The literary landscape

Russia experiences an extraordinary intellectual and cultural flowering in the century in which Leo Tolstoy was born. The writer and poet Alexander Pushkin, now thought of as the father of modern Russian literature, achieves extraordinary success for the work he did before his untimely death in 1837. Fyodor Dostoyevsky is heralded as a genius. Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Lermontov burst onto the literary scene. Others emerge alongside him. Russian artists blossom in ballet, music and art.

This creative peak was despite or perhaps because of the 30-year repressive regime of Nicholas I. The Russian Emperor clashes with many of the literary intelligentsia over their push for social reforms and democracy, including such thinkers as Alexander Herzen. It is impossible for writers to avoid censorship: Nicholas I has a committee in place to watch that the press do not go too far. Tolstoy is first published in 1852 and Ivan Turgenev praises him generously from the village of Spasskoye, where he is under house arrest for a flattering obituary of Gogol, and Dostoyevsky praises him from Siberia, his place of exile.

In 1852, by sending the manuscript of his first novel, Childhood, to NA Nekrasov, editor of The Contemporary, Tolstoy goes straight to the top. The literary journal was founded by Pushkin in 1836, the year before the great poet challenges his wife’s alleged lover to a duel and dies from the injuries received. Other periodicals of the time include Notes for the Fatherland and The Reading Library. Nekrasov’s funeral illustrates that educated Russians took their literature seriously.

When Tolstoy hits the literary scene in the early 1850s, most of the intelligentsia identify with one of the two dominant groups, Westernisers or Slavophiles. Westernisers consider Russia to be backward and want it to adopt the free-thinking ways of Europe’s socially and politically progressive countries. The Slavophiles condemn Europe’s growing capitalism and materialism -- and the growth of the middle classes. Nationalistic, religious and conservative, they consider the Russia of old to be unique and superior. Tolstoy sided with neither during the political debates. He never had much time for politics.

Writing at war
War and Peace
Anna Karenina
The body of work
Literary influences