Leo Tolstoy near the terrace of the Yasnaya Polyana house, May 11, 1908, Tula province., Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. Among Tolstoy's numerous visitors on the eve of his 80th birthday, a folk teacher from Siberia, IP Sysoev, who had previously visited America, came to Yasnaya Polyana. He asked Lev Nikolayevich for permission to photograph him for the Americans. The photographer Baranov, brought by Sysoev, took these photographs on May 11, the day when Tolstoy was strongly impressed by the report he had read in the newspaper Rus about the execution of twenty Kherson peasants. On that day, Lev Nikolaevich dictated into the phonograph the beginning of the article on the death penalty - the original version of "I can not be silent."
Photo Baranov S. A.
Leo Tolstoy playing gorodki, 1909, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village Yasnaya Polyana. In the background on the left is the grandson of Ilya Andreevich Tolstoy, on the right is the son of the servant Alyosha Sidorkov. “With me,” recalls Valentin Fyodorovich Bulgakov, “Lev Nikolayevich, at 82, played towns with Alyosha Sidorkov ... the son of the old Yasnaya Polyana servant Ilya Vasilyevich Sidorkov. There is a photograph depicting Tolstoy's "blow". Of course, he could no longer play “seriously” for a long time: he just “tried his strength””. 1909
Tapsel Thomas
Leo Tolstoy with his family, 1892, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village Yasnaya Polyana. From left to right: Misha, Leo Tolstoy, Lev, Andrey, Tatyana, Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya, Maria. Vanechka and Alexandra are in the foreground.
Photo studio "Scherer, Nabgolts and Kº"
Leo Tolstoy riding a Dawn, 1903, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. Many contemporaries of Leo Tolstoy admired his skill as a rider, including Vladimir Vasilyevich Stasov: “But as soon as he sat down, it’s just a miracle! The whole will gather, the legs seem to have merged with the horse, the body is a real centaur, it will tilt its head a little, - and the horse ... dances and knocks under him with its feet, like a fly ... ".
Leo and Sophia Tolstoy, 1895, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. The first mention of Tolstoy riding a bicycle is in a letter to his daughter Tatyana Lvovna dated April 16, 1894: “We have a new hobby: cycling. Papa spends hours studying on it, riding and circling along the alleys in the garden ... This is Alexei Maklakov’s bicycle, and tomorrow we will send it to him so as not to break it, otherwise it will probably end like this.
Photo Tolstaya Sofia Andreevna
Leo Tolstoy with relatives and friends, including the artist Nikolai Ge, 1888, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. Standing from left to right: Alexander Emmanuilovich Dmitriev-Mamonov (artist's son), Misha and Maria Tolstoy, M. V. Mamonov, Madame Lambert (governess); sitting: Sasha Tolstaya, Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya, Alexander Mikhailovich Kuzminsky (husband of Tatyana Kuzminskaya), artist Nikolai Nikolaevich Ge, Andrey and Lev Tolstoy, Sasha Kuzminsky, Tatyana Andreevna Kuzminskaya (sister of Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya), Mikhail Vladimirovich Islavin, Vera Alexandrovna Kuzminskaya, Misha Kuzminsky, Miss Chomel (governess of the Kuzminsky children); in the foreground - Vasya Kuzminsky, Lev and Tatiana Tolsty. For 12 years of friendship with Tolstoy, Ge painted only one pictorial portrait of Tolstoy. In 1890, at the request of Sophia Andreevna Tolstoy Ge, he sculpted a bust of Tolstoy - the first sculptural image of the writer, and even earlier, in 1886, he completed a series of illustrations for Tolstoy's story "What makes people alive"
Photo by Abamelek-Lazarev S.S.
Leo Tolstoy playing tennis, 1896, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village Yasnaya Polyana. From left to right: Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, Maria Lvovna Tolstaya, Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya, Nikolai Leonidovich Obolensky (son of Tolstoy's niece Elizaveta Valeryanovna Obolenskaya, from June 2, 1897 - husband of Maria Lvovna Tolstoy).
Photo Tolstaya Sofia Andreevna
Leo Tolstoy and Maxim Gorky, October 8, 1900, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. This was the second meeting of the writers. “I was in Yasnaya Polyana. I took away a huge pile of impressions from there, which to this day I can’t figure out ... I spent the whole day there from morning to evening, ”Alexei Maksimovich Gorky wrote to Anton Pavlovich Chekhov in October 1900.
Tolstaya Sofia Andreevna
Leo Tolstoy, land surveyor and peasant Prokofy Vlasov, 1890, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village.
Yasnaya Polyana. Adamson Photos
Leo Tolstoy with his family under the "tree of the poor", September 23, 1899, Tula province., Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. Standing: Nikolai Leonidovich Obolensky (son of Tolstoy's niece Elizaveta Valeryanovna Obolenskaya, since June 2, 1897 - husband of Maria Lvovna Tolstoy), Sofya Nikolaevna Tolstaya (Leo Tolstoy's daughter-in-law, since 1888 the wife of his son Ilya) and Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya. Seated from left to right: grandchildren Anna and Mikhail Ilyichi Tolstoy, Maria Lvovna Obolenskaya (daughter), Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya with her grandson Andrei Ilyich Tolstoy, Tatyana Lvovna Sukhotina with Volodya (Ilyich) in her arms, Varvara Valeryanovna Nagornova (niece of Leo Tolstoy, the eldest daughter of his sister Maria Nikolaevna Tolstoy), Olga Konstantinovna Tolstaya (wife of Andrei Lvovich Tolstoy), Andrei Lvovich Tolstoy with Ilya Ilyich Tolstoy (grandson of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy).
Photo Tolstaya Sofia Andreevna
Leo Tolstoy and Ilya Repin, December 17 - 18, 1908, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. The photograph refers to the last visit to Yasnaya Polyana by Ilya Efimovich Repin, taken at the request of his wife Natalya Borisovna Nordman-Severova. During almost thirty years of friendship, Tolstoy and Repin were photographed together for the first time.
Tolstaya Sofia Andreevna
Leo Tolstoy on a bench under the "tree of the poor", 1908, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. In the background Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya and four peasant boys.
Photo Kulakov P. E.
Leo Tolstoy and a peasant petitioner, 1908, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. Ivan Fedorovich Nazhivin wrote down the words of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy: “To love the distant, humanity, the people, to wish them well is not a tricky business ... No, you’ve got to love your neighbors, love your neighbors, those whom you meet every day, who sometimes get bored, they annoy, they interfere, - love them, do good to them! .. Here I am walking in the park the other day and thinking. I hear some woman walking behind and asking for something. And I just had an idea that I needed to work on. “Well, what do you need?” I say impatiently to the woman. “What are you bothering about?” But it's good that now he came to his senses and recovered. And then it happens, you realize it too late.
Bulla Karl Karlovich
Leo Tolstoy, July 1907, Tula province., Der. Ash trees. Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was filmed on one of the hot days of July 1907 in the village of Yasenki, where the Chertkovs lived at that time. According to an eyewitness, Bulgarian Hristo Dosev, the photo was taken after a heart-to-heart conversation between Tolstoy and one of his associates. “At the same time,” writes Dosev, “Chertkov prepared his photographic apparatus in the yard, wanting to take a portrait of L.N. But when he asked him to pose for him, L.N., who almost always peacefully agreed to this, this time did not want to. He furrowed his eyebrows and could not hide his unpleasant feeling. "There's an interesting, important conversation about a person's life, but here you're doing stupid things," he said irritably. But, having surrendered to the requests of VG, he went to stand. Apparently, having tamed himself, he joked with Chertkov. "He keeps shooting! But I'll take revenge on him. I'll take some car and, when he starts shooting, I'll douse him with water! And I laughed merrily."
Leo and Sofya Tolstoy on the 34th wedding anniversary, September 23, 1896, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana
Photo Tolstaya Sofia Andreevna
Leo Tolstoy plays chess with Vladimir Chertkov, June 28 - 30, 1907, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. On the right you can see the reverse of the portrait of Leo Tolstoy, on which the artist Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov was working at that time. During the sessions, Tolstoy often played chess. The eighteen-year-old son of Vladimir Chertkov Dima (Vladimir Vladimirovich Chertkov) was one of his most "unyielding" partners.
Photo Chertkov Vladimir Grigorievich
Leo Tolstoy with his granddaughter Tanya Sukhotina, 1908, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. In his diary, Lev Nikolaevich wrote: “If I were given a choice: to populate the earth with such saints as I can imagine, but only so that there are no children, or such people as now, but with children constantly arriving fresh from God, “I would choose the latter.”
Chertkov Vladimir Grigorievich
Leo Tolstoy with his family on the day of his 75th birthday, 1903, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. Standing from left to right: Ilya, Lev, Alexandra and Sergei Tolstoy; seated: Mikhail, Tatyana, Sofya Andreevna and Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Andrey.
Leo Tolstoy is having breakfast on the terrace of a house in Gaspra, December 1901, Tauride Gubernia, village. Gaspra. From the diary of Sofya Andreevna Tolstoy: “... it is difficult, terribly, sometimes unbearable with his stubbornness, tyranny and complete lack of knowledge of medicine and hygiene. For example, doctors tell him to eat caviar, fish, broth, but he is a vegetarian and this destroys himself ... ".
Photo Tolstaya Alexandra Lvovna
Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov in Gaspra, September 12, 1901, Tauride Province, village. Gaspra. The writers met in 1895 in Yasnaya Polyana. The photo was taken on the terrace of Sofya Vladimirovna Panina's dacha.
Photo by Sergeenko P.A.
Leo Tolstoy with his daughter Tatyana, 1902, Taurida province, pos. Gaspar
Photo Tolstaya Sofia Andreevna
Leo Tolstoy with his daughter Alexandra on the seashore, 1901, Taurida Province, village. Miskhor
Photo Tolstaya Sofia Andreevna
Leo Tolstoy and Dushan Makovitsky among patients and doctors of the Trinity District Psychiatric Hospital (talking to a patient who calls himself Peter the Great), June 1910, Moscow province., p. Trinity. Tolstoy became interested in issues of psychiatry in particular after meeting in 1897 with the famous criminologist and psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso. Living in Otradnoye next door to the two best at that time, the Trinity District and Pokrovskaya Zemstvo Psychiatric Hospitals, he visited them several times. Tolstoy visited the Trinity Hospital twice: on June 17 and 19, 1910.
Photo Chertkov Vladimir Grigorievich
Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, August 28, 1903, Tula province .., village. Yasnaya Polyana
Photo Protasevich Franz Trofimovich
Leo Tolstoy, Alexandra Tolstaya, chairman of the Moscow Literacy Society Pavel Dolgorukov, Tatyana Sukhotina, Varvara Feokritova, Pavel Biryukov, on January 31, 1910, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. The black poodle Marquis belonged to Tolstoy's youngest daughter Alexandra Lvovna.
Photo Saveliev A.I.
Leo and Sophia Tolstoy and their daughter Alexandra among the peasants of the village of Yasnaya Polyana on Trinity Day, 1909, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. Left: Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya.
Photo Tapsel Thomas
Leo Tolstoy walks from the house along the Preshpekt alley, 1903, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. From the diary of Mikhail Sergeevich Sukhotin, 1903: “Each time I am more and more surprised by the health and strength of L.N. He is getting younger, fresher, stronger. There is no mention of his former fatal illnesses ... He again acquired his youthful, quick, cheerful gait, very peculiar, with his socks turned outward.
Photo Tolstaya Alexandra Lvovna
Leo Tolstoy among the peasants of the village of Krekshino, Moscow province, 1909, Moscow province, village. Krekshino. The peasants of the village of Krekshino came with bread and salt to welcome the arrival of Leo Tolstoy. He came out to them in a shirt with suspenders outside, as the day was very hot and, according to eyewitnesses, he talked with them for a long time. The conversation turned to land, and Lev Nikolaevich expressed his view of landed property as a sin, all the evil from which he again resolved by moral perfection and refraining from violence.
Photo Tapsel Thomas
Leo Tolstoy in the office of the house in Yasnaya Polyana, 1909, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy is filmed in his office, in an armchair intended for visitors. Lev Nikolayevich sometimes liked to sit in this armchair in the evenings, reading a book by the light of a candle, which he placed next to him on a bookcase. The rotating bookcase was presented to him by Pyotr Alekseevich Sergeenko. On it were placed books that Tolstoy used in the near future and which therefore had to be “at hand”. A note was pinned on the bookcase: "Books from the right ones."
Photo Chertkov Vladimir Grigorievich
Leo Tolstoy on a walk, 1908, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village Yasnaya Polyana
Photo Chertkov Vladimir Grigorievich
Leo Tolstoy tells a fairy tale about a cucumber to his grandchildren Sonya and Ilyusha, 1909, Moscow province, village. Krekshino
Photo Chertkov Vladimir Grigorievich
Leo Tolstoy at the station in Krekshino, September 4 - 18, 1909, Moscow province., Der. Krekshino
Unknown author
Departure of Leo Tolstoy to Kochety to his daughter Tatyana Sukhotina, 1909, Tula province, Tula district, Kozlova Zasek station. In the last two years of his life, Tolstoy often left Yasnaya Polyana - sometimes for a short stay with his daughter Tatyana Lvovna in Kochety, then to Chertkov in Krekshino or in Meshcherskoye, Moscow province.
Photo Chertkov Vladimir Grigorievich
Leo Tolstoy, 1907, Tula province, Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana. “Not a single photograph, not even portraits painted from him, can convey the impression that was obtained from his living face and figure. When Tolstoy looked at a person, he became motionless, concentrated, inquisitively penetrated inside him and as if sucking out everything that was hidden in him - good or bad. At that moment his eyes hid behind overhanging brows, like the sun behind a cloud. At other times, Tolstoy responded to a joke like a child, burst into a sweet laugh, and his eyes became cheerful and playful, came out of thick eyebrows and shone, ”wrote Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky.
Photo Chertkov Vladimir Grigorievich
Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich (1828 - 1910) - count, famous writer, who reached an unprecedented in the history of literature of the XIX century. glory. Belongs to a rich and noble family, which occupied a high position in the time of Peter the Great. The great-grandfather of Lev Nikolayevich, Count Pyotr Andreevich, had a sad role in the history of Tsarevich Alexei. The great-grandson of Peter Andreevich, Ilya Andreevich, is described in War and Peace in the person of the old Count of Rostov. The son of Ilya Andreevich, Nikolai Ilyich, was the father of Lev Nikolaevich (depicted in "Childhood" and "Boyhood" in the face of Nikolinka's father). In the rank of lieutenant colonel of the Pavlograd hussar regiment, he took part in the war of 1812 and after the conclusion of peace he retired. Having spent his youth merrily, Nikolai Ilyich lost a huge fortune. Passion for the game passed to his son. To put his frustrated affairs in order, Nikolai Ilyich, like Nikolai Rostov, married the ugly and no longer very young Princess Volkonskaya. They had four sons: Nikolai, Sergei, Dmitry and Lev, and a daughter, Maria. Tolstoy's maternal grandfather, Catherine's General, is brought on stage in "War and Peace" in the face of the old prince Volkonsky, and Leo's mother is depicted in the face of Princess Marya. In addition to the Volkonskys, Tolstoy is closely related to a number of other aristocratic families - the princes Gorchakov, Trubetskoy.
1854
1862
Editorial board of the journal "Sovremennik", St. Petersburg. From left to right are L. N. Tolstoy, D. V. Grigorovich. I.A. Goncharov, I.S. Turgenev, A.V. Druzhinin, A.N. Ostrovsky are sitting.
1868
1885
1892, Yasnaya Polyana. Leo Tolstoy with his family at the tea table in the park.
1900, Yasnaya Polyana. L.N. Tolstoy and A.M. Gorky.
1901, Crimea
1901, Crimea. L.N. Tolstoy and A.P. Chekhov.
1905, Yasnaya Polyana. Leo Tolstoy returns from swimming on the Voronka River
1908, Yasnaya Polyana. L.N. Tolstoy and I.E. Repin.
1908, Yasnaya Polyana. LN Tolstoy plays chess with MS Sukhotin.
1908, Yasnaya Polyana. Leo Tolstoy with his granddaughter Tanechka
1908, Yasnaya Polyana. Leo Tolstoy with his beloved horse Delir
1908, Yasnaya Polyana. At the terrace of the Yasnaya Polyana house.
1908 Leo Tolstoy's house in Yasnaya Polyana.
August 28, 1908, Yasnaya Polyana. Leo Tolstoy on his 80th birthday.
1888
Standing from left to right: Alexander Emmanuilovich Dmitriev-Mamonov (artist's son), Misha and Maria Tolstoy, M. V. Mamonov, Madame Lambert (governess); sitting: Sasha Tolstaya, Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya, Alexander Mikhailovich Kuzminsky (husband of Tatyana Kuzminskaya), artist Nikolai Nikolaevich Ge, Andrey and Lev Tolstoy, Sasha Kuzminsky, Tatyana Andreevna Kuzminskaya (sister of Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya), Mikhail Vladimirovich Islavin, Vera Alexandrovna Kuzminskaya, Misha Kuzminsky, Miss Chomel (governess of the Kuzminsky children); in the foreground - Vasya Kuzminsky, Lev and Tatiana Tolsty. For 12 years of friendship with Tolstoy, Ge painted only one pictorial portrait of Tolstoy. In 1890, at the request of Sofya Andreevna Tolstoy, Ge sculpted a bust of Tolstoy - the first sculptural image of the writer, and even earlier, in 1886, he completed a series of illustrations for Tolstoy's story "What makes people alive." 
August 1897
The photographs were taken at the request of Ilya Yakovlevich Gunzburg during his stay in Yasnaya Polyana, when he was working on a full-length sculptural portrait of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Based on these photographs, the sculptor sculpted a figurine of the writer and then sculpted from nature, correcting what had been done earlier. 
Anton Chekhov at Leo Tolstoy's in Gaspra
1901 
Breakfast on the terrace of a house in Gaspra
December 1901 
Leo Tolstoy with his family on his 75th birthday
1903 Tula province., Krapivensky district, village. Yasnaya Polyana
Standing from left to right: Ilya, Lev, Alexandra and Sergei Tolstoy; seated: Mikhail, Tatyana, Sofya Andreevna and Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Andrey. 
Leo Tolstoy with peasant children on Trinity Day. May 17, 1909 
Leo Tolstoy riding Dawn
1903 
Leo Tolstoy with his sister Maria Nikolaevna in Yasnaya Polyana
July 1908 
Leo Tolstoy near the terrace of the Yasnaya Polyana house
May 11, 1908 
Leo Tolstoy in his office at Yasnaya Polyana
1909 
1909 Tolstoy is photographed in Yuly Genrikhovich Zimmerman's music store on Kuznetsky Most while listening to the new Mignon musical apparatus, which reproduces the playing of famous pianists. 
1909 In the background on the left is the grandson of Ilya Andreevich Tolstoy, on the right is the servant's son Alyosha Sidorkov. “With me,” recalls Valentin Fedorovich Bulgakov, “Lev Nikolaevich, at 82, played towns with Alyosha Sidorkov ... the son of the old Yasnaya Polyana servant Ilya Vasilyevich Sidorkov. There is a photograph depicting Tolstoy's "blow". Of course, he could no longer play “seriously” for a long time: he just “tried his strength””. 
Leo and Sophia Tolstoy on their 48th wedding anniversary
September 25, 1910 
Leo Tolstoy, Alexandra Tolstaya, Chairman of the Moscow Literacy Society Pavel Dolgorukov, Tatyana Sukhotina, Varvara Feokritova, Pavel Biryukov are going to the opening of the People's Library in the village of Yasnaya Polyana
January 31, 1910 
May 19, 1910
One of the last portraits of the writer. Photographed by Vladimir Grigorievich Chertkov at a time when Tolstoy and his secretary Valentin Fyodorovich Bulgakov were sorting through the mail. On the day of shooting, May 19, 1910, Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “Taking portraits. It's embarrassing that I can't say no." Lev Nikolaevich crossed out the last line, not wanting to upset Chertkov. 
Valeria Dmitrieva, a researcher at the Traveling Exhibitions Department of the Yasnaya Polyana Museum-Estate, tells about the family customs and traditions of the count's family.
Valeria Dmitrieva
Before meeting Sofya Andreevna, Lev Nikolayevich, at that time a young writer and an enviable groom, had been trying to find a bride for several years. He was gladly received in houses where there were girls of marriageable age. He corresponded with many potential brides, looked, chose, evaluated ... And then one day a happy accident brought him to the house of the Berses, with whom he was familiar. This wonderful family brought up three daughters at once: the eldest Lisa, the middle Sonya and the youngest Tanya. Lisa was passionately in love with Count Tolstoy. The girl did not hide her feelings, and those around her already considered Tolstoy to be the eldest of the sisters. But Lev Nikolayevich had a different opinion.
The writer himself had tender feelings for Sonya Bers, which he hinted to her in his famous message.
On the card table, the count wrote with chalk the first letters of three sentences: “V. m. and p. s. With. and. n. m.m.s. and n. With. In c. With. With. l. V. n. m. and c. With. L. Z. m. from v. With. T". Later Tolstoy wrote that it was from this moment that his whole future life depended.
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, photo, 1868
According to his plan, Sofya Andreevna had to unravel the message. If she deciphers the text, then she is his destiny. And Sofya Andreevna understood what Lev Nikolaevich meant: “Your youth and the need for happiness remind me too vividly of my old age and the impossibility of happiness. There is a false view of me and your sister Lisa in your family. Protect me, you and your sister Tanechka. She wrote that it was providence. By the way, Tolstoy later described this moment in the novel Anna Karenina. It was with chalk on the card table that Konstantin Levin encrypted Kitty's marriage proposal.
Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya, 1860s
Happy Lev Nikolayevich wrote a marriage proposal and sent it to the Bers. Both the girl and her parents agreed. The modest wedding took place on September 23, 1862. The couple got married in Moscow, in the Kremlin Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Immediately after the ceremony, Tolstoy asked his young wife how she wanted to continue her family life: whether to go on a honeymoon abroad, whether to stay in Moscow with her parents, or move to Yasnaya Polyana. Sofya Andreevna replied that she immediately wanted to start a serious family life in Yasnaya Polyana. Later, the countess often regretted her decision and how early her girlhood ended and that she never went anywhere.
In the autumn of 1862, Sofya Andreevna moved to live in her husband's estate Yasnaya Polyana, this place became her love and her destiny. Both remember the first 20 years of their lives as very happy. Sofya Andreevna looked at her husband with adoration and admiration. He treated her with great tenderness, reverently and with love. When Lev Nikolaevich left the estate on business, they always wrote letters to each other.
Lev Nikolaevich:
“I am glad that this day was entertained for me, otherwise, dear, I was already scared and sad for you. It's funny to say: as I left, I felt how terrible it was to leave you. - Farewell, darling, be a good boy and write. 1865 July 27. Warrior.
“How sweet you are to me; how you are better for me, cleaner, more honest, dearer, sweeter than everyone in the world. I look at your children's portraits and rejoice. 1867 June 18. Moscow.
Sofia Andreevna:
“Lyovochka, dear darling, I really want to see you at this moment, and again in Nikolskoye to drink tea together under the windows, and run away on foot to Aleksandrovka and again live our sweet life at home. Farewell, darling, dear, I kiss you tightly. Write and take care of yourself, this is my testament. July 29, 1865"
“My dear Lyovochka, I survived the whole day without you, and with such a joyful heart I sit down to write to you. This is my real and greatest consolation to write to you even about the most insignificant things. June 17, 1867"
“It is such a labor to live in the world without you; everything is not right, everything seems wrong and not worth it. I did not want to write you anything like that, but it broke so badly. And everything is so cramped, so petty, something better is needed, and this is the best - it's only you, and you are always alone. September 4, 1869"
Fat people loved to spend time with the whole big family. They were great inventors, and Sofya Andreevna herself managed to create a special family world with her own traditions. Most of all, this was felt during family holidays, as well as at Christmas, Easter, Trinity. They were very much loved in Yasnaya Polyana. The Tolstoy went to the liturgy at the parish church of St. Nicholas, located two kilometers south of the estate.
For a festive dinner, a turkey and a signature dish - Ankov pie were served. Sofya Andreevna brought his recipe to Yasnaya Polyana from her family, to whom it was given by the doctor and friend Professor Anke.
Tolstoy's son Ilya Lvovich recalls:
“Since I can remember myself, on all solemn occasions of life, on big holidays and on name days, the “Ankov pie” has always and invariably been served in the form of a cake. Without this, the dinner was not a dinner and the celebration was not a celebration.
Summer at the estate turned into an endless holiday with frequent picnics, tea parties with jam and outdoor games. They played croquet and tennis, swam in the Funnel, and went boating. They organized musical evenings, home performances ...
The Tolstoy family playing tennis. From the photo album of Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya
We often dined in the yard, and drank tea on the veranda. In the 1870s, Tolstoy brought such fun to children as "giant steps". This is a large pole with ropes tied at the top, on which there is a loop. One leg was inserted into the loop, the other was pushed off the ground and thus jumped. The children liked these "giant steps" so much that Sofya Andreevna recalled how difficult it was to tear them away from the fun: the children did not want to eat or sleep.
At 66, Tolstoy began cycling. The whole family worried about him, wrote letters to him so that he would leave this dangerous occupation. But the count said that he was experiencing sincere childish joy and in no case would he leave the bicycle. Lev Nikolayevich even studied cycling at the Manezh, and the city council issued him a ticket with permission to ride the streets of the city.
Moscow city government. Ticket number 2300 issued to Tolstoy for cycling through the streets of Moscow. 1896
In winter, the Tolstoys enthusiastically skated, Lev Nikolaevich loved this business very much. He spent at least an hour at the rink, taught his sons, and Sofya Andreevna taught his daughters. Near the house in Khamovniki, he poured the ice rink himself.
Traditional home entertainment in the family: reading aloud and literary bingo. Excerpts from works were written on the cards, it was necessary to guess the name of the author. In later years, Tolstoy was read an excerpt from Anna Karenina, he listened and, not recognizing his text, highly appreciated it.
The family loved to play in the mailbox. Throughout the week, family members dropped leaflets with anecdotes, poems, or notes about what was bothering them into it. On Sunday the whole family sat in a circle, opened the mailbox and read aloud. If they were playful poems or short stories, they tried to guess who could write it. If personal experiences - understood. Modern families can take advantage of this experience, because we now talk so little with each other.
By Christmas, a Christmas tree was always put up in the Tolstoy house. They prepared decorations for it themselves: gilded nuts, figurines of animals cut out of cardboard, wooden dolls dressed in different costumes, and much more. A masquerade was organized on the estate, in which both Lev Nikolaevich and Sofya Andreevna, and their children, and guests, and courtyards, and peasant children took part.
“On Christmas Day 1867, the Englishwoman Hannah and I longed to make a Christmas tree. But Lev Nikolaevich did not like either Christmas trees or any festivities and then strictly forbade buying toys for children. But Hannah and I asked permission for a Christmas tree and for us to be allowed to buy Serezha only a horse, and Tanya only a doll. We decided to call both yard and peasant children. For them, in addition to various sweet things, gilded nuts, gingerbread and other things, we bought naked wooden skeleton dolls, and dressed them in a wide variety of costumes, to the great delight of our children ... about 40 guys gathered from the household and from the village, and the children and I were joyfully handing out everything from the Christmas tree to the children.
Skeleton dolls, English plum pudding (a pudding doused with rum was lit while serving), a masquerade become an integral part of the Christmas holidays in Yasnaya Polyana.
Sofya Andreevna was mainly engaged in the upbringing of children in the Tolstoy family. The children wrote that most of the time their mother spent with them, but they all respected their father very much and were afraid in a good way. His word was the last and decisive, that is, the law. The children wrote that if they needed a quarter for something, they could go up to their mother and ask. She will ask in detail what you need, and with persuasion to spend carefully will give money. And it was possible to approach the father, who would simply look at point-blank range, burn with his eyes and say: “Take it on the table.” He looked so penetratingly that everyone preferred to beg for money from their mother.
Lev Nikolaevich and Sofya Andreevna Tolstoy with family and guests. September 1-8, 1892
A lot of money in the Tolstoy family was spent on the education of children. All of them received a good primary education at home, and the boys then studied at the Tula and Moscow gymnasiums, but only the eldest son Sergei Tolstoy graduated from the university.
The most important thing that children in the Tolstoy family were taught was to be sincere, kind people and treat each other well.
In the marriage of Lev Nikolaevich and Sofya Andreevna, 13 children were born, but only eight of them survived to adulthood.
The most difficult loss for the family was the death of the last son of Vanechka. When the baby was born, Sofya Andreevna was 43 years old, Lev Nikolaevich - 59 years old.
Vanechka Tolstoy
Vanya was a real peacemaker and united the whole family with his love. Lev Nikolayevich and Sofya Andreevna loved him very much and experienced an untimely death from scarlet fever of their youngest son, who did not live to see seven years of age.
“Nature is trying to give the best and, seeing that the world is not yet ready for them, takes them back ...”, - Tolstoy said these words after the death of Vanechka.
In the last years of his life, Lev Nikolaevich did not feel well and often gave his relatives cause for serious concern. In January 1902 Sofya Andreevna wrote:
“My Lyovochka is dying ... And I realized that my life cannot remain in me without him. I have lived with him for forty years. For everyone he is a celebrity, for me he is my whole existence, our lives went one into another, and, my God! How much guilt, repentance has accumulated ... It's all over, you can't return it. Help, Lord! How much love and tenderness I gave him, but how much of my weaknesses grieved him! Forgive me, Lord! Forgive me, my dear, dear dear husband!”
But Tolstoy understood all his life what a treasure he got. A few months before his death, in July 1910, he wrote:
“My assessment of your life with me is as follows: I, a depraved, deeply vicious sexually man, no longer my first youth, married you, a clean, good, smart 18-year-old girl, and despite this, my dirty, vicious past you for almost 50 years she lived with me, loving me, working, hard life, giving birth, feeding, raising, caring for children and me, not succumbing to those temptations that could so easily seize any woman in your position, strong, healthy, beautiful. But you lived in such a way that I have nothing to reproach you with.”
In 1906, Leo Tolstoy refused to consider his candidacy for the Nobel Prize. The writer explained this by his attitude to money, but the public took the refusal as another waywardness of the count. Below are a few more “quirks” of Leo Tolstoy…
One of the most colorful scenes of Anna Karenina is the description of haymaking, during which Konstantin Levin (whom Lev Nikolayevich, as you know, wrote in many respects from himself) works in the field on an equal basis with the peasants. But Tolstoy glorified physical labor not only through his heroes, but also through his own example. Working in the field side by side with the peasants was not an extravagant aristocratic hobby for him, he sincerely loved and respected hard physical labor.
In addition, Tolstoy, with pleasure and, importantly, with skill, sewed boots, which he then presented to relatives, mowed grass and plowed the land, surprising the local peasants who were watching him and upsetting his wife.
Yes, not with anyone, but with Ivan Turgenev. It is worth saying that Tolstoy in his youth and even in adulthood was very far from the image of a wise and calm old man familiar to us today, calling for humility and conflict-freeness. In his youth, the count was categorical in his judgments, straightforward, and sometimes even rude. An example of this is his conflict with Turgenev.
Rumor has it that one of the reasons for the discord was the "love affair" that began between Turgenev and Countess Maria Nikolaevna, Tolstoy's beloved sister. But the final quarrel between them happened when both writers were visiting the house of Afanasy Fet. Judging by the memoirs of the latter, the reason for the altercation was Turgenev's story about his daughter's governess, who, for educational purposes, forced her to mend the tattered clothes of beggars.
This manner seemed to Tolstoy too ostentatious, which he told his interlocutor with straightforwardness and fervor. A verbal squabble almost led to a fight - Turgenev promised Tolstoy "to punch in the face", and he, in turn, challenged him to a duel. Fortunately, they did not shoot themselves - Turgenev apologized, Tolstoy accepted them, but a long discord ensued in their relationship. Only seventeen years later, Turgenev came to Yasnaya Polyana to see the enlightened and no longer so hot-tempered Tolstoy.
In 1882, a population census was held in Moscow. Interestingly, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy took part in it on a voluntary basis. The count wanted to know the poverty in Moscow, to see how people live here, in order to somehow help the poor townspeople with money and deeds. He chose for his purposes one of the most difficult and disadvantaged sections of the capital - near the Smolensky market along Protochny Lane, which housed bunkhouses and shelters of poverty.
I.E. Repin. Leo Tolstoy in the room under the arches. 1891
In addition to social analysis, Tolstoy also pursued charitable goals, he wanted to raise money, help the poor with work, arrange their children in schools, and the elderly in shelters. Tolstoy personally went around the bunkhouses and filled out census cards, and besides, he raised the problems of the poor in the press and the city duma. The result was his articles “So what should we do?” and "On the census in Moscow" with appeals for help and support to the poor.
Over the years, Tolstoy was increasingly captured by spiritual quests, and he paid less and less attention to everyday life, striving for asceticism and “simplification” in almost everything. The count is engaged in hard peasant labor, sleeps on the bare floor and walks barefoot until the very cold, thus emphasizing his closeness to the people. Just like that - on a bare foot, in a belted peasant shirt, simple trousers - Ilya Repin captured him in his picture.
I.E. Repin. LN Tolstoy barefoot. 1901
He described it in the same way in a letter to his daughter: “No matter how this giant humiliates himself, no matter how mortal rags cover his mighty body, Zeus is always visible in him, from the wave of his eyebrows the whole Olympus trembles.”
Leo Tolstoy plays the Russian folk game gorodki, Yasnaya Polyana, 1909.
Lev Nikolaevich maintained physical vigor and strength of mind until the very last days. The reason for this is the count's passionate love for sports and all kinds of physical exercises, which, in his opinion, were mandatory, especially for those who are engaged in mental work.
Walking was Tolstoy's favorite discipline; it is known that already at the fairly respectable age of sixty, he made three foot crossings from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana. In addition, the count was fond of skating, mastered cycling, horseback riding, swimming, and started every morning with gymnastics.
Writer Leo Tolstoy learns to ride a bicycle in the former building of the Manege (Tyklist magazine, 1895).
Tolstoy was ardently fond of pedagogy and even set up a school for peasant children on his estate in Yasnaya Polyana. It is interesting that a largely experimental approach to learning was practiced there - Tolstoy did not put discipline at the forefront, but rather supported the theory of free education - the children in his lessons sat as they wanted, there was no specific program, but the classes were very fruitful. Tolstoy not only personally worked with students, but also published children's books, including his own "ABC".
The conflict between Tolstoy and the Orthodox Church has become one of the strangest and saddest pages in the writer's biography. The last two decades of Tolstoy's life were marked by his final disappointment in the church faith and rejection of Orthodox dogmas. The writer questioned the authority of the official church and spoke critically of the clergy, insisting on a broader understanding of religion. Thus, his break with the church was a foregone conclusion - in response to Tolstoy's public criticism and a series of publications on the topic of religion, the Synod in 1901 excommunicated him from the church.
Already at the advanced age of 82 years, the writer decided to go wandering, leaving his estate, leaving his wife and children. In a farewell letter to his Countess Sophia, Tolstoy writes: “I can no longer live in those conditions of luxury in which I lived, and I do what old people of my age usually do: they leave worldly life in order to live in solitude and quiet the last days own life".
Accompanied by his personal doctor Dushan Makovitsky, the count leaves Yasnaya Polyana and goes on a wandering without a specific goal. Having stopped at Optina Pustyn and Kozelsk, he decides to go south to his niece, from where he plans to move further to the Caucasus. But the last journey was cut short as soon as it began: on the way, Tolstoy caught a cold and caught pneumonia - on November 7, Lev Nikolayevich died in the house of the head of the Astapovo railway station.
Dmitry Nazarov
: https://www.softmixer.com/2013/11/blog-post_9919.html#more
