Education

Great emphasis is placed on education in aristocratic Russia. From the age of five Leo Tolstoy is schooled by the family’s German head tutor Fyodor Ivanovich Rössel. Aunt Toinette teaches French until the Frenchman M Prosper de St Thomas replaces Rössel when the family moves to Moscow. Tolstoy is then eight years of age. Then it is back to the country estate for a few years then on to Kazan for most of his teenage years.

All four boys study at the University of Kazan: Nicholas studying philosophy, Sergey and Dmitry mathematics, and Leo oriental languages. Leo has to sit the entrance exams twice to gain admission and does not particularly impress his teachers. This could be due to too much partying – by now he, his brothers and their servants are living independently of their aunt and uncle. In his second year at university Leo swaps languages for law but drops out before graduating in any subject. Perhaps the environment does not suit or his forced isolation while being treated for venereal disease undermines his commitment.

Perhaps he is just too distracted once the family fortune is divided up between the five siblings in 1847. It is traditional for the youngest son to get the childhood home so Yasnaya Polyana is left to him. He inherits total landholdings amounting to 1,485 desyatins (one desyatin equals 2.7 acres, so about 4,000 acres), 350 adult male peasants and their families, and 4,000 silver roubles given to him by his two eldest brothers because they get more land (p47, Tolstoy, Wilson). It is a few months before his nineteenth birthday. He returns to his birthplace full of enthusiasm for improving his mind, modernising his agricultural practices and making life better for the serfs that live on his land, in part by opening a school.

It is fashionable for people of Tolstoy’s social status to keep a diary and he does for most of his life. He records his internal debates about the meaning of life and his observations about the world around him, he confesses his sins and he constantly compiles behavioural rules. These rules and codes might include perfecting the French language, only associating with men higher in society than himself or cultivating an appearance of indifference. At other times his attempts at self-improvement are about studying the gospels and giving to the poor or reading widely in order to answer the big questions about life.

Bitter self-accusations often sparked by his failure to live up to his high ideals, are a constant feature of his diaries. He criticises himself for laziness and vanity, lustful thoughts and actions, and many other weaknesses listed in long columns. At times he devises rules such as “have one woman only once or twice a month”. Seldom does he comply. His romantic and not-so-romantic entanglements involve servants, gypsies and prostitutes.

At one stage he tells one of this brothers that he his writing three books: on farming techniques, on philosophy and on education (by this time he has opened a school). But less than two years after arriving back to live in his childhood home, driven by aimlessness and a lack of direction, Leo Tolstoy moves first to Moscow, then on to St Petersburg. Once again he is back in an urban environment dividing his time between social functions in the best homes in the city – behaviour he often railed against as vain and futile -- and playing cards and fraternising with women of loose morals.

Off to war
Early literary recognition
In the frontline
Home from the war
First trip to Europe
Another brother dies