Lev Tolstoy’s life: reading experience. 2nd ed. Zorin A.L.

Lev Tolstoy has long become a hallmark of Russian culture, but in modern Russia its perception is often blurred by stereotypes coming from the Soviet tradition-by school teaching, the desire to contrast the fat-artist as a thick-minded artist. Meanwhile, it is today that Tolstoy is amazingly relevant: the idea of ​​non -violent resistance, vegetarianism, downshifting, the requirement of rejection of military service, the struggle to maintain nature, the attitude to love and sexuality - everything that seemed like its strangeness becomes the world intellectual mainstream.

The new brief biography of the great writer traces the main lines of his fate and creativity. Tolstoy’s artistic and philosophical heritage is considered here along with military experience, peasant labor and family tragedy. Such an “integrative” approach allows us to talk about it outside the reasoning of the “contradictions” and more clearly to see the unique sequence and integrity of his life path.

Andrey Zorin - literature historian, professor of Oxford University and MVSHSEN.