The mystery of the fat man leaving the house is akin to the mystery of the pyramids, the biographer believes. Tolstoy's family problems

Research objectives The tragic departure of Tolstoy from his family home in Yasnaya Polyana, which ended with his death at the Astapovo railway station, continues to attract attention 100 years after the event that shook Russia. Many articles have been written about the sad results of the 50-year marriage of Lev Nikolaevich and Sofya Andreevna, memoirs, monographs and art biographies have been published. About Tolstoy, like no other Russian writer, they write abroad, and the number of countries where his work is studied is constantly increasing. A prominent place in the scale of research on Tolstoy is occupied by scientists from the USA and Canada. For a Russian reader, especially a literary critic, acquaintance with works on Tolstoy by American and Canadian scientists and writers will undoubtedly be useful. At the same time, the theme of Tolstoy and his work in North American scientific and fiction literature is so great that within the framework of the article, it is possible to consider in detail only a separate fragment of it, in this case, finding out the reasons for Tolstoy's departure from Yasnaya Polyana. The limitation of the research topic does not exclude the need for a general acquaintance of Russian readers with the state of scientific and artistic creativity about Tolstoy in the USA and Canada. Therefore, in this article, several tasks were set: 1. To give an idea of ​​Tolstoy's place in North American culture; 2. To characterize the quantitative dynamics of books about Tolstoy published by American and Canadian scientists and writers; 3. Consider the main works of North American scientists devoted to the analysis of the reasons for Tolstoy's departure from Yasnaya Polyana. The article considers only scientific works. Artistic biographies of Tolstoy and his wife are planned to be considered in the next article. This work was carried out within the framework of the scientific grant of the Russian Humanitarian Foundation "L.N. Tolstoy in the Russian and World Consciousness: Roll Call at the Turn of the Century (100 Years After His Retirement)". The author would like to thank John Woodsworth of the Slavonic Studies Group at the University of Ottawa for valuable comments on the paper. Tolstoy's place inNorth American culture In North America, Leo Tolstoy is the most famous Russian writer. He is known everywhere - from New York, Montreal and San Francisco to the towns of the American and Canadian outback. According to the plots of his novels, a dozen films were shot in Hollywood, children hear about Tolstoy in schools. The rest of the great Russians remain for the elite. Tchaikovsky, with his The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, is perceived as something European that has become part of the local culture, Pushkin, despite the efforts of Nabokov, is barely translated, and Dostoevsky and Chekhov, in many respects superior to Tolstoy, are appreciated only by intellectuals. But even in their midst, Tolstoy is noticeably singled out. According to a 2007 survey of 125 American and English writers, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and War and Peace were ranked first and third out of the top 10 works of all time, Chekhov's stories were in ninth place, and Dostoyevsky was not ranked at all. in the top ten. Another study named 100 of the world's leading writers, playwrights and poets. Here Tolstoy took fourth place (after Shakespeare, Dante and Homer), Dostoevsky was in fifteenth place, and Pushkin in twenty-first. So, Tolstoy takes pride of place in the American clip acknowledged great authors. What can explain such a high rating? The answer is obvious. It is based on the veneration of Tolstoy's great novels - "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina". In addition to the literary merit of novels, Americans are drawn to accessibility. Tolstoy's novels are large-scale and deal with big themes - war, love and family. The language is easy to translate and the characters are charming. They are aristocrats, that is, Europeans in culture, but Europeans are ideal, freed from everyday worries and having leisure for cultivating high feelings. Their thoughts and actions are obvious and understanding does not require the efforts that are inevitable when meeting with the spiritually intense heroes of Dostoevsky or with the semitones of Chekhov's psychological watercolors. And finally, where should we start, admirers of Tolstoy are not mistaken: he is really a great writer. Tolstoy, a public figure, occupies a special place in the history of North America. His influence was twofold - direct and indirect. Tolstoy actively participated in the resettlement of the Doukhobors to Canada. Together with the followers of Tolstoy, they organized a campaign in their defense, and helped to enlist the support of the world community. The writer gave the fees from the plays to the Dukhobors, and for their sake finished the shelved novel Resurrection in order to help them with money for resettlement. In 1898 - 1899. about 8,000 Doukhobors arrived by sea in Canada. One of the Doukhobor parties was accompanied by Sergei Tolstoy, the writer's son. The Doukhobors remain a prominent religious community in western Canada to this day. Tolstoy's indirect influence is determined by the fact that he was the spiritual father of Tolstoyism - a movement that preaches moral perfection through labor, non-resistance to evil by violence, forgiveness and universal love. The experience of the Tolstoyans was used in the organization of kibbutzim in Palestine (future Israel), which became a model for the creation of communes in North America, now united in the "Federation of Egalitarian Communities" (Federation of Egalitarian Communities). Of far greater consequence is the fact that Tolstoy's views influenced Mahatma Gandhi, the founder of the non-violent resistance movement in India. In turn, Gandhi became an example for Martin Luther King, who led the movement for the civil rights of the black population in the United States. An important role in the reception of Russian refugees who came to the United States during World War II and in the post-war years was played by the Tolstoy Foundation, founded in 1939 thanks to the efforts of the writer's daughter, Alexandra Tolstaya. The foundation's humanitarian activities were based on the ideas of her father. In addition to the adaptation of refugees, the fund helped orphans and the elderly and financed educational programs. In 1941, the foundation purchased a farm in the state of New York with a large plot of land, which became a temporary refuge for refugees. Currently, the farm operates as a rehabilitation center and a nursing home. The Tolstoy Foundation Library is one of the centers of Russian culture in America. Tolstoy in North American Russian Studies: main monographsand magazines It is hardly surprising that Tolstoy's work and life are given a prominent place in the works of American and Canadian scholars studying Russian literature and history. However, this did not happen immediately: for the first four decades of the 20th century, knowledge about Tolstoy was accumulating among the still few Russianists in the United States and Canada. The tone was set by Tolstoy's translations, memories of him by relatives and friends, and the work of European, primarily British authors. In 1946, the first American monograph on Tolstoy was published, and then until the end of the 1970s, two or three new books (not counting dissertations) devoted to Tolstoy and his work appeared in the United States every decade (see table). Tolstoy studies in the United States and Canada reached their true heyday in the 1980s, when 12 new books about Tolstoy went out of print in a decade. The same number of books were published by American and Canadian authors in the 1990s. Finally, in the incomplete decade of the 21st century (2001-2008), nine more books devoted to Tolstoy, his writings and correspondence appeared in the USA and Canada.
TABLE. Books about Tolstoy and his work published by American and Canadian scholars from 1946 to 2009(The first editions of the main books are given).

Very soon, the Estate Express will travel to the Tula region to the homeland of Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana. On this occasion, I would like to present you footage from the film "Leo Tolstoy", filmed back in 1984 by director Sergei Gerasimov, whose fate is somewhat similar to the fate of the writer. Most of the screen time was filmed in Yasnaya Polyana, both inside the estate and on its territory.

Director: Sergey Gerasimov
Screenplay: Sergey Gerasimov
Operator: Sergey Filippov
The film starred: Sergei Gerasimov, Tamara Makarova, Borzhivoy Navratil, Ekaterina Vasilyeva, Viktor Proskurin, Nikolai Eremenko Jr. and etc.
Country: Czechoslovakia, USSR, 1984

2. The film consists of two parts: "Insomnia" and "Departure".

The chronicle film tells about the life of Leo Tolstoy at the beginning of the 20th century and touches upon the last years of his life (1908-1910). The memoirs of Leo Tolstoy bring us back to the events of his youth, and to the time of the decisive and passionate turning point in his views. Throughout the film, we learn about his thoughts, feelings and ideas concerning all aspects of people's lives. Subtly and unobtrusively, a family drama is also given, a difficult relationship with his wife, for whom the family is everything. But Tolstoy, with his largely revolutionary views, encroached on this social institution as well. On religion, politics, literature, art - he had his own view of everything, often at odds with the established one. The finale is the tragic departure from Yasnaya Polyana and death, which became the beginning of immortality.

3. Most of the screen time was filmed in the former estate of Leo Tolstoy - the estate "Yasnaya Polyana".

Film produced by two countries - the USSR and Czechoslovakia. The premiere took place in Moscow on October 26, 1984, in Bratislava on November 5, 1984.

Awards:
1984 - International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary: The main prize "Crystal Globe" for the best film to Sergei Gerasimov.
1985 - All-Union Film Festival in Minsk: The main special prize and diploma for Sergei Gerasimov.

5. Young Lev Nikolaevich in front of the house of his grandfather, Prince Volkonsky.

7. Lev Nikolaevich recalls the days he lived.

In September 1910, a walk by Leo Tolstoy and his wife Sofya Andreevna was filmed in Yasnaya Polyana. Exactly 73 years later, on September 6, 1983, Gerasimov began filming the film Leo Tolstoy. The role of the writer in it was played by Gerasimov himself, the role of Tolstoy's wife went to the director's faithful companion Tamara Makarova. The film "Leo Tolstoy" told about the last years of the life of the great Russian writer, about summing up the results of life, Tolstoy in it talked a lot about the meaning of life, about art and about children. VGIK professor Natalia Fokina-Kulidzhanova recalled that the crisis that Tolstoy endured at the end of his life was interesting to Gerasimov and in some ways even consonant.

The acting profession is always full of traditions and superstitions, and one of the signs is that an actor, even playing death, cannot lie down in a coffin. It is believed that by doing so, a person calls for his death. Usually the actors, if according to the script it is required to lie in a coffin, use a double instead of themselves, which was suggested to Gerasimov. But the director put his soul into his film, and believed that it was dishonest for the audience to deceive them by slipping a "dummy". Whether he believed in this omen or not, no one knows for sure, but the director was able to transgress through it. Later, actress Inna Makarova said: “We were driving in a car with Sergei Apollinarievich and Tamara Fedorovna from the Union of Cinematographers, and I talked about how I had just returned from a film festival in Bulgaria. And in passing I say that you can’t play death, you can’t die on stage and in the cinema. And silence hangs in the car - Sergei Apollinarievich just brilliantly played the death of Tolstoy!

13. In the cinemas of the USSR, the film was watched by 4.9 million viewers.

14. One of the scenes of the film filmed at the main house.

16. We invite everyone to a tea party on October 14, 2017 with the "Manor Express".

20. The main house in which the writer moved in 1856, after the end of military service.

21. Evening leisure playing the piano.

22. Guests stayed in the wing of the Kuzminskys.

23. Kuzminsky wing from the manor park.

27. Leo Tolstoy (Sergey Gerasimov) and his wife Sofya Andreevna (Tamara Makarova) walk along the alley after 73 years in 1984.

28. The shooting of the film in an ironic and grotesque manner is depicted in Oleg Khafizov's story "Tolstoy's Funeral".

30. Terrace of the main house. View from the second floor.

31. Peasants in the estate.

32. Lev Nikolaevich is walking around his estate.

When the inheritance was divided in 1847 between the children of Nikolai Sergeevich, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy got about 1600 hectares of land with 330 souls of the “male sex”.

34. The youngest daughter of Lev Nikolaevich Alexander, performed by Ekaterina Vasilyeva (left). Behind the patifon.

In many ways, thanks to the efforts of the youngest daughter of the writer Leo Tolstoy Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya, the estate was turned into a museum. On June 10, 1921, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a resolution on the new status of Yasnaya Polyana. The curator of the museum was supposed to create a cultural and educational center in Yasnaya Polyana with a library, a school, organize lectures, performances, exhibitions and excursions.

38. Manor park Kliny in 1984. Already without L.N. Tolstoy.

40. Entry towers. Funeral of L.N. Tolstoy.

It was not in vain that Gerasimov chose the final days of Tolstoy's life with his last work, in many ways their life paths coincided - both a long, full of labor and fruitful work life, and the pedagogical activities of both, and even the fact that both of them went their life path hand in hand with faithful companion. Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya was for the great writer both a muse, and a faithful wife, and a secretary, and a support in difficult times. Just as Tamara Fedorovna Makarova was Gerasimov's beloved wife, beloved actress and constant support in life.

When released on the screen, the film received well-deserved recognition from the audience. In November 1985, Gerasimov suddenly felt ill, after which the doctors suggested that he go to the hospital due to arrhythmia and heart problems. In the hospital, Gerasimov soon ended up in intensive care, and he underwent heart surgery. The help of doctors did not help, and on November 26, 1985, Sergei Gerasimov died.

Tamara Makarova suffered the death of her husband hard. She did not even attend the funeral, saying that she had already seen him on his last journey once, referring to the funeral episode in the film Leo Tolstoy. The second time the actress could not bear such a thing.

The film "Leo Tolstoy" received many prizes and awards, including after the death of its creator. In 1986, VGIK was renamed in honor of Sergei Gerasimov, who did so much for this institute, who brought up a galaxy of brilliant actors and directors within its walls.

43. Grave of Leo Tolstoy.

Excerpts from the story of Oleg Khafizov about the shooting of the film:

One autumn, the manager slipped into our office and announced:
- Comrades, who wants to take part in the funeral of Tolstoy, please go to the entrance. Bus Departs in fifteen minutes (it was YarOslavskaya).

It was about shooting a film by Sergei Gerasimov about Leo Tolstoy, which had long been advertised on TV. Obviously, work on the film was coming to an end, and Gerasimov was going to film the funeral of himself in the role of Lev Nikolaevich in Yasnaya Polyana. The youth faction of our laboratory enthusiastically responded to the director's proposal, which gave them a chance to get some air during working hours and, who knows, perhaps finish the working day an hour or two earlier.

Soon, a couple of capacious regular buses, taken off the route, approached the checkpoint. We merrily plunged and set off towards Yasnaya Polyana, discussing the upcoming adventure. No matter how sarcastic, it was interesting for everyone to take part in the filming of a real feature film. All the more so as information spread throughout the bus: each extra in historical clothes would be paid ten rubles, each person in the crowd - five. And on the top five, my friends, we managed to go to a restaurant.

Our opinions regarding the future of Gerasimov's films were divided. Burak considered Gerasimov to be a great, but boring director, whose characters do nothing but mumble thoughtfully under their breath. Albina liked the film about love “By the Lake”, but she didn’t want to listen to the teachings of some grumpy old man, even Leo Tolstoy, from the screen for two hours. As for me, I considered Gerasimov one of the main communist nobles, the creators of that hopeless boredom that held me by the throat.

Look, sly, I said. - All my life I glorified the next decisions of the party not out of fear, but out of conscience, and towards the end I saw the light and decided to crawl into eternity, wearing Tolstoy's beard.

The bus stopped at the Kochaki stop outside Yasnaya Polyana. We landed on the rutted side of the road and only now saw an endless line of cars lined up in front of us and stretching behind as far as the eye could see. If forty-fifty people arrived in each of the buses, and let's say there were a hundred buses ... We began to calculate the number of extras driven to the shooting, but, being humanitarians, we quickly lost count and came to the conclusion that people are here, in any case , no less than at the real funeral of Lev Nikolaevich. Evidently, most of the junior and middle scientific workers of the city, engineers and laboratory assistants, as well as a considerable part of the working class, were driven here. And the issuance of the fee can take several days.

In the meantime, it began to rain, and the crowd moved off somewhere along the slippery clay road. My hopes that they would give me some kind of frock coat or overcoat turned out to be untenable. Obviously, we were not going to be photographed in close-up, and therefore it was completely unimportant that I was wearing a Levi Strauss jacket instead of an army coat. With my vision, I could not see the bearded Gerasimov in the coffin or the cameramen with their chirring cameras and flat boxes, which for some reason they effectively click before shooting. The same engineers trudged ahead and behind us, and sometimes cowardly extras in a student cap, tunic and jeans. It became cold and dreary, like at a real funeral, and my attitude to official Soviet culture worsened with every step.
Suddenly there was a crowd. A disheveled lady with a wandering look ran past us on the side of the road, as if she had just met Lenin.
“I just saw Makarova, just like I see you,” she said, blinking with happiness. - I told her: “Hello, Tamara Fedorovna!”. And she answered: “Hello!”. So simple.
Staggering, the woman wandered across the field. And then the familiar muffled voice of Gerasimov was heard from the sky, carried throughout the district by an amplifier, as if God himself turned to us, remaining invisible.

Dear thugs! - said Gerasimov. Our shooting is over. Thank you all for your help and for the time you gave us, breaking away from your important work. We decided not to pay you money, because the tribute to the memory of your great countryman cannot be valued with any money. And now thanks again to everyone, and I look forward to seeing you in theaters.
We trudged back through the pouring rain.

PAY ATTENTION TO MY READERS
FOR A NEW BOOK:

REMIZOV Vitaly Borisovich.
Leaving Tolstoy. How it was. - Moscow: Prospect, 2017. - 704 p.

https://cloud.mail.ru/public/6sn5/x4Q5twEfw

(This is in the Cloud or on my website "Leo Tolstoy. The Voice of Truth from Yasnaya Polyana". You can also download the book to users of the SS "VKontakte". It should be found through a general search through documents, because I uploaded it there too.)

The author-compiler of this book is one of those FEW in Putin's perverted Russia who can and SHOULD be trusted in the development of "hot", socially relevant topics of Tolstoy thought. He is NOT a sub-Putin opportunist, like the bastard Pasha Basinsky. Remizov is an old man, he will soon die, and CONSCIOUSLY he will not turn his back under any ideological engagement!

In addition, Vitaly Remizov is one of the leading experts on L.N. Tolstoy and practitioners of not only scientific, but also educational and pedagogical work. His "School of Leo Tolstoy" is a pedagogical super project that made a splash in Russia in the 1990s and even received some recognition and support in the civilized world.

In this book, Remizov worked, first of all, as a meticulous compiler. Here, for the first time, a detailed chronicle of the last months of Leo Tolstoy's life is presented: from June 19 to November 7, 1910. Built on authentic materials - diaries, letters, documents, memoirs of participants in the events - it conveys the uniqueness of each day, creates conditions for an objective and truthful perception of meaning what is happening. The reader is given the opportunity, bypassing numerous interpretations and interpretations, to feel free in search of answers to the complex questions of the drama that has played out.

A number of documents are published for the first time, according to the GMT archives. Many others are cited from single editions that have long become a bibliographic rarity.

The narrative series is enriched with a huge number of photographs from the funds of the State Museum of Leo Tolstoy. Some of them are also published FOR THE FIRST TIME.

[ ATTENTION!
There is NO photo data in the PDF file offered by the link! There is only text - for those who find it difficult to get to bookstores, scientific libraries - i.e. to the paper copy of this book.
It seems that difficulties will not stop real fanatical bibliophiles. As for the rest... With a circulation of 1,000 (One Thousand!) copies of the book, you, gentlemen. The rest, the book will not get at all, so - read at least the text, without pictures. He's still more important...]

In this case, I cannot, as I often did before, add here the full text of the presented book as an Appendix to the review. The reason is technical: when copying to this site, all HIGHLIGHTS (in bold, italics, underlining ...) will disappear, in which, in fact, the research thought of Vitaly Borisovich was expressed and which therefore have a value that cannot be neglected. It makes no sense to publish like this - there is simply no ...

Yet, with this caveat, I add below: 1) Introduction and 2) Afterword from this book. The afterword has a characteristic heading: "IN SEARCH OF THE IMMORTAL TEMPLE" - and has the value of presenting the results of an independent and very deep, laborious and many years of research by V. B. Remizov on the topic stated by the title of the book.

PLEASANT READING, JOYFUL DISCOVERIES!

ATTACHMENT 1

Many definitions have been given to what happened on the night of October 28, 1910 in Yasnaya Polyana: “flight”, “disappearance”, “sudden departure”, “liberation”, “last resurrection”, “artistic gesture”, “departure”. But the latter is the most commonly used. Questions related to him - why, who is to blame and is it anyone's fault, how, why, where ... - to this day arise in the soul of the reader and do not have unambiguous answers, although volumes of books have been written about the departure and death of Leo Tolstoy, and a binder clippings from newspapers and magazines are stored in 20 huge folders-volumes.

The proposed pages of a detailed chronicle, recreated on the basis of authentic materials (diaries, letters, memoirs, documents) of witnesses of the events of a hundred years ago, allow the reader to look into the world of communication of its heroes, to reflect alone with them about what happened and feel free from existing interpretations and interpretations.

The chronicle collected in this way is given for the first time. It may seem superfluous to someone to quote participants in dramatic events standing on different positions, but their voluminous spherical presentation is a defense against one-sidedness of subjective assessments.

Insulting and derogatory judgments about Tolstoy's departure from Yasnaya Polyana, as well as his personality ("an old man who has lost his mind", a misogynist, "a hard-hearted

A debauchee who stepped over marital fidelity, disgraced himself and his family, left his wife, children and 25 grandchildren without a livelihood", "a person tired of life and communicating with people", "a PR man who desired even greater fame"...), met before, but in our time there are so many of them that the quantity began to turn into a new quality. Tolstoy found himself caught in a circle of philistine ideas and unrestrained vulgarity.

It is important to emphasize one point in this whole kaleidoscope of judgments. The opinion about Tolstoy's spiritual and physical weakness in the last months of his life has nothing to do with reality. It is important for someone to imagine him almost as a senile who does not know what he is doing. Meanwhile, the creative and vital activity of Tolstoy in the last five months of his life is amazing. The days of illness are interspersed with constant horse riding, until leaving (on October 27, together with D. P. Makovitsky, he rode 16 miles on horseback), long walks around Yasnaya Polyana, Otradnoye, Kochetov.

The spiritual communication of the writer with his contemporaries does not weaken: from June to November 1910, he wrote more than 250 letters to 175 recipients. Many of the letters are distinguished by the depth of philosophical and socio-public content, penetration, each one bears the stamp of the originality of the author's personality. Among them are letters to the young Gandhi, F.A. Strakhov, K.F. Smirnov about hard drinking, priests D.N. Rensky and D.E. Troitsky about the impossibility of embarking on the path of dogmatic theology, one of the former teachers of the Yasnaya Polyana school, N.P. Peterson, the original thinker of the 20th century P.P. Nikolaev, V.I. Shpiganovich about the problem of suicide, to the publisher I.I. Gorbunov-Posadov about the popular editions of Posrednik and what should be published, like-minded friends, his biographers - the Russian P.I. Biryukov, the Italian Giulio Vitali, the American Eilmer Mood. The large body of letters is

Tolstoy's correspondence with relatives and friends, which revealed the essence of the life positions of Tolstoy and those who surrounded him in the last months of his life.

Almost not for a day did the writer stop communicating with numerous guests - representatives of different classes, different ideological convictions, different ages and nationalities. They came to Tolstoy for advice, material support, with everyday requests, but mostly with a desire to resolve one or another painful issue of earthly existence, to talk about the soul and God.
As before, the writer's interest in reading is great. It is based on his long-standing addictions to certain authors and his thirst to always be at the forefront of critical events in the world. Increasingly, reading takes Tolstoy away from the “vanity of vanities”, from the unkind atmosphere in the home environment, from the loneliness that torments him and increases every day.

So, on October 5, a day after a severe fainting, still quite weak, Tolstoy is talking about writers: Guy de Maupassant, Gogol, V. V. Rozanov, N. A. Berdyaev, V. S. Solovyov, M. P. Artsybashev . He recites aloud his favorite poems - Tyutchev's Silentium and Pushkin's Remembrance. A day later, his soul needs a "reading of Schopenhauer"; On October 8, 9, 18 and 22, Tolstoy studies P. P. Nikolaev’s book “The Concept of God as the Perfect Basis of Life”, and on the 9th he “interrupts” this reading with an article by V. A. Myakotin “On Modern Prison and Exile” in the magazine "Russian wealth".

In the center of the proposed chronicle is Leo Tolstoy. All other points of view are built around it. Sending the reader on a difficult journey, I think it is important to draw his attention to the confession of Leo Tolstoy himself, made two years before his death: "and never cheated on his wife." It is impossible not to believe this, because Tolstoy never lied. For him

From youth to the end of his days, the heroes of his life and work were truth and sincerity.

The first part includes materials reflecting the situation before the "leaving Yasnaya Polyana" - from June 19 to October 28, 1910, the second - directly the departure and death at the half-station in Astapovo.

APPENDIX 2

IN SEARCH OF THE IMMORTAL TEMPLE

"I love you and I'm sorry with all my heart,
but I can’t do otherwise than I do.”
From the last letter of Leo Tolstoy
Sofia Andreevna. October 31, 1910

Instead of an introductory article - the genre of afterword. The reason for this is the unwillingness to impose on the reader someone else's perception of events. Free reader, free reading.

Each participant in the recreated chronicle of tragic events has his own truth. The reader, having come into contact with different points of view, will make his choice. The chosen principle of objective presentation of materials favors this. The peculiarity is that they all line up around the center of the cycle of events - the personality of Leo Tolstoy.

November 1910 was cold and gloomy. The thaw began, the rain turned into snow. Windy, uncomfortable. He was leaving Yasnaya Polyana, where he was born and spent more than 60 years of his life, on a dark night. He left hurriedly, with a FEELING OF FEAR THAT THEY WILL STOP HIM, WHICH TIME THEY WILL BE BOUND BY HANDS AND FEET, DEPRIVING THE FEELING OF FREEDOM, while the soul was already striving for the journey - no matter how long it would be, it was important that it became the beginning of a new life. And the gates of this life opened...

Leaving home, and then death at the Astapov station in the middle of the snowy fields of Russia - all this was swiftly fast, but from his youth he thought about escaping from the world of the rich to the world of working people, where there are so many destitute and offended.

After the dream of becoming a true representative of the golden youth - a man of "comme il faut", after entertainment balls, sometimes ending with pictures of the torture of soldiers on the parade ground, the idea came to leave their studies at Kazan University,

To leave for Yasnaya Polyana in order to sincerely and completely help the peasants in their difficult fate. But the stern, hard-working peasant from Yasnaya Polyana clearly did not understand the intentions of the young Tolstoy. Then, under the influence of his beloved brother Nikolenka Tolstoy, he fled to the Caucasus with the hope of serving the so-called. "Motherland" (state). This is not success in military service, but, like Olenin from The Cossacks, "the dream of living in a peasant hut, doing peasant work" deeply and forever sunk into Tolstoy's soul.

The dream grew stronger over the years, and after, in the forty-ninth year of his life, having experienced an internal upheaval, he took the side of the working people and cut the umbilical cord between himself and the privileged classes, made itself felt with even greater force. He was ashamed to be rich among a humiliated and starving people. He was seized with shame at the sight of the lordly luxury in which the masters of life lived, and the poverty of the peasants. His house in Yasnaya Polyana was not distinguished by wealth, but even it seemed to him a "screaming contradiction" in his life.

Social motives for Tolstoy's departure from Yasnaya Polyana are strong. But can they be considered the main ones?

CARE IS ONE OF THE BASIC ONTOLOGICAL CATEGORIES, in which the character of not only a person, but also entire peoples is revealed. Departure is always associated with a choice between life and death - whether it is the expulsion of a person from Paradise, the Exodus from the book of Genesis, monastic seclusion or wandering. This is the breaking out of a person from the usual forms of existence. It can also be such a graceless “way out” of the impasse as suicide, or it can become a manifestation of the eternal movement from imperfection to perfection, “birth by the spirit”, inspired by Tolstoy in the treatise “On Life”. It is always a rejection of the past, a transition from the present to the sometimes unknown future. Time is not the main thing here, but the state of the human soul, the collective will of the peoples, the unifying idea - why and for what?
For the majority of those who know at least part of Tolstoy's biography, he is a typical recluse of Yasnaya Polyana. Born here

He spent 60 of the 82 years of his life, here he found eternal peace. He did not like Petersburg, and in the spring he happily fled from the Khamovniki Moscow house to Yasnaya Polyana, where, spending most of his time at work (ten hours a day), he enjoyed leaving the bustle of home into the silence of forests and fields. He traveled on foot from Moscow to Tula, from Yasnaya Polyana to Optina Pustyn. He was fond of horse riding. He loved communication, but over the years he got tired of it more and more, he wanted real peace and quiet - escape from worldly life, solitude for communication with God.

Outwardly - a recluse of Yasnaya Polyana, internally - the unceasing genius of creating new forms of life. His heroes are such that if they do not find meaning in real space, or do not find the strength in themselves to resist external circumstances, or are deprived of a feeling of Christian love, they are doomed to death - to the transition to non-existence, where there is no and cannot be immortality, their remains, unlike those of Strider, are useless.

The world of Tolstoy's heroes is many-sided, the range of their fluctuations, losses and discoveries, ups and downs is wide; many of them manage to escape from the routine of everyday life, to enter the road of great life meanings. Some of them painfully and lonely go through borderline situations (Ivan Ilyich, Pozdnyshev, Nikita, Katyusha Maslova, Prince Nekhlyudov), in someone the instinct of humanity instantly works and a transformation takes place (Brekhunov from The Master and Worker), someone to awaken conscience, to be born in the spirit, you need the support of someone living nearby. But in everyone there is this "infinitely small moment of freedom", the possibility of choosing between good and evil, the possibility of moving towards the better, moral improvement, approaching the spiritual ideal.

Reflecting on education at the beginning of the 20th century, Tolstoy urged people to pay attention to the experience of life and the structure of thoughts of the wise men of the world. Inviting the reader to fearlessly enter the river of wisdom, he incessantly pointed out the importance

Preservation of personal freedom: it "is a necessary condition for any education, both for students and teachers" (38, 62).

The writer talked about free will from his youth. One of his first philosophical fragments of the late 1840s is devoted to this problem. In the epilogue of War and Peace, he will call the problem of freedom one of the most difficult questions that humanity asks itself from different angles.

HE ALWAYS FELT HIMSELF A FREE MAN. AND AS A THINKER, ARTIST, TEACHER HE WAS REALLY ALWAYS FREE. So free that even Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory of free education seemed limited to him - Emile, the hero of Rousseau's novel "On Education", is formed and brought up according to the template created by his creator. Everything is different with Tolstoy: every child, every person is unique, individual, and in matters of education one must proceed from the peculiarities of his nature, and not from the head third-party attitudes.

THIS IS THE PERSONALITY OF TOLSTOY THAT SHE ALWAYS STANDS OVER THE BATTLE OF AGES, PARTIES, OTHER OPINIONS. The words he said after meeting with Herzen in London vividly convey the essence of Tolstoy: "Herzen is on his own, I am on my own" (60, 436). He never joined any of the parties, to any of the social movements. CONSIDERING POLITICS TO BE A DIRTY BUSINESS, TOLSTOY DID NOT JUST FIND WORDS FOR SCAGGING IT, BUT ALSO PROPOSED NEW WAYS OF DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY. He loved the peasant, considered himself a "lawyer for a hundred million peasants," but did not idealize him and did not merge with him in a beautiful-hearted embrace. Love for the true homeland (not a nest of robbers and robbers of the people who call themselves the Russian state, but "earthly", communal, people's Russia) never faded away in him, but she was not the only one. The deeper he comprehended the soul of the Russian people, the more obvious it became for him that common thing that unites all peoples and reminds a person that he is not only a citizen of the fatherland, but also a citizen of the world. He did not recognize abstract love for all mankind, considering it a non-binding declaration. And he pointed out more than once how difficult it is sometimes to love someone who lives nearby, HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO SERVE YOUR NEIGHBOR, FOLLOWING THE LAWS OF THE MOST HIGH.

With particular acuteness, he felt the tragic contradiction of his being: TO LOVE FREEDOM, to sing of its spiritual essence, to strive for it all the time and suddenly, at the end of life, realize that you are a prisoner.

Family and friends created such an atmosphere that Lev Nikolayevich, so loved and adored by everyone, could not step aside. His hands and feet were tied.

Knowing his kindness, ability to endure and forgive, the people close to him around him behaved unbridledly. The elderly man turned out to be RINGED BY THE BATTLE OF THE WARRING PARTIES, played out not for life, but for death.

The secret of creativity was blasphemously violated. As soon as Tolstoy left the office, relatives and friends immediately rushed from all sides in order to make copies of what he had written. Tolstoy started a diary for himself alone, a secret diary, but they also managed to find a way to it.

He went for a walk, and at a distance a Circassian or another spy followed him, and it was not the writer's health that bothered him, but the fear of meeting Chertkov.

On the one hand, the flow of insults and accusations of almost all mortal sins increased, including the blasphemous accusation of homosexual cohabitation with V. G. Chertkov, on the other hand, Tolstoy received harsh, sometimes cruel letters from this dubious "friend" of his, calling to follow attitudes and least of all thinking about the right to freedom of the writer himself.

Relatives well knew that Tolstoy was ill with affective epilepsy, a form of illness that was caused by stress, scandal, and despite the fact that the people around him knew about it, every day, not sparing the old man, they added fuel to the fire.

He loved his family, that's why he endured for so long and did not leave her.

But spiritual life strove for prayerful solitude and union with God. He stood at such a level of moral height that there were very few equals to him in the world, and if we keep in mind that he was also an artistic genius, then we will understand that Tolstoy is not so much life as Being. HE

HE CREATED HIS OWN STARRY SKY, WHERE HIS STARS, HIS PLANETS WERE, CREATED OWN SPIRITUAL MAP OF THE WORLD, FOR HE IS AMONG THOSE WHO COME TO US, MEMORIAL MORTALS, ONCE IN A FEW CENTURIES.

He was not born a saint, doomed to holiness from childhood, and therefore spent his life in a titanic search for "the truth about the world and the human soul", leaving a 90-volume collection of works to his contemporaries and future generations. From his youth, he defended the poor and disadvantaged, saved thousands of lives from starvation, rescued dozens of innocent people from Russian prisons. Constantly working on himself, he tirelessly walked towards the ideal. “Walk in the star, in the sun,” he said, referring to the movement towards Christ. And at the end of his life, when God sent him severe trials, he withstood them with honor. The decision to leave is entirely natural. It is the result of all his active nature. THE STAR MAP OF THE WORLD SHOULD BE COMPLETED "IN solitude and silence", WITH THE CONSCIOUSNESS THAT YOU ARE NOT A SLAVE, THAT YOU ARE BORN TO BE FREE AND YOU ARE FREE!

This is not the freedom that Ivan Bunin wrote about in his well-known book, The Liberation of Tolstoy. This is not a liberation from the carnal and immersion in the world of Nirvana. And this is not the freedom of selfish self-will, which Tolstoy was reproached with by some members of the family. This is not a manifestation of anarchism, as learned people are sometimes inclined to believe. This is not a gesture of protest against everyday life, burdened with envy, self-interest, family selfishness. Tolstoy learned to deal with this. It is possible to continue for a long time a series of things that fit the Tolstoy formula "not that" ("The Death of Ivan Ilyich").

But one could also say that all of the above takes place in the act of Tolstoy's departure. But there is a main reason that rises above all the rest: THE INITIABLE DESIRE OF A SEEKING SOUL TO MERGE WITH GOD, TO BREAK FROM THE GRIP OF MOMENTARY NEED TO THE SPACE OF A FREE SPIRITUAL

LIFE. WHERE NO ONE WILL STOP YOU TO EXPRESS YOUR WILL, WHEN NO ONE CAN INVADE YOUR MYSTERY, YOUR SECRET THOUGHTS, YOUR DIALOGUE WITH YOURSELF ABOUT LIFE - DEATH - IMMORTALITY. LEAVING BEHIND THE LIFE TURNED BY PEOPLE INTO A "SCREAMING MARKET", AND GO TO SEARCH FOR HIS IMMORTAL TEMPLE.

Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya is not as famous as her husband, but for every person who came into contact with the life of the author of War and Peace, her name is always heard and causes conflicting associations. The controversy surrounding the couple has always been acute and continues to this day.

Who is she? Faithful and kind comrade-in-arms of her husband, mother of thirteen children, assistant in rewriting and publishing his works or an “evil genius”, who tormented him from the first days of marriage and all subsequent years of married life? A victim of the tyranny of a genius who never loved anyone but himself and his glory, as Tolstoy's son Lev Lvovich believed, or from childhood a seriously ill person who suffered from paranoia, prone to hysteria, which progressed over the years, and who chose his own husband as the subject of his torture?

In Sofia Andreevna, of course, there were sprouts of many talents. She was fond of gardening, embroidered beautifully, drew well, professionally took a great interest in photography, skillfully played music, was capable of foreign languages, teaching, showed a serious interest in philosophy, from her youth she was disposed to psychoanalysis, mastered the art of the word.

But the boat of her hobbies often crashed into everyday life: household chores, hard work on rewriting and publishing her husband's works, endless receptions of numerous guests, but most importantly, the fulfillment of maternal duty. The birth of thirteen children, of whom five died in early childhood, is a high and difficult mission. And, of course, the eternal problem - how to support a family? There was never enough money. And Lyovochka's husband hovered, as it seemed to her, in empiricism, from a certain moment

Life refusing royalties for their works. In a word, it was not only difficult, but unbearably difficult to "be the wife of a genius."

Living in the rays of the glory of a great man, she was afraid to lose that unique thing that was in her. SHE WANTED THE Fame TOO. FROM THE EXCESS OF LIFE ENERGY, FROM THE EXCESS OF FEELINGS, I WANTED LOVE - THAT ANIMAL LOVE WHICH SHE, OF COURSE, ALREADY FOUND IN THE CHRISTIAN TOLSTOY.

Once in his diary, Leo Tolstoy wrote: "... in life, as a rule, extremes converge." But Tolstoy's contemporaries, and we, who live 100 years later, are prone to harsh, sometimes polar judgments. To this day, there are two camps among people interested in the life and work of Tolstoy.

In one - supporters of Sofya Andreevna - convinced that living next to Tolstoy is difficult, sometimes unbearable, and she, the sufferer, took upon herself all the torments. The logic behind their reasoning is quite understandable. Tolstoy, who was in the daily work of writing, in a constant search for truth, changed internally, rushed from one extreme to another. As a result, he came to the denial of wealth and took the path of asceticism, refused royalties for his works, neglected the problems of family existence, and did not burden himself with the cares of fatherhood. In addition, at the suggestion of Sofya Andreevna, he had a bad, irritable character (eternal dissatisfaction with himself, high demands on people around him, exorbitant claims against family members, a socially conflicted personality), complicated by a sharp, ever-increasing criticism of the social foundations of society, state, church, science over the years. , medicine and even art, to which he devotedly served all his life.

In another camp, they never favored Sofya Andreevna. So, the personal secretary of the writer, the outstanding biographer of Tolstoy, Nikolai Gusev, considered her a bourgeois not only by birth, but also by her way of thinking. It was not given to her to rise to the heights of the spirit of the great sage and artist. Tormenting him, she claimed congeniality to her husband, accused him of selfishness,

Complacency, vanity, was indignant at his decisions in the field of property, arranged eternal scandals over trifles, expressed unfair reproaches against his callousness, inattention to raising children, cruelty and indifference towards her. She did everything to justify herself, trying to convince her contemporaries and descendants that she, and not Lev Nikolaevich, was the subject of torture. Such a position in relation to Sofya Andreevna, no less far from the true state of affairs than the position of her supporters, could not but outrage those who knew and sincerely loved Tolstoy.

Who is right? Who is guilty? Eternal questions that arise before a person trying to understand the family life of Tolstoy. But the Gordian knot is so strong that few people manage to cut it and find answers to painful questions. The situation becomes even more complicated when the serious problems of life are approached from a philistine, everyday point of view. In the mass consciousness, unfortunately, the belief has been entrenched that Leo Tolstoy, although a genius, is a hard and quarrelsome person, and therefore his wife, Sofya Andreevna, deserves all compassion and justification. Her diaries, stories, autobiography "My Life", known to a wide range of readers, incline precisely to this view. What to do? Tolstoy, although he wrote 13 volumes of diaries, was least of all inclined to describe in them the history of relations with Sofya Andreevna, and most importantly - who would take the trouble to read thirteen volumes? The whole complexity of the relationship could appear in the correspondence of the spouses, but it has not been published as correspondence. Searching for Tolstoy's letters to his wife in a 90-volume book is tiring, and the volume with Sofya Andreevna's letters to her husband came out in the pre-war years and is not available to the general reader.

So today's reader is dealing with one view of the problem: the life of the family is seen through the eyes of the wife. The purpose of the proposed book on Tolstoy's Departure is precisely to give the floor to Tolstoy himself, as well as to other witnesses of the drama, to restore the right of each participant in the events to their own point of view.

Before the wedding, the relationship between the spouses was drawn to Sofya Andreevna in romantic colors. But just before the wedding, everything changed. On the eve of his marriage, the sincere and masculinely naive Tolstoy gave the eighteen-year-old Sonya the opportunity to read his diaries of his youth. He was 34 years old, and he did not take a strict vow of abstinence. There were connections with women, BUT NOT FREQUENT, and there was also love for the peasant woman Aksinya Bazykina. At the same time, Sonya could not help but feel the loving and kind attitude towards herself from Lev Nikolaevich - Lyovochka, as she would call her husband in the future. Read, forgive and forget. Wisely and graciously for further family life. But alas... Reading the diaries of the young Tolstoy turned out to be fatal for Sonya. Being extremely jealous from birth, emotionally unrestrained, prone to suspicion, she herself stuck a knife in her heart; bleeding wound marked for life. Over the years, jealousy only increased, acquiring hypertrophied forms. Tolstoy began to be perceived by Sofya Andreevna as her inalienable property, which no one had the right to encroach on, even in terms of friendly communication. Every detail from the diaries he read was kept in memory, and a hidden feeling of fear always sat inside - he continues to keep a diary, it seemed to her that he probably records all their conversations and quarrels, and, justifying himself, puts her not in the best light in front of those who will read his diaries.

She dreamed of marrying a romantic hero, and at first she imagined Leo Tolstoy as such. The hero of romantic feelings is in love only with her, lives for her and future children, she is the undivided idol of his heart. The life of the countess lies ahead: with fashionable clothes, in a high-ranking society, with exciting travels, in the brilliance of the rays of glory of her famous husband.

But everything turned out the other way around. Not only that, IN HER IMAGINATION, the husband before marriage is a “libertine”, he is also poor and aims to live not in Moscow or St.

Housewives, recluses. Everyday life broke into the poetry of the relationship of young spouses from the first days of their life together. Not just days passed, but years, decades of everyday existence. Tolstoy created artistic worlds, he apparently had enough creative projections, escape into an imaginary and created reality by himself. No matter how terrible the reality was, it brought the artist and thinker to the boundless expanses of artistic and philosophical-journalistic creativity.

And Sofya Andreevna, with all her delight from the first touches to her husband's opuses during the rewriting of his manuscripts, was a laborer, took on hard labor and, admittedly, regularly performed it almost until the end of her life. And besides that, there are a lot of other concerns.

Calculating by nature, and, let's not be afraid to tell the truth, greedy for money, always worried about the problem of property (the children wrote about this, and the grandchildren talked about it), she knew how to manage the household harshly, for the benefit of the family and in the manner of managing it in many ways. reminded Feta. It must be said that L.N. Until the end of the 1870s, Tolstoy was not indifferent to the material side of life and consciously increased his fortune. He never lived in such cramped circumstances as Dostoevsky. Tolstoy rejoiced that he was paid the highest fee for the printed sheet he wrote. He did not consider it shameful to haggle over the price of his works. Later, a reassessment of values ​​​​would occur in it, leading to the rejection of royalties for works written after 1880. A statement for the press will be made in 1891. By this time, Sofya Andreevna will put the process of publishing Tolstoy's works on a grand scale. She will have helpers. On the territory of the Moscow estate "Khamovniki" she will open an office-publication. Products sold out quickly. Russia knew and loved Tolstoy, everyone was looking forward to his new works.

And suddenly this statement! The already tense relationship between the spouses - almost 14 years of confrontation due to

New religious and life attitudes of her husband, and here when there is a famine in Russia, when Tolstoy himself writes that a lot of money is needed to support his family, he gives well-fed publishers the right to reprint the works he has just written free of charge. But the main thing is that he forgot that there is a family, a duty to children who are part of a great life, and it requires considerable financial costs. Such was the logic of S.A. Tolstoy. It is difficult for the worldly-minded reader to disagree with this. But a gullible layman sometimes does not delve into the essence of Lev Nikolayevich's statement.

HE DIDN'T "DISTRAINED THE FAMILY", BUT MADE SOFIA ANDREYEVNA THE SUCCESSOR OF THE EDITION OF WORKS WRITTEN DURING HIS ARTISTIC FLOWERING. She printed in separate editions, published collected works of her husband, and they included works that had already become classics during the life of the writer - “Sevastopol stories”, Trilogy “Childhood”, “Boyhood”, “Youth”, “Cossacks”, “War and world", "Anna Karenina", "ABC" and Books for children's reading, etc.

Tolstoy put an end to the commercial trade in works of religious content, connected with the second stage of a person's life and revealing the essence of his second - "spiritual birth".

HE DROPPED THE MERCHANTS FROM THE TEMPLE OF HIS SPIRITUAL SEARCH AND DISCOVERIES.

His thought was already occupied with something else: the division of property between family members so that he himself would not own property, having voluntarily renounced it. And this, too, soon happened - in July 1892, the family as a whole took it with joy. There was clarity in the distribution of property among family members. Sofya Andreevna, together with Vanechka, became the full-blooded owner of Yasnaya Polyana. Masha and Lev Nikolaevich refused to own property. Tolstoy received 2,000 rubles a year for staging his plays on the stages of Russian theaters. He distributed this money to ordinary people who came to him for help.

He professed the PRINCIPLE OF REASONABLE Sufficiency in everything: in clothing, food, work, in the field of communication.

By this time, the veil of his greatness was a burden to him, and SOFIA ANDREEVNA'S RESPONSES TO HIM REGARDING SELF-ADVERTISEMENT AND THE CONSTANT DESIRE FOR FAME AND LAudED WORDS WERE TO THE HIGHEST DEGREE UNFAIR. Tolstoy's road led to the Master who sent him into life, and he followed it, despite many difficulties and obstacles. And the further he went, the more he approached bodily death, the more powerful was his need for inner purification and obedience to God. By the way, I note that Tolstoy’s prayers, uttered by him alone with himself, often in the Yasnaya Polyana park “Kliny” among two hundred-year-old lindens, are very similar in meaning and direction to the prayers of the Optina elders, as well as in the books of aphorisms he collected, there are many coincidences with thoughts from the “Philokalia” .

Sofya Andreevna conscientiously fulfilled her duty to her husband, children, and grandchildren. She sincerely loved everyone, with the possible exception of her daughter Sasha, who was an unwanted child from birth. Sofya Andreevna successfully ran Tolstoy's publishing business with great material profit for the family, brought herself to physical exhaustion by rewriting her husband's manuscripts, but she did it not without pleasure - she was the first, showing curiosity, to touch Tolstoy's word, and besides, she SAVE MONEY ON CANDIDATES. They, money, were, but they always seemed to be lacking.

She had no equal in housekeeping. She knew everything: what, where and when to plant, when to harvest and process the crop, how to profitably sell it. In recent years, together with her family, she planted apple orchards on three sides of the Big Yasnaya Polyana House, which should also bring considerable profit over time. As a true botanist, she sketched with maximum accuracy the mushrooms and wild flowers of Yasnaya Polyana, which now, with the loss of a significant part of the flora of the reserve, becomes especially valuable.

When Lev Nikolayevich, contrary to the will of the tsarist government, was the first in Russia to publicly declare a famine and called for assistance to the starving peoples of the Volga region and central provinces, she headed the financial commission for collecting

And the distribution of funds for the hungry. He spent two years wandering - and in the heat and cold - in Russia, creating canteens for the starving, and she sometimes helped him in this. It was a selfless act, moral in intention and execution. In the process of communication with the peasants, NEW FORMS OF AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATION IN THE VILLAGE WERE FOUND, DOZENS OF WORKING ARTELS WERE CREATED. The Tolstoys were concerned not only with feeding the hungry, but with the search for an effective way out of the current tragic situation. It was important that people learn how to arrange their lives in the best possible way.

Like a Lioness, she rushed to defend her husband in front of the church, when in 1901 the Holy Synod recognized him as having fallen away from the Orthodox Church. Actually, the noise around this event was raised by Sofya Andreevna. It seemed to her that her husband needed such support. But what was supposed to turn into a conversation between Tolstoy and the church took the form of "excommunication", a worldwide scandal. Not without the help of Sofia Andreevna.

No matter how negatively she treated peasant children, she always took an active part in their fate, helped Lev Nikolaevich a lot as a teacher, teaching various subjects and sometimes studying with the children from morning to evening.

In the days of Lyovochka's illness, she was always by his side. And he admitted that no one could help him better than her. One touch of her hand calmed him and brought hope for recovery. This was especially true in the Crimea, when Lev Nikolaevich was seriously ill and when the miraculous power of Sofya Andreevna's love for him resurrected him, returned him from the other world.

It is also known that they could not be at a distance from each other for a long time. They immediately began to yearn, write long letters, go every day to the post office in anticipation of a reply letter. Letters were always frank, intense, from Sofya Andreevna there were a lot of gloomy ones, from Lev Nikolaevich - encouraging and supportive. Philosophical and religious distances opened up to him, he more and more immersed himself in those forms of communication that brought

To God. He wrote to Sofya Andreevna about this, sincerely wishing that she would understand him and, if she could, follow him or beside him.

But it was these differences in outlook on life that became a stumbling block for Sofya Andreevna. To understand the whole peculiarity of the situation, let's draw an analogy with the friendship of Tolstoy and his second cousin Alexandra Andreevna Tolstaya. Here is how Sofia Andreevna herself wrote about it:

“Countess Alexandra Andreevna Tolstaya also came from St. Petersburg and stayed for several days. I speak about her in my diary that she is joyful, affectionate, but courtly (italics by S.A. Tolstoy. - V.R.) to the marrow of her bones. He loves the king, the royal family, the court - and his position. But we had endless conversations with her. Responsive to everything, sensitive, kind and in her own way - religious, she was interested in everything and everyone, WILLINGLY TALKED ABOUT EVERYTHING AND DID NOT JUDGE ANYONE.

She was tormented by the new belief of Lev Nikolaevich, she could not agree with him, but she loved him all her life and did not condemn him, she pitied him, and me, and the children.

THE SAME ATTITUDE TO LEV NIKOLAEVICH'S BELIEFS WAS ALSO HIS SISTER Countess MARIA NIKOLAEVNA, COMING FROM THE MONASTERY" (Tolstaya S. A. My Life: In 2 vols. - Vol. 2. - M., 2011. - P. 209) .

It would seem that everything is clear: let everyone live according to his convictions. No need to ridicule them, mock them, find constant reasons for scandals because of them.

“Without self-respect, without respect for oneself — and in an aristocrat these feelings are developed — there is no solid foundation for the public ... bien public (public good), a public building. Personality, dear sir, is the main thing: the human personality must be strong as a rock, for everything is built on it ”(Turgenev I.S. Full collection of collected works ..; In 28 vols. - Vol. 7. - M. , 1981. - S. 47 - 48).

So Turgenev, together with his hero Pavel Petrovich from Fathers and Sons, defined the essence of aristocracy.

But Sofya Andreevna did not possess this "tact of reality". Her husband's spiritual insights seemed to her just another fantasy. He himself, she believed, imagined himself a prophet, residing in pride and glory - he does not need anyone, except for those who supported his new ideas, who were ready to go to hard labor or prison for them. Almost constantly on the pages of "My Life" she refers to comments on Tolstoy's thoughts, his actions, filling her judgments with irony, sarcasm, giving them a negative-sounding character. In a word, it seems that SHE IS COMPLETELY CONSCIOUSLY GOING TO aggravate relations with her husband, hurting him for the most painful, there is a feeling of some marital revenge.

Live, it would seem, your life, give your spouse the opportunity to think the way he wants, build a normal relationship with all those around him, including his friends-minded friends, get away from conflict, sharp assessments, unjustified accusations, and everything would be in HOME AND FAMILY PEACELY. At the very least, scandals would noticeably decrease. However, the claim to congeniality to her husband took its toll. It often seemed to her that he had suppressed many talents in her, hence her inner dissatisfaction with herself and the election of her own husband, only him and no one else, as the subject of hysterical irritation. As a result, she achieved, perhaps unintentionally, that he, with all his phenomenal patience, sometimes could not stand it and fell into protracted attacks of epilepsy, caused not so much by overwork from his titanic work, but by emotional anguish. The incisions in fellowship that were marked at the beginning of the marital path have now turned into bleeding wounds. The spouses themselves felt it, it was obvious to everyone around them.

But other factors also affected Sofya Andreevna's behavior. In particular, the tendency to suicide from an early age. Over the years, the idea of ​​suicide grew stronger. Children, acquaintances more than once brought her out of a state of almost insanity. Knowing this inclination behind her, she more than once

She warned Tolstoy that if he took even a step out of the house, she would commit suicide. The test for the writer was serious. On the one hand, a powerful pressure of claims, on the other hand, enormous patience and the ability to forgive. Over the years, developing hysteria is another fatal legacy of Sofya Andreevna.

In the diaries of S. A. Tolstoy, the thought often appears of revenge on Lev Nikolayevich for an unfinished life, a desire to poison his last years of life. This is also felt in her works “My life”, “Whose fault?”, “Song without words”. It seems that Lev Nikolaevich could not fail to notice this. He not only did not respond to anger with anger, but he could not do it due to the nature of his character and religious beliefs. The more Sofya Andreevna showed hostility towards her husband, the more he let her feel how much love, pity, compassion for her he had.

Getting acquainted with "My life", Diaries and stories of S.A. Tolstoy, the reader sees only one side of the coin. The other side, Tolstoy's point of view, is hidden from him. Today there is a one-sidedness and bias in the perception of the life drama of the spouses.

For many years, Leo Tolstoy, in the eyes of readers, has been facing the court of his own wife. And what is strange - no one expects an excuse from him. Yes, there are almost none. Everything in the diaries is decent, there are no sharp, full of hostility, attacks against his wife, there is a desire to understand her experiences, to help her overcome psychological difficulties. He lived an open, working life, where every day was meaningful to him.

Leo Tolstoy at the end of his life admitted that he had never been evil, with the exception of three or four cases. He was not a fornicator either. Before marriage, he had 4-5 women, and he married at 34 years old. For 48 years of married life, he never cheated on Sofya Andreevna ("and never cheated on his wife" - 56.173). About 900 letters to his wife testify to true love for her. His letters are unusually touching, tender, poignant in sincerity and truthfulness. They have depth of understanding.

Family conflicts, the fate of loved ones, the desire, perhaps, to help, to always be close to his wife and children. He was an attentive and loving father. This is evidenced in their memoirs by the children themselves, confirmed by the huge correspondence between Tolstoy and them that has come down to us. He did a lot to ennoble the life of the family, to give it the form of a truly spiritual life.

Over the years, he came to the conclusion that one must live without luxury, modestly, without frills, because you cannot take everything with you to the grave. Some members of the family, headed by Sofya Andreevna, thought differently. Let us note by the way that he was the only person working in the family - the world-famous writer.

His dream of living in a peasant hut and doing peasant labor was shared in the family by only two daughters - Masha and Sasha. Sofya Andreevna, on the whole, had a negative attitude towards the peasants and constantly clashed with them. Many of Tolstoy's friends who shared his ideas became her enemies.

One of the main features of Tolstoy's creative genius is the purity of moral feeling, that is, the ability to look at the world from the very beginning morally. At the same time, he saw the abyss of life, the triumph of evil and violence, but he always believed that good is immeasurably stronger than evil. And therefore Tolstoy is a bright and kind genius. Not only in art, but also in life. The heroes of his works are people of different ages, different nationalities, different professions, these are hundreds of war-weary, humiliated and insulted, but in each of them he was looking for a particle of the Divine essence. Compassion and love were the eternal companions of his work.

COMPASSION AND LOVE BECAME FORMS OF HIS WORLD KNOWLEDGE AND EXISTENCE. As an officer, he defended ordinary soldiers, created a school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana, spent two years wandering during the famine, saving hundreds of thousands of lives, and rebelled against the death penalty in Russia. Dozens of people were released at the request of Tolstoy

From prisons. He wrote more than 10 thousand letters to his contemporaries, and in many of them there is a piercing pain for the fate of specific people.

Tolstoy also treated Sofya Andreevna with love and understanding. But over the years, the conflict between the spouses grew. Property problems piled up on him (the struggle for a will).

“We lived together, apart” - these words spoken by Tolstoy perfectly convey the essence of marital relations, and before her death, Sofya Andreevna admitted that she had lived with Lev Nikolayevich for forty-eight years, without realizing what kind of person he was.

The family has its own life, its own needs, its own logic of understanding events and behavior. The first published six-month correspondence of relatives and friends (June - November 1910) testifies to their callousness, the unreasonableness of their communication with Tolstoy. Sometimes the egocentrism of the people around him went off scale. Sofya Andreevna respected and feared Tatyana Lvovna's eldest daughter. One word from Tanya, one sincere gesture of love for her mother, and the drama could have been avoided. After all, everyone knew that the mother was seriously ill. So persuade her to break out of the hellish domestic circle, take her abroad, which she dreamed of all her life, find the best doctors. After all, Lev Lvovich, the middle son of Tolstoy, was able to recover. Why didn’t anyone take pity on the mother, why did everyone understand everything, but kept neutrality. So convenient? Or money was a pity? Or is this the measure of their love for their parents? The whole situation was essentially given to Sasha, and she was still too young to deeply understand what was happening. She wrote about this more than once and spoke many years later.

Here I will say something that for a long time I did not dare to say, and even write even more so. Alexandra Lvovna, shortly before her death, told Sergei Mikhailovich Tolstoy, the writer's grandson

(to my older friend who told me this story) that when Tolstoy, already sick, got off the train in Astapovo, he remembered Sofya Andreevna and wanted to see her. Sometimes I think that there is truth in the words of the writer's wife, who convinced everyone of the importance of her presence with her sick husband, rightly crying that she had experience in caring for him. But the cruelty of the family made itself felt even in these mournful days. The man with whom Tolstoy lived for 48 years was essentially not allowed to see the dying man. She entered him when he was unconscious. Alexandra Lvovna also could not forgive herself for this.

And he, Tolstoy, a great writer, a sage, and on his deathbed continued to draw his map of the world. They say that he died at a half-station, like a wanderer, like a restless person, punished by God. He died in pain and suffering.

There was suffering and pain. Physical. But he courageously endured them, trying to disturb others as little as possible. But the spiritual thoughts, feelings, manifested on his deathbed, were filled with extraordinary care for those present, sincere gratitude and love, Christian peace. He was not afraid of death, but humbly went to God, whispering, dying: "... the truth... I love a lot... I love everyone."

Leaving Yasnaya Polyana, he thought of getting lost, like a needle in a haystack. There was always a share of naivety in him, something so direct that it is akin, as he liked to say, "the prototype of the harmony of a child." And, indeed, for two days the police lost sight of him. In the Russian gendarmerie, starting with the Winter Palace, there was a commotion, but soon a trace of departure was discovered, and all the remaining days of the writer's life were taken under control.

These 10 days shook the world. The wars stopped, humanity seemed to freeze in anticipation of the denouement of the drama that had unfolded. Journalists worked around the clock in the building of the railway station;

With the world?.. With each of us?.. With all mankind?.. A small village in the center of Russia became the center of the Earth for seven days.

During his lifetime, Tolstoy was the ruler of the thoughts and hearts of people of different generations, different professions, nationalities, religions; denmarks. There is a lot of evidence for this - from the statements of a simple peasant to the recognition of a European-educated writer. Anton Chekhov: “What will happen to us when Tolstoy dies? It's scary to think." Alexander Blok: "Wise humanity left with Tolstoy." Thomas Mann: "If Tolstoy had lived, the First World War would not have happened." Such was the moral authority of Tolstoy during his lifetime.

Astapovo. Nearby are Ryazan, Lipetsk, Zadonsk, Lebedyan, Dankov, Kulikovo Pole ... Nearby are places familiar to Tolstoy from his work during the famine. He and his comrades created more than 240 canteens for the starving, saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

Astapovo station with a large railway station, a railway depot, service buildings, residential buildings and squares, which arose in 1889-1890, has survived to this day, and today, having a different name since 1918, Leo Tolstoy, is a monument of architecture of the railway architecture.

The house of the head of the station, in which Leo Tolstoy died, in fact, immediately after the death of the writer became a folk museum, and in the middle of the last century it became part of the State Museum of L.N. Tolstoy (Moscow). To the 100th anniversary of

The writer's death memorial house, railway station, residential buildings were restored.

On November 20, 2010, on the Day of Remembrance, more than two thousand people honored the Astapovo Memorial at the Lev Tolstoy station with their visit. A new exposition “Astapov Meridian. On the threshold of eternity. The grand opening of the Cultural and Educational Center named after. L.N. Tolstoy with a demonstration in its halls of an exhibition of rare paintings from the museum's funds, in the cinema hall - a historical chronicle of the beginning of the 20th century "Living Tolstoy". The well-known writer and publicist Valentin Kurbatov gave a poignant and deep word about Tolstoy to numerous guests from different cities of Russia and foreign countries.

“Not Petersburg, not Moscow - Russia ... - Andrei Bely wrote about those mournful days. - Russia is Astapovo, surrounded by spaces; and these spaces are not dashing spaces: they are clear, like the day of God, RADIANT GLADES.

(Bely Andrey. The tragedy of creativity. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy // Russian thinkers about Leo Tolstoy. Tula - Yasnaya Polyana, 2002. P. 285).

When on the morning of November 7 (20) only the word “died” was scattered to all corners of the world, everyone knew who the world had lost.

Despite his prophecies and warnings, humanity has gone down the path of evil and violence. The 20th century has become the bloodiest in the history of civilizations, the 21st strikes with even greater atrocities. Today, people are dying from wars and famine in different parts, religious strife continues, the rich “crush” the poor, hypocrisy and hypocrisy, lies and deceit in honor of the authorities. Judas with his kiss is alive.

Tolstoy was not forgotten. Millions of copies of his works have been and are being published, hundreds of plays and films based on his works have been created, Tolstoy museums in Yasnaya Polyana, Khamovniki (Moscow) are visited

Every year, tens of thousands of people, among them not only our compatriots, but also representatives of many foreign countries. And yet, with full confidence, we can say: for the majority of the living, Tolstoy remains an unknown writer. And the fact that he is a great sage of life, few in our country know. The reason for this is the prohibition of the philosophical and religious works of the writer both under the tsarist and Soviet authorities, the oppression of Lenin's articles in the analysis of Leo Tolstoy's work, when every schoolchild could laugh at the sage without reading him and not understanding what is behind Lenin's words: squishy, ​​foolish in Christ”, miserable “non-resistance”.

Those ideas and principles of life, in the name of which Tolstoy made his way to Golgotha, are not only not in demand, but even not comprehended by our contemporaries. Whereas, under the influence of Tolstoy's ideas, Mahatma Gandhi brought freedom to India from the oppression of the British, in 1922 Korea became an independent state, the activities and death of Martin Luther King in the United States turned the consciousness of American society upside down, dramatically changing the attitude towards blacks for the better.

The house, which became the last earthly refuge of L.N. Tolstoy, not a memorial of sorrow, because this would contradict the concept of "life - death - immortality" of the great writer, who believed that "there is no death."

Having gone through the "Arzamas horror" of death, the loss of many relatives and friends, the fear of death, Tolstoy thought about suicide at the age of fifty, because he could not answer the question - where is the meaning of life, which is indestructible after death? His philosophical treatise “On Life” was originally called “On Life and Death”, but, having written it, Tolstoy crossed out the word death - it does not exist for someone who, having gone through “birth by the spirit”, found the strength in himself for spiritual movement towards the ideal.

In the Yasnaya Polyana notes of Dushan Makovitsky about the dying days of Tolstoy, there is noteworthy evidence: “Lev Nikolayevich himself hoped to overcome the disease, wished to survive,

But even during the entire time of his illness, he did not show anything to the contrary ... fear of death ... "

TOLSTOY CONCLUDED THAT DEATH DOES NOT EXIST FOR A PERSON WHO KNOWS THE MEANING OF LIFE IN PERFORMING THE HIGHEST GOOD - SERVING GOD, NEIGHBOR MORAL TRUTH.

Death is terrible for a person who is in the power of the body. The question of how one's own life was lived and what trace a person left about himself in the world became one of the main questions for Tolstoy in his reflections on life and death. In love, service to people and God, he saw the way out of the tragic impasse - here is the focus of the problem of immortality, here is the threshold of eternity, and you yourself must cross over it. The sooner Reason, a particle of the Divine, awakens in a person, the sooner the birth of the spirit occurs, the more immortal meaning we have, the more obvious the essence of the transition “from time to Eternity” (A. Fet), even more mysterious than earthly life.

TRANSITION IS THAT THRESHOLD, THAT REFERENCE POINT WHICH CHECKS A MAN IN THE FACE OF DEATH (in "War and Peace" - "the personality of a whole people"). This starting point reveals the significance of this person and what remains after her physical death: the life of the family, spirit, ideas, significant and good deeds, a work of art, a scientific discovery or a corner in the memory of a person who loved you ... This and much more contrary to our desire can become an integral part of the culture of mankind, be in the orbit of his memory. But the very immortality of the spirit after the death of the body, that immortality that many of Tolstoy's heroes and Tolstoy himself aspired to - where is it? It is in every person, if through God the work of an immortal soul is tirelessly going on in him. Belief in immortality is a sacrament, with the recognition of which life is filled with light and meaning. Without it, as Tolstoy wrote, life is like a “clean whitewashed square room”, causing “horror red, white, square”.

On his deathbed, Tolstoy hears the voices of dead people close to him. As if they are calling him to themselves, to another world. With his soul he responds to this call, but the “mind of the heart” is still firmly connected with the earthly sufferings of the people around him. Even on his deathbed, the fate of his neighbor is more precious than universal experiences. And so he writes in his diary, first in French: "Do what you must ...", does not finish the continuation of his favorite saying "and let it be, what will be." Gathering the last of his strength, he writes in Russian: “And everything is for the good of others, and most importantly, for me” (58, 126). These were the last words written by his hand.

The day before his death, Tolstoy got up from his bed and in a loud voice, clearly said to those present: “This is the end! .. And nothing!” I saw my daughters Tanya and Sasha and turned to them with the words: “I ask you to remember that, besides Leo Tolstoy, there are many more people, and you are all looking at one Leo.” And he also said: “The end is better than this” (YaZ - 4. S. 430).
The theme of "Departure - Death - Immortality", associated with the uniqueness of the Astapov house, sounds in a special way in the context of the philosophy of the Way of Life.

THE PHENOMENON OF THE PATH is the path of a person's life, his endless movement "from darkness to light"; spiritual ascent of the individual to the sacred center - the source of the highest grace and joy, to God; the path of self-knowledge of man and knowledge of the world; the path of the searching Russian soul, thinking about the fate of the motherland and all of humanity.

Tolstoy himself is the living embodiment of the man-Way. As a sage, he went through the ascetic purification of the spirit, striving for virtue, ascending from the material to the ideal, being in eternal movement for the sake of spiritual transformation.

The room in which Leo Tolstoy died - the philosophical image of the Threshold, the Transition, the meeting of the Man with the Logos, the Light - is viewed from two sides according to the exposition plan:

Internal - a look at the room itself from inside the house and external - a look at the opposite door (Tolstoy's symbol of death and access to a new life), open from the side of the road to the world. Behind it is a transparent bulletproof installation and a lighted room. Light breaks out, illuminates the grass, trees, residential buildings and goes up. Tolstoy, as it were, blesses the whole world, the whole world, but already “without himself”, without his personified “I”, being in the luminous area of ​​space. He himself is already becoming an eternal source of light in the eternally “living life” of the world.

In his youth, he wanted to be the richest, greatest, happiest man on this earth. But he refused wealth, was burdened by lifetime glory, in old age he was least of all tormented by pride, he wanted family happiness - it did not work out, he dreamed of happiness for the common people, but everything was already breathing anger, class intransigence, Russia was heading for revolutions, fratricidal wars. And it became clear that a person has no power over circumstances, but he has the power to change his soul for the better. From the thirst for wealth - to simplification, from the desire for happiness - to the “kingdom of God within you”, from greatness and glory - to the request to bury him in the simplest coffin, not to erect a monument over the grave, not to say mourning speeches.

His last book, The Way of Life, was published after his death. The book is about how a person discovers the meaning of life, acquires immortality, so that on the threshold of Eternity one could say with the words of Ivan Ilyich: "Death is over."

The last years of Tolstoy's life were very painful for him. He honestly followed his principles: he renounced all property rights, even the ownership of his compositions. But life in Yasnaya Polyana still weighed on him: the atmosphere of the manor estate itself, the relative material well-being contradicted his views, his convictions. In the end, he decided to leave. Where? It seems that he did not have a clear plan, a clear route. Just leave. On the way, Tolstoy fell ill (don't forget that he was 82 years old) and died at the Astapovo station.
Academician D.S. Likhachev wrote that even if Tolstoy had recovered, “he would have gone further, because he needed to get away from everything that threatened to stop him. For him there were no stations and stops in life, he was a wanderer, a typical Russian wanderer by nature and by his literary and ethical quests.

Essay on literature on the topic: Leo Tolstoy's departure from Yasnaya Polyana

Other writings:

1. Again, Herzen faces the question of variation in the lives of individuals and in the history of peoples. Matthew's life could have taken different paths. If circumstances had turned out differently, a different fate would have awaited him. However, randomness does not change patterns. After all, any Read More ......
2. “Without my Yasnaya Polyana, I can hardly imagine Russia and my attitude towards it,” said L. Tolstoy. We can no longer imagine Leo Tolstoy without Yasnaya Polyana. Now Yasnaya Polyana is a reserved place. A memorial was created here Read More ......
3. The problems that the author raises in this text are as follows. What kind of person can be considered intelligent? What is intelligence? Is intelligence necessary at all? It is these problems that D.S. Likhachev raises. Discussing these issues, the author believes that intelligence is needed under all circumstances. She Read More ......
4. In the early 80s. there is a decisive change in Tolstoy's views on life, on its moral foundations, on social relations. “A revolution has taken place with me,” the writer admitted, “which has been preparing in me for a long time and the makings of which have always been in me. From Read More ......
5. “After the Ball” is one of the most significant works. Written by a 75 year old man. The power of talent is inexhaustible. In a miniature story, the poetic youth of an ageless genius and the power of denunciation of the prophet, who smashes the sinful world, manifested itself. Poetry and citizenship are inseparable in Tolstoy. Ball and execution – Read More ......
6. Tolstoy gave the broadest panorama of Russian life at the beginning of the 19th century. Genre - epic novel: life is depicted on a national-historical scale. The history of the country is portrayed through private life. The main theme is the historical fate of the Russian people in the Patriotic War of 1812. More than 550 Read More ......
7. Tolstoy comes from a noble family and belonged to the high society of St. Petersburg, but he did not like this high society because of his constant deceit and fake feelings. Tolstoy was closer to ordinary people. And Tolstoy decided to show the whole truth in his stories Read More ......
8. The work of Leo Tolstoy “War and Peace” describes representatives of different strata of society, starting with the common people (Tikhon Shcherbaty and Platon Karataev) and ending with the high society (Sherer salon). But Tolstoy, as it were, unites all of them into two large groups according to their naturalness Read More ......

100 years have passed since the departure of Leo Tolstoy from his native home and his death.
Yesterday I watched the film "Last Sunday" about the last year of Tolstoy's life in Yasnaya Polyana. The script of the film was written by Michael Hoffman (who is also the director of the film) based on the novel by Jay Parini "The Last Station", based on the diaries of Tolstoy himself, members of his family and close friends.
The film shows the most dramatic period in the life of Leo Tolstoy.
What made the great writer run away from his estate Yasnaya Polyana from his wife and children, ending his life in the house of the head of the Astapovo railway station?

Last year, when I was in Paris, I was surprised to find that there was still interest in the love drama of Sofya Andreevna Bers and Leo Tolstoy. This is still being written about in magazines.

I watched the German film "Last Sunday" about Leo Tolstoy at the Rodina cinema in an almost empty hall. Young people were breaking into a Japanese cartoon.
Helen Mirren as Sophia Andreevna seemed to me more convincing than Christopher Plummer as Leo Tolstoy.
Of course, foreign films about Tolstoy are as far from reality as our films about Indians. I felt it when I participated in the filming of Anna Karenina with Sophie Marceau and Sean Bean in the lead roles.

It's a pity that foreigners are making films about the great Russian people, but we don't have the money for that right now.
Andrei Tarkovsky wanted to make a film about the tragic death of Leo Tolstoy. And directed by Sergei Gerasimov, in which the director himself played the main role.

The end of Tolstoy's life is a real tragedy. His associate Chertkov and his wife Sofya Andreevna fought out of love for Tolstoy, and in fact for his legacy.

The drama of Tolstoy is in the conflict of his beliefs and real behavior, Tolstoy's personal love and his universal love for all mankind.
Tolstoy wanted to, but admitted that he was unable to love all of humanity.
He loved his wife. But even her love at the end of his life could not bear.

I consider Tikhon Polner's book "Leo Tolstoy and his wife" to be the most reliable source. As well as a book by pianist Alexander Goldenweiser, since he was a direct witness to the drama that took place in Yasnaya Polyana.

Leo Tolstoy met his future wife Sonya Bers when she was seventeen and he was thirty-four years old. Together they lived 48 years, gave birth to 13 children. Sofya Andreevna was not only a wife, but also a faithful and devoted friend, an assistant in all matters, including literary ones.
For the first twenty years they were happy. However, they often quarreled afterwards, mostly over the beliefs and lifestyle that Tolstoy defined for himself.

Leo Tolstoy was a man of love. Even before his marriage, he had numerous relationships of fornication. He got along with the female servants in the house, and with peasant women from subject villages, and with gypsies. He even seduced his aunt's maid, an innocent peasant girl, Glasha. When the girl became pregnant, the mistress kicked her out, but her relatives did not want to accept her. And, probably, Glasha would have died if Tolstoy's sister had not taken her to her. (Perhaps this case formed the basis of the novel "Sunday").

Tolstoy then made a promise to himself: "I will not have a single woman in my village, except for some cases that I will not look for, but I will not miss."
But he could not overcome the temptation of the flesh. However, after sexual pleasures, there was always a feeling of guilt and bitterness of remorse.

Especially long and strong was the connection between Lev Nikolaevich and the peasant woman Aksinya Bazykina. Their relationship lasted three years, although Aksinya was a married woman. Tolstoy described this in the story "The Devil". In my youth, reading the story "The Devil", I was struck by the sincerity of the narrator, and promised myself not to repeat his mistakes.

When Lev Nikolaevich wooed his future wife Sofya Bers, he still kept in touch with Aksinya, who became pregnant.
Before his marriage, Tolstoy gave his diaries to read to the bride, in which he frankly described all his love interests, which caused shock in an inexperienced girl. She remembered this all her life.

Eighteen-year-old wife Sonya was inexperienced and cold in intimate relationships, which upset her experienced thirty-four-year-old husband. During the wedding night, it even seemed to him that he was hugging not his wife, but a porcelain doll.

From the school bench we are told that the classics of Russian literature were almost angels. Leo Tolstoy was not an angel. He cheated on his wife even during her pregnancy.
Justifying himself through the mouth of Stiva in the novel Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy admits: “What to do, you tell me what to do? The wife is getting old and you are full of life. You will not have time to look back, as you already feel that you cannot love your wife with love, no matter how much you respect her. And then love suddenly turns up, and you are gone, gone!”

At the end of 1899, Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “The main cause of family misfortunes is that people are brought up in the idea that marriage gives happiness. Marriage is lured by sexual desire, which takes the form of a promise, a hope for happiness, which is supported by public opinion and literature; but marriage is not only not happiness, but always suffering, with which a person pays for the satisfaction of sexual desire.

A direct witness, Alexander Goldenweiser, wrote: “Over the years, Tolstoy more and more often expresses his opinions about women. These opinions are terrible.
“If you need a comparison, then marriage should be compared with a funeral, and not with a name day,” said Leo Tolstoy. - The man walked alone - five pounds were tied to his shoulders, and he rejoices. What is there to say, that if I walk alone, then I am free, and if my foot is tied with the foot of a woman, then she will follow me and interfere with me.
- Why did you get married? the countess asked.
“But I didn’t know it then.
You are constantly changing your beliefs.
Two strangers come together, and they remain strangers for the rest of their lives. … Of course, who wants to get married, let him get married. Maybe he will be able to arrange his life well. But let him only look at this step as a fall, and apply all his care only to making coexistence as happy as possible.

Personally, I believe that no one else could have endured Lev Nikolaevich for so long as his wife Sofya Andreevna. To live your whole life with such a person is a real feat!
When a wife could not share a marital bed with her husband, Tolstoy was fond of either another maid or a cook, or sent to the village for a soldier's wife.

For 48 years of married life, Sofya Andreevna gave birth to thirteen children, five of them died. At forty-four, Sofya Andreevna gave birth to her last child, who died six years later.
She couldn't bear it. It seemed to her that her husband fell out of love with her. And she fell in love. The object of her passion was a family friend, composer Alexander Sergeevich Taneyev. She was 52 years old!

Everyone guessed that Sofya Andreevna was in love, except for Taneyev himself. They never became lovers.
In her diary, Sofya Andreevna wrote: “I know this painful feeling, when love does not illuminate, but the world of God fades, when it is bad, it is impossible - but there is no strength to change it.”
Before her death, she told her daughter Tatyana: "I loved one of your fathers."

Sofya Andreevna was afraid to remain in the memory of her descendants not worthy of her brilliant husband. And therefore she tried to delete all unflattering references to her from Tolstoy's diaries.
Knowing that his wife Sofya Andreevna read his diaries, Tolstoy started a “secret” diary, and then a “diary for himself alone,” which he kept in a bank safe.

At the end of his life, Tolstoy experienced a collapse. Collapsed his ideas about family happiness. Leo Tolstoy was unable to change the life of his family in accordance with his views.
"Kreutzer Sonata", "Family Happiness" and "Anna Karenina" Lev Nikolayevich wrote based on the experience of his family life.

In accordance with his teachings, Tolstoy tried to get rid of attachment to loved ones, tried to be even and friendly to everyone.
Sofya Andreevna, on the contrary, maintained a warm attitude towards her husband, but she hated the teachings of Tolstoy with all the strength of her soul.

- You will wait until they take you to prison on a rope! Sofya Andreevna frightened.
“That’s all I need,” Lev Nikolayevich answered imperturbably.

For the last fifteen years of his life, Tolstoy thought about becoming a wanderer. But he did not dare to leave the family, the value of which he preached in his life and in his work.
Tolstoy expressed his passionate desire to give up everything and become a wanderer in his last story, not published during his lifetime, "Father Sergius."

Under the influence of like-minded people, Leo Tolstoy renounced copyright on works created by him after 1891. In 1895, Tolstoy formulated in his diary his will in case of death. He advised the heirs to give up copyright on his writings. “If you do it,” Tolstoy wrote, “it’s good. It will be good for you too; if you don’t, it’s your business. So you are not ready to do it. ".

Tolstoy transferred all his rights to property to his wife. But that wasn't enough for her. Sofya Andreevna wanted to become the heiress of everything created by her great husband. And that was a lot of money in those days. Some firms offered a million gold rubles for the monopoly right to publish all of Tolstoy's works!

In her diary on October 10, 1902, Sofya Andreevna wrote: “I consider it both bad and senseless to give Lev Nikolayevich’s works into common ownership. .. I told Lev Nikolayevich that if he dies before me, I will not fulfill his wishes and will not give up the rights to his compositions.

It was because of this that a family conflict broke out. There was no longer spiritual closeness and mutual understanding between the spouses. The interests and values ​​of the family were in the first place for Sofya Andreevna. She took care of the financial support of her children.
And Tolstoy dreamed of giving everything away and becoming a wanderer.
Incessant conflicts oppressed Tolstoy and deprived his wife of mental balance.

“In June 1910, two doctors invited to Yasnaya, the psychiatrist Professor Rossolimo and the good doctor Nikitin, who had known Sofya Andreevna for a long time, after two days of research and observation, diagnosed “a degenerative double constitution: paranoid and hysterical, with a predominance of the first.”

“Hell has begun. The unfortunate woman has lost all power over herself. She eavesdropped, peeped, tried not to let her husband out of her sight for a minute, rummaged through his papers, looking for a will or records about herself ... She rolled around in hysterics, shot, ran around with a can of opium, threatening to commit suicide every minute if one or another her whim will not be fulfilled immediately ... "

“Tolstoy thought about leaving this “house of lunatics”, infected with hatred and struggle. He began to irresistibly want to die in a calm environment, away from the people who "exchanged him for rubles."

At three o'clock in the morning from October 27 to 28, 1910, Tolstoy woke up to hear Sofya Andreevna rummaging through his papers, apparently looking for the text of a secret will in which the writer renounced copyright to his works.

The cup of patience overflowed. Tolstoy realized that "the moment had come for him to save not himself, Lev Nikolaevich, but that human dignity and the spark of God, which were finally humiliated by his position in Yasnaya Polyana."
Eighty-two-year-old Lev Nikolaevich was forced to secretly flee from his own house at night. His daughter Alexandra and doctor Makovitsky helped him in this.

Sofya Andreevna had long promised her husband that she would commit suicide if he left. When she learned of Tolstoy's flight, the Countess wept incessantly, beat herself on the chest now with a heavy paperweight, now with a hammer, stabbed herself with knives and scissors, wanted to throw herself out the window, threw herself into the pond.

For Sofya Andreevna, the departure of her husband was a shame. With his departure, he trampled 48 years of their life together, which were filled with her self-sacrifice for the sake of her beloved.

Tolstoy wanted to leave for the Caucasus, but caught a cold and had to get off at the Astapovo station.
The dying Leo Tolstoy lay in the apartment of the head of the station and asked not to let his wife in. In his delirium, it seemed to him that his wife was following him and wanted to take him home, where Tolstoy terribly did not want to return.

Leo Tolstoy died on November 7, 1910.
On November 29, Sofya Andreevna wrote in her diary: “Intolerable longing, remorse, weakness, pity to the point of suffering for her late husband ... I can’t live.”
She wanted to end her life.
At the end of her life, Sofya Andreevna confessed to her daughter: “Yes, I lived for forty-eight years with Lev Nikolaevich, but I never found out what kind of person he was ...”

She was an ideal “pagan wife”, as Tolstoy wrote, but she never became a “Christian friend”. In one of his last letters, Tolstoy wrote: “You gave me and the world what you could give, you gave a lot of maternal love and selflessness, and you can’t help but appreciate you for that…. Thank you and remember with love and will remember for what you gave me.

I have read all the novels of Leo Tolstoy more than once, many stories and journalistic articles.
The whole religion of Tolstoy can be reduced to a few propositions:
– do the will of God who sent you to earth;
- you will have to merge with Him after carnal death;
- God's will is that people love each other and, as a result, do to others as they want to be done to them.

His theory of non-resistance to evil by violence became the basis of Mahatma Gandhi's work. And this theory really changed the world!

In the last years of his life, Tolstoy admitted that he was still only looking for the truth, that he still had a lot of work to do on the inner change of his life. Every dogma, every final theory became hateful to him. He resolutely protested against "Tolstoyism" and sometimes even spoke of his followers: "This is a" Tolstoyan ", that is, a man of a world outlook most alien to me."

Some believe that the main result of the life of Leo Tolstoy is his literary work. Others (and I belong to them) are convinced that the main thing in the life of Leo Tolstoy is his spiritual growth, self-knowledge and self-improvement.
Lev Nikolayevich himself considered his literary works a "by-product" of his spiritual development. He did not just write novels and write articles, he tried to live in accordance with his convictions.
And this makes Tolstoy closer to me than Dostoevsky.

Many saw the decline of our church at the end of the 19th century. But only Leo Tolstoy was able to speak honestly about this, spoke out against the hypocrisy of some churchmen who turned the community of like-minded people into an office in the service of the state.

Tolstoy considered himself a follower of Christ, but did not accept Church Christianity. Tolstoy did not consider Christ the God-Man, but saw in Him only one of the greatest prophets of mankind. In 1879-85, Tolstoy retranslated the four Gospels from the ancient Greek language and brought them into one text, leaving, in his opinion, the most necessary.
Leo Tolstoy is our Luther!

For me, Tolstoy is first and foremost a thinker. Yes, he was turned into an icon, into a classic of literature. But in spirit it was a real revolutionary!
Perhaps the centenary of Tolstoy's death is not officially celebrated because they do not want to remember that Leo Tolstoy was an opponent of private property and opposed the Russian Orthodox Church.
But Tolstoy's revolution is still relevant today!

I remember how in my youth I read Tolstoy's Confession in the library. Then I decided to build my life on the basis of the life experience of Lev Nikolayevich.
"Well, you will be more glorious than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, all the writers in the world - so what!". And I couldn’t answer…”

I followed the path that Tolstoy had taken. When I visited Optina Hermitage, in a hut where I spent the night, I found the book "Leo Tolstoy" Divine and Human "from the diary entries of recent years."

“There is one undoubted sign that divides the actions of people into good and evil: the act increases the love and unity of people - it is good; produces enmity and division – he is bad.”

Tolstoy spent his whole life striving for truth, looking for an ideal. He entered the Faculty of Philosophy - transferred to law - dropped out of university - decided to become a model landowner - entered the military service - tried to create an ideal family - became a writer - debunked the old religion to create a new one - spent his whole life looking for a "green stick" that could make people happy - and died with the words "Search, search all the time ..."

It was a seeker of Truth, although he went by trial and error.
In essence, Leo Tolstoy was a wanderer - a man on the way to God!
And therefore, following the path of Tolstoy, I called my novel-life story "The Wanderer".

Dante Alighieri in the book "New Life" writes: "wanderers" can be understood in a double sense - in a wide and narrow sense: in a wide one - because a wanderer is one who is far from his homeland; in the narrow sense, only the one who goes to the house of St. James or returns from there is revered as a wanderer.

Tolstoy actually refused to award him the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1906.
Now the Yasnaya Polyana literary prize has been established, which is awarded by the descendants of Leo Tolstoy on his birthday, September 9th.

In 2008, on Leo Tolstoy's birthday, I visited Yasnaya Polyana and donated to the museum my true-life novel The Wanderer (mystery), in which I described my conversation with Leo Tolstoy.
I was struck by the modesty of the decoration of the house. I wandered along the paths where Lev Nikolaevich once walked, and it seemed to me as if I were talking to him.
“Such a mania is writing. Write for money. It's like eating when you don't feel like it, or like prostitution when you don't want to indulge in debauchery. ... I feel that I am committing a great sin by encouraging writing, which is the most empty occupation.
- It seems to me that the act of the writer is more important than the works he created.
- “I understand very well that the judgment that a writer should be judged by his writings, and not by deeds, does not please you. I don't like that idea either."
- How to live?
- “Let meanwhile people around you are evil and insensitive, find in yourself the strength to shine with the light of goodness and truth in the darkness of life, and with your light illuminate the path of others. Never lose hope, even if everyone leaves you and drives you out by force, and you are left completely alone, fall to the ground, wet it with tears, and the earth will bear fruit from your tears. Perhaps it will not be given to you to see these fruits already - your light will not die, even though you have already died.
But what do you live for?
“The righteous departs, but his light remains. You work for the whole, you do for the future. Never seek rewards, for already great is your reward on this earth. Don't be afraid of the noble or the strong..."
- What did you want, but could not or did not have time to write?
- “I wanted to write everything that a person thinks for several hours. Everything!"
- But why?
“Just come to your senses for an hour, and it will be clear to you that what is important, the one thing important in life is not what is outside, but only what is within us, what we need. Just understand that you don’t need anything, nothing, except for one thing: to save your soul, that only by this we will save the world. Amen".
(from my true-life novel "The Wanderer" (mystery) on the site New Russian Literature

LOVE CREATE NEED!

© Nikolay Kofyrin - New Russian Literature - http://www.nikolaykofyrin.ru