute to the courage of the common soldier while forcefully condemning war. A short novel, Kazaki (1863; The Cossacks, 1887), grew out of Tolstoy’s service in the Caucasus. The hero of the book, Olenin, decides to escape the artificiality of Moscow society to attempt a more natural life among the Cossacks in a Caucasian village. He finds that he cannot abandon his civilized values, and the Cossacks never accept him.