The Tolstoys were a very hospitable family. It happened sometimes, that about 50 people gathered at the dining table. Then the chairs around the table were put in two rows – not for dinner, but for an interesting conversation. In this room they also played chess, did needlework by the light of the big oil lamp, held family masquerades and performances, played different games.The young people often gathered here to sing, and dance, and play the guitar Classical music, Russian folk songs, Gypsy romances could be heard in this house every day.

• The portrait of Leo Tolstoy by Ivan Kramskoy (1873)

  “I remember going up to the small drawing room”, Tolstoy’s wife Sofia recalls, “and looking at these two artists, one painting a portrait of Tolstoy and the other writing his novel “Anna Karenina.” Their expressions were serious and concentrated, two real artists of the first order, and I felt such a deep reverence for them in my heart.”

• The portrait of Leo Tolstoy by Ilya Repin (1887).

  Repin was not happy with this portrait: “There`s no air in it and the perspective`s wrong”. “However,” Sofia insists, “the eyes in this portrait, Lev Nikolayevitch`s small, sharp grey eyes, are painted with a remarkable accuracy not found in any other portraits of Tolstoy, either by Repin or any other artist.”

For a long time here was the bedroom of Tolstoy’s “dearly beloved aunty” (as he called her) Tatiana Yergolskaya – a distant relative of the family who brought up Tolstoy, his brothers and sister after their parents’ death. Tolstoy’s mother died when he was 18 months old, and his father – when he was 9 years old.

After the death of his Aunt Tatiana Tolstoy’s wife Sophia used to spend a lot of time in this cosy room…

In this room Sofia did her needle-work, taught her children Russian, French and German, and copied Leo Tolstoy’s draught manuscripts. “Copying “War and Peace” and Lev Nikolayevitch’s works in general gave me a great aesthetic enjoyment”, she was to write later. “I used to wait for the evening undaunted by the task and delighted at the opportunity to renew the pleasure of following the further course of the action. I admired this life of the mind, all the twists and turns, the surprises and various incomprehensible forms of his writing.”

• The portrait of Sofia with the youngest daughter Sasha by N.Ghe (1886).

In different years Tolstoy’s study was in different rooms. But it looked almost the same. In his study there always was the black couch, on which Tolstoy was born, books and photographs of his family and friends, and the writing desk of Persian walnut. The drawers in the desk still contain Tolstoy’s personal possessions: pens bearing traces of ink, pencils, a pen-knife, paper knives and a set of instruments.

During his life Leo Tolstoy changed his attitude towards religion, state, family. What remained unchanged was his attitude to his own literary work, and it was more than demanding: “I only can send a manuscript to print when I feel I have put in it all I was able to”. Some extracts of his works were changed 10, 20 or 30 times.

In the last years of Leo Tolstoy’s life his circle of acquaintance was very broad, and his correspondence – unusually extensive. Among his guests there were, for example, the Japanese writer Tokutomi Roka, the Russian scientist Mechnikov, American and French journalists... Among his correspondents were Anatole France, R. Rolland, B. Shaw, Mahatma Gandhi, numerous translators of his works into the European and Oriental languages. No wonder that soon after Tolstoy’s death Yasnaya Polyana became a place of pilgrimage. At that time Tolstoy’s wife Sophia showed the people coming here two rooms of the house – Tolstoy’s study and bedroom.

Almost all the furniture in the bedroom once belonged to Tolstoy’s father and Aunt Tatiana Yergolskaya. All these old things were especially valuable for Tolstoy, as they evoked in him pleasant, “honest family recollections”, as he put it. Side by side with the old things so dear to his heart are portraits of the people he loved.

Here are also Leo Tolstoy’s clothes, which resemble clothes of the peasants. It happened so, that Tolstoy was taken for a peasant, but the delusion couldn’t last long, as Tolstoy’s aristocratism could be felt in his every word and gesture. In the late 19 th century the so-called “tolstovkas” (blouses named after Tolstoy) came into fashion. Young people of democratic views used to wear such tolstovkas with pleasure. Leo Tolstoy’s social, philosophical and religious ideas were extremely popular among the young people.

• The portrait of Leo Tolstoy’s daughter Maria by her elder sister Tatiana.

Maria was her father’s soul-mate, and he called her “the greatest joy in his life”. He wrote about her in his diary: “Masha is so good. She is the only one who makes me happy”. About his eldest daughter Tatiana Tolstoy also wrote with great warmth and tenderness: “Tanya has arrived. It was so good to have her here. She is very dear to my heart, and she is such a fine person”.

Tolstoy always had a lot of voluntary assistants. It was only in 1906 that he hired a secretary to do translations and deal with his correspondence. Tolstoy’s first secretary was Victor Lebrun, a young Frenchman who was greatly interested in the Russian culture. In 1907 Nikolay Gusev became Tolstoy’s secretary, and in 1910 Valentin Bulgakov took his place. The secretary had to work with Tolstoy’s manuscripts, deal with the letters and telegrams and answer some of them.

The library contains 22 thousand books and periodicals in 39 languages. The first catalogue of the library was compiled by Leo Tolstoy’s wife and daughters. Young Tolstoy reproached himself of being ignorant; as the years went by, he became a man of encyclopedic knowledge. As the writer and critic Mark Aldanov remarked, in different periods of his life Tolstoy “would be interested with all his incredible enthusiasm now in philosophy, now in natural science, or theology, or the theory of art”. The rich library of Yasnaya Polyana seems to be the best illustration of these words.

Here there are considerable selections of books on medicine, history, art, pedagogical questions, geography, philosophy, fiction and so on.

Leo Tolstoy was a real polyglot. He knew to a deferent extent 15 foreign languages. He learned French when he was a child and knew it to perfection. Traveling about West European countries, he took lessons of English, German, Italian and Polish. When a student of the Kazan University he learned Turkish and Arabic, and at the age of 50 he took up Hebrew and Ancient Greek with the sole aim to read and translate some extracts of the Old and New Testaments.

Tolstoy read a lot. He remembered what he had read for a long time, and he always distinguished books which should be read carefully and those in which he only selected the most essential extracts to save his time.

Tolstoy’s contemporaries often compared this room with the vaulted ceiling to a cell of a hermit. But the fact is that the room once served as a pantry and the iron rings in the ceiling were used to hang foodstuffs in sacks. It was the coldest room in the house.

Later it was no longer a pantry; a stove appeared here and the stone vault always remained warm. Besides, silence reigned in the vaulted room. Probably that’s what made it a perfect study. Leo Tolstoy worked in this room for about 20 years.

In 1910 here was the bedroom of Leo Tolstoy’s youngest daughter Alexandra. In the last years of his life, when he suffered from misunderstanding in his family, it was his daughter Alexandra who became the closest person to him, his assistant and friend, sharing all his views. No wonder that leaving his home for good on the 28 th of October Tolstoy came to this very room to say good-bye to his daughter. He left Yasnaya Polyana, but while traveling by railway, he caught cold and got off the train at the station of Astapovo. 10 days after he left his home estate, Leo Tolstoy died of pneumonia in the house of the stationmaster. The coffin with his body was brought to Yasnaya Polyana and put in the guestroom for the people to pay their last respects to Tolstoy.

The guestroom was also called in the Tolstoy family the downstairs library. The books bought by Tolstoy’s parents and grandfather were kept here. When Tolstoy inherited this estate and returned to Yasnaya Polyana from Kazan, he found here a library containing about 600 books, mainly published at the end of the 18 th and the beginning of the 19 th century. The oldest book of the library is dated 1613.

In the 70s this room served Tolstoy as a study. The novel “Anna Karenina” was written here from beginning to end.

Another name of the room was the “room with the bust”. In the semi-circular niche in the wall there is the marble bust of Tolstoy most beloved brother Nikolay. Tolstoy had it made after his brother’s death. (Nikolay died of consumption at the age of 37). It was a great loss for young Tolstoy. In his diary we read: “He was one of the best people I have ever known, he was my brother, all my best memories are connected with him; and he was my very best friend”. Many years later Tolstoy recalled that when Nikolay was 12 he told his family about a great secret. If it could be revealed, no one would ever die; there would be no wars or sufferings. And he added that he had written the secret on a little green stick and buried it on the edge of the ravine here, at Yasnaya Polyana. When a boy Tolstoy believed it was true, and tried to find that magic stick. In his old age Tolstoy wrote: “It was so very good. And I thank God that I could play such games. We called it a game, though anything in the world can be a game except that”. In his own novels and stories, articles and philosophical works Leo Tolstoy would ponder over the same idea – that of love understanding and common good.

Tolstoy mentioned the story about the little green stick in the 1 st version of his will; he asked his family to bury his body without any ceremonies in a simple wooden coffin at the place of the little green stick. On the day of his burial (the 9 th of November 1910) the coffin with Leo Tolstoy’s body was put in front of the bust of his brother. About 6 thousand people came here on that day. At 3 o’clock Tolstoy’s body was committed to the earth at the very place where, according to the legend, the little green stick was buried. There were no religious ceremonies; they only knelt down around the grave.