Appendix 1

Meet Leo Tolstoy: A Chronology of the Writer’s Life

Making it to the age of eighty-two would be an accomplishment in any era. But at a time when the life expectancy for a man was roughly half that number of years, it was nothing short of heroic. Tolstoy packed a lot of living into those eight-plus decades, too: from his youthful (mis)adventures on the battlefield, at the gambling table, and in the bedroom, to his later years as a father of thirteen children, the founder of a religion, and the internationally famous social thinker who would inspire the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. No stranger to the upheavals of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century life, Tolstoy was born a few years after the failed Decembrist uprising of 1825, came of age during the Crimean War of the 1850s, witnessed the Great Reforms of Alexander II in the 1860s, and then watched as his country barreled toward the failed, bloody Russian Revolution of 1905. And through it all this graphomaniac just kept on writing, producing ninety volumes of prose in all, among which there happen to be not one, but two of the world’s greatest novels, as well as a handful of essays that would influence the course of modern civilization.

How do you choose details from such a life to be included in a brief chronological summary? Very, very selectively. Which is why the chronology of Tolstoy’s life I offer below is meant simply as a useful reference point for readers wanting to keep track of what Tolstoy did, what he wrote, and when. The book you are holding in your hands will certainly fill in a number of the details relating to the writing and themes of War and Peace. For the complete story of Tolstoy’s life and times, however, I recommend one of the excellent biographies mentioned in the Suggestions for Further Reading.

1828	Tolstoy is born in his inherited ancestral estate, Yasnaya Polyana, or “Clear Glade.”
1830	Mother dies.
1836	Tolstoy moves to Moscow with his family.
1837	Tolstoy’s father dies. Children raised by their distant relative, T. A. Yergolskaya, beloved “Aunty.”
1844	Moves to Kazan, where he enters Kazan University to study Oriental languages, then transfers to the Faculty of Law.
1847	Withdraws from Kazan University and returns to Yasnaya Polyana. Begins his Benjamin Franklin–inspired journal, writing down daily rules of conduct.
1848	Moves to Moscow, where he frequents high society.
1849	Moves to Petersburg, plans to enroll in the university and enter civil service, but instead returns to Yasnaya Polyana. Opens a school for peasant children on his estate.
1851	Returns with his brother Nikolai to the Caucasus, Russia’s southern frontier.
1852	Joins the military as a cadet stationed in the North Caucasus. Publishes “Childhood.”
1854	Promoted to rank of ensign. Publishes “Boyhood.”
1855	Forced to sell the house he was born in to pay off a gambling loss of six thousand rubles. Serves at Sevastopol on the notoriously bloody fourth bastion during the Crimean War. Goes to Petersburg, where he becomes acquainted with writer Ivan Turgenev.
1856	Publishes “Sevastopol in August 1855,” “Two Hussars,” and “A Landowner’s Morning.” Meets radical philosopher and critic Nikolai Chernyshevsky.
1857	Publishes “Youth.” Travels through Europe.
1859	Publishes “Family Happiness.” Reopens his school for peasant children at Yasnaya Polyana.
1860	Brother Nikolai dies.
1862	Marries Sofya [Sonya] Andreyevna Behrs. Secret police raid Tolstoy’s Yasnaya Polyana school in search of seditious educational materials.
1863	Publishes The Cossacks. Son Sergei, first of thirteen children, is born.
1864	Begins work on the first draft of War and Peace, then called 1805. First daughter, Tatyana, is born.
1865	1805 (first two volumes of what will become War and Peace) is published in the Russian Herald.
1866	Second son, Ilya, is born.
1867	Works on the third and fourth volumes of War and Peace.
1868	Works on the fifth volume of War and Peace.
1869	Works on the sixth volume of War and Peace. Travels to Penza Province for a possible land purchase, stops overnight in a hotel in Arzamas, where he suffers a severe panic attack, the beginning of a long period of intense religious searching. Third son, Lev (Leo), is born.
1871	Suffers severe depression. Travels to the steppes of Samara, lives with the Bashkirs. Meets philosopher and critic Nikolai Strakhov. Second daughter, Marya, is born.
1872	Fourth son, Pyotr, is born.
1873	Begins work on Anna Karenina. Publishes his collected works in four volumes, included a revised edition of War and Peace. Baby Pyotr dies of croup.
1874	Fifth son, Nikolai, is born. Beloved “Aunty” T. A. Ergolskaya dies.
1875	Beginning of Anna Karenina published in the Russian Messenger. Baby Nikolai dies of meningitis. Third daughter, Varvara, is born prematurely, dies within two hours.
1877	Completes Anna Karenina, published the following year in a single edition. His religious quest intensifies. Sixth son, Andrei, is born.
1879	Seventh son, Mikhail, is born.
1880	Writes Confession. Begins work on A Translation and Harmony of the Four Gospels.
1881	Visits Optina-Pustyn Monastery, some seventy miles from Yasnaya Polyana. Writes a letter to Tsar Alexander III requesting that the tsar not execute the revolutionary terrorists who assassinated his father, Tsar Alexander II. The tsar responds that he doesn’t have the right to forgive the criminals; the assassins are executed. Moves with his family to Moscow and hates city life. Eighth son, Alexei, is born.
1882	Buys a house in Moscow (today the site of the L. N. Tolstoy Museum).
1883	Finishes working on the religious treatise “What I Believe,” published the following year. Reads the Bible in Hebrew. Meets Vladimir Chertkov, who will eventually become a prominent Tolstoyan.
1884	Threatens to leave home, but soon returns. Reads and admires the essay “Self-Reliance” by American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Fourth daughter, Alexandra, is born.
1886	Publishes The Death of Ivan Ilyich, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?,” and the play The Power of Darkness. Four-year-old Alexei dies of croup.
1887	Works on The Kreutzer Sonata and the essay “On Life.” Struggles to give up smoking and drinking.
1888	Walks from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana. Quits smoking. Thirteenth and last child, Ivan (Vanya), is born. First grandchild, Anna (daughter of son Ilya), is born.
1889	Begins the novel Resurrection and writes the novella The Devil.
1890	Works on the tale “Father Sergius.” Censor refuses to publish The Kreutzer Sonata. Writes article “Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?”
1891	Renounces the copyright on all works published before 1881. Gives up meat and alcohol. Organizes a relief effort for the famine in Tula and Ryazan. Writes several articles about the famine, including “On Hunger,” which sharply criticizes the government.
1892	Finishes work on The Kingdom of God Is Within You and sends it abroad for translation and publication.
1893	Writes an introduction to the essays of Guy de Maupassant. Meets theater director Konstantin Stanislavsky.
1894	Meets writer Ivan Bunin.
1895	Finishes “Master and Man.” Youngest son, Vanya, dies suddenly from scarlet fever. Meets writer Anton Chekhov.
1896	Writes the first draft of the novella Hadji-Murat.
1897	Travels to Petersburg. Works on the tract What Is Art?
1898	Works on the novel Resurrection and the tale Father Sergius with the intention of donating the proceeds to help the Dukhobors, a persecuted religious sect in Russia, emigrate to Canada.
1899	Meets German poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
1900	Writes articles, “The Slavery of Our Times,” “Patriotism and Government,” and “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” Works on drama The Living Corpse (published posthumously). Meets writer and revolutionary activist Maxim Gorky. Having read Nietzsche, condemns the German philosopher for his moral “savagery.”
1901	Excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church, and in response, publishes “A Reply to the Holy Synod’s Edict.” Comes down with malaria and travels to the Crimea to recuperate. Visited by Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky in the Crimea.
1902	Returns to Yasnaya Polyana. Finishes What Is Religion and Wherein Lies Its Essence? Sends a letter to Tsar Nikolai II criticizing the Russian government. Decides to commission his biography in order to share with people the “vileness of my life until my awakening.”
1903	Protests Jewish pogroms in Kishinev. American politician William Jennings Bryan visits Yasnaya Polyana. Writes the story “After the Ball.”
1904	Publishes the influential antiwar tract “Bethink Yourselves” in response to the Russo-Japanese War. Finishes Hadji-Murat. Beloved brother Sergei dies.
1905	Deplores the violence of the revolution. Writes articles such as “The End of an Age,” applying principles of nonviolent resistance to the political turmoil in Russia. Writes the story “Alyosha the Pot.”
1906	Publishes the story “For What?” Prepares stories for the instructional publication Cycles of Reading. Daughter Marya dies of pneumonia.
1907	Tells British playwright George Bernard Shaw in a letter that he is “not sufficiently serious.” Brother-in-law Vyacheslav Behrs, a transportation engineer, is murdered during a strike in Petersburg. Russian painter Ilya Repin paints portrait of Tolstoy.
1908	Publishes “I Cannot Be Silent,” condemning the death penalty. Receives Dictaphone from American inventor Thomas Edison.
1909	Writes his will leaving control of all of his works to daughter Alexandra after his death. Considers giving away all of his property.
1910	Leaves Yasnaya Polyana in secret. Dies in the stationmaster’s house at the Astapovo train station with international media looking on. Buried, according to his wishes, in the forest where he and his brother Nikolai first discovered the “little green stick,” on which they believed was inscribed the secret to universal happiness.