Tolstoy

TOLSTOY

ALSO BY ROSAMUND BARTLETT

Wagner and Russia (1995)

Chekhov: Scenes from a Life (2004)

CO-AUTHORED

Literary Russia: A Guide (1997)

EDITED AND CO-EDITED

Shostakovich in Context (2000)

Victory over the Sun: the World’s First Futurist Opera (forthcoming)

TRANSLATED AND EDITED

Anton Chekhov, About Love and Other Stories (2004)

Anton Chekhov, A Life in Letters (co-translated with A. Phillips, 2004)

Anton Chekhov, The Exclamation Mark (2008)

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (forthcoming)

TOLSTOY

A RUSSIAN LIFE

Rosamund Bartlett

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by

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This eBook edition published in 2010

Copyright © Rosamund Bartlett, 2010

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN 978 1 84765 283 6

for Lucy

CONTENTS

Map

Chronology

Tolstoy Family Tree

Bers Family Tree

Note on Conventions

Introduction

1 Ancestors: The Tolstoys and the Volkonskys

2 Aristocratic Childhood

3 Orphanhood

4 Youth

5 Landowner, Gambler, Officer, Writer

6 Literary Duellist and Repentant Nobleman

7 Husband, Beekeeper and Epic Poet

8 Student, Teacher, Father

9 Novelist

10 Pilgrim, Nihilist, Muzhik

11 Sectarian, Anarchist, Holy Fool

12 Elder, Apostate and Tsar

Epilogue: Patriarch of the Bolsheviks

Notes

Further Reading in English

Select Bibliography

Illustration Credits

Acknowledgements

Index

CHRONOLOGY

1828

Born at Yasnaya Polyana, Tula Province

1830

Death of Tolstoy’s mother

1837

Father dies shortly after family moves to Moscow

1841

The five Tolstoy children move to Kazan

1844

Becomes a student at Kazan University

1847

Starts writing a diary and returns to Yasnaya Polyana without finishing his degree when he comes into his inheritance

1851

Travels to the Caucasus with his brother Nikolay and joins the army

1852

Childhood is published

1854

Receives his commission and transfers to Bucharest, then the Crimea

1855

Sebastopol in December greeted with wide acclaim; arrives in St Petersburg and meets Turgenev and other writers for the first time

1856

Death of brother Dmitry; retires from the army

1857

First visit to Western Europe

1859

Opens school at Yasnaya Polyana for the peasants

1860

Second visit to Western Europe, to study pedagogy; death of brother Nikolay

1861

Appointed Justice of the Peace after serfs are emancipated; opens more schools and founds an educational journal

1862

Yasnaya Polyana raided by the secret police while Tolstoy is in Samara; marries Sofya Bers

1863

Starts writing War and Peace (completed 1869); birth of first child – son Sergey

1871

Buys an estate in Samara province

1872

Publishes ABC book and re-opens Yasnaya Polyana school briefly

1873

Starts writing Anna Karenina (completed 1877)

1875

Publication of the New ABC

1877

Becomes devout – visits Optina Pustyn Monastery

1878

Reconciliation with Turgenev; meetings with sectarians in Samara

1879

Renounces the Orthodox faith

1880

Confession (circulates in samizdat in 1882)

1881

Appeals to Tsar to exercise clemency after the assassination of Alexander II

Union and Translation of the Four Gospels

Family moves to Moscow for the winter months

1882

Investigation of Dogmatic Theology (published in 1891)

What I Believe (circulates in samizdate in 1884)

1883

Meets Vladimir Chertkov; Gospel in Brief published in France

1885

Sonya takes over the publication of Tolstoy’s earlier fiction First English translations of Confession, What I Believe

1886

What Then Must We Do?; The Death of Ivan Ilych; The Powers of Darkness

First English translations of War and Peace and Anna Karenina

1887

On Life (first publication in French in 1889)

1888

The Tolstoys’ last child, Ivan, is born First grandchild is born (to Ilya and his wife Sofya)

1889