1836
Tolstoy family moves to Moscow to prepare eldest son Nikolai for university.

1837
Father dies; Tolstoy children placed under guardianship of his very pious sister, Countess Aleksandra Illinichna Osten-Saken. Distant relative, T. A. Ergolskaia, Tolstoy’s beloved “Aunty,” assumes major role in raising the children. Family lives mostly in Moscow, summers at Iasnaia Poliana.

1844
Enters Kazan University to study oriental languages intending to become a diplomat. Transfers next year to the Faculty of Law.

1847
Begins Franklin journal with daily schedules and records of actual adherence (and most often, non-adherence) to them. Begins diary which, in various forms and with some significant breaks, he keeps for the rest of his life. Daily routine includes physical exercise – riding and gymnastics. Physically active, strong, agile, and good at all sports for his whole life. Hospitalized more than once for venereal disease. Fragments survive of a commentary on the discourses of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and a comparison of Tsarina Catherine the Great’s Instruction with Montesquieu’s De L’Esprit des Lois. Around this time he reads all of Rousseau, “including the dictionary of music,” as he later told one commentator. Rousseau is the thinker who most influenced T (see note 1 at the end of this chronology for a list of abbreviations used), who returns to him many times over his life and once said there were many pages in Rousseau that he felt he could have written himself.
May: withdraws from university without graduating and returns to Iasnaia Poliana. Philanthropic work among his peasants with mixed results.

1848
Moves to Moscow, where frequents high society and does little else.

1849
Moves to St. Petersburg, plans to enter civil service, then studies briefly in the Faculty of Law at the university there. Thinks of joining an elite guards unit. Returns to Iasnaia Poliana, where opens a school for peasant children. This year and the next spends much time thinking about music and playing piano. Fragmentary writings on music survive. Plays piano and loves music passionately his entire life. Favorite composers include Weber, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Schumann, Bach, Chopin, and early Beethoven; also folk and gypsy music. His Russian favorites are Glinka and then Tchaikovsky. Even in old age he never once speaks of abandoning music or music-making, although he claims at times that his tastes in music have changed. Applies to civil service and in 1850 is accepted at beginning rank in Tula province.

1852
Hunting, gambling, and womanizing. Recurrent venereal disease. Reads Plato and various works by Rousseau, especially “The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar” (from Emile). Finishes Childhood and works on The Raid. Conceives idea for Novel of a Russian Landowner.
January: takes an exam for the rank of cadet and joins the artillery as a “bombardier fourth class” stationed in the North Caucasus.
February: nearly killed in action by a shell that shatters the wheel of a cannon he is aiming.
August 3: “In my novel [Novel of a Russian Landowner] I will lay out the evil of the Russian government, and if I find that satisfactory, then I’ll devote the rest of my life to the construction of a plan for an electoral monarchic and aristocratic government based on existing elections. This is truly a goal for a virtuous life. Thank you, Lord, give me strength” (d).
September 2: reading Dickens’s David Copperfield for the second time, pronounces it “delightful” (d).
November 30: “Four epochs of life will be my novel up until Tiflis. I can write about it [that is, my own life], because it is far from me. And as the novel of an intelligent, sensitive and erring person, it will be instructive, though not dogmatic. The novel of a Russian landowner – that will be dogmatic” (d).
Publications: Childhood. Well received by both public and literati.

1853
Recommended for promotion to ensign. Sends in letter of resignation from army, but all leaves forbidden until the end of the Russo-Turkish War (declared on June 14). Gambles at cards and womanizes. Works intensively at times on Novel of a Russian Landowner, and comments frequently on writing by himself and others.
July 27: intimidated by Ivan Turgenev’s Sportsman’s Sketches: “It’s somehow hard to be writing after him” (d).
August 28–30: works on “The Fugitive,” the first, incomplete version of The Cossacks.
September 13–17: Writes and sends off story Notes of a Billiard Marker in a white heat, “so carried away that it’s even hard for me: I feel faint” (d).
October 6: Applies for active service against the Turks.
October 18: “don’t forget to look at it [each composition] from the point of view of the most narrow reader, who is seeking nothing in a book but entertainment” (n).
November 26: asks brother Sergei to send him David Copperfield in English.

December 1: “Literary success, satisfactory in and of itself, is achieved only by means of developing a subject from all angles. But the subject itself must be an elevated one if the labour is always to be pleasant” (d).
Publications: The Raid.

1854
Promoted to ensign for distinction in action in the Caucasus. Gambling and womanizing. Reads voraciously: Goethe, Schiller, Lermontov, Pushkin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Sand, contemporary Russian playwright Ostrovsky, and others. Reaches Bucharest in March, takes part in the siege of Silistria and the retreat, at the end of June, back to Bucharest.
July 11–12: reads Dickens’s Bleak House, published in translation in The Contemporary.
September 6: promoted to second lieutenant. Arrives in Kishiniev on September 9, and applies for transfer to the Crimea where allied siege in the Crimean War is taking place.
September–October: sale of main house at Iasnaia Poliana – it is dismantled and carted away – for 5,000 roubles to raise money after heavy gambling losses.
November: transferred to the Crimean front, and arrives at Sevastopol November 7.
November 21: receives rejection by Tsar Nikolas I of proposal submitted by group of artillery officers to publish a popular journal for soldiers.
Publications: Boyhood.

1855
Takes part in defense of Sevastopol, sees action on the notorious fourth bastion (in April), fights at fall of Sevastopol in August. Reads Goethe, Thackeray (Vanity Fair, Henry Esmond, Pendennis), Balzac, and others. Works on Youth, the continuation of Childhood and Boyhood.
January: gambles away all 5,000 roubles received for sale of house.
January–February: works on several plans for military reform.
March 4: records plan to found new religion: “in accordance with the development of humanity, the religion of Christ, but cleansed of faith and mystery, a practical religion, not promising future bliss, but giving bliss on earth [...] To act consciously to unite people by means of religion – here is the foundation of a thought that will, I hope, captivate me” (d).
March 11: “A military career is not for me, and the sooner I get out of it to give myself utterly to literature, the better” (d).

Mid-November: arrives in St. Petersburg, moves in with Turgenev. Makes friends with leading literati, all anxious to meet L. N. T., celebrated author of enormously popular war stories. Generally regarded as best young Russian writer, especially admired for gifts of psychological analysis and moral power. Carouses, gambles, loves gypsies and gypsy music.
Later November: meets distant, somewhat older relative A. A. Tolstaia, a lady-in-waiting at the Court, who becomes a lifelong friend and confidante. By mid-December is fighting bitterly with Turgenev, loves to épater his new, cultured friends by claiming to despise such cultural icons as George Sand, Homer, and Shakespeare.
December: introduced by friends to poetry of F. I. Tiutchev. Along with Pushkin and A. A. Fet (with whom he became friends in early 1856), Tiutchev becomes his favorite Russian poet.
Publications: Notes of a Billiard Marker, Sevastopol in December, Sevastopol in May, and The Wood-felling.

1856
Participates in both Petersburg Westernizer and Moscow Slavophile circles. Quarrels and reconciles with Turgenev, whom he sees frequently. Under influence of Petersburg friends, especially aesthete V. P. Botkin, indulges and explores all forms of sensuality, from physiological to aesthetic and musical. Attends theatre, concerts, and operas. Keeps a mistress for a few months. Reads Shakespeare, Pushkin, Dickens (The Pickwick Papers, Little Dorrit), Thackeray (The Newcomes), Goethe, Molière, and Homer. In literary polemics, chooses the side of sympathetic portrayal, which he associates with Pushkin and Dickens, over that of satire, associated with Gogol. Briefly courts neighbor Valeriia Arsenieva. Works intensively on and completes part one of Youth. Begins two comedies, A Noble Family and A Practical Man (which remain unfinished), continues Novel of a Russian Landowner and The Cossacks and begins the novel The The Decembrists. Remains interested his entire life in the 1825 Decembrist revolt of gentry army officers. Conceives and works on a story called “The Distant Field,” never finished and related in subject matter to War and Peace.
February 2: hears of death from tuberculosis on January 18 of brother Dmitrii.
March: Poet N. Nekrasov, T’s editor, intervenes to prevent a duel between T and one Longinov.
March 26: Promoted to lieutenant for “outstanding bravery and courage” at Sevastopol.

May–June: responding to political ferment under new tsar Alexander II, presents a plan to his serfs to free them.
Fall: sends in his resignation from the army, which becomes effective in the following year.
December 15: attends performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
Publications: Sevastopol in August, 1855 (signing with his full name for the first time), Meeting a Moscow Acquaintance in the Detachment (The Demoted Officer), A Landowner’s Morning (the only part published from the unfinished Novel of a Russian Landowner), Two Hussars, The Snowstorm. Separate editions of Childhood and Adolescence, and War Stories.

1857
Mixed relations with Turgenev; close to Botkin. Reads Balzac, Tocqueville (L’Ancien Régime), Goethe, and Don Quixote.
January: Attends musical evenings, and especially enamored of Beethoven; meets an itinerant musician, Georg Kizevetter, gets idea for story Albert. Leaving in late January, travels to France, Switzerland, northern Italy, and Germany; returns at the end of July. While abroad writes Lucerne in the form of a letter to Botkin, works on Albert, part two of Youth (never completed), and The Cossacks.
March 25: witnesses a guillotining in Paris: “A strong impression that will leave its mark. I am not a political man. Morality and art. [These] I know, love, and can do” (d). On same day writes to Botkin that “Human law is nonsense! The truth is that government is a conspiracy not only to exploit, but mainly to corrupt citizens. […] I will never serve any government anywhere.”
April–May: idyllic two months in Switzerland: “I am gasping from love, both physical and ideal. […] I am taking a very great interest in myself. And I even love myself for the fact that there is so much love of others in me” (d, May 12).
Friendship with AA intensifies.
July 12–20: loses heavily at roulette in Baden-Baden.
July 24: on way home, sees and admires Raphael’s painting of the Madonna in Dresden. (AA later gives him a copy, which hangs first in his bedroom at Iasnaia Poliana and then in his study.)
August: having reread Iliad, vows to completely rewrite The Cossacks. Two weeks later rereads the Gospels “which I had not done for a long time.”
Fall: distressed by declining reputation. In December or January 1858, drafts project to found a musical society in Moscow.
Publications: Youth and From the Notes of Prince D. Nekhliudov. Lucerne, both poorly received, the latter soon rejected by T himself.

1858
Continues to oppose satirical, politically motivated literature. Proposal to friends, eventually rejected but seriously discussed, for a new journal with one goal only: to make people weep and laugh.
January: begins friendship, close until 1861, with B. N. Chicherin, jurist and liberal philosopher.
March: reads Gospels, starts unfinished story “The Bright Resurrection of Christ.”
March 21: “the political excludes the artistic, because the former, in order to prove [its point], must be one-sided” (d). Follows debates in his district about emancipation of serfs, with other landowners signs a manifesto declaring that peasants should be freed with land, and that landowners should be compensated for this. Finishes Albert, writes Three Deaths, works on The Cossacks, begins Family Happiness. Starting December, 1857, tentatively courts E. F. Tiutcheva, the poet’s daughter. (Interest persists, with significant doubts and also other possible choices, through 1861.)
May: begins passionate affair with married peasant Aksiniia Bazykinа from Iasnaia Poliana: “I’m in love as never before.” Spends summer on estate absorbed in Aksiniia and farm life rather than literature. (The affair lasts until his marriage in 1862, and Aksiniia bears T one son, Timofei, later a coachman on the estate.) In 1860 he wrote of this affair that “it’s no longer the feelings of a stag, but those of a husband for a wife”(d).
August: reads published letters of Schellingian philosopher N. V. Stankevich from the 1830s. August 23: “Never has any other book made such an impression on me. I have never loved anyone as much as this man whom I have never seen” (letter to AA).
December 23: mauled and nearly killed by a she-bear on bear hunt.
Publications: Albert, poorly received.

1859
Relations with Turgenev worsen. Reads and admires George Eliot’s Scenes of Clerical Life and Adam Bede. Works intensively on and finishes Family Happiness, mostly disliked by friends, and rejected by him after its publication. Subsequently – from April on – withdraws from literary life, writes little, lives at Iasnaia Poliana, farming and hunting.
February 4: first public address, given after joining the Society of Lovers of Russian Philology at Moscow University. Praises politically engaged “exposé” literature, but says that “the literature of a people is its full, many-sided consciousness, in which both the national love of the good and true and the national contemplation of beauty in a given epoch of development should be reflected.”
Besides the “temporal interests of society,” literature should reflect “eternal human interests, the ones that are most valuable and of greatest spiritual worth, in the consciousness of the nation.”
October: starts another school for peasant children at Iasnaia Poliana.
Publications: Three Deaths, Family Happiness.

1861
January: visits Naples and Rome, where feels “a return to art” (d).
February 18–March 5: in London, visits Alexander Herzen several times, and perhaps attends a lecture by Dickens on education. (Subsequently reads Herzen’s journalism and corresponds with him about it.) Meets Matthew Arnold, who writes a letter of introduction for him asking London teachers to allow him to visit their schools.

1861
January: visits Naples and Rome, where feels “a return to art” (d).
February 18–March 5: in London, visits Alexander Herzen several times, and perhaps attends a lecture by Dickens on education. (Subsequently reads Herzen’s journalism and corresponds with him about it.) Meets Matthew Arnold, who writes a letter of introduction for him asking London teachers to allow him to visit their schools.
March: in Brussels begins Polikushka.
Mid-March: writes Turgenev that he has returned to fiction, and is reading Goethe’s Faust, which he highly praises.
March 16: writes that public education is the most important, unifying task of society (n).
March 31–April 6: in Weimar, visits Goethe’s house, studies schools.
Back in Russia on April 12, continues work on education. Now and throughout the 1860s spends much time hunting, sometimes going off for days with his friend D. D. Obolensky.
April 20: applies for permission from the Ministry of Education to publish a journal called Iasnaia Poliana on practical pedagogy.
May 16: over the objections of many neighboring landowners, is appointed Arbiter of the Peace to resolve disputes between peasants and their former masters. Landowners mistrust T because of his generous settlements with his own peasants both before and after the Emancipation Proclamation of February 19. (T resigns position in 1862, citing “sickness” as his reason.)
May: challenges Turgenev to a duel following a quarrel, and the two break off relations until 1878.

1862
Works intensely on pedagogy, and especially the journal Iasnaia Poliana. In response to this, many schools for peasants founded nearby. T follows reaction to journal and his publications in it, and worries about perceived lack of interest (letter to Katkov, April 11). His pedagogical theories evoke mixed reaction in the press, but the journal itself, as well as his efforts to promote literacy, are widely praised.
February: loses badly at cards (the last such episode), and finishes The Cossacks to pay debt. Reads and admires Dostoevsky’s Notes from a Dead House.
May–June: goes to drink kumys (fermented mare’s milk) for his health in Samara province.
July 6–7: in his absence secret police search Iasnaia Poliana looking for evidence of radical political agitation among the peasants by teachers at school. They find nothing, and T so infuriated that he considers immigration.
September 16: proposes to eighteen-year-old Sofya Andreevna Behrs, daughter of a former playmate only two years his senior, and a prominent Moscow doctor. Marries her on September 23. Before he does so, he shows her his early diaries. Although the marriage is tumultuous from the beginning, the couple is very happy for the first twenty years, until T’s religious conversion takes him in a direction that his wife cannot follow. Even after they begin to quarrel, the bond between the two is deep and endures until T’s death.
October 11: writes E. A. Behrs (SA’s sister) that his pedagogical journal is beginning to seem a burden. “I [’m] drawn now to free work de longue haleine [on a grand scale] – a novel or something like it.”
Publications: Commences monthly issues of Iasnaia Poliana (lasting into mid-) to which he contributes “Education for the People,” “Methods for Learning Grammar,” “The Spontaneous Founding and Development of Schools Among the People,” “The Iasnaia Poliana School in the Months of November and December,” “Project for a General Plan for the Construction of Public Schools,” “Upbringing and Education,” “Social Work in the Field of Popular Education,” “Who Learns to Write from Whom: Peasant Children From Us or We from Them?,” and “Progress and the Definition of Upbringing.”

In January announces cessation of Iasnaia Poliana. Works on Strider (“the story of a horse” first conceived in 1856) and begins comic drama The Infected Family. Rewrites a short story The Dream, and tries unsuccessfully to publish it. Begins War and Peace, which will occupy him for another six years. Selected comments related to novel from diary:
January 3: “The epic mode is becoming the only natural one for me.”
January 23: “It’s been a long time since I have felt such a strong and calmly self-conscious desire to write. I don’t have subjects, that is, no one [subject] stands out urgently, but, whether I’m wrong or not, it seems to me I could do any one of them.”
February 23: reads Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables – “Powerful”; “I went through my papers – a swarm of thoughts and a return, or an attempt to return to lyricism. Lyricism is good. I cannot write, so it seems, without a set intention and enthusiasm.”
June 2: “I’m reading Goethe, and thoughts swarm.”
October 6: “I’m happy with her [SA], but terribly dissatisfied with myself. I’m sliding down toward death and I barely feel the strength in myself to stop. I don’t want death, though, I want and love immortality. There’s no use choosing. The choice was made long ago. Literature, art, pedagogy and family.”
Forms close bond with SA’s beloved lively and pretty younger sister Tatiana, who spends much time on estate. (Brother Sergei and Tatiana fall in love, but Sergei eventually does the “right thing” by marrying his long time live-in gypsy mistress Marya, who has borne him three children.)
June 28: Sergei, the first of thirteen children, is born.
Publications: The Cossacks, which receives mixed reviews in the press, but is greeted ecstatically by friends, including AA, and F. It remains Turgenev’s favorite work by T. Polikushka, less well-received.

1864
During entire writing of War and Peace, keeps diary only sporadically, and except for hunting trips leaves home rarely and for short periods. Four children are born by the time he finishes novel. Marriage is happy and very close. Much hunting now and throughout the 1860s and 1870s. Visitors numerous in the summer, almost exclusively old friends and family. Only the Fets are exceptions. F is one of T’s closest friends in the 1860s and 1870s, and their correspondence is as lively, playful, and poetic as the one with AA. Loves devising home entertainments, balls, and masquerades during which sings gypsy songs and accompanies himself on guitar. Exercises every day. Long walks, riding, hare-hunting with borzoi dogs, gymnastics – keeps barbells in study. Reads English and Russian novels, histories and memoirs from the Napoleonic wars. SA acts as copyist: by the time the novel finished she has copied it the equivalent of several times. Arranges to publish The Year 1805 (as War and Peace called at this point) in Mikhail Katkov’s journal The Russian Herald. During this period (up until 1870), busy with various projects to improve his farm. Plants an apple orchard, and takes up beekeeping. Works to improve his stock of cattle, pigs, and poultry, with his childhood friend and neighbor D. A. Diakov his main advisor. Looks after the estate of his sister, who lives abroad.
March 26: by chance sighting a hare while on the way to visit a neighbor, bolts after it, falls from his horse and seriously injures right arm. (It is incompetently set, and two operations are required to repair it.)
October 4: birth of daughter Tatiana.
December 9: in Moscow for operation on arm, reads part of novel to friends who praise it, writes SA that “I’m glad, and more cheerful about writing on. It’s dangerous when people don’t praise, or lie, but it’s useful when you feel that you’ve made a strong impression.”
Publications: two-volume set of collected works.

1865
Thinks sporadically about pedagogy. Sends out feelers to close friends about reception of novel. Asks F to report Turgenev’s reaction: “He will understand.” Rereads Goethe’s Faust; reads Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, intimidated by Trollope’s The Bertrams. Conceives idea of separate psychological novel about Alexander I and Napoleon.

"All the baseness, all the false phrases, all the madness, all the contradictions of the people around them and them themselves" (d).
Comments frequently on art of novel. The Year 1805, is "not a novel and not a long short story and does not have the kind of plot with a beginning and end in which, once it ends, so does [the reader's] interest" (unfinished introduction).

July–August: "The goals of art are disproportionate (as mathematicians would say) with social goals. The goal of the artist is not to indisputably resolve a question, but to force [people] to love life in all its innumerable and inexhaustible manifestations. If I were told that I could write a novel in which I could indisputably establish the viewpoint that seemed correct to me on all social questions, I would not devote two hours of labor to such a novel; but if someone told me that what I write now will be read by today’s children twenty years hence, and that then they would cry and laugh over it and come to love life, then I would devote my whole life and all my powers to it" (Unsent letter to writer P. D. Boborykin). Writes F (in mid-December) that "Ars longa, vita brevis, I think this every day. If we could only get out one hundredth of what we understand, but only one ten thousandth comes out. Nonetheless this consciousness that I can constitutes the happiness of our fraternity. You know the feeling. This year I’ve felt it with special force."

August 13: Attacks notion of private property and defends peasant commune (n).

Publications: The Year 1805 roughly corresponding to first book of War and Peace appears in two issues of The Russian Herald.

1866
Briefly takes up sculpture. Builds an addition to the house at Iasnaia Poliana and plants a birch forest. Reads Don Quixote and writings of Victor Hugo, whom he praises highly. Publishes continuation of The Year 1805 with a subtitle “War.” At this point decides to suspend serial publication, preferring to publish it all at once. Considers new title: All’s Well That Ends Well. Learns indirectly of Turgenev’s criticism of novel, agrees with him that there are too many psychological details, resolves to change (mid-May letter to F). Works on sources for novel in Rumiantsev Library (now the Lenin Library) in Moscow. Writes a comedy called The Nihilist for home performance.

May 22: birth of second son Ilia.

July–August: unsuccessfully defends soldier Shabunin, on trial for having struck an officer; Shabunin sentenced to death by shooting.

November 27: "The poet takes the best from his life and puts it in his writing. This is why his writing is fine and his life bad" (n).
Publications: Part of The Year 1805 roughly corresponding to book two of War and Peace appears in three issues of The Russian Herald. In June the part of the novel already published comes out separately in a small print run under title 1805.

1867
March: Title War and Peace first appears in a draft contract dated March 1867, in which T has crossed out title 1805 and inserted it.
Summer: Suffers from ill health, revises 1805, cutting it significantly. Still envisages the novel as only four volumes, three of which to appear at end of 1867, with a fourth promised.
June 28: Writes F that "the reason that we love one another is that we both think with the mind of the heart, as you call it [...] The mind’s mind and the heart’s mind – that explained a lot to me [...] Without the power of love there is no poetry."
September 25–27: Visits battlefield of Borodino as part of preparations to write novel.

1868
Works intensively on philosophical part of novel.
February 14–May 10: Lives with family in Moscow apartment.
February 14: Turgenev, having read 1805, praises it extravagantly in letter, but criticizes historical fatalism and excessive psychological detail.
March: T announces a fifth volume. In the same month publishes fourth volume and article "A Few Words about ‘War and Peace’."
By this time novel is a sensation, and the four-volume edition goes immediately into a second printing.
September: Reads German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (according to American consul Eugene Skyler, one of first prominent outsiders to make pilgrimage to Iasnaia Poliana), and "is ecstatic" over him. First mention of primer for peasant readers (n).

1869
Continues philosophical reflections as finishes volume 5 and writes volume 6. War and Peace published in a six-volume edition, goes into second printing almost immediately.
May 20: Birth of third son, Lev. Consults philosophical friends in Moscow, and reads philosophy – Kant, and especially Schopenhauer – over the summer. Proposes a joint translation of Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Idea to F. (F does translate it, but without T’s collaboration.) Much of T’s philosophizing of the next decade (and indeed, the rest of his life) is a response to Schopenhauer.

September 2: On trip to Penza Province to inspect an estate for possible purchase, stops overnight at a hotel in Arzamas, where suffers an inexplicable attack of "anguish, fear, terror."
October 3: Named a divisional justice of the peace for his district by the Senate.
Mid-October: Turns down invitation to have portrait painted by leading portraitist I. N. Kramskoy for the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow.

February: Experiments with writing comedy or drama. Briefly infatuated with Shakespeare – "enormous dramatic talent" (February, SA's diary) – and writes that comedy is possible today, "but tragedy, given the psychological development of our time, is extremely difficult" (n, February 2).

February 22: Conceives idea for Anna Karenina.
February 23: "Yesterday evening he [T] told me that the type of a married woman, from high society but having lost her reputation, had come into his head. He said that his task was to make this woman only pitiable, not guilty and that no sooner had this type come to him than all the other characters and male types who had occurred to him earlier found their places and grouped themselves around this woman" (SA’s diary).

May: Serves on a jury in Tula, and finds it "very interesting and instructive" (May 11, letter to F).

October 28: "Poetry is a flame burning in a person’s soul. The flame burns, it warms and gives light...[some think that the purpose of art is to warm or give light, but this is not true]...A real poet suffers involuntarily as he himself burns and he burns others. And that is the crux of the matter" (n).

December: Begins intensive study of Greek, within three months reads Xenophon, Homer, Plato, and others in original.

1871
Suffers from serious depression. Crisis passes, but this period also marks first sign of estrangement from SA. Builds large addition to house at Iasnaia Poliana. Works intensely on primer which includes his own stories and translations, and first part ready to be set in print by end of year.
February 12: Birth of second daughter, Marya, after which SA is seriously ill, and afraid of another pregnancy.

June–July: At SA's urging spends two months on the steppes of Samara province living with Bashkirs, drinking kumys, reading Herodotus in Greek. Buys land in Samara. (Now and throughout the decade pursues interest in horse-breeding.)

Mid-August: N. N. Strakhov, the author of highly laudatory articles from 1869 and 1870 on War and Peace, visits T at his invitation, and quickly becomes his closest intellectual friend, with whom he especially likes to discuss issues of philosophy, science, and religion. S a favorite with both Tolstoys, visits them often until his death in 1896, and the correspondence between him and T is one of the most important sources of our knowledge of T’s ideas. T also reads and responds to S’s writings.

Approx. August 21: Meets Tiutchev by chance on a train, and they have a long conversation. "A magnificent and simple and such a profound, truly intelligent old man" (letter to F).

December 26: At Christmas masquerade festivities, dresses as a goat.

1872
Revival of peasant school, at which T, SA, and older children all teach.
Corresponds with F and S about issues of religion and philosophy.
Works on novel about Peter the Great, and reads extensively in the period.

January 8: Views the body of a woman, the mistress of a neighboring landowner, who has thrown herself under a train, and this gives him the ending for Anna Karenina.

January 12: "My proud hopes for the primer are these: that two generations of all Russian children, from those of the Tsar to those of the peasants, will learn using only this primer, and they will get their first poetic impressions from it, and that, having written this primer, it will be possible for me to die peacefully" (letter to AA).

April: Gives A. A. Erlenvein, former teacher at his schools, permission to republish stories for children from journal Iasnaia Poliana, because no books for peasant children have come out in the ten years since the journal ceased publication. (The resulting book is republished seven times from 1873 to 1909.)

June: Finishes primer which contains a complete curriculum for beginning students. S publishes the primer in the fall but negative reviews radically curtail sales of the first edition. T upset by bad reviews and sales, but still believes in project.

June 13: Birth of fourth son, Piotr.

Late summer: On return from Samara, learns that a bull at Iasnaia Poliana has gored its young keeper to death. The investigating Magistrate charges him with criminal negligence and orders him not to leave estate until the case settled. Indignant at this arbitrary exercise of power, T considers moving his family to England.
Publications: The Prisoner of the Caucasus and God Sees the Truth But Waits published separately and also in primer.

1873

With assistance of S reworks War and Peace for Collected Works.
This time the novel is published in four rather than six volumes, with philosophical and historical digressions published together as appendixes and titled “Articles about the Campaign of 1812.” Almost all the French is translated to Russian and other stylistic changes are made.

Works on novel about Peter the Great until March.
March: Having reread Pushkin, begins Anna Karenina.

April 7: Writing to S but not yet mentioning new novel, T says that
"I am fulfilling a duty laid upon me by some most high command – I am in torment, and I find in this torment the whole, not joy, but goal of life."

Spends summer in Samara, where he has bought still more land, and becomes involved with famine relief work there. Writes open letter to Moscow newspaper with inventory of inhabitants and conditions in every tenth household (twenty-three in all) in the nearest village. Letter raises almost 2 million roubles and 375 tons of grain in donations.

September: Kramskoy paints famous portrait of T, and himself serves as model for painter Mikhailov in Anna Karenina.

November 6:
"From youth I prematurely began to analyse everything and to destroy mercilessly. I have often feared and thought that nothing would be left whole, but here I am getting old, and there is much more whole and unharmed in me than in others [...] People my age who believed in everything while I was destroying don’t have one hundredth as much" (d).

November 9: Baby Piotr dies of croup – as T writes F, “the first death in our family in eleven years.”
Publications: Collected works in four volumes, including revised War and Peace.

1874
Teaches, serves on district educational committees, thinks and writes about education. Too busy to make much progress on novel, but various journals offer very high rates to publish it. Is chosen a member of the Academy of Sciences.
January 15: Lectures in Moscow at the official Committee for Literacy defending his theories about teaching Russian, and a six-week pilot project is set up to compare his method to the old one adopted from German pedagogy.

April 22: Birth of fifth son, Nikolai.
June 20: Death of beloved "Aunty" T. A. Ergolskaia.
August: Pays a brief visit to Samara estate.
October 22: Approaches F for a one-year loan of 10,000 roubles to buy property elsewhere. (F declines.)
November 22: Letter to clergyman Archimandrite Leonid, an expert in hagiography, asking him to compile a list of appropriate saints’ lives which T proposes to publish in a book for a popular audience.
Publications: "On Popular Education," which generates much public discussion.

1875
At this point, with five children, the oldest of whom is twelve, the house is full of teachers of all sorts. Guests frequent, especially in summer, still mostly family and close friends. T works in public education, applying for permission to open a school for peasant teachers on his estate. (Request wends its way slowly through official bureaucracy, receiving cautiously positive responses. Permission granted in 1876, but there are no applicants in 1877 and drops idea.)
Turgenev arranges for T’s writings to begin to be published in France. In a foreword to a translation of Two Hussars, Turgenev introduces T to the French public as Russia’s most popular writer.
T meets philosopher Vladimir Soloviev. Starts philosophical treatise on the vanity of life and the need for religion, part of which goes into the first draft of A Confession.
Works on two unfinished philosophical writings entitled "On the Afterlife outside Time and Space" and "On the Soul and its Life outside Life as it is Known to and Understood by Us."
Spends two months on Samara estate with whole family and organizes a highly successful horse race for local tribesmen. Several deaths in family.

February 20: Baby Nikolai dies suddenly of meningitis.
Late October: SA dangerously ill with peritonitis, miscarries in the sixth month of pregnancy; the baby girl, named Varvara, lives less than two hours.
December 22: Former guardian and member of household Aunt Pelageia dies.

Publications: First installments of Anna Karenina appear in Katkov’s Russian Herald. Wildly popular, and also controversial because of its explicitly sexual material. Four children’s readers based on the primer, and New Primer. The first volume of the four readers contains twelve new stories, and the rest are unchanged.

New Primer – shorter and cheaper – is published, recommended by the Ministry of People’s Enlightenment and enters its second printing by December.
(New Primer goes through 28 editions in T’s lifetime.)

1876
SA in poor health. S visits often and letters exchanged about philosophy and religion.

February: Old friend S. S. Urusov visits. T reads him a religious–philosophic composition. In a letter dated October 26, Urusov chastises T for abandoning Russian Orthodoxy, and he burns letters from the 1870s in which T criticizes Orthodoxy.

Late March: Reads the Pensées of Pascal, who becomes a favorite writer.

April 14: Writes A. P. Bobrinskii that to live without faith, as he does now, is “terrible torment.”

April 23: Writes S famous letter about the “labyrinth” of different ideas, themselves not connected by thought, but by something else, of which his works are composed.

December: Makes the acquaintance of composer P. I. Tchaikovsky, whose music he loves. Weeps upon hearing the Andante to his first quartet.

Publications: Parts Three, Four, and Five of Anna Karenina published serially in The Russian Herald to continued acclaim.

1877
As in earlier years of the decade, praises F’s poems and writes about them in letters to him. Agonizes over religion.
In fall complains repeatedly of depression and ill health, inability to work. Goes to church. Fasts.
Works on religious philosophical composition, never finished, called “Interlocutors.”
Works furiously to finish Anna Karenina. Burns two (positive) reviews without reading them because fears negative criticism (letter to S, April 5).
Especially in summer works intensely with S to prepare a separate edition of Anna Karenina.
S marvels at T’s attention – that of a “scrupulous poet” – to every word and phrase in the text.
T tells SA that the idea of War and Peace had been the “nation,” that of Anna Karenina the “family,” now plans a novel about Russian expansion east (SA’s diary).

July: Visits Optina Monastery with S to consult monks.
August 16: Bored by The Philosophical Beginnings of Whole Knowledge by Soloviev, sends it back to S.

September 29: Participates as secretary in district meetings of gentry, chosen for three-year term as a member of a committee on education.
December 6: Birth of sixth son, Andrei.
December 24: Writes F that he needs Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, which provides key elements in his later religious doctrine.
Publications: Parts Six and Seven of Anna Karenina appear, but editor Katkov refuses to publish the final part of the novel because he disagrees with T’s attack on Russo–Turkish war.

1878
Religious quest continues. Returns to The The Decembrists as a continuation of War and Peace, collects material, interviews surviving The Decembrists and their relatives, researches behavior of Tsar Nicholas I toward The Decembrists, and also resettlement of peasant populations in the 1820s. Resumes diary after almost no entries for thirteen years. Reads Dickens’s Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit and Dombey and Son. Starts a memoir, My Life.

March 8: Meets admirer and influential music and literary critic V. V. Stasov, and despite Stasov’s avowed secularism, the two correspond until Stasov’s death. (After S’s death in 1896, Stasov, who also works in the Rumiantsev Library in Moscow, becomes T’s main supplier of books on various topics.)

March 10: In Petersburg attends a lecture by Soloviev on “god-manhood,” pronouncing it “childish nonsense” (letter to S, April 17).

April 6: Writing Turgenev in Paris, initiates reconciliation after seventeen years.

April 9: Writes S that the Zasulich affair (in which a jury acquits a revolutionary who attempted to assassinate the military governor of St. Petersburg) is a harbinger of revolution.

Summer: Several weeks with family in Samara, where S also visits.
Holds horse races with prizes for local Bashkis, and interviews local priest and sectarians on religion.

Early August: Turgenev visits, relations cordial but not intimate.
Publications: A separate edition of Anna Karenina, including the final part.

1879
Moves away from official church, and SA disapproves of this. Interest in sectarians intensifies. Friendship with F begins to cool because of T’s changing ideas. Stops work on The The Decembrists in February, and turns to novel on Peter the Great. Collects material, visits historical archives, and takes an interest in the lives of his own ancestors.
Starts a large religious philosophical composition. Writes article "The Church and Government."
March 25: Asks AA to exert influence at court to have three imprisoned old-believers released.
April 12: Starts a special notebook for nature descriptions (kept until June 7, 1880). Also records folk expressions and phrases from peasant conversations and pilgrims.
June: Visits churches and churchmen in Kiev, not impressed.
July: Records stories and folk legends from oral poet visiting Iasnaia Poliana; later used for What People Live For, Two Old Men, Prayer, Kornei Vasiliev.
August 31: Writes F to recommend Ecclesiastes, “which has much in common with Schopenhauer.”
October: First of series of visits to Troitskii-Sergeev Monastery to discuss religion; starts A Confession, first called An Introduction to an Unpublished Work (mostly written this year, finished in 1882).
October 30: Looks to early Christianity (pre-third century) for true teaching of Christ, rejecting government (n).
December 20: Birth of seventh son, Mikhail.

October 7: Makes acquaintance of painter I. E. Repin, who subsequently paints him several times; cordial relations continue to end of T’s life.
November: Rereads Dostoevsky’s Notes From a Dead House, asks S to tell Dostoevsky: “tell him that I love him.”
October: Exchanges letters with F explaining his new religious views; F refutes them.
December 30: In letter to S, calls Goethe’s Faust “rubbish.”
Publications: Another Collected Works with War and Peace in 1873 version.

1881
Correspondence with F ends. Quarrels with SA. Works on A Translation and Harmony of the Four Gospels.

January 31: SA describes T in her diary:
T is “happy in his soul,” illuminated by “the light,” views all people as brothers. Health in decline, greying, thin. Quiet, absorbed, silent. The calmness of his soul is real, but suffering for injustice, evil, persecution “sears his existence.”

Early February: On hearing of Dostoevsky’s death, writes to S:
“he was very, very close, dear [and] necessary for me.”

March 1: In response to assassination of Tsar Alexander II, writes to new tsar asking clemency for the six assassins, as a Christian act. The six are hanged on April 3. T’s sympathy alienates family.
April 8: Begins “Notes of a Christian,” first part of What I Believe.

May 18: First record in diary of disagreements with family.
June: Visits Optina Monastery on foot.
July: Horse-buying in Samara – “An unbearable task. Idleness. Shameful” (d, July 17) – and visits with sectarians.

September: Moves with family to Moscow for children's education. Hates city life but begins exploring it and recording negative impressions.
October 31: Birth of eighth son, Alexei.
December: Visits Liapin House, a shelter for the poor; later described in chapter 2 of What Then Must We Do?
Publications: What Men Live By, based on 1879 legend, published in children’s journal — first fiction since Anna Karenina (1877).

1882
Police begin to spy on T for links to religious sectarians in Samara.

January: Participates in Moscow census; leads to article "On the Moscow Census" and treatise What Then Must We Do? over the next 4 years.
Begins friendship with artist N. N. Ge, who contacts T after reading "On the Moscow Census." Ge becomes a Tolstoyan, paints T many times, and remains close to his family until death in 1894.
Begins notes for Death of Ivan Ilich, works on it in spring.

April 9: Reports reading Balzac “with pleasure” (letter to SA).

May: Reads Marcus Aurelius with enthusiasm.
A Confession, under title Introduction to an Unpublished Work, banned from publication (circulates illegally).
First published in Geneva (1884), in Russia (1906).
Begins religious treatise What I Believe, fourth part of larger work:
A Confession, An Investigation of Dogmatic Theology, and A Translation and Harmony of the Four Gospels.
Unhappy in city, makes short trips to Iasnaia Poliana. Complains of depression.

August 26: SA’s diary: he shouted he wanted to leave the family.
In fall sets up “post box” at Iasnaia Poliana for household compositions read aloud on Sundays — continues until mid-1880s.
Buys Khamovniki house with large Moscow grounds, prepares for occupancy.
Until 1902, divides time between Khamovniki and Iasnaia Poliana.

October: Reads Epictetus; engages Moscow rabbi to teach him Hebrew.

December 16: Elected to three-year term as district marshal of nobility in Tula province, declines to serve.

1883
Works intensively on What I Believe.

May 21: Gives SA legal authority over business affairs; leaves for a month in Samara, combining business with discussions with peasants about religious/political ideas.
Authorities view this as dangerous agitation — he is barred from giving a public lecture on Turgenev after the latter’s death in August.

May 29: Reading Bible in Hebrew.
September 28: Refuses jury duty for religious reasons.
Mid-October: Meets V. G. Chertkov, former elite guards officer turned rural charity worker. Ch becomes T’s most dedicated disciple, helps him apply ideas.
In fall trip to Iasnaia Poliana, T has trouble working (What I Believe), focuses on hunting/practical matters.

November: Reads Letters from the Countryside by A. N. Engelhardt; calls them “captivating...a contrast of our life and the real life of mouzhiks” (Nov 11).

Publications: Prologue to A Short Exposition of the Gospels. French translation in La Nouvelle Revue — first appearance of T’s religious-philosophical writings abroad.

1884
Intermediary Press is founded at Ch’s suggestion, aimed at affordable literature for popular audiences.
T engages less in translation/editorial work, writes many stories in first 2 years.
Takes up shoe-making.
Contacts revolutionaries, sympathizes with goals but not methods; blames government for stifling dissent.
Relations with SA deteriorate; he asks Ch to destroy his diary (Ch refuses).
Works on Death of Ivan Ilich.
New Collected Works (fifth) planned by SA to raise money for life in Moscow.

January: Publishes What I Believe, but printed copies are seized at press in February. Like A Confession, it circulates widely in manuscript in Russia, and is soon published abroad in several languages.

February: Begins to study Chinese philosophy; reads a speech on publishing houses for the people to education experts at his Moscow house.

March 15: First mention of idea for a cycle of reading—to include Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tse, Buddha, Pascal, the Gospels (d).

May: Reads and admires On Reliance by American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson.

June: Threatens to leave home, actually sets out for Tula but returns in time for birth of third daughter, Aleksandra (June 18).

Summer: Tries to stop smoking, give up wine, meat, tea.
Fall: Gives up hunting.

December: Part of What Then Must We Do? prepared for journal publication, but banned almost immediately.
Publications:

• Fragments of The The Decembrists

• A Confession published in Geneva by Elpidin’s Russian-language press.
  Elpidin continues publishing many of T’s banned works.

1885
Participates in hay-mowing in summer. In November in Moscow, provides water and wood for household daily.
Visits Iasnaia Poliana alone in winter.

Corresponds with Repin about paintings.
Works on Death of Ivan Ilich.
After What Then Must We Do? is banned, three short fragments from it appear in Russian journal.
Manuscript circulates illegally in Russia, published uncensored only in 1906.
October 16: Still writing it — “I’ve got to shove out everything that has settled in my throat” (letter to Ch).

January: Begins work on translation of Teaching of the Twelve Apostles using German/Russian translations, checking against Greek.
(T’s version published unsigned, revised for censors, reissued 1905 as part of Cycle of Reading.)

February 2: Writes SA that George Eliot’s Felix Holt is “an outstanding work.”
Recommends Eliot and Dickens for Intermediary Press.

April: Begins close collaboration with philosopher Nikolai Grot, who seeks to unite science and philosophy via inductive metaphysics and psychological data; reads Matthew Arnold’s Literature and Dogma in letter to Ch, saying it expresses many of his own opinions. (April 26)

May–June: Substantially rewrites biography of Socrates by A. M. Kalmykova for Intermediary Press; rereads Plato and the Stoics.

June 5: Writes to Ch:
"I would very much like to put together a cycle of reading, that is a series of books and selections from them which would all speak of that one thing most needful to a person, namely, what life and the good are for him."

Around June 8: Recommends Rousseau’s Confession and Emile, saying they had “an enormous” influence in his youth.

July: Enthuses over Love of Labour and Parisitism, or the Triumph of the Landowner, by sectarian T. M. Bondarev, exiled in Siberia.
Reads Henry George’s Progress and Prosperity, approves George’s arguments against private land ownership.

October 28: Critiques sister-in-law Tatiana’s A Woman’s Lot as unsuitable for the people but “very good for the likes of us” (letter to SA).

November: With SA’s help, succeeds in transferring a conscientious objector to non-combat role.

Fall–Winter: Depressed over family disagreements.
December 18: Threatens again to leave home (SA to her sister).

Publications:
Censorship pushes more publications abroad.

• Ma religion (French translation of What I Believe) by L. D. Urusov appears in Paris.

• A shortened Russian version appears in General Affairs (Geneva), later in book form via Elpidin’s press.
  (What I Believe not published in Russia until 1906.)

• General Affairs also publishes Letter to NN, T’s 1882 letter to M. A. Engelhart about loneliness and beliefs.

• In London, Christ’s Christianity published, with English translations of A Confession, Prologue to A Short Exposition of the Gospels, and What I Believe.

Often using traditional plots, writes many stories (1885–86), mostly for Intermediary Press.
Titles include: Two Brothers and Gold (based on ancient legend and wirh illusrrarions by Repin); Little Girls Wiser than their Elders; Evil Allures, But Good Endures; A Spark Neglected Burns the House; Where God is, Love is (based on a translation of a French story published in 1884); Ilias; Two Old Men; The Candle (said to have been published unchanged by T as he heard it from a drunken peasant); Three Hermits; and The Tale of Ivan the Fool. Intermedi- al}- also republishes Prisoner of the Caucasus, God Sees the Truth But Waits, and a revised version of What Men Live By. SA puts out the fifth edition o f the collected works, without, however, including either A Confession or What I Believe, which she is nor allowed by the censor to publish. Stricter, the story of a horse begun in , is finished this year and included in volume SA works on a sixth edition o f the collected works.

1886
During this year writes article "Nikolai The Stick" (about his nemesis Tsar Nicholas I) and play The Power of Darkness (published in Intermediary Press in 1887). Around this time, writes Walk in the Light While There is Light (published first in English in 1890, and then in Russian by Elpidin in 1892).

January 17–18: four-year-old Alexei falls ill with croup and dies in thirty-six hours.

April: walks 130 miles from Moscow to Iasnaia Poliana.

August: injures himself and is bedridden for three months.

December: in response to a letter from graduates of a woman’s gymnasium in Tiflis asking him how they can best serve the public, publishes open letter in Tiflis newspaper recommending that they help prepare popular books. (Responding to a similar letter in 1887, especially recommends reworkings of English novels. Letter, republished in 1887 in major journal, produces a flood of volunteers.)

PUBLICATIONS:
A portion of chapter ten of A Confession called What is Happiness? is allowed by the censor and appears in a journal. In addition to the stories written in 1885, writes and Intermediary Press publishes The Grain as Big as a Hen’s Egg, The Repentant Sinner, How Much Land Does A Man Need?, and The Imp and the Crust. Death of Ivan Ilich and War and Peace in its 1868–69 version, before the “corrections” of 1873, come out in the SA’s fifth edition of Collected Works. (This 1886 version maintains the division of the book into four instead of the original six volumes, however.)

1887
Discusses metaphysics with Grot. Writes Notes of a Madman (based on experience at Arzamas in 1869; published 1912); parable Three Sons (published 1888); adapts The Coffee House of Surat by Bernardin de St. Pierre for Intermediary. Staging of The Power of Darkness banned (but performed in Paris in 1888). Begins work on The Kreutzer Sonata.

January 19–21: Writes Ch that Intermediary should publish popular editions of foreign authors. Recommends Voltaire, Rousseau, Bernadin de St. Pierre, Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, Schiller’s Robbers, Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Franklin’s diary, Plutarch, and others.

March: Discusses plan for publishing popular books on medicine in Intermediary Press with group of doctors. Intermediary also publishes anthology of folk tales, and a new short primer with passages from Gospels considered essential by T.

March 7: Ch announces publicly that all works or translations by T published by Intermediary Press are not bound by copyright.

March 14: At Moscow Psychological Society T reads a paper called “Life’s Meaning,” a draft of part of On Life, his major philosophical treatise, which he finishes this year.

In April and June respectively: Admirer and fellow writer N. S. Leskov and famous jurist (and later, Senator) A. F. Koni visit Iasnaia Poliana for first time. Friendly with Leskov until his death in 1895.
Koni gives him the subject for novel Resurrection, and T henceforth relies on him, as he does on AA, for access to high level of government.

Spring and summer: Field work at Iasnaia Poliana; Repin visits, sketches T plowing.

September–October: Reads Gogol’s Selected Passages From Correspondence With Friends for third time—the first had been in 1851—recommends that Intermediary Press publish selections.

Mid-October: Reads Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, starts a translation of which fragment survives. Struggles to give up smoking and drinking.

Around December 9: Signs pledge to abstain from drink and invites others to do likewise. (As of 1890, 791 people had taken the pledge.)

December 27: Disciple arrested for distributing copies of banned article “Nikolai The Stick.”

1888
Physical labor at Iasnaia Poliana and in Moscow. Poor relations with S.A. Troubles with church and state censorship grow, as does influence at home and abroad. Government reluctant to punish T directly, fearing bad publicity. Quits smoking for good, promotes temperance, and wants to translate a book by American doctor Alice B. Stockham, Tokology: A Book for Every Woman (Chicago, 1888), which advocates chastity within marriage. (Writes introduction to Russian translation, which is published in 1892.) Correspondence with and visits from foreigners increasing. (Examples include Czech patriot Thomas Masaryk, at Iasnaia Poliana on April 27–29, and American translator Isabel Hapgood, who visits the following year and translates On Life.)

March 31: birth of thirteenth and last child, beloved son Vania (Ivan).
April: walks from Moscow to Iasnaia Poliana.
December: warmly welcomes birth of first grandchild, Anna (daughter of son Ilia).

1889
More connections with foreigners, including American writers, social reformers, and clergy. Relations with SA worsen amid tensions between her and his followers (especially Ch), whom she calls “dark ones.” Criticizes, feels alienated from family with exception only of second daughter Marya, who joins his reformist activities.
Relations distant with old friend F, whom he sees several times.
Hard physical labor at both city and country houses. Preaches temperance to peasants, and also writes against the widespread use of rag pacifiers, responsible for many infant deaths. Takes active interest in schools for peasants run by his daughters.
Discovers Shakers, Swedenbourgians, reads, and vows to translate Christian Non-Resistance (1846) by American abolitionist and pacifist writer Adin Ballou.
Reads Walt Whitman, at first disliking, but soon warming to him. Several conversations with Soloviev.
Discovers A. P. Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant.

Begins last novel Resurrection and writes The Kreutzer Sonata and The Devil.
Works on The Fruits of Enlightenment. (The Kreutzer Sonata begins to circulate widely in unauthorized copies throughout Russia, and during this and the next year cause widespread debate. The Devil is published for the first time in the first posthumous collection of T’s Collected Works. The Fruits of Enlightenment finished in 1890, permitted on the stage only in 1892 and not for general audiences until 1894.)
Assists A. I. Orlov with popular biography of Pascal for Intermediary Press.
More works published abroad: On Life appears French translation by SA.
The full version of What Then Must We Do? published by Elpidin’s Russian-language press in Geneva.
Works intensely on aesthetics, and reads widely, including Plato, Schopenhauer, Arnold, and essays on art by John Ruskin. (Identifies especially strongly with Arnold’s Literature and Dogma, which rereads in 1890.)

March 7: first sculpture of T – Tolstoy at the Plow – by K. A. Klodt.
March 17: “I’ve been reading Chekhov. No good – trite [...] I sat alone all evening, reading Chekhov. The ability to love to the point of artistic insight, but so far there’s no point to it” (d).
March 28: visits textile factory, decries terrible labor conditions.
May: again walks from Moscow to Iasnaia Poliana.
September 12: writes S that he does not want to make money from The Kreutzer Sonata. In diary (September 15) names joy as first and inalienable principle of life; but elsewhere (November 18) writes that “I don’t dare think about personal happiness – not even happiness but tranquillity. And I don’t need to – it’s better.”

February: visits monastery, disapproves of sequestered monastic life. Talks there to conservative Christian thinker K. N. Leontiev, who reports that T wishes the government would arrest and imprison him. T subsequently repeats this wish for martyrdom many times.

April 1–6: reads Russian

translation of articles and aphorisms by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard by Danish visitor P. Hansen.
August 8: writes George Kennan to thank him for his book on the Russian penal system, and to inform him of the recent execution by hanging of two peasants in Penza.
September 6: rereading Rousseau’s Emile.

1891
Fame as spiritual leader and social critic grows in Russia and abroad, as authorities try unsuccessfully to counter influence through

censorship. Gives up meat and alcohol. Continues shoe-making and hard labor. Chafes under luxurious living conditions and writes, “I want to suffer” (d, March 5). Exacerbating family tensions — SA threatens suicide — publicly renounces copyright for all of his works published after 1881. Reads books on aesthetics, and works on essay about art and science. Begins The Kingdom of God is Within You and works on Father Sergius. In connection with work on article “The First Step,” advocating vegetarianism (published 1892), on June 7 visits slaughter house in Tula.

June: reads Montaigne.
June 29–July 16: Repin visits, does bust and several paintings. In his last years T is painted, sculpted, and photographed numerous times.
September 14: having read plays of Ibsen, writes translator P. Hansen that considers them “all artificial, false and even very poorly written in the sense that all the characters are unconvincing and inconsistent.” In the same letter, praises writing of Kierkegaard as sincere, ardent, and serious.

Starting in late summer and into 1893, relief work for the famine ravaging Tula and Riazan. Family unites around issue, with SA collecting money for relief effort. Visits famine-stricken regions in Tula, Riazan, and Orlov, sets up cafeterias, and writes several articles about famine, chief among them On Hunger, a strong indictment of the socio-political organisation of Russia. Personal letter on famine to Leskov is published in newspapers.

1892
Begins to find hard physical labor difficult. Government, concerned about T’s power and sure of his ill will, persecutes disciples, but afraid to arrest him. Difficulties with censorship as further editions of The Tale of Ivan the Fool banned. On Hunger appears in English translation in The Daily Telegraph in January; later that month excerpts in reverse translation are published in The Moscow Gazette with editorial comments labelling the article as socialist propaganda. First biography of T, by Raphael Löwenfeld, published in Germany. Even after relief work on famine, T remains convinced that such aid is only palliative, and that solutions require complete social change (letter to S on April 24). As famine work ends, family problems return, and on July 7 T turns all his property over to his SA and heirs. Thinks again of leaving home.

November 15: reads poetry of French poet Baudelaire “to get an idea of the degree of depravity of the fin de siècle” (letter to SA).

1893
Reads Lao-Tze and other Chinese thinkers. Finishes The Kingdom of God is Within You (a denunciation of all government on the basis of his theory of all non-resistance) and sends it abroad for translation and publication. Reads letter by Al. Dumas on how love is only solution to class hatred (written as disapproving response to speech by Zola recommending life of science and work to youth), and writes article “Non-Acting” siding with Dumas. Writes “Religion and Morality” (a response to a letter) and works on “Christianity and Patriotism” (a condensation of The Kingdom of God is Within You, completed in 1894). Subsequently writes several articles in the form of letters. Having praised Ward No. Six in the previous year, expresses an interest in meeting Chekhov. Works on long preface to collection of stories by Maupassant (published in 1894). Considers Maupassant best nineteenth-century writer after Victor Hugo, because “he is the only writer who understood and recreated the negative side of the relations between a man and a woman” (memoirs of Iu. A. Veselovskii). Elsewhere, however, criticizes Maupassant for his “dirty” subject matter (March 2, 1894, letter).

November 5: in letter to Princess Iu. P. Khilkova begs her to return the minor children of her exiled Tolstoyan son Dmitrii. (On October 23, with the help of local authorities, Khilkova had seized the children, not properly christened, from their parents’ home in the Caucasus. Despite T’s efforts, including a direct appeal in early 1894 to Tsar Alexander III [which the tsar ignores], the children are never restored to their parents.)

1894
Ongoing complaints about family situation, feels trapped but does nothing because “I feel sorry for the spiders who have spun this web” (d, January 24). When T is photographed late in year with Ch and other disciples, SA obtains negative of photograph from photographer and destroys it. Mourns the death of Ge on June 1.
Reads books sent to him by American economist Henry George, whose theories he had already embraced in early 1890s. Applies George’s theories about land use to daughter Tatiana’s neighboring estate. George’s single tax theory and rejection of private ownership of land becomes the basis of T’s subsequent economic and social recommendations for Russia. Begins Master and Man. Works on “Catechism,” a short and clear statement of his religious beliefs (works on this intermittently until 1896). Elpidin publishes first volume of Ripe Ears of Grain, a series of books of thoughts and aphorisms drawn from T’s private correspondence.

January 3: having written T several times, writer I. A. Bunin visits him at Iasnaia Poliana. (Bunin first contacts T in 1890, after reading The Kreutzer Sonata.)
January 11: sitting on the stage at a general session of a congress of natural scientists in Moscow, T receives ovation from audience.
January 27: Tolstoyan E. N. Drozhzhin dies of tuberculosis while in prison for refusing to serve in the military, and T soon starts writing preface to biography of Drozhzhin published following year in Germany.

February 17: visits Tretiakov Gallery, singles out as praiseworthy painting from peasant life by N. V. Orlov, who subsequently – from 1904 – becomes his favorite contemporary painter. (In 1908 writes an introduction to an album of his paintings.)
February 18: ten-year-old daughter Sasha in letter to sister Tatiana describes how the evening before T, Ge, and a visiting Englishman join the younger generation in dancing to music played by brother Sergei.

Mid-May: visit from American Ernest Howard Crosby, who becomes T’s chief disciple in the United States.

June 14: “As I was approaching Ovsianikovo, I looked at the lovely sunset. A shaft of light in the piled up clouds, and there, like a red irregular coal, the sun. All this above the forest, the rye. Joyful. And I thought to myself: No, this world is not a joke, not a vale of ordeal only and a passage to a better, eternal world, but one of the eternal worlds, which is good, joyful, and which we not only can, but must make finer and more joyful for those living with us, and for those who will live in it after us” (d).

Summer: Iasnaia Poliana filled with friends and younger generation of family. One friend (V. F. Lazurskii) reports T executing a mazurka step to general applause and laughter. Ch rents a nearby house, and T’s letters begin to be routinely copied on press supplied by Ch to daughter Marya.

August 21: makes acquaintance of Slovenian doctor D. P. (Dushan) Makovitsky. (From 1904 on, M, a household favorite, became T’s personal, live-in physician.) A dedicated Tolstoyan, M kept detailed notes, writing in a notebook in his pocket, of T’s conversation, and these notes are among the best sources of life at Iasnaia Poliana at that time, and also cadences of T’s speech.)

1895
Campaigns for sectarians called Doukhobors, who are being persecuted for refusing to serve in the military. Works hard on Resurrection. Publishes article “Shame,” an indictment of flogging of peasants. Writes introduction to collected thoughts of Ruskin published by Intermediary.

Mid-January: refuses to sign a joint letter from writers asking the new tsar to abolish censorship, because according to T the tsar lacks all authority and should abdicate. Finishes Master and Man, of which he feels a bit ashamed (so he claims in a letter to S on January 14) just because it is a work of fiction.

February 6: in fit of anger and jealousy, SA runs in her nightclothes from the house over T’s decision to publish Master and Man in journal whose editor is a woman. Eventually T agrees to publish it simultaneously in three places, one of them the collected edition belonging to SA.

February 21: declares in diary that not only Russia, but all states are illegitimate and should be rejected.

February 23: youngest son, Vania, dies suddenly from scarlet fever. Both parents devastated, and T finds it difficult to work for many weeks.

March: takes up bicycle riding. Rides for the next two years over the objections of some disciples, who regard it as undignified. (July 17, 1897: “I rode the bicycle to Iasenki. I like the motion a lot. But I feel guilty” [d].)

March 27: writes unofficial will in diary, asking SA, S, and Ch to dispose of his papers after his death.

April 28: explains three conditions necessary for relieving harsh working conditions and establishing brotherhood: don’t force others to work for you; do difficult and dirty jobs for yourself (and others, if you can); and develop technologies that replace hard physical labor (d).

June 28: brotherhood of man (without separate nations) must be first priority, and both science and art must accommodate it, not the other way around (d).

August 8–9: Chekhov’s first visit. T has him read part of Resurrection manuscript and listens carefully to his reaction. Over the years praises Chekhov’s artistry, criticizes his reluctance to take moral stand.

September 4: letter to feminist N. V. Stasova criticizing “woman’s work” as demeaning. This negative category does not include the bearing and raising of children.

October 28–November 3: rereads old diaries from 1888–95, crosses out all passages that SA considers offensive to her.

December: visited in Moscow by English disciple John Kenworthy.

1896
Agonizes over intensifying persecution of disciples while he remains untouched. SA throws herself into music after Vania’s death, becomes infatuated with pianist and composer S. I. Taneev, Tchaikovsky’s favorite student. He is twelve years her junior. T had known him since at least 1889, and often played duets and chess with him. Intense infatuation persists for at least the next four years. T restrains himself, but is jealous and angry, though he does not suspect SA of actual infidelity. Begins What Is Art?, writes draft of autobiographical drama The Light Shines in the Darkness, and begins Hadji Murat. (Worked on last two intermittently until 1904, but did not finish either.)

January 20: Meets concert pianist A. V. Goldenweizer, who becomes a disciple and has left detailed memoirs about T.

July 19: “I left the Chs on July 5. Evening, and beauty, happiness, blessings everywhere. But in the human world? Greed, spite, envy, cruelty, lust, depravity [a few words scratched out] ... When will it be among people as it is in nature? There is struggle there, but it is honorable, simple, beautiful. While here it is base. I know this world and hate it, because I too am a human being” (d).

August 10–15: with SA visits sister Marya, who lives as nun in convent.

September 26: visit from two Japanese journalists.

1897
Home life difficult, especially with children grown. SA’s infatuation with Taneev peaks during this year and next, and T once again contemplates leaving home.

July 8: writes long farewell letter to SA and hides it inside upholstery of armchair in study. (In 1901–2, seriously ill, gives letter to daughter Marya, with instructions to write on it: “To be opened fifty years after my death, if this episode of my biography is of interest to anyone.” When he recovers, Marya does not follow his instructions. In 1907, when SA has furniture in study recovered, T entrusts letter to son-in-law, with instructions to give it to SA after his death. When this was done, according to the son-in-law, the envelope contains two letters, one of which SA, having read it, immediately tears up.) Government removes minor children from Molokans (a religious sect), and T agitates, eventually successfully, to have them returned. Ch exiled abroad for involvement in sectarian movement, and two other disciples are sent into internal exile for the same reason. (Ch takes up residence in England, where in 1898 he founds press called Free Word (Svobodnoe slovo), which subsequently publishes many of T’s banned or censored writings , and also compilations of his thoughts.) T enjoys concerts, and plays four-handed pieces on the piano. Works intensely on What Is Art?. Reads books on aesthetics, and especially pursues the topic of aes- thetics and ethics.

March 17: meets Aylmer Maude, who becomes his most important English translator and biographer.

Mid-April: sees an exhibit of Impressionist paintings in Moscow, crit- icizes them for their lack of an "idea." Around the same time, says to a memoirist that Chekhov "writes like a decadent, like an im- pressionisf in the broad sense of the word." During summer plays lawn tennis.

1898
Finishes What Is Art?, which is published simultaneously in Russian and in English translation by Maude. Book widely praised, including by so-called “decadent” writers. Works for last time on Father Sergius (published only posthumously). More famine relief work. Writes Hunger or No Hunger describing the situation of the Russian peasantry, and “Carthago delenda est” (in the form of an answer to questions about war and militarism sent to him by two publishing houses in Milan and Paris). Works on Resurrection which decides to publish for profit to help the Doukhobors resettle in Canada. During the second half of the year, absorbed in the novel, which he calls “a joint letter – to many” (in a letter to P. Biriukov on December 16), he stops writing his diary almost entirely. At T’s invitation, artist L. O. Pasternak (poet’s father) illustrates Resurrection.

January: Composer N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov visits, and the two men disagree totally about music and art. T buys weights for gymnastic exercises.

February 14: assigns poetry of Heinrich Heine to category of bad art because too pessimistic and cynical, but adds that “not long ago he had reread Heine’s poetry and had loved it, although he explained this was because he himself had been spoiled by our distorted views of art” (diary of V. F. Lazurskii).

February 16: rereads Schiller’s Robbers and, as always, praises and recommends it (d).

March 28: “There is no woman question. There is the question of the freedom, the equality of all human beings” (d,n).

May 6: while setting up famine relief, writes SA that “I rode back through the forest of Turgenev’s Spasskoe at sunset: the fresh green in the woods and underfoot, the stars in the sky, the smells of the flowering willow and the drooping birch leaf, the sounds of the nightingale, the drone of the maybeetles, the cuckoo and the solitude, and the cheerful, pleasant motion of the horse under you, and physical, and spiritual health. And I thought, as I do constantly, about death. It became clear to me that it will be as fine on the other side of death as it is on this side, only different, and I understood why the Jews describe paradise as a garden. The purest joy - the joy of nature. It became clear to me that there it will be just as fine - no, better. I fried to summon up the doubt in that life that had been there before. I couldn't, just as before I couldn't summon up belief."

July 17: considers leaving home for Finland (letter to Finnish writer and disciple).

July 28: after a long inconclusive talk with SA, writes down whole conversation in form of letter to sister-in-law Tatiana entitled “A Dialogue.” Tells disciple (L. P. Nikiforov) that he does not leave SA because he fears she would commit suicide if he did.

1899
SA’s obsession with Taneev continues, daughter Tatiana marries (Marya had married in 1897), and this is blow to T. Works hard on Resurrection during first part of year, very few diary entries, and comments by him about his – to him embarrassing – irresistible need to write fiction. (Novel is published serially, heavily censored, in Russian journal, and simultaneously uncut in Russian and in English translation abroad. An American edition – published by The Cosmopolitan Magazine – abridged because editors consider parts of novel immoral.)

January: asked by correspondent to be godfather to his child, T responds: “I consider it impossible to take any part in one of the cruellest and most vulgar deceptions perpetrated against people, which is called the christening of infants.”

April: sympathizes with student protests in Petersburg, but will not endorse violence, calling instead for refusal to attend classes.

April 22: loves Chekhov’s The Darling, takes extraordinary step of visiting young writer in his rooms. Also praises writing of A. M. Gorky, although criticizes his psychology as “made-up” at times. Chekhov writes to Gorky (April 25) that T says, “You can think up anything you like, but not psychology, and in Gorky there are some psychological inventions, he describes what he has not felt.”

May 5: writes Ch that for him as a writer “the main thing is the inner life expressed in scenes.”

August 8: in letter to Ch calls Herzen a model journalist, and in early September, rereads Letters to An Old Comrade. (During his last years, T reads and praises Herzen repeatedly.)

November: rereading poetry of Tiutchev, calls it “true art” – “I cannot read it without tears.”

January 24: attends Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. He finds that it lacks drama, his general criticism of Chekhov’s plays. Partly motivated by dissatisfaction with Uncle Vanya, works on unfinished play The Living Corpse (published posthumously).

April 29: claims to have read all of Goethe and Shakespeare three times “and could never understand their charm.” By contrast, loves all of Schiller’s plays (G).

June 21: in response to American journalist Edward Garnet, who asks him for a “message to the American people,” writes (in English), that he is grateful for the help he received from American writers of the 1850s, including William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Adin Ballou, and Henry Thoreau. Also mentions the “brilliant pleiad” of William Ellery Channing, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, and Walt Whitman; and ends his letter with remark that he would like to ask the American people why they pay attention to (capitalists) Gould, Rockefeller, and Carnegie instead of the writers T so admires.

June 23: “I want terribly to write something artistic, and not dramatic, but epic – a continuation of Resurrection: the peasant life of Nekhliudov” (d). From the same diary entry: “Nature moves me to the point of tenderness: the meadows, the forests, the crops, the ploughed fields, the mowing. I think, is this my last summer that I am living through? Fine; all to the good. I’m thankful for everything – I have been endlessly blessed. How possible and how joyful it is always to be thankful.”

July 3: regretting persecution of his disciples, says that he hopes his articles will lead to his own arrest (G).
July 12: “I cannot rejoice at the birth of children of the wealthy classes – they’re breeding parasites” (d).
August 21: with SA still seeing Taneev, feels “old temptation” to leave home (d).
September 1: tells disciple P. A. Sergeenko that his drama The Light Shineth in the Darkness may be the most important thing he writes because “before I thought only about success, about glory, now none of that is any longer necessary for me, and I want to speak out my most sincere and intimate thoughts.”
October 21: says that he has loved Giuseppe Verdi’s music “from earliest youth” (letter).
Fall: plays chess frequently, and starts to study Dutch by reading the Gospels in Dutch translation. (By February 1, 1901, G reports that “already reads it fairly easily.”) In October plans a letter to the Chinese people, but does not complete it.
December 29: having read Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, says that when Nietzsche wrote it he was truly insane, and ends diary entry about it with “What kind of a society is it that recognizes such a madman, and an evil madman, as a teacher?” (d). He also criticizes Nietzsche for the “disconnectedness” of his style, and his repudiation of all metaphysical laws in order to assert his own superhuman status. T attacks Nietzsche several times, but he read him carefully. Maude quotes him as saying in 1903 that “I was absolutely charmed by his language when I first read him. What vigor and what beauty! I was so carried away that I forgot myself. Then I came to and began to digest it all. Great God, what savagery! It is terrible to drag down Christianity like this!”

1901
Sympathetic to demonstrators roughed up by authorities in Petersburg. Helps free Gorky, arrested in connection with the disturbances. Writes articles on Christians and military service (“A Soldier’s Leaflet” and “An Officer’s Leaflet”) and according to his disciple Boulanger is very upset that these are distributed by revolutionaries with manuals on how to kill.
February: turns over all negotiations with foreign publishers and translators of his work to Ch.
Late February: excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church. In response he publishes A Reply to the Holy Synod’s Edict. The reaction to the excommunication is worldwide and negative.

Late June: falls seriously ill with malaria, and for a while near death. Messages of support pour in from around the world.
September: goes to Crimea to recuperate at Gaspri, the luxurious estate of S. V. Panina. Government takes measures to keep secret, first T’s possible impending death and then his trip south. T loves the Crimea, and is delighted by its beauty. Visited there by Chekhov, Gorky, V. G. Korolenko, decadent poet K. D. Balmont, and others.

1902
January: finishes most careful treatment of religion What is Religion and Wherein Lies its Essence? (published in England, 1902).
January 16: sends letter to Nicholas II criticizing autocracy and recommending freedom of religion, movement, and education, as well as abolition of private property.
In February near death from pneumonia, and remains in Crimea until late June. Despite weakness, follows political events closely, comments, and even writes on them. Gorky writes in a July letter to K. P. Piatnitskii: “Lev Nikolaevich is definitely back on his feet and already at Iasnaia Poliana. Genius is stronger than death. He’s writing an article on the land question, hm? What enormous force, what an astonishing grasp of the issues of the day!” Disciple and biographer P. I. Biriukov sends him a list of questions. (Biriukov continues to question him, the first volume of his biography comes out in 1906.)
May 19: at first T “feared the lack of frankness characteristic of every autobiography, but now I seem to have found a form in which I can fulfill your wish by indicating the main character of succeeding periods of my life in childhood, youth and adulthood” (letter to Buiukov).
July: finishes “Address to the Working People,” published in Ch’s London press. Back home during the summer, works intensely on fiction, chiefly Hadji Murat. Revisits The Light Shines in the Darkness, starts The False Coupon, and works on The Restoration of Hell, a fictional narrative first conceived as an illustration of his article “Address to the Clergy.” In agreement with T’s own wishes, doctors say that he must winter at Iasnaia Poliana, and from this time on, he no longer lives in Moscow. As soon as possible resumes his active life, with walks and horseback riding. Receives numerous congratulations on occasion of his fiftieth anniversary as a writer.
September 15: listening to Chekhov’s The Darling read aloud, T “laughed until he cried, infecting everyone else with his laughter” (letter from eyewitness).

September 23: approvingly recites a poem by F from memory, and praises Homer. “I reread him not long ago, and I will read him again. The Greeks combine realism with poetry” (Sergeenko’s memoirs).
November: very impressed by P. A. Kropotkin’s Notes of a Revolutionary. Health remains fragile, and in December falls seriously ill from flu.
November 11: “I decided that I could write [my biography], because I understood that it could be interesting and useful to tell people the vileness of my life until my awakening and, speaking without false modesty, all the goodness (if only in intentions that were not always realized because of weakness) after the awakening. It’s in this sense that I would like to write for you” (letter to Buiukov).
November 30: “Often a clear representation of how I should and could narrate my entire soul will come to me. But this happens only momentarily, and then an instant later I don’t even remember how” (d).

1903
Protests Jewish pogroms in Kishinev, and writes three stories – Esarhaddon, Three Questions, and Work, Death and Illness – for inclusion (translated into Yiddish) in an anthology published in Warsaw to aid the pogrom victims. Writes After the Ball (only published posthumously), and begins The Divine and the Human (completed 1906). Collects historical material about the reign of Nicholas I for Hadji Murat, and works on chapter about tsar.
During the last twenty years of his life, diary contains many lists of possible topics for fiction and non-fictional writing. As T grows feebler, his production, especially of artistic works, declines, but his ideas for them keep coming. Conceives what he regards as an important new literary form, the so-called Cycles of Reading – inspirational calendars with wise sayings and also stories, original and borrowed, for meditation each day and week. (Several are compiled and published in T’s last years.) Occasionally chastises self for working on fiction (and especially Hadji Murat). Starts Shakespeare and the Drama (finished 1904). Responding to Biriukov’s request for biographical material, begins Memoirs which he works on until 1906. In connection with this, rereads diaries of 1840s and 1850s, in which he finds “much of interest” (June 4, d).

March 7: writes to Japanese translator of Anna Karenina.
July 10–11: completes a definition of life in diary. It is recopied with title On Consciousness and sent to Ch to publish in England.

September 5–6: decadent poet and religious thinker A. M. Dobroliubov visits.
December 5: William Jennings Bryan visits and makes a good impression.
December: last exchange of letters with AA. On December 22, T, knowing that she is very ill, writes to thank her “for all the good” she has done for him during their “half-century-long friendship.” He speaks of her “goodness and love,” thanks to which “he himself has become better.” She responds a few days later, thanking him for his love and saying that in his letter she hears “that same, very sincere note that had always sounded” between them when they were young. She dies in March 1904.

1904
To keep them from Ch, SA sends T’s manuscripts to the Historical Museum in Moscow. In response to outbreak of Russo-Japanese war, T publishes enormously influential anti-war tract Bethink Yourselves. Follows war closely, at times unable to suppress his Russian patriotism as it goes badly. Works with Biriukov on biography, and SA starts her own autobiography.
August 23: beloved brother Sergei dies.
December 12: reads aloud from Dickens’s Pickwick Papers and “laughs heartily” (SA’s diary).

1905
Deplores violence of both sides as Russo-Japanese war ends and revolution breaks out, with a brutally suppressed general strike in Petersburg and the mutiny of the battleship Potemkin. Considers the revolution to have been inevitable. Writes a number of articles applying his theories of non-resistance and social reform to the political situation (such as pamphlets “The One Thing Needed” and “The End of An Age”). Although courted by all sides of the conflict, does not back any of them. Rereads almost all of Dickens.
Whole family occupied in compiling a cycle of reading. T writes Alesha the Pot, Kornei Vasilyev, Strawberries, and Prayer, the last three of which are published by Intermediary in 1906 in a new Cycle of Reading.
August 25: praises Haydn’s music for its “joy of life” (G).
October 19: welcomes tsar’s manifesto of October 17, which calls for a constitution, freedom of assembly, and abolition of censorship (M), but reading it on October 23, T writes that “there is nothing in it for the people” (d). Last evidence of work on Hadji Murat (published posthumously in 1912).
December 1: having read two letters from George Bernard Shaw critical of Shakespeare and the Drama, directs Ch to make necessary changes himself rather than sending the manuscript back to him.

December 4: warns first Chinese correspondent that China should not modernize by simply importing Western models: "Changes must grow by themselves from the attributes of a people and be com- pletely new, not like the forms of other peoples." 

1906
In this and subsequent year spends much time instructing peasant children on the estate, and also writing for children and preparing readings for them (a Children’s Cycle of Reading). On several different occasions, expresses his contempt for constitutional democracy as practiced abroad and as being attempted in Russia. Increasingly concerned about the intentions of reformers and revolutionaries, writes and publishes three articles on his solution to Russia’s political crisis: “A Letter to a Chinese,” “The Significance of the Russian Revolution,” and “An Address to the Russian People: to the Government, to the Revolutionaries, and to the Masses.” Argues in these against the suitability of industrialization and Western democracy for Russia. The last article criticizes revolutionaries so severely (for their violence) that Ch, with great difficulty, convinces T to modify it.
January: a letter in two Russian newspapers informs editors who want to publish T’s previously forbidden or censored works in Russia that they can get authentic and complete copies from Ch in London.
January 16: having received letter from Kharkov landowner about how he had turned his land over to his peasants, keeping only one allotment for himself, T publishes an open response to him urging all property owners to follow suit.
January–February: composes and publishes story For What?
February 24: “I’ve always wanted to write... a Russian Robinson [Crusoe]: to describe a community that would migrate from Tambov Province across the steppe to the borders of China. To characterize its most outstanding members.” Goes on to say that Robinson Crusoe is the best book for children (M).
March 10: a note written on a separate sheet: “A dull depressed mood the whole day. Toward evening this mood turned into tenderness – a desire for a caress – for love. I wanted, as in childhood, to cling to a loving, pitying being and to weep and to be comforted. But who is that being to whom I could cling that way? I run through all the people I love – not one will do. Who to cling to? To become little and cling to mother as I picture her to myself. Yes, yes, Mommy whom I never called by rhar name, nor being yet able to speak. Yes, she, my highest image of pure love, not cold, divine, but earthly, warm, motherly. My best, tired soul is drawn to this. You, Mommy, caress me. - This is all insane, but it is all the truth."

April 12: writes Ernest Crosby that the revolution in Russia is a harbinger of a worldwide revolution that, not soon, but within a few decades, will destroy the power of states everywhere.
July 12: argues with sons Lev and Andrei against capital punishment, which they support, and writes daughter Marya that is beside himself for two days afterwards. Later that month, SA has two peasants prosecuted for cutting down oaks on estate, and although she relents after they are tried, they have to serve their sentences anyway. These two incidents revive his desire to leave home (G).
Late August: SA falls seriously ill. The tenderness of the couple for one another, severely tested though it has been, quickly surfaces. T cannot concentrate on his work, and admires his SA’s stoicism. Too weak to be moved, she is operated on at home for a large uterine tumor.
November 26: beloved daughter Marya, visiting with her husband, falls ill of pneumonia and quickly dies.
December: reads Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and praises it highly.

1907
Much music-making. Ongoing interest in Eastern thought. Disparages the Duma (Russian Parliament) and constitutional government: for instance, responding to a question from a Petersburg newspaper, writes that “No Duma can promote the common good” (January 26). Begins to read Shaw, mostly does not like his writing. (In 1908, tells Shaw himself in a letter [August 17] that his writing is too satirical, and draws too much attention to the brilliance of the author.) Works on cycles of reading for children as well as adults, and also a children’s version of the Gospels (The Teaching of Christ Told For Children, published 1908).
May 19: Brother-in-law Viacheslav Behrs, a transportation engineer, murdered during a strike in Petersburg.
September: very upset when SA and son Andrei ask authorities to prosecute peasants stealing from estate garden.
July: interview with T by correspondent published July 7 in The New York Times.
July 26: sends letter to influential liberal statesman P. A. Stolypin, urging him to promote the abolition of private property. Replying, Stolypin defends his policy of replacing communes with small private farms.

Late September: Repin visits and sketches T with SA listening intently to him. Of this T remarks on October 1 to M. S. Sukhothin that “For the last 45 years I’ve been waiting for SA to listen to me, and I haven’t been able to make this happen.”
October 26: “It’s strange that it is my lot to be silent with the people living around me and to speak only with those who are far away in time and space, who will listen to me” (d).

1908
Begins to suffer from fainting spells. Having returned permanently to Russia, Ch settles near Iasnaia Poliana. SA increasingly out of control. Many concerts, and many comments on musical performances reported by G. T works on story There Are No Guilty People in The World (unfinished, reworked in 1909 and 1910). Publishes, among other things, I Cannot Be Silent, directed against the death penalty. Receives a flood of letters, pro and con, in response. On July 10, Repin publishes letter in newspaper praising T for saying openly what Repin claims that millions of Russians privately believe. Government tries to censor this and other works of T that are in print or circulating, and sentences a disciple to prison for distributing T’s banned writings.
January 4: receives dictaphone from American inventor Thomas Edison. Records various comments and stories on it, some of which survive, including a recitation of The Wolf, a story composed for grandchildren.
January 28: another letter to Stolypin deploring the strategy of fighting violence with violence, and calling once again for the abolition of private property.
March 6: an idea for a story – “I’ll take the first trial of revolutionaries that comes along, and I’ll describe what [the revolutionary] experienced when he decided to kill the agent provocateur, what this provocateur experienced when he was being killed, what the judge who sentenced him experienced, what the executioner who hung him experienced” (Gusev’s diary). (As health declines, has many such ideas for fiction, most not realized.)
April 8: criticizes an article about punishments of revolutionaries as too sensational: “He expounds these terrible facts with his own epithets, explanations, conclusions... These only weaken the impression. It must be left to the reader himself to make these conclusions” (Gusev’s diary).
June: Rereads Pushkin. Especially struck by long novel in verse Eugene Onegin, but singles out prose pieces as well.

July: writes a “secret diary” from July 2–18. In it expresses wish to leave or even to die to get away from unpleasantness at home; worries that he might leave for personal, not principled reasons. This diary is soon discovered, and when T is ill in August, he allows Ch to copy it.
August 11: dictates will to Gusev asking to be buried, without religious rites, in the woods where he and his brothers played the game of the “green stick,” which supposedly had written on it the secret of universal brotherhood; also expresses the wish that his heirs allow all his writings to be in the public domain.
August 28: turns eighty years old. In February discourages plans for celebration of his eightieth birthday.
March 13: records on dictaphone that best birthday present would be to be put in jail. Government also tries to control public response to the birthday, but congratulations flow in from around the world. In just one example, the head of the British Museum brings him a message from England signed by more than 800 well-known cultural figures.

1909
Many concerts at Iasnaia Poliana, with performances by famous musicians such as Polish pianist Wanda Landowska (who played three times for T). For the most part praises the performances, and is often very affected by them. One of the musicians (violinist M. G. Erdenko) reports in October that listening to a mazurka, T “danced around the room.” Persecution of disciples intensifies, and T tries unsuccessfully to make the government prosecute him rather than them. Advocates for abolition of private property according to the methods of Henry George. Reads Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone twice. Writes a series of short dialogues called A Child’s Wisdom. Rereads all of Gogol, and on March 5 declares short story The Carriage his best artistic work (n). Writes and publishes Conversation With a Passerby and Songs in the Village, both recording incidents that he witnesses. Corresponds with Gandhi, who praises The Kingdom of God is Within You as the work that has most inspired him. Publishes “The Inevitable Revolution” and “The Sole Commandment.”
January 30: in letter gives Ch permission to publish any of his personal letters in an edition of his works.
February 14: “Executions in our day are good, because they obviously show that the leaders are bad people who have gone astray , and that therefore to obey them is as harmful and shameful as to obey the ataman of a robber gang" (d).

August 10: in conversation about a fellow writer (Saltykov-Shchedrin), remarks that “Le secret d’être ennuyeux, c’est tout dire” (The secret of being boring is to say everything; G).
August 22: “I went walking in the Forest Preserve, a marvelous morning. Like a little cloud with indistinct edges on one side, the moon is high in the bright blue sky over the green ocean of the forest. Very nice” (d).
September: Maude makes his last visit and remarks on how vigorous and passionately interested in life T still is despite the fact that at the time he was in a wheelchair.
September 3: on way to visit Ch in Moscow Province, recites a poem by F from memory (Autumn Rose), praises and comments on it. On return trip, thousands gather at train station in Moscow to cheer him and SA. Fainting spells connected to exertions of journey.
November 1: writes will giving control of all his works, including artistic ones, to daughter Aleksandra after his death. Aleksandra, age twenty-five, on bad terms with mother and sides with Ch. T also toys with the idea of finally giving up his property. SA exacerbates the situation with frequent hysterical outbursts and unreasonable demands.
December 23: T reads a book by Valentin Bulgakov on the Tolstoyan world view and comments: “In general it’s poor – not his, but my work” (d).
December 24: having reread Sterne’s Sentimental Journey twice with great enjoyment – “it’s amazing how funny it is” – wants to reread Tristram Shandy as well (M).
Also compiles a collection of sayings called The Path of Life, this one organized by theme; and writes moralizing two-act play for peasants called The Cause of It All. Both are published in 1911.

November 7: dies of pneumonia. Unbeknownst to him, crowds of reporters have gathered at the station. His final agony and the suffering of SA, kept from his bedside until the very end, when he is already unconscious, become one of the first worldwide media events. He is buried according to his wishes, in the woods at Iasnaia Poliana.

This chronology has been compiled with the help of Megan Swift. It is taken primarily from the two-volume N. N. Gusev, Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva L’va Nikolaevicha Tolstogo (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1958; Gottlizdat, 1960), but draws on many other sources as well. The purpose of the chronology is to give readers a general sense of the course of Tolstoy’s life. It is not comprehensive even in listing all of Tolstoy’s artistic works, and readers should not use it to establish exact dates of publication or events, which are often contentious in Tolstoy scholarship. In each entry, general items are listed before those with exact dates. Dates, unless otherwise noted, are given according to the old style Julian calendar in effect during Tolstoy’s life. This calendar was twelve days behind the Western (Gregorian) one in the nineteenth century and thirteen days behind it in the twentieth. The translations are my own.

The following abbreviations apply throughout:

AA – A. A. Tolstaia
Ch – V. G. Chertkov
d – Tolstoy’s diary
F – A. A. Fet
G – A. B. Goldenweizer
M – D. P. Makovitsky
n – Tolstoy’s notebook
S – N. N. Strakhov
SA – Sofya Andreevna Tolstaia
T – Lev Tolstoy