After the Cold War, Leo Tolstoy’s country estate fell into disrepair, until salvation came from a distant relative and a Christian pacifist sect. Alfred Kueppers reports.
Photos by Swiatoslaw Wojtkowiak www.thewideangle.com / www.nygus.info
Drive out of Moscow, past the onion-domed churches in the historic centre, the neon lights of the casinos, the stark Brezhnev-era high-rises, the forests that camouflage the dachas – the second homes – of the capital’s freshly minted millionaires, and you will eventually reach the Russian countryside.
Here, long-rolling hills stretch out, tall grasses mix with weeds and merge into woodland, and tumbledown log-cabin villages spring up along quietly flowing rivers.
Despite the introduction of sealed roads, cars, electricity and some industry, rural Russia seems as though little has changed since the 19th century, when many wealthy Russians had country estates, including leading writers, playwrights and poets such as Ivan Turgenev, Afanasy Fet and Anton Chekhov.
The most famous of the estate holders, Leo Tolstoy, is said to have made the 200km journey on foot every spring from his winter residence in Moscow to his estate, in keeping with his philosophy of living simply in imitation of the Russian empire’s impoverished peasantry. Today, the final leg of the journey to the estate – which is named Yasnaya Polyana, meaning clear glade – still runs 12km from the provincial city of Tula, down a rain-washed, potholed road lined with apple trees. It ends where two stout white columns shoot up out of the ground. Built by Tolstoy’s grandfather, Prince Nikolai Volkonsky, the pillars mark the beginning of one of post-Soviet Russia’s remarkable stories of rebirth.
After drifting and decaying during the stagnation of the Soviet years, the estate is now reprising its earlier role as a cultural and intellectual landmark, complete with its very own Tolstoy – Vladimir, the great-great-grandson of the iconic author.
‘I came here on 1 August 1994,’ the 44-year-old museum director says. ‘I didn’t have any intention of rebuilding Yasnaya Polyana, I only planned to preserve what was best about the estate and expand it in order to bring a new quality and a new life to the people here.’
The renaissance began in an unlikely place: the bathrooms. When Tolstoy arrived from Moscow in 1994, the poor condition of the toilets was obvious – though not to the local staff, who saw no need for an upgrade. ‘Yasnaya Polyana is out in the country, and so the staff told me, “Nobody pays attention to those kinds of things out here,”’ he laughs, his smiling open face bearing little resemblance to the brooding portraits of his famous ancestor that hang throughout the two-storey, green-roofed manor house where War and Peace and Anna Karenina were penned.
The new museum director responded to such recalcitrance with an unique solution – he sent the entire staff, including stable hands and gardeners, on an all-expenses-paid trip to Italy’s finest museums. ‘Basic things like that – the difference between bathrooms in the West and here – they cannot be explained, they have to be experienced first hand. When people came back, they understood exactly what I meant,’ he says.
Still sensitive to the West and issues of state ownership, local government officials were less enthusiastic, and rumours began to spread that the extended Tolstoy clan, which boasts more than 200 members outside Russia, had sent Vladimir to secure the estate for the family. awsuits proliferated – over alleged misappropriation of funds to pay for the trip to Italy and Tolstoy’s plan to renovate two historic buildings for office space in the centre of nearby Tula, among other matters. Tolstoy eventually prevailed, though he remains concerned that the ‘new Russian’ nouveau riche could someday privatise the historic property. The concern is very much a testament to Tolstoy’s achievements on his ancestor’s estate. Today, its reputation as a faded jewel is a distant memory. Great birches soar over the main entrance, thinning out towards the top and converging to create a sunlit green canopy. Asphalt has been replaced with the original gravel, and cars are banned in favour of horse-drawn carriages. The house is well preserved; the gardens and woodlands, maintained.
I tour the grounds with Elena Petrova, who heads the estate’s international marketing department. She learned her perfect English at the university in Tula, and from talking to the numerous foreigners who visit every year.
‘Most of our guests are Russians, of course, but we also get many Americans, Koreans, Chinese and Indians,’ she says as we stroll past the apple orchards that Tolstoy so loved. ‘We would get more foreigners, but most tourists go to St Petersburg and Moscow, without ever really thinking of places such as Tula.’
The forest becomes thicker as we walk along the dirt path
towards Tolstoy’s unmarked grave. It is the same spot, where,
according to family legend, Leo’s older brother Nikolai buried
a mysterious green stick inscribed with the secret of human
happiness. In the 97 years since his death the small grassy
mound has begun to blend into the forest. It is a fitting end
for Tolstoy, whose writing and outlook were so powerfully
influenced by life on the estate.
Yasnaya Polyana appeared frequently in his works, serving as
a model for Konstantin Levin’s idyllic estate in Anna Karenina
and as the setting for the country life he described in his first
published work, Childhood. ‘The chatter of the peasants; the
rumbling of horses and wagons; the joyous cries of quails; the
hum of insects as they hung suspended in the motionless air;
the smell of the soil and grain and steam from our horses;
the thousand different lights and shadows which the burning
sun cast upon the yellowish-white cornland; the purple forest
in the distance; the white gossamer threads which were
floating in the air or resting on the soil – all these things I
observed and heard and felt to the core,’ he wrote.
In his 82 years, Tolstoy led a sprawling, contradictory life,
evolving from a dissolute college dropout to a world-famous
author before a midlife crisis led him to develop his own ascetic
version of Christianity, which resulted in his excommunication
from the Orthodox Church.
Though he ultimately mastered French, German,
English and ancient Greek, Tolstoy spent only three
years at Kazan University and left without a degree.
This led him to the army, where, like older brother
Nikolai, he became an officer in the turbulent Caucasus region.
After fighting in the Crimean War, he returned to his estate,
fathered an illegitimate child with one of his peasants and
began his writing career. But it was not until after he settled
into married life with Sophie Behrs, some 16 years his junior,
that he wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
His sudden fame led to a personal crisis, as he questioned
the value of his own writing and art in general. Instead of
embracing the life of a famous literary figure, he retreated to
Yasnaya Polyana, studied the world’s major religions and tried
to live in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount.
The new Tolstoy referred to Anna Karenina as ‘an abomination’,
turned his property over to his wife and children, adopted
peasant dress, became a vegetarian and a pacifist Christian
anarchist, believing only in the authority of God. His religious
writings attracted a large international following, and small
Tolstoyan colonies sprang up in Russia and abroad. But sadly
the mythical ‘green stick of happiness’ continued to elude him, and his religious quest put him at odds with his wife and many of his children.
His opposition to the Church and State attracted the attention of the Tsarist authorities, his works were censored and he was kept under constant police surveillance. By 1901 he had been excommunicated from the Orthodox Church, and the Tsar’s government had begun to jail his followers. Still, his fame grew, and when he died in 1910 he was considered a national hero.
The breadth of Tolstoy’s interests makes Yasnaya Polyana a natural magnet for an eclectic range of visitors. Among the more obscure groups to have renewed old ties to the estate since Vladimir Tolstoy’s return are the Doukhobors, or ‘spirit wrestlers’, a pacifist Christian sect – who also rejected the authority of the Church and State – that emerged around the 1600s in Russia.
By the late 19th century, Tsar Nicholas had begun to see the Doukhobors as a threat to his authority. He ordered Cossack troops to ransack Doukhobor villages and torture the conscription-age males who refused to serve in the imperial army. Upon hearing of their persecution, Tolstoy felt an immediate kinship with the Doukhobors and launched an international campaign to call attention to their plight. He also pledged all of the royalties from his final novel, Resurrection, to help 7,500 Doukhobors emigrate to Canada.
Now their descendants, who number about 50,000, are returning the goodwill by raising money for Yasnaya Polyana, and supporting the estate in numerous other ways. In 2005, Doukhobor representatives built a café-bakery on the estate to help Vladimir Tolstoy come closer to his goal of making the estate self-sufficient, as it had been in his great- great-grandfather’s time. ‘We always felt that we owed a debt to Tolstoy because he helped us in our time of need,’ says Peter Rezansoff, a 67-year-old descendant of the original immigrants.
Rezansoff has visited the estate three times since the Soviet Union collapsed. ‘The changes are noticeable, many buildings were slipping into ruin, there was very little capital going into their maintenance,’ he says. ‘Vladimir Tolstoy seems to have a good idea of how he wants to do things, and he does it from the heart.’
Where to stay
The estate museum operates its own hotel – the Yasnaya Polyana Hotel – out of the ramshackle Soviet-era sanatorium adjacent to the historic property. Despite the somewhat rundown appearance, the rooms have recently been restored to European standards and cost $25 per night.
www.yasnayapolyana.ru/english
If staying in Tula, the best option is the Demidov’s Style Hotel Tula, which charges $83 for a single. Contact through a booking website such as Expedia or HotelClub.
By 1901 Tolstoy had been excommunicated from the Orthodox Church, and the Tsar’s government had begun to jail his followers. Still, his fame grew.
How to get there
The most enjoyable way to arrive is by train from Moscow’s Kursky Vokzal station. This runs at the weekend. Museum staff greet arrivals at the Kozlova Zaseka station and chauffeur them to the estate. Another option is to take a bus from Moscow’s Domodedovskaya metro station, and then transfer to minibus 216 at the Tula bus station.
When to go
Yasnaya Polyana is open year round, though visitors might want to skip the muddy spring in favour of the long summer days or the brief but glorious autumn. Winter trips are also worth considering, especially for those interested in a sleigh ride across the snow-covered countryside. The estate is closed on Mondays, and the main house is closed on the last Wednesday of each month for cleaning.
Visit Yasnaya Polyana
Several tour companies organ-ise trips to the Yasnaya Polyana Estate. One highly recommended Moscow-based option is Patriarshy Dom Tours;
Tel (+7) 495 795 0927 (Moscow office), (+1) 650 678 7076 (US office)
www.russiatravel-pdtours.netfirms.com
Where to stay
The Savoy Hotel Moscow
3/6 Ul. Rozhdestvenska
Moscow
Tel: (+7) 495 620 8555
www.savoy.ru
Marriott Moscow Royal
Petrovka St-Bld 11/20
Moscow
Tel: (+7) 095 937 1000
www.marriott.com
Hotel Baltschug
Kempinski Moscow
Ul. Balchug, 1
Moscow
Tel: (+7) (495 or 501) 230 5500
www.kempinski-moscow.com
Ararat Park Hyatt Moscow
4 Neglinnaya Street
Moscow
Tel: (+7) 495 783 1234
www.moscow.park.hyatt.com
