Tolstoy Museums

Moscow honors Count Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910), one of the country's greatest writers, with two museums detailing his life and works. Details of both museums as well as a brief biography of the writer's life are given below.

Born on the family's country estate at Yasnaya Polyana in Tula Province, 210 kilometers south of Moscow, the young Lev Tolstoy experienced an idyllic childhood despite the early deaths of many of his close relatives, including his mother. After failing to complete his studies in first Oriental Languages and then Law at Kazan University, Tolstoy turned to private study and became particularly interested in literature and ethics and the writings of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the English novelists Laurence Sterne and Charles Dickens. The writer joined the army and took part in the Crimean War (1853-1856), which was to have a great influence on his early published works, and traveled to Paris before marrying the daughter of a prominent Moscow physician in 1862 and settling down on the family estate for the his most creative period and for most of the remainder of his life. "War and Peace", commonly regarded as one of the finest novels ever written, was penned during the 1860s and combines a historical account of the Napoleonic Wars, the intricate exploration of the novel's principal characters and discussions on Tolstoy's personal theories on the philosophy of history and historical progression. The great novel "Anna Karenina" was also written at the estate, along with the novelist's remaining works. Having fathered 13 children, only 10 of who survived infancy, Tolstoy's marriage soured as he became more and more drawn to Christianity as a means of facing a growing fear of death, and he gradually developed his own system of religious beliefs. Tolstoy eventually died in 1910 after having achieved fame not just as a remarkable writer, who explored the most diverse approaches to human experience in his novels and whose literary works still endure at the summit of realist fiction, but as a renowned historical philosopher and moral and religious teacher.

Tolstoy Museum - Prechistenka Branch

This branch of the museum is housed in the elaborate Krushchev Mansion, built by Afanasy Grigoriev, one of the most famous and most prolific architects of the Russian Empire Style. The museum houses an enormous collection of original editions of Tosltoy's works and exhibits all manner of artifacts pertaining to his life. Lectures are regularly organized on the different periods of the writer's literary activity and the museum provides themed excursions for private parties and school children.

Tolstoy Estate-Museum

This branch of the museum was opened in 1921 and is housed in the building where Tolstoy and his family spent the winter months between 1882 and 1901. Situated in Ulitsa Lva Tolstovo, formerly Ulitsa Khamovnicheskaya, and just a short distance from the magnificent 5-domed Church of Nikolai in Khamovniki, the two-story house was purchased by the writer in 1882 to placate his wife, who was tired of provincial life and feared that their children's education was suffering. The house features numerous portraits of the family, including one of Tolstoy's lively and artistic daughter Tatyana by the famous Russian painter Ilya Repin, and one of the writer's wife Sofia Andreevna by the renowned artist Valentin Serov. Visitors can wander round the various bedrooms of the author's children, have a look at the servants quarters and browse round the upstairs family salon, where Tolstoy regularly entertained the composers Scriabin, Rakhmaninov and Rimsky-Korsakov and read his latest works to the writers Chekhov and Gorky. Tolstoy's study features a heavy desk and dark leather furniture, which seem appropriate to the author's gloomy literary output during the 1880s. Here he wrote his famous novella "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", "The Power of Darkness" and the moral treatises "On Life" and "What Then Are We To Do?". Unfortunately, the house's gardens and stables are off limits to the public, but visitors can enjoy a stroll in the small wooded park at the end of the street, where a seated statue of the famous writer broods beside the entrance.