Person

Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was one of Russia’s most influential writers, author of the monumental novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, which reshaped world literature. Born into an aristocratic family, he spent most of his life at Yasnaya Polyana, where he wrote, educated peasant children, and developed a personal philosophy centered on moral renewal, nonviolence, and simplicity. In his later years he became a vocal critic of church and state. A notable curiosity is that his ideas profoundly inspired Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of nonviolent resistance.