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Serving Tatars (Tatar Cyrillic: йомышлы татарлар, Latin: Yomışlı Tatarlar; Russian: Служилые татары) were a class of ethnically Tatars state servants in Muscovy and Russia in 14th-18th centuries.

Originally this class was formed Tatar nobles from Golden Horde and Tatar khanates that enjoyed membership of the Russian service class. Later, qara xalıq (black people) peasants of Kazan Khanate enjoyed this status after the fall of khanate in 1552. Their own ownership of shares in state land were granted to Russian and Qasim nobles.

The elite of the Serving Tatars were those served as translators, scribes, clerks, ambassadors to Central Asian countries and so on. The majority participated in Livonian war of 1558-1583, as well as other campaigns. They also, with the Cossacks, protected the Eastern borders of Russia, especially in the modern Orenburg Oblast. Unlike most Tatars, they had the right to use firearms and some of them became officers in the Russian Army.

Serving Tatars received land, financial support and food. They also had privileges in handicraft production and trade. In the 18th century they were reclassified as members of the class of State Peasants.

References[link]

• (Tatar) "Йомышлы татарлар". Tatar Encyclopedia. Kazan: Tatarstan Republic Academy of Sciences Institution of the Tatar Encyclopaedia. 2002. 

Tatars
(Tatarlar / Татарлар)

Ruslan Chagaev • Dinara Safina Şihabetdin Märcani • Pyotr Gavrilov Gabdulkhay Akhatov • Timati • Diniyar Bilyaletdinov • Ğabdulla Tuqay
Total population
ca. 6.8 million
Regions with significant populations
Russia 5,554,601 [1]  Uzbekistan 324,080 [2]  Kazakhstan 261,000  Ukraine 254,400  Tajikistan 97,000 [3]  Turkmenistan 60,000  Kyrgyzstan 52,000
Languages
Tatar, Russian
Religion
Islam majority, Russian Orthodox minority

Tatars (Tatar: Tatarlar / Татарлар, sometimes spelled Tartars) are a Turkic people, numbering around 7 million. The majority of Tatars live in the Russian Federation, with a population of 5.5 million, 2 million of which in the republic of Tatarstan, 1 million in the republic of Bashkortostan and other 2.5 million in different regions of Russia. Significant minority populations are found in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine.

The Tatars originated with the Tatar confederation in the north-eastern Gobi desert in the 5th century. After subjugation in the 9th century by the Khitans, they migrated southward. In the 13th century Mongol Empire, they were subjugated under Genghis Khan and reassigned once again particularly by his son Jochi. Under the leadership of his grandson Batu Khan, they moved westwards, forming part of the Golden Horde which dominated the Eurasian steppe during the 14th and 15th centuries. In Europe, they were assimilated by the local populations or their name spread to the conquered peoples: Kipchaks, Kimaks and others; and elsewhere with Uralic-speaking peoples, as well as with remnants of the ancient Greek colonies in the Crimea and Caucasians in the Caucasus.

Siberian Tatars are survivors of the Turkic population of the Ural-Altaic region, mixed to some extent with the speakers of Uralic languages, as well as with Mongols.

The three ethnic descendants of the 13th-century westward migration are Volga Tatars, Lipka Tatars and Crimean Tatars, most of whom adopted Islam in the medieval period.

The territories inhabited by Tatars

Name[link]

The name Tatar likely originated amongst the nomadic Tatar confederation of northeastern Mongolia in the region around Lake Baikal in the beginning of the 5th century.^[4] The Chinese term is Dadan (韃靼) and is a comparatively specific term for nomads to the north, emerging in the late Tang. Other names include Dadan and Tatan. The name "Tatars" was used an alternative term for the Shiwei, a nomadic confederation to which these Tatar people belonged.

As various of these nomadic groups became part of Genghis Khan's army in the early 13th century, a fusion of Mongol and Turkic elements took place, and the invaders of Rus and the Pannonian Basin became known to Europeans as Tatars or Tartars (see Tatar yoke).^[4] After the breakup of the Mongol Empire, the Tatars became especially identified with the western part of the empire, known as the Golden Horde.^[4]

The form Tartar has its origins in either Latin or French, coming to Western European languages from Turkish and Persian Tātār ("mounted courier, mounted messenger; postrider"). From the beginning the extra r was present in the Western forms, and according to the Oxford English Dictionary this was most likely due to an association with Tartarus (Hell in Greek mythology), though some claim that the name Tartar was in fact used amongst the Tatars themselves. Nowadays Tatar is usually used to refer to the people, but Tartar is still almost always used for derived terms such as tartar sauce or steak tartare.^[5]

Many Kazan/Volga Tatars prefer to be called Bulgars and reject the Tatar name, a position known as Bulgarism. Bulgarism pertains to the notion that the Volga/Kazan Tatars are actual Bulgars who did not mix with any other group (additionally, Tatarstan was called Bolgaristan until 1919).

History[link]

Map of Tartaria (1705)

Cossacks fighting Tatars of Crimea.

During the 11th to 16th centuries, Tatar tribes lived in what is now Russia and Kazakhstan. The present territory of Tatarstan was inhabited by the Volga Bulgars who settled on the Volga river in the 7th century and converted to Islam in 922 during the missionary work of Ahmad ibn Fadlan. Exact origin of Volga Bulgars is still unknown, possibly descendants of Sarmatian, Scythian and other Uralic tribes inhabiting Eurasian Steppe of modern day Russia. After the Mongol invasion, Bulgaria was defeated, ruined and incorporated in the Golden Horde. Much of the population survived, and there was a certain degree of mixing between it and the Kipchak Tatars of the Horde during the ensuing period. The group as a whole accepted the ethnonym "Tatars" (finally in the end of 19th century; although the name Bulgars persisted in some places; the majority identified themselves simply as the Muslims) and the language of the Kipchaks; on the other hand, the invaders eventually converted to Islam. As the Horde disintegrated in the 15th century, the area became the territory of the Kazan khanate, which was ultimately conquered by Russia in the 16th century.

Subgroups[link]

The Qolsharif Mosque in Kazan.

The bulk of the Tatar population are Volga Tatars, centered on Tatarstan. There are scattered minority groups distinct from the Volga Tatars, notably the Crimean Tatars, Lipka Tatars and Astrakhan Tatars in Europe and the Siberian Tatars in Asia.

Volga Tatars[link]

The main group of the Volga Tatars are further subdivided into dialect groups. The majority of Volga Tatars are Kazan Tatars. The major group are the Kazan Tatars in Tatarstan proper. They are distinct from the Mişär group and the Qasim group. A minority of Christianized Volga Tatars are known as Keräşens.

The Volga Tatars used the Turkic Old Tatar language for their literature between the 15th and 19th centuries. It was written in the İske imlâ variant of the Arabic script, but actual spelling varied regionally. The older literary language included a large number of of Arabic and Persian loanwords. The modern literary language, however, often uses Russian and other European-derived words instead.

Volga Tatars number nearly 8 million, mostly in Russia and the republics of the former Soviet Union. While the bulk of the population is to be found in Tatarstan (nearly 2 million) and neighbouring regions, significant numbers of Kazan Tatars live in Central Asia, Siberia and the Caucasus. Outside of Tatarstan, urban Tatars usually speak Russian as their first language (in cities such as Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Tashkent, Almaty, and cities of the Ural and western Siberia) and other languages in a worldwide diaspora.

Kazan Tatars[link]

Qolsharif and his students defend their mosque during the Siege of Kazan.

In the 1910s the Kazan Tatars numbered about half a million in the Kazan Governorate in Tatarstan, their historical homeland, about 400,000 in each of the governments of Ufa, 100,000 in Samara and Simbirsk, and about 30,000 in Vyatka, Saratov, Tambov, Penza, Nizhny Novgorod, Perm and Orenburg. An additional 15,000 had migrated to Ryazan or were settled as prisoners in the 16th and 17th centuries in Lithuania (Vilnius, Grodno and Podolia). An additional 2000 resided in St. Petersburg. The Kazan Tatars speak the Tatar language, a Turkic language with substantial amount of Russian and Arabic loanwords. Most Kazan Tatars practice Sunni Islam.

Before 1917, polygamy was practised only by the wealthier classes and was a waning institution.

There is an ethnic nationalist movement among Kazan Tatars which stresses descent from the Bulgars and is known as Bulgarism - there have been graffiti on the walls in the streets of Kazan with phrases such as "Bulgaria is alive".^{[citation needed]}

Mishars[link]

Mişär-Tatars (or Mishars) are a group of Tatars speaking a dialect of the Tatar language. They are descendants of Burtas in the Middle Oka River area and Meschiora where they mixed with the Cuman-Kipchaks tribes. Nowadays they live in Chelyabinsk, Tambov, Penza, Ryazan, Nizhegorodskaya oblasts of Russia and in Bashkortostan and Mordovia. They lived near and along the Volga River, in Tatarstan.

Qasím Tatars[link]

The Western Tatars have their capital in the town of Qasím (Kasimov in Russian transcription) in Ryazan Oblast, with a Tatar population of 1100.^{[citation needed]}

Noqrat Tatars[link]

Tatars live in Russia's Kirov Oblast and Tatarstan.

Keräşens[link]

A Tatar warrior in battle.

Some Tatars were forcibly Christianized by Ivan the Terrible during the 16th century and later in the 18th century.

Some scientists suppose that Suars were ancestors of the Keräşen Tatars, and they had been converted to Christianity by Armenians in the 6th century, while they lived in the Caucasus. Suars, like other tribes (which later converted to Islam) became Volga Bulgars and later the modern Chuvash (mostly Christians) and Tatars (mostly Muslims).

Keräşen Tatars live all over Tatarstan and in Udmurtia, Bashkiria and Chelyabinsk Oblast. Some of them did assimilate among Chuvash and Tatars with Sunni Muslim self-identification. Eighty years of Atheistic Soviet rule made Tatars of both confessions not as religious as they were. As such, differences between Tatars and Keräşen Tatars now is only that Keräşens have Russian names.

Some Turkic (Kuman) tribes in Golden Horde converted to Christianity in the 13th and 14th centuries (Catholicism and Nestorianism). Some prayers, written in that time in the Codex Cumanicus, sound like modern Keräşen prayers, but there is no information about the connection between Christian Kumans and modern Keräşens.

Chinese Tatars[link]

A significant number of Volga Tatars emigrated during the Russian Civil War, mostly to Turkey and Harbin, China. According to the Chinese government, there are still 5,100 Tatars living in Xinjiang province.

Volga Tatars around the world[link]

Places where Volga Tatars live include:

• Ural and Upper Kama (since 15th century) 15th century - colonization, 16th - 17th century - re-settled by Russians, 17th - 19th century - exploring of Ural, working in the plants
• West Siberia (since 16th century): 16th - from Russian repressions after conquering of Khanate of Kazan by Russians, 17th - 19th century - exploring of West Siberia, end of 19th - first half of 20th - industrialization, railways constructing, 1930s - Joseph Stalin's repressions, 1970s - 1990s oil workers
• Moscow (since 17th century): Tatar feudals in the service of Russia, tradesmen, since 18th - Saint-Petersburg
• Kazakhstan (since 18th century): 18th – 19th centuries - Russian army officers and soldiers, 1930s – industrialization, since 1950s - settlers on virgin lands - re-emigration in 1990s
• Finland (since 1804): (mostly Mişärs) - 19th - from a group of some 20 villages in the Sergach region on the Volga River. See Finnish Tatars.
• Central Asia (since 19th century) (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Xinjiang ) - 19th Russian officers and soldiers, tradesmen, religious emigrants, 1920-1930s - industrialization, Soviet education program for Central Asia peoples, 1948, 1960 - help for Ashgabat and Tashkent ruined by earthquakes - re-emigration in 1980s
• Caucasus, especially Azerbaijan (since 19th century) - oil workers (1890s), bread tradesmen
• Northern China (since 1910s) - railway builders (1910s) - re-emigrated in 1950s
• East Siberia (since 19th century) - resettled farmers (19th), railroad builders (1910s, 1980s), exiled by the Soviet government in 1930s
• Germany and Austria - 1914, 1941 - prisoners of war, 1990s - emigration
• Turkey, Japan, Iran, China, Egypt (since 1918) - emigration
• UK, USA, Australia, Canada, Argentina, Mexico - (1920s) re-emigration from Germany, Turkey, Japan, China and others. 1950s - prisoners of war from Germany, which did not go back to the USSR, 1990s - emigration after the breakup of USSR
• Sakhalin, Kaliningrad, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Karelia - after 1944-45 builders, Soviet military personnel
• Murmansk Oblast, Khabarovsk Krai, Northern Poland and Northern Germany (1945–1990) - Soviet military personnel
• Israel - wives or husbands of Jews (1990s)

Astrakhan Tatars[link]

The Astrakhan Tatars (around 80,000) are a group of Tatars, descendants of the Astrakhan Khanate's agricultural population, who live mostly in Astrakhan Oblast. For the 2000 Russian census 2000, most Astrakhan Tatars declared themselves simply as Tatars and few declared themselves as Astrakhan Tatars. A large number of Volga Tatars live in Astrakhan Oblast and differences between them have been disappearing.

The Astrakhan Tatars are further divided into the Kundrov Tatars and the Karagash Tatars. The latter are also at times called the Karashi Tatars.^[6]

Text from Britannica 1911:

The Astrakhan Tatars number about 10,000 and are, with the Kalmyks, all that now remains of the once so powerful Astrakhan empire. They also are agriculturists and gardeners; while some 12,000 Kundrovsk Tatars still continue the nomadic life of their ancestors.

While Astrakhan (Ästerxan) Tatar is a mixed dialect, around 43,000 have assimilated to the Middle (i.e., Kazan) dialect. Their ancestors are Khazars, Kipchaks and some Volga Bulgars. (Volga Bulgars had trade colonies in modern Astrakhan and Volgograd oblasts of Russia.)

The Astrakhan Tatars also assimilated the Agrzhan.^[7]

Siberian Tatars[link]

The Siberian Tatars occupy three distinct regions—a strip running west to east from Tobolsk to Tomsk—the Altay and its spurs—and South Yeniseisk. They originated in the agglomerations of various Uralo-Altaic stems that, in the region north of the Altay, reached some degree of culture between the 4th and the 5th centuries, but were subdued and enslaved by the Mongols. According to the 2002 census there are 400550 Tatars in Siberia, but 300,000 of them are Volga Tatars who settled in Siberia during periods of colonization.^[8]

Baraba Tatars[link]

The Baraba Tatars take their name from one of their stems (Barama). After a strenuous resistance to Russian conquest, and much suffering at a later period from Kyrgyz and Kalmyk raids, they now live by agriculture—either in separate villages or along with Russians.

They numbered at least 9000 in 1990.

Tatars of East Europe[link]

Crimean Tatars[link]

The Ottoman campaign in Hungary in 1566, Crimean Tatars as vanguard

At the Battle of Warsaw in 1656 Tatars fought with the Poles against the Swedes

The famous Tatar commander Tugai Bey.

The Crimean Tatars emerged as a nation at the time of the Crimean Khanate. The Crimean Khanate was a Turkic-speaking Muslim state which was among the strongest powers in Eastern Europe until the beginning of the 18th century.^[9] The rulers of the Crimean Tatars were the progeny of Hacı I Giray a Jochid descendant of Genghis Khan.

Lithuanian Tatars[link]

After Tokhtamysh the Khan of the Golden Horde and a direct Jochid descendant of Genghis Khan was defeated by Timur, some of his tribesmen and loyalists sought refuge in Grand Duchy of Lithuania. These Muslim Tatar's were given land and nobility in return for military service and were known as Lipka Tatars. They are known to have taken part in the Battle of Grunwald.

Another group appeared in Jagoldai Duchy (Lithuania's vassal) near modern Kursk in 1437 and disappeared later.

The Lipka Tatars were among the first founders of Muslim communities in the United States.

Belarusian Tatars[link]

Islam spread in Belarus from the 14th to the 16th century. The process was encouraged by the Lithuanian princes, who invited Tatar Muslims from the Crimea and the Golden Horde as guards of state borders. Already in the 14th century the Tatars had been offered a settled way of life, state posts and service positions. By the end of the 16th century over 100,000 Tatars settled in Belarus and Lithuania, including those hired to government service, those who moved there voluntarily, prisoners of war, etc.

Tatars in Belarus generally follow Sunni Hanafi Islam. Some groups have accepted Christianity and been assimilated, but most adhere to Muslim religious traditions, which ensures their definite endogamy and preservation of ethnic features. Interethnic marriages with representatives of Belarusian, Polish, Lithuanian, Russian nationalities are not rare, but do not result in total assimilation.

Originating from different ethnic associations, Belarusian (and also Polish and Lithuanian) Tatars back in ancient days lost their native language and adopted Belarusian, Polish and Russian. However, the liturgy is conducted in the Arabic language, which is known by the clergymen. There are an estimated 5,000-10,000 Tatars in Belarus.

Polish Tatars[link]

Main articles: Lipka Tatars and Islam in Poland

Tatar cavalry training in their Sarai.

From the 13th to 17th centuries various groups of Tatars settled and/or found refuge within the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. This was promoted especially by the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, because of their reputation as skilled warriors. The Tatar settlers were all granted with szlachta (nobility) status, a tradition that was preserved until the end of the Commonwealth in the 18th century. They included the Lipka Tatars (13-14 centuries) as well as Crimean and Nogay Tatars (15th-16th centuries), all of which were noticeable in Polish military history, as well as Volga Tatars (16th-17th centuries). They all mostly settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, lands that are now in Lithuania and Belarus.

Various estimates of the number of Tatars in the Commonwealth in the 17th century are about 15,000 persons and 60 villages with mosques. Numerous royal privileges, as well as internal autonomy granted by the monarchs allowed the Tatars to preserve their religion, traditions and culture over the centuries. The Tatars were allowed to intermarry with Christians, a thing uncommon in Europe at the time. The May Constitution of 1791 gave the Tatars representation in the Polish Sejm.

Although by the 18th century the Tatars adopted the local language, the Islamic religion and many Tatar traditions (e.g. the sacrifice of bulls in their mosques during the main religious festivals) were preserved. This led to formation of a distinctive Muslim culture, in which the elements of Muslim orthodoxy mixed with religious tolerance formed a relatively liberal society. For instance, the women in Lipka Tatar society traditionally had the same rights and status as men, and could attend non-segregated schools.

King Charles X Gustav in skirmish with Tatars near Warsaw during the Second Northern War.

About 5,500 Tatars lived within the inter-war boundaries of Poland (1920–1939), and a Tatar cavalry unit had fought for the country's independence. The Tatars had preserved their cultural identity and sustained a number of Tatar organisations, including a Tatar archives, and a museum in Wilno (Vilnius).

The Tatars suffered serious losses during World War II and furthermore, after the border change in 1945 a large part of them found themselves in the Soviet Union. It is estimated that about 3000 Tatars live in present-day Poland, of which about 500 declared Tatar (rather than Polish) nationality in the 2002 census. There are two Tatar villages (Bohoniki and Kruszyniany) in the north-east of present-day Poland, as well as urban Tatar communities in Warsaw, Gdańsk, Białystok, and Gorzów Wielkopolski. Tatars in Poland sometimes have a Muslim surname with a Polish ending: Ryzwanowicz; another surname sometimes adopted by more assimilated Tatars is Taterczyński, literally "son of a Tatar".

The Tatars were relatively very noticeable in the Commonwealth military as well as in Polish and Lithuanian political and intellectual life for such a small community.^{[citation needed]} In modern-day Poland, their presence is also widely known, due in part to their noticeable role in the historical novels of Henryk Sienkiewicz, which are universally recognized in Poland. A number of Polish intellectual figures have also been Tatars, e.g. the prominent historian Jerzy Łojek.

A small community of Polish speaking Tatars settled in Brooklyn, New York City in the early 1900s. They established a mosque that is still in use today.

Dobruja Tatars[link]

Main articles: Tatars of Romania, Crimean Tatars in Romania and Crimean Tatars in Bulgaria

Tatars were present on the territory of today's Romania and Bulgaria since the 13th century. In Romania, according to the 2002 census, 24,000 people declared their ethnicity as Tatar, most of them being Crimean Tatars living in Constanţa County in the region of Dobruja. The Crimean Tatars were colonized there by the Ottoman Empire beginning with the 17th Century.

Tatar language[link]

The Tatar language together with the Bashkir language forms the Kypchak-Bolgar (also "Uralo-Caspian") group within the Kypchak languages (Northwestern Turkic).

There are three Tatar dialects: Eastern, Central, Western.^[10] The Western dialect (Misher) is spoken mostly by Mishärs, the Central dialect is spoken by Kazan and Astrakhan Tatars, and the Eastern (Sibir) dialect is spoken by Siberian Tatars in western Siberia. All three dialects have subdialects. Central Tatar is the base of literary Tatar.

Tatar was written with the Arabic alphabet prior to 1928, in the so-called İske imlâ alphabet and from 1920 to 1928 in the Yaña imlâ alphabet. In 1928 the Soviet Union introduced a Latin orthography, known as Jaŋalif. Jaŋalif was replaced by a Cyrillic orthography in 1940. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, use of Jaŋalif was revived, but the Cyrillic script was again enforced in 2002, when the Russian Federation passed a controversial law enforcing the use of Cyrillic for all official languages.^[11]

Famous Russian Tatars[link]

• Marat Kabaev, association football coach
• Galima Shugurova, former gymnast
• Rudolf Nureyev, dancer & choreographer
• Aliya Garayeva, gymnast
• Dinara Gimatova, former gymnast
• Sultan Galiev, Bolshevik
• Timati, rapper and actor
• Marat Safin, tennis player and politician

References[link]

lez:Татарар

Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy photographed at his Yasnaya Polyana estate in May 1908 by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. The only known color photograph of the writer.
Born	Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-09-09)September 9, 1828 Yasnaya Polyana, Russian Empire
Died	November 20, 1910(1910-11-20) (aged 82) Astapovo, Russian Empire
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist
Language	Russian, French
Nationality	Russian
Period	1852–1910
Notable work(s)	War and Peace Anna Karenina A Confession
Spouse(s)	Sophia Tolstaya
Children	14
Signature

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Никола́евич Толсто́й, pronounced [lʲev nʲɪkɐˈlaɪvʲɪtɕ tɐlˈstoj] ( listen); known in the Anglosphere as Leo Tolstoy) (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910^[1]) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists.^[2][3] Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.

His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi^[4] and Martin Luther King, Jr.^[5]

Biography[link]

Tolstoy at age 20, 1848

Tolstoy was born in Yasnaya Polyana, the family estate in the Tula region of Russia. The Tolstoys were a well-known family of old Russian nobility. He was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, and Countess Mariya Tolstaya (Volkonskaya). Tolstoy's parents died when he was young, so he and his siblings were brought up by relatives. In 1844, he began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University. His teachers described him as "both unable and unwilling to learn."^[6] Tolstoy left university in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and then spent much of his time in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he went with his older brother to the Caucasus and joined the army. It was about this time that he started writing.

His conversion from a dissolute and privileged society author to the non-violent and spiritual anarchist of his latter days was brought about by his experience in the army as well as two trips around Europe in 1857 and 1860–61. Others who followed the same path were Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin. During his 1857 visit, Tolstoy witnessed a public execution in Paris, a traumatic experience that would mark the rest of his life. Writing in a letter to his friend Vasily Botkin: "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere."^[7]

His European trip in 1860–61 shaped both his political and literary transformation when he met Victor Hugo, whose literary talents Tolstoy praised after reading Hugo's newly finished Les Miserables. A comparison of Hugo's novel and Tolstoy's War and Peace shows the influence of the evocation of its battle scenes. Tolstoy's political philosophy was also influenced by a March 1861 visit to French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, then living in exile under an assumed name in Brussels. Apart from reviewing Proudhon's forthcoming publication, La Guerre et la Paix (War and Peace in French), whose title Tolstoy would borrow for his masterpiece, the two men discussed education, as Tolstoy wrote in his educational notebooks: "If I recount this conversation with Proudhon, it is to show that, in my personal experience, he was the only man who understood the significance of education and of the printing press in our time."

Fired by enthusiasm, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana and founded thirteen schools for his serfs' children, based on the principles Tolstoy described in his 1862 essay "The School at Yasnaya Polyana".^[8] Tolstoy's educational experiments were short-lived, partly due to harassment by the Tsarist secret police. However, as a direct forerunner to A. S. Neill's Summerhill School, the school at Yasnaya Polyana^[9] can justifiably be claimed to be the first example of a coherent theory of democratic education.

Personal life[link]

Tolstoy's house at Yasnaya Polyana, today a museum.

Tolstoy's wife Sophia and their daughter Alexandra

On September 23, 1862, Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs, who was 16 years his junior and the daughter of a court physician. She was called Sonya, the Russian diminutive of Sofya, by her family and friends.^[10] They had thirteen children, five of whom died during childhood.^[11] The marriage was marked from the outset by sexual passion and emotional insensitivity when Tolstoy, on the eve of their marriage, gave her his diaries detailing his extensive sexual past and the fact that one of the serfs on his estate had borne him a son.^[10] Even so, their early married life was ostensibly happy and allowed Tolstoy much freedom to compose War and Peace and Anna Karenina with Sonya acting as his secretary, proof-reader and financial manager.^[10] However, their latter life together has been described by A. N. Wilson as one of the unhappiest in literary history. Tolstoy's relationship with his wife deteriorated as his beliefs became increasingly radical. This saw him seeking to reject his inherited and earned wealth, including the renunciation of the copyrights on his earlier works.

Novels and fictional works[link]

Tolstoy is one of the giants of Russian literature. His most famous works include the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina and novellas such as Hadji Murad and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. His contemporaries paid him lofty tributes. Fyodor Dostoyevsky thought him the greatest of all living novelists. Gustave Flaubert, on reading a translation of War and Peace, exclaimed, "What an artist and what a psychologist!" Anton Chekhov, who often visited Tolstoy at his country estate, wrote, "When literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone. What he does serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature."

Later critics and novelists continue to bear testament to Tolstoy's art. Virginia Woolf declared him the greatest of all novelists. James Joyce noted that, "He is never dull, never stupid, never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical!". Thomas Mann wrote of Tolstoy's seemingly guileless artistry: "Seldom did art work so much like nature". Such sentiments were shared by the likes of Proust, Faulkner and Nabokov. The latter heaped superlatives upon The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Anna Karenina; he questioned, however, the reputation of War and Peace, and sharply criticized Resurrection and The Kreutzer Sonata.

Tolstoy's earliest works, the autobiographical novels Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852–1856), tell of a rich landowner's son and his slow realization of the chasm between himself and his peasants. Though he later rejected them as sentimental, a great deal of Tolstoy's own life is revealed. They retain their relevance as accounts of the universal story of growing up.

Tolstoy served as a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment during the Crimean War, recounted in his Sevastapol Sketches. His experiences in battle helped stir his subsequent pacifism and gave him material for realistic depiction of the horrors of war in his later work.^[12]

His fiction consistently attempts to convey realistically the Russian society in which he lived.^[13] The Cossacks (1863) describes the Cossack life and people through a story of a Russian aristocrat in love with a Cossack girl. Anna Karenina (1877) tells parallel stories of an adulterous woman trapped by the conventions and falsities of society and of a philosophical landowner (much like Tolstoy), who works alongside the peasants in the fields and seeks to reform their lives. Tolstoy not only drew from his own life experiences but also created characters in his own image, such as Pierre Bezukhov and Prince Andrei in War and Peace, Levin in Anna Karenina and to some extent, Prince Nekhlyudov in Resurrection.

War and Peace is generally thought to be one of the greatest novels ever written, remarkable for its dramatic breadth and unity. Its vast canvas includes 580 characters, many historical with others fictional. The story moves from family life to the headquarters of Napoleon, from the court of Alexander I of Russia to the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. Tolstoy's original idea for the novel was to investigate the causes of the Decembrist revolt, to which it refers only in the last chapters, from which can be deduced that Andrei Bolkonski's son will become one of the Decembrists. The novel explores Tolstoy's theory of history, and in particular the insignificance of individuals such as Napoleon and Alexander. Somewhat surprisingly, Tolstoy did not consider War and Peace to be a novel (nor did he consider many of the great Russian fictions written at that time to be novels). This view becomes less surprising if one considers that Tolstoy was a novelist of the realist school who considered the novel to be a framework for the examination of social and political issues in nineteenth-century life.^[14] War and Peace (which is to Tolstoy really an epic in prose) therefore did not qualify. Tolstoy thought that Anna Karenina was his first true novel.^[15]

After Anna Karenina, Tolstoy concentrated on Christian themes, and his later novels such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) and What Is to Be Done? develop a radical anarcho-pacifist Christian philosophy which led to his excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901.^[16] For all the praise showered on Anna Karenina and War and Peace, Tolstoy rejected the two works later in his life as something not as true of reality.^[17]

Tolstoy on Shakespeare[link]

During his life, Tolstoy came to the conclusion that William Shakespeare was a bad dramatist and not a true artist at all. Tolstoy explained his views in a critical essay on Shakespeare written in 1903: "I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful aesthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear", "Romeo and Juliet", "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium...". He goes on:

Several times I read the dramas and the comedies and historical plays, and I invariably underwent the same feelings: repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment. At the present time, before writing this preface, being desirous once more to test myself, I have, as an old man of seventy-five, again read the whole of Shakespeare, including the historical plays, the "Henrys," "Troilus and Cressida," the "Tempest," "Cymbeline," and I have felt, with even greater force, the same feelings,—this time, however, not of bewilderment, but of firm, indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of a great genius which Shakespeare enjoys, and which compels writers of our time to imitate him and readers and spectators to discover in him non-existent merits,—thereby distorting their aesthetic and ethical understanding,—is a great evil, as is every untruth.^[18]

Understanding that his conclusions contradict popular opinion, Tolstoy supported his opinion by detailed analysis of King Lear. George Orwell wrote a well-known response to this: Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool.

Religious and political beliefs[link]

Tolstoy dressed in peasant clothing by Ilya Repin (1901)

After reading Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, Tolstoy gradually became converted to the ascetic morality upheld in that work as the proper spiritual path for the upper classes: "Do you know what this summer has meant for me? Constant raptures over Schopenhauer and a whole series of spiritual delights which I've never experienced before. ... no student has ever studied so much on his course, and learned so much, as I have this summer"^[19]

In Chapter VI of A Confession, Tolstoy quoted the final paragraph of Schopenhauer's work. It explained how the nothingness that results from complete denial of self is only a relative nothingness, and is not to be feared. The novelist was struck by the description of Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu ascetic renunciation as being the path to holiness. After reading passages such as the following, which abound in Schopenhauer's ethical chapters, the Russian nobleman chose poverty and formal denial of the will:

But this very necessity of involuntary suffering (by poor people) for eternal salvation is also expressed by that utterance of the Savior (Matthew 19:24): "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Therefore those who were greatly in earnest about their eternal salvation, chose voluntary poverty when fate had denied this to them and they had been born in wealth. Thus Buddha Sakyamuni was born a prince, but voluntarily took to the mendicant's staff; and Francis of Assisi, the founder of the mendicant orders who, as a youngster at a ball, where the daughters of all the notabilities were sitting together, was asked: "Now Francis, will you not soon make your choice from these beauties?" and who replied: "I have made a far more beautiful choice!" "Whom?" "La poverta (poverty)": whereupon he abandoned every thing shortly afterwards and wandered through the land as a mendicant.^[20]

Tolstoy's Christian beliefs centered on the Sermon on the Mount, particularly the injunction to turn the other cheek, which he saw as a justification for pacifism, nonviolence and nonresistance. Various versions of "Tolstoy's Bible" have been published, indicating the passages Tolstoy most relied on, specifically, the reported words of Jesus himself.^[21] Tolstoy believed being a Christian required him to be a pacifist; the consequences of being a pacifist, and the apparently inevitable waging of war by government, made him a philosophical anarchist.

Tolstoy believed that a true Christian could find lasting happiness by striving for inner self-perfection through following the Great Commandment of loving one's neighbor and God rather than looking outward to the Church or state for guidance.^{[citation needed]} His belief in nonresistance (nonviolence) when faced by conflict is another distinct attribute of his philosophy based on Christ's teachings.^{[citation needed]} By directly influencing Mahatma Gandhi with this idea through his work The Kingdom of God is Within You (full text of English translation available on Wikisource), Tolstoy has had a huge influence on the nonviolent resistance movement to this day. He believed that the aristocracy were a burden on the poor, and that the only solution to how we live together is through anarchism.^{[citation needed]} He also opposed private property^[22] and the institution of marriage and valued the ideals of chastity and sexual abstinence (discussed in Father Sergius and his preface to The Kreutzer Sonata), ideals also held by the young Gandhi. Tolstoy's later work derives a passion and verve from the depth of his austere moral views.^[23] The sequence of the temptation of Sergius in Father Sergius, for example, is among his later triumphs. Gorky relates how Tolstoy once read this passage before himself and Chekhov and that Tolstoy was moved to tears by the end of the reading. Other later passages of rare power include the crises of self faced by the protagonists of The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man, where the main character in the former or the reader in the latter is made aware of the foolishness of the protagonists' lives.

Ilya Tolstoy, Leo Tolstoy's son

Tolstoy had a profound influence on the development of Christian anarchist thought. The Tolstoyans were a small Christian anarchist group formed by Tolstoy's companion, Vladimir Chertkov (1854–1936), to spread Tolstoy's religious teachings. Prince Peter Kropotkin wrote of Tolstoy in the article on anarchism in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:

Without naming himself an anarchist, Leo Tolstoy, like his predecessors in the popular religious movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Chojecki, Denk and many others, took the anarchist position as regards the state and property rights, deducing his conclusions from the general spirit of the teachings of Jesus and from the necessary dictates of reason. With all the might of his talent he made (especially in The Kingdom of God is Within You) a powerful criticism of the church, the state and law altogether, and especially of the present property laws. He describes the state as the domination of the wicked ones, supported by brutal force. Robbers, he says, are far less dangerous than a well-organized government. He makes a searching criticism of the prejudices which are current now concerning the benefits conferred upon men by the church, the state and the existing distribution of property, and from the teachings of Jesus he deduces the rule of non-resistance and the absolute condemnation of all wars. His religious arguments are, however, so well combined with arguments borrowed from a dispassionate observation of the present evils, that the anarchist portions of his works appeal to the religious and the non-religious reader alike.^[24]

Tolstoy and his grandchildren, 1909

During the Boxer Rebellion in China, Tolstoy praised the Boxers. He was harshly critical of the atrocities committed by the Russians, Germans, and other western troops. He accused them of engaging in slaughter when he heard about the lootings, rapes, and murders, in what he saw as Christian brutality. Tolstoy also named the two monarchs most responsible for the atrocities; Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany.^[25][26] Tolstoy also read the works of Chinese thinker and philosopher, Confucius.^[27][28]

Film footage of Tolstoy's 80th birthday at Yasnaya Polyana. Footage shows his wife Sofya (picking flowers in the garden), daughter Aleksandra (sitting in the carriage in the white blouse), his aide and confidante, V. Chertkov (bald man with the beard and mustache) and students. Filmed by Aleksandr Osipovich Drankov, 1908.

In hundreds of essays over the last twenty years of his life, Tolstoy reiterated the anarchist critique of the state and recommended books by Kropotkin and Proudhon to his readers, whilst rejecting anarchism's espousal of violent revolutionary means. In the 1900 essay, "On Anarchy", he wrote; "The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without Authority, there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power ... There can be only one permanent revolution—a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man." Despite his misgivings about anarchist violence, Tolstoy took risks to circulate the prohibited publications of anarchist thinkers in Russia, and corrected the proofs of Kropotkin's "Words of a Rebel", illegally published in St Petersburg in 1906.^[29]

In 1908, Tolstoy wrote A Letter to a Hindoo^[30] outlining his belief in non-violence as a means for India to gain independence from British colonial rule. In 1909, a copy of the letter fell into the hands of Mohandas Gandhi who was working as a lawyer in South Africa at the time and in the beginnings of becoming an activist. Tolstoy's letter was significant for Gandhi who wrote to the famous writer seeking proof that he was the real author, leading to further correspondence between them.^[30] Reading Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You also convinced Gandhi to avoid violence and espouse nonviolent resistance, a debt Gandhi acknowledged in his autobiography, calling Tolstoy "the greatest apostle of non-violence that the present age has produced". The correspondence between Tolstoy and Gandhi would only last a year, from October 1909 until Tolstoy's death in November 1910, but led Gandhi to give the name, the Tolstoy Colony, to his second ashram in South Africa.^[31] Besides non-violent resistance, the two men shared a common belief in the merits of vegetarianism, the subject of several of Tolstoy's essays.^[32]

Tolstoy also became a major supporter of the Esperanto movement. Tolstoy was impressed by the pacifist beliefs of the Doukhobors and brought their persecution to the attention of the international community, after they burned their weapons in peaceful protest in 1895. He aided the Doukhobors in migrating to Canada.^[33] In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, Tolstoy condemned the war and wrote to the Japanese Buddhist priest Soyen Shaku in a failed attempt to make a joint pacifist statement.

Death[link]

Tolstoy's grave with flowers at Yasnaya Polyana.

Tolstoy died in 1910, at the age of 82. He died of pneumonia^[34] at Astapovo train station, after falling ill when he left home in the middle of winter. His death came only days after gathering the nerve to abandon his family and wealth^[35] and take up the path of a wandering ascetic,^{[citation needed]} a path that he had agonized over pursuing for decades. He had not been at the peak of health before leaving home; his wife and daughters were all actively engaged in caring for him daily. He had been speaking and writing of his own death in the days preceding his departure from home, but fell ill at the station not far from home. The station master took Tolstoy to his apartment, where his personal doctors were called to the scene. He was given injections of morphine and camphor.

The police tried to limit access to his funeral procession, but thousands of peasants lined the streets at his funeral. Still, some peasants were heard to say that, other than knowing that "some nobleman had died," they knew little else about Tolstoy.^[36]

In film[link]

A 2009 film about Tolstoy's final year, The Last Station, based on the novel by Jay Parini, was made by director Michael Hoffman with Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as Sofya Tolstoya. Both performers were nominated for Oscars for their roles. There have been other films about the writer, including Departure of a Grand Old Man, made in 1912 just two years after his death, How Fine, How Fresh the Roses Were (1913), and Leo Tolstoy, directed by and starring Sergei Gerasimov in 1984.

There is also a famous lost film of Tolstoy made a decade before he died. In 1901, the American travel lecturer Burton Holmes visited Yasnaya Polyana with Albert J. Beveridge, the U.S. senator and historian. As the three men conversed, Holmes filmed Tolstoy with his 60-mm movie camera. Afterwards, Beveridge's advisers succeeded in having the film destroyed, fearing that documentary evidence of a meeting with the Russian author might hurt Beveridge's chances of running for the U.S. presidency.^[37]

Gallery[link]

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  1854

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  Tolstoy in military uniform, by Sergei Lvovich Levitsky, 1856

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  Self-portrait of Tolstoy, c1860s

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  The novel “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy. Romanian version: “Război şi pace”

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  Tolstoy at his desk, 1870

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  Sketch based on photograph of Tolstoy taken in 1876

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  Tolstoy with his wife and son, photo taken between 1870–90

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  Ca. 1897

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  Tolstoy with his wife and family, 1887

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  Portrait of Tolstoy in 1887, by Ilya Repin

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  Tolstoy commemorated on a Soviet stamp issued in 1978

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  Tolstoy with fellow contributors to Sovremennik Magazine Tolstoy's first work Childhood was published in Sovremennik.

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  Tolstoy with Maxim Gorky in Yasnaya Polyana, 1900

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  1908

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  Tolstoy and his wife Sophia Tolstaya, taken September 23, 1910, about six weeks before his death

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  Tolstoy's bedroom at Yasnaya Polyana

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  Tolstoy with a group of children; postcard by Elisabeth Bohm, 1909

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  Tolstoy's sons

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  Tolstoy's death mask

Bibliography[link]

See also[link]

	Russia portal
	Biography portal
	Politics portal

• Anarchism and religion
• Christian vegetarianism
• Confirmation bias, a psychological phenomenon of which Tolstoy was an early informal observer

References[link]

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links[link]

Find more about Leo Tolstoy on Wikipedia's sister projects:
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