Leo Tolstoy is a free person. Basinsky P.V.

Dozens of memoirs were written about Leo Tolstoy, including the memories of his closest relatives, the smallest facts of his biography are reflected in hundreds of letters and diary entries of contemporaries. Nevertheless, his life continues to be a mystery. How did the great writer and philosopher get from the “Rubbed Small”, who did not receive a systematic education? What did his “spiritual coup” mean? What prompted him to abandon property and literary rights? Why was he excommunicated from the church? What are the true reasons for several attempts to leave the house? Why did he go to Optina Desert before his death?

writer and journalist, laureate of the Big Book Literary Prize, Pavel Basinsky, summarizes his many years of searching for the “True Tolstoy” in a book written on the basis of extensive documentary material from which The reader finds out why Tolstoy sold his father’s house, why, at an advanced age, he learned the Greek language in a month and a half, how he saved dozens of starving, for which he did not like the “Tolstoyes”, for which he rewrote the testament six times. In a word, this is a complete biography of a literary genius in a small format.