Leo Tolstoy
1828 – 1910 Russian novelist
The author of War and Peace, a colossus of the realist novel.
- Religion
- Born Russian Orthodox, he developed his own radical Christianity of nonviolence and simple living, and was excommunicated by the church in 1901.
- Affiliations
- None. His pacifist teaching inspired Gandhi and later movements.
Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, vast novels that capture whole societies and the inner lives of their people. Late in life he turned to a radical Christian pacifism and renounced his wealth. His ideas on nonviolence influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Connections
- rival of Fyodor Dostoevsky — The two defined Russian literature from opposing temperaments.
- rival of Fyodor Dostoevsky — The two giants of Russian fiction admired each other but never met.