(28 August 1828-7 November 1910)

Portrait of Leo Tolstoy by Ilya Repin

“Freedom from the servitude in which we find ourselves at present is impossible for those who seek it in collective effort. It can only be obtained by the substitution of the law of love for the law of violence. Believing in the need to oppose evil by violence is merely to provide justification for our habitual vices—of vengeance, cupidity, envy, ambition, pride, cowardice and spite…. As soon as man refuses to serve as soldiers, tax collectors, judges, jury and police agents, the violence from which the whole world suffers will disappear forthwith…. Understand it, you men of tomorrow…. Put the good of your life in the perfecting of your love for your fellow men. As soon as you begin to live like this, you will feel a joyous sensation full of liberty and happiness.”
--Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence, translated by Mary Koutouzow Tolstoy

Lev Tolstoy by Nikolai Ge

BOOKS

War and Peace
Anna Karenina
Resurrection
The Kingdom of God Is Within You; or, Christianity Not as a Mystical Teaching but as a New Concept of Life
The Cossacks
The Kreutzer Sonata
Hadji Murat
Father Sergius
Divine and Human and Other Stories
Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
A Confession and Other Religious Writings
The Gospel According to Tolstoy edited and translated by David Patterson
The Law of Love and the Law of Violence translated by Mary Koutouzow Tolstoy
Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy Letters edited by B. Srinivasa Murthy
The Tolstoys by Nikolai Tolstoy-Miloslavsky
What Is Art?
The Wisdom of Children
Sevastopol
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
A Nineteenth-Century Russian Reader edited by George Gibian
From Karamzin to Bunin: An Anthology of Russian Short Stories edited by Carl R. Proffer

STORIES

"Master and Man"
"Happy Ever After"
"Esarhaddon"
"The Three Questions"
"God Sees the Truth, but Waits"

LINKS

Leo Tolstoy
The Last Days of Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy Studies Journal
Mohandas K. Gandhi

Yvonne Marie Thomas

updated 11 April 2009

Page 2