Saturday, June 11, 2011

Leo and Vladimir Ilya Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy, or Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828 – 1910), was a Russian writer. His literary masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent, in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist fiction.
Tolstoy's further talents as essayist, dramatist, and educational reformer made him the most influential member of the aristocratic Tolstoy family. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. 
Although a wearer of interesting skull caps and beret-like hats, I don't believe Tolstoy ever wore a Basque beret, living before the coming of age of the Basque beret really, but fitting all the affiliations of the beret of course. 
His grandson Vladimir Ilya did (as well as a beard very similar to his grandfather's). 
Leo Tolstoy`s grandchildren (left to right): Vladimir Ilya and Sergei, 1 May 1965 , photo by N. Granov

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