Off to war

Wherever he lives, Leo Tolstoy struggles to decide what sort of life he wants and to put each new plan in place. A young man born into his class can afford to be idle but he is the only one of the four brothers not to complete university and is constantly in financial strife due to gambling. In letters to family members he discusses joining the government service or the military, the two key careers befitting his social status, and serves as a magistrate in the Tula Assembly of Nobles for a short time. During a stint in St Petersburg he passes a couple of law examinations.

Finally he drifts into the army. He doesn’t firmly decide to serve his country, rather he has nothing better to do, is encouraged to abandon his destructive lifestyle by family members, and is a little awestruck by his eldest brother Nicholas, when he returns on leave from the Caucasian War in uniform in December 1850. The pair set off in April 1851 on the long journey – partly by barge along the Volga River – to Nicholas’s regiment in the village of Starogladkovskaya on the banks of the Terek River in the shadow of the spectacular Caucasus Mountains.

“His position in camp was highly irregular. As the only civilian in a group of officers, he passed for an idle aristocrat, and irresponsible tourist. He did not like his brother’s comrades, or his superiors. They were rough and ignorant, their only subjects of conversation were horses, women, promotions and deeds of heroism” (p80, Tolstoy, Troyat).

That said Tolstoy hasn’t thrown off his own bad habits, including whoring, regularly losing significant sums of money from gambling, and lack of application to anything. He continues his intense introspection as he struggles to balance the good and evil in his personality.

At the end of 1851, with fighting experience as a volunteer, Tolstoy formally enlists. He has a long wait in the city of Tiflis because of the paperwork and uses his time to play billiards, practise his German, hunt and again gets treatment for venereal disease. In one of his many letters home he tells Aunt Toinette he is much occupied with writing. His focus is Childhood, which he then saw as the first of several partly autobiographical novels.

He returns to Starogladkovskaya as a cadet in the 4th battery of the 20th Artillery Brigade, the unit in which his brother Nicholas also serves. He spends all of February 1852 in skirmishes with the enemy.

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