Imaginary Interviews: My Visit with Leo Tolstoy

In this imagined interview, I sat down with Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), the Russian literary giant whose novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina redefined the possibilities of fiction, and whose later philosophical and spiritual writings reshaped his life and influenced global thought. A man of profound contradictions, Tolstoy was both an aristocrat and a champion of the poor, a soldier turned pacifist, and a novelist who ultimately sought truth beyond art. Here, I explore the pivotal moments that drove his midlife transformation, his embrace of pacifism, and the roots of his enduring influence as a writer and thinker. Through Tolstoy’s own words, we glimpse his restless spirit, unyielding moral quest, and vision for a better world.

EN: Count Tolstoy, your novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina are considered masterpieces. How did your early life shape your path to becoming such an influential writer?

Leo Tolstoy: My early years were a tangle of privilege and pain. Born in 1828 to a noble family at Yasnaya Polyana, I was orphaned young—my mother died before I was two, my father when I was nine. That loss left a void, a hunger for meaning. I was a wild youth, prone to gambling, debauchery, and searching for purpose in all the wrong places—university, the army, society’s pleasures. Yet, those years in the Caucasus as a soldier and my travels exposed me to life’s raw edges: the courage of peasants, the brutality of war, the simplicity of nature. Writing became my way to wrestle with these truths. I poured my questions about life, love, and death into stories, striving to capture the chaos and beauty of human existence. My novels grew from that struggle to understand, to make sense of a world both glorious and flawed.

 

EN: In your fifties, you made the radical decision to release your serfs and renounce your estate. What prompted this dramatic shift in your life and values?

Leo Tolstoy: By my fifties, I was drowning in despair despite my wealth and fame. Anna Karenina was behind me, yet I felt empty, haunted by the question: What is the meaning of life? I saw the injustice of my aristocratic life—my comfort built on the toil of serfs, men and women no less human than I. My Christian awakening, not the Church’s dogma but Christ’s teachings, pierced me. In the Gospels, I found a call to simplicity, to love all as equals. Keeping serfs, owning vast lands while others starved—it was sin, plain and simple. In 1861, I’d supported the emancipation of serfs in Russia, but that wasn’t enough. I freed those on my estate and tried to give away my lands, though my family resisted. I could no longer live a lie, hoarding what belonged to all in God’s eyes.

EN: You served as a soldier in the Crimean War, yet later became a fervent pacifist. What led you to reject violence and advocate for nonresistance?

Leo Tolstoy: War scars the soul. In the Crimea, I saw men cut down, their lives snuffed out for empires’ games. I carried that weight, but it was my spiritual crisis in the 1870s that turned me fully against violence. Reading Christ’s words—“Resist not evil” and “Love your enemies”—I realized war and killing were an affront to God’s law. Violence begets violence, chaining humanity to suffering. My book The Kingdom of God Is Within You lays it out: true power lies in love, in refusing to harm another, even an enemy. I saw governments and armies as tools of oppression, not progress. Pacifism wasn’t weakness but strength—a radical trust in humanity’s capacity for good, guided by the divine spark within us all.

 

EN: Your works have inspired readers, writers, and thinkers worldwide, from Gandhi to modern novelists. How did you achieve such profound influence as a writer?

Leo Tolstoy: Influence was never my aim—truth was. I wrote to grapple with life’s questions, to hold a mirror to the human soul. War and Peace and Anna Karenina wove history, love, and morality into stories that felt alive because they came from my own struggles. I didn’t shy from showing people’s flaws, their contradictions, their search for meaning. Readers saw themselves in that. Later, my essays and moral writings—A Confession, What I Believe—spoke plainly to universal longings: purpose, justice, peace. I wrote for the peasant as much as the scholar, in a language raw and honest. If I influenced anyone, it’s because I dared to ask hard questions and live by the answers, however imperfectly.

EN: You faced criticism, even from your family, for your radical changes. How did you reconcile your ideals with the realities of living in a complex world?

Leo Tolstoy: Reconciliation was a daily battle. My wife, Sonya, bore the brunt of my choices—she managed our estate while I preached simplicity, a hypocrisy that pained me. I wanted to give everything away, but family duties tethered me. Critics called me a dreamer, a fool, yet I couldn’t unsee the truth: wealth and power corrupt. I strove to live simply, wearing peasant clothes, working the fields, but I was still a count, entangled in privilege. The struggle taught me humility—to act on truth as best I could, knowing perfection is God’s alone. I urged others to do the same: live your conscience, even if you stumble.

EN: If you could observe the modern world, what aspects of your teachings do you think are most needed today?

Leo Tolstoy: Your world chokes on greed, division, and endless wars. My teachings—simplicity, love, nonresistance—are cries for sanity. Live simply, free from the tyranny of possessions. See every soul as equal, whether prince or pauper, to heal your fractured societies. Above all, reject violence—your weapons grow deadlier, but peace is still the only path to true progress. Seek the kingdom of God within you, not in power or wealth. That inner truth can still redeem a world lost in noise.

 

EN: Any final words for our readers?

Leo Tolstoy: Life is a gift, but only if you seek its meaning. Question everything—your comforts, your society, your heart. Live by love, not force; by truth, not lies. The divine is within you, waiting to guide you to a life of purpose. Dare to follow it, no matter the cost, and you’ll find peace that no wealth can buy.

EN: Thank you again for this time together and your work to make this world a better place. 

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Three Seeds from the Diaries of Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy at 20 in 1848.

Beautiful sunny day here. Re-connected with a friend over coffee. Shared stories from the past couple years of our life journeys. Feeling laid back, reflective.

My recent months of reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn brought me back in touch with Tolstoy, the pre-eminent literary light of the previous century. An aim of Solzhenitsyn's was to become the Tolstoy of Russian literature for the 20th century.

Because I've never read War and Peace and get stymied each time I threaten to begin it, I decided to watch one of the movies based on the classic, which I am in the middle of, despite it being a poor substitute. And even though the movie is but a shadow of the book, I see glimmers of Solzhenitsyn's massive story The Red Wheel, which begins with August 1914.

What follows here are three excerpts from the diaries of Leo Tolstoy.

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OUR PLACE IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS
How good it is to remember one's insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of an animal amid billions of animals; and one's abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in comparison with Sirius and others, and one's life span in comparison with billions on billions of ages. There is only one significance, you are a worker. The assignment is inscribed in your reason and heart and expressed clearly and comprehensibly by the best among the beings similar to you. The reward for doing the assignment is immediately within you. But what the significance of the assignment is or of its completion, that you are not given to know, nor do you need to know it. It is good enough as it is. What else could you desire?

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Tolstoy in 1897

A MID-LIFE CRISIS
Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort? . . . How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.

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IMPORTANT QUESTIONS
My question … was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man from the foolish child to the wisest elder: it was a question without an answer to which one cannot live, as I had found by experience. It was: “What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life?” Differently expressed, the question is: “Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything?” It can also be expressed thus: “Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”

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Related Link
Tolstoy Asks Us To Address One Question: How Should We Then Live