How much do today's readers know about Leo Tolstoy? The great Russian writer was a vegetarian, neglecting copyright and money. He did not recognize religious authorities and was excommunicated. All his life, Tolstoy strove to do good and stood on the side of the peasantry. These are just a few facts from the eventful biography of the writer.
Instruction manual
1
Those who knew Lev Nikolaevich well claimed that he was a very gambler from a young age. Playing once in cards with his neighbor, the landowner, Tolstoy managed to lose part of his family estate, located in Yasnaya Polyana. The winner eventually dismantled one of the buildings he won and took to his property. Subsequently, the writer repeatedly wanted to redeem this heirloom, but for some reason did not do it.
2
With his future wife, Sofia Andreevna, Leo Tolstoy met when she was not even eighteen years old. They lived together for nearly half a century. Almost all this time, the wife was a faithful and devoted friend to the writer, helped Tolstoy a lot in literary activity. But in recent years, the couple began to quarrel often. The reason for the discrepancy was differences in life beliefs and a peculiar lifestyle of the writer.
3
Leo Tolstoy was seriously interested in India, its way of life, culture, religion and philosophy. The ideas of non-resistance to evil, which the writer tirelessly preached in his life, had a strong influence on Mahatma Gandhi. After many years, the Indian, who in his youth absorbed the views of the Russian writer, led the liberation movement of his people, relying on the theory of struggle, which denied any violence.
4
Working on the novel "War and Peace", Tolstoy repeatedly remade the work, mercilessly redrawing the storylines and coming up with new characters. The book changed its working title several times. At first, the author was going to tell readers about the three generations of his heroes, so at one time the novel had a rough title "Three Pores." Each time during the alteration of the plot lines are increasingly shifted to the beginning of the XIX century.
5
The writer actively studied the European education system, for which he even twice traveled abroad. He made a disappointing conclusion for himself that the education in his homeland was fundamentally wrong. Tolstoy temporarily abandoned his literary activity in order to create his own school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana. He even started publishing a journal with a pedagogical orientation. Tolstoy's pen belongs to textbooks: "ABC" and "Book for Reading", designed for peasant children.
6
The creative heritage of Leo Tolstoy is ninety volumes of works, about ten thousand letters and over 160 thousand manuscripts. Throughout his conscious life, the writer was searching for the source of human happiness. And literary work helped him in this, to which he devoted himself all.
