Tolstoy At War And Peace
- By Amos Chapple
Marking the death of Leo Tolstoy 110 years ago on November 20, we present photos from the life of one of Russia's greatest writers.
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Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy poses for a portrait at the age of 20. The young nobleman was born into a wealthy rural family in 1828. Both of Tolstoy's parents died when he was a boy.
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Tolstoy's childhood home in Yasnaya Polyana. The family estate is about 200 kilometers south of Moscow.
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Tolstoy in military uniform in 1854. After several youthful years of gambling, drinking, and chasing girls, Tolstoy joined the tsar's army. He served with distinction in the Caucasus and the Crimean War, which was ongoing when this photo was taken.
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Cannonballs dot the landscape in Crimea after a battle.
In Crimea, Tolstoy described watching amputations being carried out on his fellow soldiers -- an experience that profoundly shifted his views on war: "You see the sharp, curved knife enter the healthy, white body," he wrote later. "You see the wounded man suddenly regain consciousness with a piercing cry and curses, you see the army surgeon fling the amputated arm into a corner, you see another wounded man, lying in a litter in the same apartment, shrink convulsively and groan as he gazes at the operation upon his comrade...you behold war, not from its conventional, beautiful, and brilliant side, with music and drumbeat, with fluttering flags and galloping generals, but you behold war in its real phase -- in blood, in suffering, in death."
In Crimea, Tolstoy described watching amputations being carried out on his fellow soldiers -- an experience that profoundly shifted his views on war: "You see the sharp, curved knife enter the healthy, white body," he wrote later. "You see the wounded man suddenly regain consciousness with a piercing cry and curses, you see the army surgeon fling the amputated arm into a corner, you see another wounded man, lying in a litter in the same apartment, shrink convulsively and groan as he gazes at the operation upon his comrade...you behold war, not from its conventional, beautiful, and brilliant side, with music and drumbeat, with fluttering flags and galloping generals, but you behold war in its real phase -- in blood, in suffering, in death."
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Tolstoy (top left) poses with a group of other Russian writers in 1856. By the time this photograph was taken, Tolstoy was known as an emerging talent in Russia's literary scene.
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Tolstoy with his wife, Sophia, whom he married in 1862. The couple had 13 children -- eight of whom survived to adulthood. But the marriage was not a happy one. The day before their wedding, Tolstoy inexplicably gave Sophia a notebook detailing his sexual experiences with peasant women.
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Tolstoy in 1862. The year after this photo was taken, the writer began work on his epic novel War And Peace, which would take him six years to complete.
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A portrait of the already world-famous Tolstoy in the 1870s. In 1878, Tolstoy became a devout Christian who focused on the biblical teachings of Jesus Christ. Tolstoy rejected much of what the Russian Orthodox Church dictated. At around the same time, he also became a vegetarian, declaring in an essay: "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral."
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Tolstoy makes a list of starving peasants who needed food supplies during the Russian famine of 1891. The same year, Tolstoy declared he would renounce the copyright to his writings -- by then worth a fortune.
![Tolstoy poses with Russian writer Maksim Gorky at Yasnaya Polyana in 1900. Gorky recalled: "I took away from [the meeting] a huge heap of impressions, which to this day I cannot fully comprehend.... I spent the whole day there from morning until evening." ](https://gdb.rferl.org/9d39ac43-8b09-4214-a8ee-b8641ea1e1e0_w1024_q10_s.jpg)
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Tolstoy poses with Russian writer Maksim Gorky at Yasnaya Polyana in 1900. Gorky recalled: "I took away from [the meeting] a huge heap of impressions, which to this day I cannot fully comprehend.... I spent the whole day there from morning until evening."
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Tolstoy with his daughter Aleksandra on the seaside at an unknown location in 1901. Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church the year this photograph was taken.
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Tolstoy delights his grandchildren as he tells them a fairy tale in 1908.
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The road to Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's home in the countryside south of Moscow, photographed in 1909.
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A rare image from 1909 of Tolstoy speaking. Less than a year later, amid an ongoing marital crisis, Tolstoy walked out of his house and into the snow. Then he boarded a train to an uncertain destination. He caught pneumonia during the journey and died on November 20, 1910, in a stationmaster's house.
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Tolstoy's body is carried out of a railway station in Russia's Lipetsk region, where the famed writer died.
Amid an outpouring of grief around the world, Russia's Tsar Nicholas II wrote: "I sincerely regret the death of the great writer, who, during the height of his talent, reflected in his works images of the most glorious years of Russian life. May the Lord God be a merciful judge to him."
Amid an outpouring of grief around the world, Russia's Tsar Nicholas II wrote: "I sincerely regret the death of the great writer, who, during the height of his talent, reflected in his works images of the most glorious years of Russian life. May the Lord God be a merciful judge to him."
