Vintage Footage of Leo Tolstoy: Video Captures the Great Novelist During His Final Days

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“My life came to a stand­still,” wrote Leo Tol­stoy in his 1882 con­ver­sion mem­oir A Con­fes­sion, “I could not breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing these things.” So Tolstoy’s described his “arrest of life,” a peri­od of severe depres­sion that led to a very deep, per­son­al brand of faith in his late mid­dle age. The tow­er­ing Russ­ian nov­el­ist renounced world­ly desires and came to iden­ti­fy with the poor, the for­mer serfs of his aris­to­crat­ic class. Tolstoy’s rad­i­cal reli­gious anar­chism in his final years spread his fame far among the peas­antry just as his lit­er­ary achieve­ments had brought him world­wide renown among the read­ing pub­lic. So famous was Tol­stoy, William Nick­ell tells us, that Russ­ian crit­ic Vasi­ly Rozanov wrote that “to be a Russ­ian and not have [seen] Tol­stoy was like being Swiss and not hav­ing seen the Alps.”

Nick­ell describes the occa­sions that Tol­stoy appeared on film, the new medi­um that allowed the author’s mil­lions of ador­ing fans to get a glimpse of him. Just as his life was punc­tu­at­ed by a rad­i­cal depar­ture from his ear­li­er atti­tudes, his medi­um was in for a shock as film for­ev­er changed the way sto­ries were told.

In those ear­ly days, how­ev­er, it was very often sim­ply a means of record­ing his­to­ry, and we should be glad of that. It means we too can see Tol­stoy, at the top on his 80th birth­day. We see him vig­or­ous­ly saw­ing logs and pious­ly giv­ing alms to the poor. Also includ­ed in the ini­tial footage are Tolstoy’s wife Sofya, his daugh­ter Alek­san­dra, and aide and edi­tor Vladimir Chertkov. Then, at 1:04, the scene shifts to Tolstoy’s deathbed and scenes of his funer­al. The remain­ing 11 min­utes give us some uniden­ti­fied footage of the author. (If you’re able to read the title cards in Russ­ian, please let us know!).

Just above, see a more com­plete film of Tolstoy’s death and funer­al pro­ces­sion. The author died at age 82 after he abrupt­ly decid­ed to leave his wife, tak­ing only a few pos­ses­sions and his doc­tor. Read the dra­mat­ic sto­ry of Tolstoy’s last ten days in this trans­lat­ed excerpt from Pavel Basinsky’s award win­ning Leo Tol­stoy: Escape from Par­adise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

The Com­plete Works of Leo Tol­stoy Online: New Archive Will Present 90 Vol­umes for Free (in Russ­ian)

Study Finds That Read­ing Tol­stoy & Oth­er Great Nov­el­ists Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.