5. What Tolstoy believed

Abstract

As he approached the age of 50, Tolstoy experienced what is often described as a spiritual crisis. He struggled to finish Anna Karenina and then devoted the next several years to religious life. He returned to the fold of the Russian Orthodox Church, but soon doubted the Church’s doctrines, rituals, and practices. Tolstoy found faith on his own terms. Love of God and neighbour and non-violence were at the core. ‘What Tolstoy believed’ discusses the religious ideas that Tolstoy explored in his fiction and set forth more directly in works such as his Confession, Translation and Harmonization of the Gospels, The Gospel in Brief, What I Believe, and The Kingdom of God Is Within You.