Did you know that…

Tolstoy carried on a correspondence with Mohandas Gandhi and directly influenced Gandhi’s ideas about non-violent resistance.

Tolstoy was very much in favor of using Esperanto.

Levin (Левин) was created to reflect Tolstoy’s character.

Tolstoy considered a novel to be a framework for examining social and political issues.

He did not believe that “War and Peace” was a novel, as he did not believe it examined those issues. Thus, even though chronologically he wrote “War and Peace” before “Anna Karenina,” he considered “Anna Karenina” to be his first novel.

Tolstoy believed that to be a good Christian, he had to be a pacifist. His pacifist leanings caused him to violently criticize the government’s violence. He believed that the only solution for people to peacefully live together was through anarchy. He profoundly influenced the anarchist school of thought.

Tolstoy was a vegetarian.

Tolstoy fled from his wife and became a wandering ascetic – something he’d wanted to do for years. However, he caught pneumonia and died of heart failure at the Astapovo train station – intriguing, considering where Anna Karenina died!