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0899017 - Count Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828 - 1910) - Travels in Europe followed active service in the Crimean War. He then returned to his family estate of Yasnaya Polyana. He married in 1862 and subsequently wrote his best known novels War and Peace (1863-9) and Anna Karenina (1873-7). The former is an epic tale of the Napoleonic invasion and the lives of three aristocratic families; the latter describes a married woman's passion for a young officer and her tragic fate. He devoted much energy to the education of his peasants but in later life underwent a spiritual crisis, espousing a moral code based on self-sufficiency, non-resistance to evil, belief in God, love of humankind. This led him to renounce property, and repudiate government and organized religion. This provoked The Orthodox Church to excommunicate him in 1901 and to ban many of his works.
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