The death of Leo Tolstoy: how the great Russian writer passed away

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy died on November 20, 1910 at the age of 82. He wanted to spend the last years of his life away from the hustle and bustle, so that no one would bother him. To do this, he secretly left Yasnaya Polyana and went on a journey. On the way, he caught a cold and was forced to get off at the Astapovo station (now Leo Tolstoy). It was there that the famous writer and philosopher spent his last hours.

When the first reports appeared that Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy had died, the great writer’s contemporaries reacted very ambiguously to this. Some mourned, while others, on the contrary, did not hide their joy, considering Tolstoy a dangerous person for society. And all because the author of famous literary works has been at odds with the church in recent years.

Years of Leo Tolstoy's life

The famous Russian philosopher and prose writer was born on September 9, 1828 in the Tula province in the town of Yasnaya Polyana, and died at an old age on November 20, 1910. Death occurred at the Astapovo station in the Ryazan province (today this station bears the name of the writer).

Lev Nikolaevich was 82 years old. For those times - a real long-liver. He wanted peace, but meanwhile he was constantly drawn into the struggle. In the end, Tolstoy decided to run away from everyone in order to spend his last days in solitude and silence. He left secretly from his wife, accompanied only by a doctor. On the way, Lev Nikolaevich suddenly felt ill and was forced to get off the train. He died on November 20 (November 7, old style) 1910 at 5:30 am.

Scientists who studied the biography and documents of Tolstoy found that the causes of sudden death were:

• bilateral pneumonia;
• pulmonary edema;
• acute heart failure;
• acute viral infection.

At the time of Tolstoy's death, he was surrounded by his family and friends.

The writer died unconscious; he could not even say goodbye to his relatives. Representatives of the church claim that such a death is God’s punishment for the fact that during his lifetime the philosopher and writer spread heresy and undermined the authority of the Orthodox Church.

Where is Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy buried?

The coffin with the body was sent by train home to Yasnaya Polyana. Upon arrival at the station, the writer’s sons and simple peasants carried a simple oak coffin in their arms to the funeral site.

Where is Leo Tolstoy buried? Relatives and friends buried the body according to the will - without a monument and a tombstone cross, near a ravine near the road to the “Old Order” forest that Tolstoy loved in childhood. Many hundreds of people wanted to say goodbye to their beloved writer, but the government, in order to avoid unrest, canceled all trains in the direction of Yasnaya Polyana.

Tolstoy's excommunication from the church

In his philosophical articles, the writer claimed that he had invented a new religion, or “refined Christianity.” Tolstoy believed that:

• you cannot fight evil with violence;
• culture and religion have long lost their importance and relevance;
• bourgeois society leads a wrong life;
• the modern social order is hostile to human nature.

The writer's attempts to create a new religion led to his excommunication from the Orthodox Church in 1901 by a resolution of the Holy Synod.

In 1923, renovationists came up with a proposal to return the great author to the fold of the Orthodox Church. However, their request was refused.

Views and worldview

The study of theology, a pilgrimage to Optina Pustyn, communication with monks and church dogmas could not provide an answer to the global questions of the world order that tormented Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy. The contradiction between real life and death and spiritual aspirations tormented Leo Tolstoy all the years of his life, and at the end of the 70s “Confession” appeared - a work in which the philosophical teachings of the great writer were outlined.

Tolstoy adhered to the principles set out in the treatise until his death - the denial of pseudo-values ​​imposed by bourgeois society, a return to natural roots and physical labor, renunciation of violence, even to resist evil. The writer’s life itself served as propaganda for this idea of ​​“purified Christianity.” Representatives of the Orthodox Church negatively perceived Leo Tolstoy's critical statements addressed to her, and disagreements led to the writer's excommunication in 1901, although, as some theologians write, this was not a real anathema, but simply a condemnation. In fact, Leo Tolstoy, a deeply religious man, did not condemn the Lord himself, but the external manifestations of religion.

The decision to leave Yasnaya Polyana

In the last years of his life, Tolstoy’s relationship with his wife deteriorated sharply. He hid his diary entries from his wife, and also decided to renounce the copyright to his works. At the end of October 1910, about a month before his death, the writer decided to leave for a new place - to the south of Russia, to live there away from luxury, worldly bustle and prepare his body and soul for his final journey. Leaving a farewell note to his wife, the writer secretly left at night, accompanied by his attending physician Makovitsky.

He did not have an exact plan of action. We decided first to visit the Shamarda Monastery, where the writer’s sister Maria lived. The road was difficult, so we had to stop for the night in Optina Pustyn, where Tolstoy talked with Father Mikhail.

In Shamardino, Lev Nikolaevich met with his sister, and a little later his daughter Alexandra secretly arrived there and reported that her mother (Sofya Andreevna) tried to commit suicide by throwing herself into a pond. She also said that the location of Lev Nikolaevich is probably known to many.

The old man panicked and hastily left with his daughter and doctor back to Kozelsk. There I boarded a train to go further south, but only got to the Ryazan province. The writer suddenly developed a high temperature, and doctors decided to remove him from the train for further treatment.

How Leo Tolstoy died

Leo Tolstoy was provided with medical assistance, but the capabilities of medicine of that era were very modest. When the writer felt better, he even wanted to continue the journey, and then the disease began to progress again. Tolstoy was sick with pneumonia. The weakened body could not cope with the serious illness.

At Tolstoy’s request, a telegram was sent to Optina Pustyn with a request to send an abbot to him. The visiting relatives and followers of the writer, who were called Tolstoyan atheists, did not allow the elder to see Lev Nikolaevich, and soon the patient fell into unconsciousness and died on November 7, 1910. The dream of the writer's sister Maria turned out to be prophetic. The disciples made sure that their teacher died without repentance and communion.

Stop at Astapovo station

The temperature rose to 40 degrees, and it was decided to make an emergency stop at the small Astapovo station. At the request of the attending physician, the writer was temporarily placed in the house of the station chief, Ivan Ozolin. In the last days of his illness, only his son and two daughters were allowed to see Tolstoy. In her memoirs, Alexandra Tolstaya writes:

• sometimes the father’s health improved, but the improvements did not last long;
• he really wanted to go further, but the doctors categorically forbade him to set off until he recovered;
• Until the last moments of his life, Lev Nikolaevich kept notes in his personal diary.

He did not show these recordings to anyone. The last entry was made on November 3rd. The writer wrote that he felt very bad at night and suffered from a fever for two days.

News about the illness of the busy writer quickly spread throughout the area. Six doctors offered to help him, but he refused. He only asked to be left alone and said that God would solve everything.

Escape from Paradise

Leo Tolstoy was a wanderer all his life. Not only in the soul, but also in real life. Photo: State Museum of L.N. Tolstoy

To this day, biographers are wondering whether this was a premeditated and conscious act or whether it happened spontaneously, under the influence of the “moment.” Waking up at night, Tolstoy noticed that his wife Sofya Andreevna was looking for something in the drawers of the table in his office. We know that she was looking for traces of his will for literary rights. When his wife went to her room and fell asleep, Tolstoy woke up the doctor Dusan Makovitsky, his daughter Sasha and her friend Varvara Feokritova and announced his decision to leave home. He himself went to wake up the coachman and helped him harness the horse to the carriage. He will write about all this in his diary, where there will be the following words: “I am trembling, waiting for the chase.”

And yet, Tolstoy’s “departure” cannot be explained by a family conflict related to the will alone. Figuratively speaking, he “left” all his life. Flight from Kazan University to Yasnaya Polyana, then flight to the Caucasus, where he came to his older brother Nikolai without any documents, flight from a careless life to the Crimean War, pilgrimages to Optina Pustyn, Kiev-Pechersk and Trinity-Sergius Lavra, three times a trip on foot from Moscow to his estate...

Sometimes you are amazed at how “mobile” a man was, who wrote 90 volumes of essays, letters and diaries (a more complete 100-volume collection is now being prepared for publication). And many of his heroes are running somewhere or are planning to run (Prince Olenin, Pierre Bezukhov, Andrei Bolkonsky, Natasha Rostova, Elder Sergius, Fedya Protasov, Prince Nekhlyudov). They cannot sit still, they are constantly searching for themselves and their place on earth.

So Tolstoy, seemingly in love with his Yasnaya Polyana, tried more than once to escape from it, but carried out this “leaving” at the very end of his life.

First, he went with Makovitsky to Optina Pustyn. After spending the night in the monastery hotel, he wanted to meet Elder Joseph, approached the cell twice, but did not dare to knock - the elder was sick, and he knew it. Then Tolstoy went to see Sister Masha, a nun at the Shamorda monastery. I thought about staying in a village near the monastery, agreed with a peasant widow to rent half of the hut, but again ran away early in the morning...

On the train from Kozelsk, Tolstoy, Makovitsky and Sasha still did not know where exactly they were going. “They consulted with Gorbachev again and settled on Novocherkassk,” writes Makovitsky. — There, with L.N.’s niece, rest for a few days and decide where to finally direct the journey - to the Caucasus or, having obtained passports for us, accompanying L.N. (“You all have residence permits. - Ed.), and I will be your servant without a look,” said L.N.), go to Bulgaria or Greece.”

If there had been the Internet at the beginning of the 20th century, Tolstoy's passing would have been covered in real time

So, they were going to cross the border, smuggling an 82-year-old man with the appearance of Leo Tolstoy under the guise of a servant... But it was impossible! Firstly, they would have been identified at the border, because the news that Tolstoy had fled home had by that time spread throughout the world. Secondly, they were secretly accompanied on the train by Konstantin Orlov, a correspondent for the Russkoe Slovo newspaper. He followed Tolstoy from Kozelsk, having the task of giving telegrams from every major railway station. If Orlov had the Internet, he would have reported on the “departure” in real time. But even without the Internet, the world's telegraph agencies worked quickly. So for ten days the whole world watched this “departure” with excitement, and it was a major world sensation.

On the train, Tolstoy fell ill, and they were forced to get off at the Astapovo station on the Ryazan-Ural railway. d. Fortunately for them, the station chief, Ivan Ozolin (Ozolins), a Latvian by birth and a Protestant by religion, turned out to be a fan of Tolstoy. He provided him with his government house, moving his large family to another room.

Several doctors fought for Tolstoy's life. Makovitsky, Chertkov, Feokritova, daughters Sasha and Tatyana, and eldest son Sergei were constantly on duty near the bed. Sofya Andreevna, who arrived in Astapovo with her other sons, was not allowed to see the patient. Elder Barsanuphius, who came from Optina Hermitage with the goal of reconciling Tolstoy with the Church, was not allowed in either. And today this decision is controversial. But in fact, doctors did not advise doing this. They were afraid that Tolstoy’s heart would break down from excitement. Sofya Andreevna said goodbye to her husband when he was still alive, but already unconscious.

On November 7 (20), 1910, at 6:50 a.m., Tolstoy passed away. And this was the last “departure,” which Ivan Bunin figuratively called “the liberation of Tolstoy.” He was buried in Yasnaya Polyana, in the forest of Stary Zakaz, on the edge of a ravine, where he and his brother Nikolenka buried a “green stick” on which was written a recipe for universal happiness. What needs to be done to stop wars, hunger, disease, and suffering on earth? We still don't know this to this day.

Last words

In his dying diary entries, Lev Nikolaevich mentioned his wife, children and other relatives, and also wrote his motto - a proverb in French. Freely translated into Russian, it sounds like this: “A person should do what he is born for, and should not make big plans for the future; no one knows how life will turn out.”

In the last entry at which the diary ended, Tolstoy wrote that everything he did in life was for the benefit of others. He probably had in mind not only literary creativity, but also his philosophical teaching. The day before his death, already in delirium and agony, the writer clearly pronounced the word “six” several times. Perhaps he had already foreseen the hour of his death: his death occurred at about six o'clock in the morning. His last words were intermittent and addressed to his son Sergei: “Seryozha... the truth... I love a lot, I love everyone...”.

Major works

Novels:

• "Family Happiness" (1859)
• “Decembrists” (1860-61, unfinished, published 1884)
• “War and Peace” (1863-1869, published from 1865, 1st edition 1867-69, 3rd edition corrected 1873)
• "Anna Karenina" (1873-1877, published 1875-77)
• “Resurrection” (1889-1899, published 1899)

Stories:

• Trilogy: “Childhood” (1852), “Adolescence” (1854), “Youth” (1857; the entire tril.—1864)
• “Two Hussars”, “Morning of the Landowner” (both 1856)
• “Cossacks” (unfinished, published 1863)
• "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (1884-86)
• "Kreutzer Sonata" (1887-89, published 1891)
• "The Devil" (1889-90, published 1911)
• "Father Sergius" (1890-98, published 1912)
• "Hadji Murat" (1896-1904, published 1912)
• “Posthumous Notes of Elder Fyodor Kuzmich...” (unfinished, 1905, published 1912)

Stories, including:

• "Raid" (1853)
• “Notes of a Marker”, “Cutting Wood” (both 1855)
• Cycle “Sevastopol Stories” (“Sevastopol in December”, “Sevastopol in May”, both - 1855; “Sevastopol in August 1855”, 1856)
• “Blizzard”, “Demoted” (both 1856)
• "Lucerne" (1857)
• "Three Deaths" (1859)
• "Kholstomer" (1863-85)
• “Françoise” (adapted from G. de Maupassant’s story “The Port”, 1891)
• "Who is right?" (1891-93, published 1911)
• “It’s Expensive” (adapted from an excerpt from G. de Maupassant’s essay “On the Water”, 1890; published 1899 in England, 1901 in Russia)
• “After the Ball” (1903, published 1911)
• “False coupon” (late 1880s - 1904, published 1911)
• “Alyosha the Pot” (1905, published 1911)
• “Korney Vasiliev”, “Berry”, “For what?”, “Divine and Human” (all - 1906)
• “What I Saw in a Dream” (1906, publ. 1911)
• “Khodynka” (1910, published 1912)
• "Accidentally" (1910, published 1911)

Stories and fairy tales for children and popular reading, including:

• in “ABC” (books 1-4, 1872), “New ABC” (1875) and four “Russian books for reading” (1875):
• “Three Bears”, “Filipok”, a cycle of stories about Bulka, “Prisoner of the Caucasus” and many others. etc.

• Philosophical and moral stories and parables, including:
• "How People Live" (1881)
• “Where there is love, there is God”, “The enemy’s sculpt, but God’s is strong”, “If you let the fire go, you won’t put it out”, “Two old men” (all - 1885)
• “Two Brothers and Gold”, “Ilyas”, “Candle”, “Three Old Men”, “How Much Land Does a Man Need”, “Godson” (all—1886)

Dramaturgy:

• comedy
• "The Infected Family" (1864, publ. 1928)
• “The first distiller, or How the little devil earned the edge” (1886)
• "The Fruits of Enlightenment" (1891)
• “All qualities come from her” (1910, published 1911)

• dramas
• “The power of darkness, or the Claw is stuck, the whole bird is lost” (1887)
• “The Living Corpse” (1900, unfinished, published 1911)
• “And the Light Shines in the Darkness” (1880s-1900s, published 1911)

Journalism, including:

• “Confession” (1879-82; published 1884, Geneva, in Russia - 1906)

• articles
• “On the census in Moscow” (1882)
• “So what should we do?” (1882-86; publ. complete 1906)
• “On Hunger” (1891; published in English 1892, complete in Russian 1954)
• "Nikolai Palkin" (published in Geneva 1891)
• "Shame" (1895)
• “Slavery of Our Time” (1900; published in Russia, part 1—1906, complete—1917)
• “Thou shalt not kill” (published abroad 1900, in Russia - 1917)
• “To the Tsar and His Assistants” (published abroad 1901)
• “I Can’t Be Silent” (published abroad in 1908, distributed illegally in Russia until 1917)

Pedagogical essays, including:

• Art. “Progress and Definition of Education” (1863), etc.

Religious and philosophical works:

• "A Study in Dogmatic Theology" (1879-80)
• "Connection and Translation of the Four Gospels" (1880-81)
• "What Is My Faith" (1884)
• “The Kingdom of God is within you” (1893, in French; prohibited in Russia, published 1906), etc.

Criticism, including:

• “Speech at the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature” (1859, published 1928)
• “Who should learn to write from whom, the peasant children from us or us from the peasant children?” (1862)
• “On Art” (1889, unfinished, published 1927) “What is art?” (1897–98)
• "On Shakespeare and Drama" (1906)
• "About Gogol" (1909)

Diaries (1847-1910)

Funeral

After the death of the writer, his body was sent by train to Yasnaya Polyana. The funeral was attended by Tolstoy's children and peasants from his estate, who treated their master with great respect.

The famous Silver Age poet Valery Bryusov came to say goodbye to the great philosopher and writer. Later, in his memoirs, he wrote that he remembered Lev Nikolaevich as a “thin, withered old man.” To prevent admirers of Tolstoy's talent from starting riots, the government ordered the cancellation of several trains to Yasnaya Polyana.

Society's reaction to the writer's death

Since the writer was excommunicated from the church, his funeral became the first celebrity funeral held in a non-Christian manner. But admirers of his talent saw off the writer with great honors. Seeing the simple grave of the famous author, which did not even have a cross or a tombstone, the Russian public began to think about the ideal of “high simplicity” that Tolstoy promoted in his works. This grave still looks like this - a green mound without a cross, without a monument or slab.

The death of the great writer Leo Tolstoy left no one indifferent. Recognizing the ambiguity of his views on the socio-political structure of the world, in no case should one belittle his literary merits. Interest in his works continues unabated in the 21st century; The moral and ethical problems that the writer considered in his books are still relevant today.