Leo Tolstoy was born September 9, 1828 in Yasnaya Polyana, Tula province in a noble family. When the boy was two years old, his mother died. After another seven years, his father passed away. Lev's guardian acted as an aunt from Kazan. The atmosphere of growing up in her family, the writer later recalled in the story "Childhood".

At first Tolstoy studied at home - he was tutored by French and German teachers. And in 1843 he began to attend lectures at the Faculty of Oriental Literature of the Imperial Kazan University. But because of poor academic performance, he was later transferred to the Faculty of Law. There, too, did not work out: the writer did not want to learn on someone's instructions, liked to comprehend the sciences independently. And so in 1847, not bringing the matter to a degree, Lev stopped chasing higher education and decided to go home to engage in farming. Although even this he did not do too well because of frequent absences from Yasnaya Polyana. Noting that he was good at keeping a diary, Tolstoy decided to go to Moscow to try his hand at writing. At the same time, he became interested in cards, which later led to large debts.

As a young man, Leo Tolstoy participated in military operations with his brother Nicholas, first as a junker in the Caucasus mountains, and then transferred to Sevastopol, where he commanded a battery. Subsequently, the experience gained formed the basis or became the leitmotif of several works:

"The Cossacks"

"Hadji Murat"

"Demoted"

"Chopping Wood"

"The Raid"

"Sevastopol Stories"

"Adolescence"

"Youth"

Leo Tolstoy: to fame

Fame in literary circles began to slowly come to Tolstoy in 1855 after writing stories about the right of serfs "Polikushka" and "Morning of the landlord." From 1857 to 1860 Lev turned to wanderlust, where he created school textbooks. In 1859, he even opened a school for peasant children. And later, from under his pen sprinkled famous and gave him unprecedented fame works:

"War and Peace"

"Anna Karenina"

"After the Ball"

"For what?"

"The Power of Darkness"

"Resurrection"

In the eighties, Tolstoy decided to excommunicate from the church, not finding truth in religion. There was a time when the creator even visited thoughts of suicide, but his heart still stopped beating because of old age and illness - in the late fall of 1910, when the writer was 82 years old. Tolstoy became ill in the train heading to Kozelsk. At the Astapovo railroad station, the chief gave him shelter. After a week of agonizing suffering, the writer was gone. November 9, several thousand people gathered in Yasnaya Polyana to say goodbye to Leo Tolstoy. It was the first public funeral of a famous person, which was not held according to the Orthodox rite.

The writer's work had a huge influence on the development of the traditions of realism in world literature and contributed to the evolution of European humanism.