Lev Tolstoy (Yasnaya Polyana, 1828 - Astapovo, 1910
Russian novelist, deep social and moral thinker, and one of the most eminent writers of realistic fiction of all time.
After a brief and unfortunate attempt to improve the living conditions of the servants of their lands, surrendered to the dissipated life of high society aristocratic Moscow. In 1851 he decided to join the army. In the Caucasus he came into contact with the Cossacks, who greatly influenced his novellas.
Tolstoy returned to St. Petersburg in 1856, and was attracted to the education of farmers. It opened in Yasnaya Polyana school for peasant children in which he applied his educational methods, anticipating modern progressive education. In 1862, he married Sonya Andreyevna Bers, a member of a cultured family in Moscow. For the next fifteen years he was an extended family, successfully he managed its properties and wrote his two major novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877)