Sophia Tolstoy Biography

The provincial life seemed to a young active girl boring, so she herself found classes - she played the piano, read, painted. The bride and groom devoted a lot of time to the housekeeping - arranged the house and landed flower beds around it. During this period, the spouses talked a lot with each other. According to the memoirs of Sofia Andreevna herself, she was completely influenced by her husband - "she looked at him with her eyes and thought with his thoughts." She did not always like it, and she tried to defend her personal boundaries.

Nevertheless, this period was the happiest and most cloudless in their relationship. Everything changed after the birth of the first -born Sergey. A stream of worries that every young mother faced at Sofya Andreevna. Over time, there were only more of them - in proportion to an increase in the number of children in the family. Their upbringing was mainly engaged in Sofya Andreevna.

She took care that each of them had the clothes necessary in size and season, so that they were all full and healthy. She entertained them - organized home performances and family celebrations. This is not to say that Tolstoy did not help his wife at all and did not engage in children. However, he was much more interested in literary work and various projects - for example, the creation of a school for peasant children, livestock, agronomy and charity.

So, during mass hunger in Russia, he was engaged in the opening of public canteens, which his wife actively helped him. In parallel with household chores, Sofya Andreevna rewritten her husband's works. The volume of work was huge - Tolstoy regularly made corrections to his manuscripts. Later, Sofya Andreevna became a proofreader and a kind of literary agent of her husband - instead of him communicated with a censorship committee, publishers and printing houses.

At the same time, the woman suffered from her own unrealism, as evidenced by her diaries. Sofya Andreevna composed novels, stories for children and poems in prose. She even published the latter in one of the capital's literary magazines under the pseudonym "Tired". However, she did not have enough time and effort to a full immersion in her own work, which the woman was very worried about.

The more obligations to conduct the literary affairs of her husband, Sofya Andreevna took upon himself, the more he departed from family life and writing. Sofya Andreevna was not up to high matters - they were too torn off from her real life, filled with labor, work on publishing books and worries about children and grandchildren. This annoyed Tolstoy, who treated his ideas extremely seriously.

What the spouse caused a response irritation - she did not understand part of her husband’s ideas, the part did not accept, and her intention to completely abandon property and met exclusively with physical labor with undisguised horror. Tolstoy's preaching activity annoyed church authorities. They repeatedly tried to find a common language with a obstinate writer - after all, he was a universally recognized authority, and the whole world closely followed his words.

When it was not possible to establish relations, the Synod issued a definition in which he stated Tolstoy’s “falling away” from Orthodoxy.

Contrary to a common myth, the writer was not excommunicated, since the definition does not correspond to the formal canons of this procedure. Thus, the Church wanted to force the writer to reconcile with it. However, he categorically rejected this opportunity. She also threatened that in the event of the death of Tolstoy, she would find a priest who, despite all the prohibitions, will still fulfill his funeral service.

Subsequently, she kept her word - some time after the writer’s funeral, the disgraced priest Grigory Kalinovsky plunged him. Gradually, the relations of Tolstoy and Sofia Andreevna finally deteriorated - their views were too different. As a result, the writer decided to leave home to lead a solitary and ascetic life. He left his wife a note in which he forbade him to search for him.

The writer was accompanied by his personal doctor, later the daughter of Alexander Tolstaya joined them. However, the classic traveled for less than two weeks - on the road he caught a cold, the disease flowed into severe pneumonia, which led to his death. After the death of her husband, Sofya Andreevna had a hard time. Emperor Nicholas II tried to support the widow, who appointed her a personal pension.

However, she was barely enough - Sofya Andreevna could not refuse monetary assistance to her many relatives, and the authorities were not going to support all the Tolstoy at the state expense. In recent years, the widow was engaged in the preservation of her husband’s memory - he systematized his diaries and letters. This was done only after the establishment of Soviet power to their daughter Alexander.

Modern literary scholars diverge in the assessments of the personality of Sophia Andreevna. Some blame her in Tolstoy's death, others believe that he would not be able to become a great writer without her active support.One thing is indisputable - it is thanks to her efforts that modern researchers can turn to unique materials about Tolstoy's life. In the selection, we present you documentaries about Leo Tolstoy, many of which are based on the documents that his wife preserved.