In Memory of Leo Tolstoy

It was 110 years ago today that Count Lev Nikolayevich (Leo) Tolstoy, the famous Russian writer, died at the age of 82, a month younger than I am now—and except for the mustache, my covid-19 pandemic beard now looks much like his as seen in the following picture taken near the end of his life. 

Remembering Tolstoy as a Novelist

Leo Tolstoy was born on August 28, 1828, about 200 kilometers south of Moscow. The third son of a landowning aristocrat, he inherited an estate consisting of a huge manor house and property with nearly 500 serfs.

After spending his young manhood in profligacy, in 1851 he joined the Russian army. He was an artillery officer during the Crimean War and was a part of the forces the British light brigade charged against, as described in my Oct. 20 post.

Reacting negatively toward that war, Tolstoy left the army and after traveling around Europe for a while, he began founding schools for peasant children in Russia. During the 1850s, even while still a soldier, he began to write novellas.

In the next decade, then, Tolstoy became a full-fledged novelist. War and Peace, his first, and very long and complicated, major novel, was published in 1869. It was followed by another lengthy novel, Anna Karenina, published in 1878.

Tolstoy wrote many novellas and literary works of many kinds, but his only other major novel was Resurrection, which was not published until 1899. Yes, with just three major works, and the third not widely read, Tolstoy is still recognized as one of the best novelists the world has ever seen.

Remembering Tolstoy as a Christian

Although baptized and brought up in the Russian Orthodox Church, Tolstoy wrote that by the age of 18 he had “lost all belief in what I had been taught.” Those are words from Confession (1882), the book he wrote in his early 50s about becoming a follower of Jesus Christ.

So, for the last 30 years of his life, Tolstoy lived and wrote as a Christian believer—but not as a member of the Orthodox Church, which, in fact, excommunicated him in 1901.

Tolstoy’s writings during those years were largely of a man who sought to follow the teachings of Jesus, especially as found in the Sermon on the Mount.

Selections of Tolstoy’s Christian writings are published in a 325-page book under the title The Gospel in Tolstoy (2015), and I much enjoyed reading that book this fall.

“My Way to Faith,” the fourth chapter, is an excerpt from Confession in which Tolstoy wrote, “As long as I know God, I live.” Also, “To know God and to live come to one and the same thing. God is life.”

Chapter 20 is “What Is the Meaning of Life?” from one of Tolstoy’s most theological writings, The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894).

Remembering Tolstoy as a Teacher 

Although Tolstoy was never a teacher in a formal sense, through his writings some of the world’s best-known people, and a multitude of unknown people, have learned important lessons from him.

Tolstoy became an important teacher for Mahatma Gandhi, for Martin Luther King Jr., and for Dorothy Day. And although certainly not widely known, he was also a teacher for Nishida Tenko-san, the subject of my 2/24/13 blog post, and I encourage you to (re)read that post.

Actually, Tolstoy has had much influence in Japan and is still seen as a trustworthy teacher there. In 2018 a Japanese woman published an article titled “What Today’s Youth Can Learn From the Great Russian Writer Leo Tolstoy.” She mentions Nishida (1872~1968) in her thoughtful article.

So, even though he died 110 years ago, Tolstoy is still remembered and honored as a brilliant writer—and as one who by his life and writings taught what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.