Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky. Other architectural sights of Yasnaya Polyana

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N. S. Volkonsky - grandfather of L. N. Tolstoy

The year 763 is significant for Yasnaya Polyana in that it became the owner of an influential military general at the court, who distinguished himself in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) with extraordinary courage, Prince Sergei Fedorovich Volkonsky - the great-grandfather of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy on his mother's side. He left behind “Memoirs of the Seven Years’ War,” which were published in “Russian Antiquity” and “Russian Archive” - memoirs, vividly written and rich in material.

The prince belonged to an ancient and very noble family, descended from St. Mikhail, Prince of Chernigov, a descendant of Rurik, tortured by the Tatars in the Golden Horde. The surname Volkonsky, according to legend, comes from the name of the Volkon River, which flows partly through the Kaluga, partly through the Tula province, where Prince Ivan Yuryevich (XIII tribe from Rurik), nicknamed Fat Head, received an inheritance. Many of the Volkonsky family were governors, captains, and some okolnichy.

In Yasnaya Polyana, a portrait of Tolstoy’s great-grandfather, Prince Sergei Fedorovich, has been preserved. L. Tolstoy remembered him from childhood, as well as the portrait of his grandfather Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky. As a boy, he peered into their faces, listening to family stories related to the distant history of the family.

ABOUT

S. F. Volkonsky - the writer’s great-grandfather

Lev Nikolayevich artistically reinterpreted the bottom of such legends in the novel “War and Peace.”

During the Seven Years' War, in which Prince Sergei Fedorovich Volkonsky participated, his wife had a dream: a voice commanded her to paint a small icon and send it to her husband. The next day she found the tablet, ordered an icon to be painted on it, and delivered it to Prince Sergei through Field Marshal Apraksin. On the same day, the courier brought the prince an order to go and search for the enemy. Sergei Fedorovich “took upon himself the resulting image.” During a cavalry campaign, an enemy bullet hit him in the chest, but hit the icon itself and did no harm. So, according to legend, his wife’s love saved the prince from an enemy bullet.

Everyone remembers well the episode from “War and Peace” in which Princess Marya blesses her brother, Prince Andrei, before leaving for war. Handing him the icon, she says: “Think what you want, but do it for me. Do it please! My father’s father, our grandfather, wore it in all wars...”

Prince Sergei Fedorovich was married to Maria Dmitrievna Chaadaeva (d. 1775), an intelligent and educated woman. She was involved in raising her son Nicholas (born 1753) and followed his teaching. In the Russian aristocratic environment of that time, parents cared primarily about their children knowing French, surrounding their children with foreign tutors, hiring dance and music teachers, but not teaching Russian at all. Such an upbringing led to complete ignorance of the homeland, to indifference and even contempt for everything Russian. Prince Sergei Fedorovich and Maria Dmitrievna instilled in their son a love for their country and native language, respect for the people and their history. The young prince was well acquainted with the works of Voltaire, Racine, Corneille, Boileau and other French writers; in his father’s library he read the collection of volumes “The Key to Acquaintance with the Cabinets of European Sovereigns,” from which he learned the detailed history of Russia since 1700. This shaped his worldview and aroused interest in the more distant past of Russia.

After the end of the Seven Years' War and the accession of Peter III, Prince Sergei Fedorovich resigned and immediately began to put his affairs in order. He bought land from the small landowners of Yasnaya Polyana and united the possessions of Yasnaya Polyana. The family of Prince Sergei Fedorovich lived permanently in Moscow, and he himself sometimes came to the village in the summer. Life in those years was simple, and Yasnaya Polyana had changed little since Peter’s time: there was still no large house, no park or upper ponds. The prince moved into the house, having first rebuilt it: he turned the large front entrance into two rooms from which one could enter the hall (it was cold under the previous owners). The room converted from the back hallway became living space. And there were also two rooms on the mezzanine. The furniture was simple: carpeted oak tables, benches, antique chairs and cabinets, kivots with images and lamps, a Russian stove made of patterned multi-colored tiles. There were no sofas, no canapés, no armchairs and chests of drawers, no card tables in these places back then.

P

E.D. Volkonskaya is the grandmother of L.N. Tolstoy.

After the death of Prince Sergei Fedorovich, Yasnaya Polyana was inherited by his son, Prince Nikolai Sergeevich, who by that time served in the retinue of Empress Catherine II. During the accession of Paul I he found himself in disgrace. L.N. Tolstoy writes in his memoirs: “... having reached the high ranks of general-in-chief under Catherine, he suddenly lost his position due to his refusal to marry Potemkin’s niece and mistress Varenka Engelhardt.”

But as fate would have it, it so happened that Varenka Engelhardt later became the wife of Prince S. F. Golitsyn, a close friend of Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky. Now in Yasnaya Polyana, among many portraits of the Golitsyn family, her portrait hangs.

How did these portraits get into Tolstoy's house? In the 18th and early 19th centuries, noble families often exchanged family portraits as a sign of close friendship. Typically, serf artists made copies of the originals, and these copies were transported to a friend's estate. Appearing to Nikolai Sergeevich at the beginning of the last century, portraits of the Golitsyns, like numerous portraits of the Volkonskys, Tolstoys, Gorchakovs, are still kept in the Tolstoy house-museum.

At the age of 46, being considered ill, Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky retired as an infantry general and cavalier (as stated in the epitaph) and moved to live in Yasnaya Polyana, where he took up farming with great scope and zeal. He devoted a lot of time to raising his only daughter, Maria Nikolaevna. The wife of Prince Nikolai Sergeevich (born Princess Ekaterina Dmitrievna Trubetskaya) died early, when little Princess Marya was not even two years old. The princess spent her childhood and youth in the Yasnaya Polyana estate. She witnessed all the transformations and improvements that were carried out by her father, Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky. He is familiar to all of us, even near and dear. This is old Prince Bolkonsky from War and Peace.

“Smart, proud and gifted,” Lev Nikolaevich writes about his grandfather, “he actively took up farming, planned an estate, an apple orchard, a park, dug ponds, started greenhouses.”

He built the Yasnaya Polyana estate for 18 years. For this purpose, an architect was hired, and his own brick factory appeared, where his own serfs burned bricks.

On a mountain overlooking the lower pond and the village of Yasnaya Polyana, in the most beautiful place overlooking the south-eastern hilly distances, the prince built two two-story brick houses, which were supposed to serve as outbuildings and be connected by galleries with a huge house, slightly moved forward in relation to him. He then built a large brick building for numerous courtyards, as well as a carpet and weaving factory.

From the manor house down through the dam, a birch alley was planted, overlooking the “high road”, and at the very entrance there were two famous “pillars”-towers, topped with a helmet-shaped covering with iron flags. These towers also served as guardrails for the massive gates, which the watchman opened only for those traveling to the estate; The gates were locked at night. And the interior of the towers was a refuge from bad weather for the gatekeepers. Next to one of the towers there is a small brick house in which the gardener lived.

The prince, “when going out for a ride on his couple, loved to go to the place on the high road from which the estate was visible, and admired it,” writes Lev Nikolaevich in one of the versions of “War and Peace.” “He even broke down a stable eighty-two fathoms long just so that the façade of the house could be seen from the road. "Town!" - he said to himself, looking at his structure.”

The big road, Muravsky Shlyakh, was also called “embassy” because Russian ambassadors to Turkey and Persia traveled along it from time immemorial. And Griboyedov, and Pushkin, and Lermontov could see Yasnaya Polyana from this road, couriers galloped along it, coachmen's sixes rushed, transferring high-ranking officials from one station to another.

Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky lived in Yasnaya Polyana alone with his daughter Marya, as he called her in Russian, and a Frenchwoman, taken by the prince out of mercy for the company of the princess.

The prince was unsociable, did not communicate with any of his neighbors, did not receive guests, and did not go anywhere himself. He was absorbed in the affairs of the estate, the day was planned by the hour. “Precise and neat in everything, the prince got up at the same time summer and winter, ate tea at the same time, had breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

“At seven o’clock in the morning on one of the linden alleys that made up a square and a star near the house, about eight people in doublets, stockings and shoes and toupees stood with violins, flutes and sheet music, and cautious talking and tuning of instruments could be heard. To the side of the alley, covered with linden trees in the interior of the square, stood at least a hundred-year-old ash tree, two and a half arshins in diameter. Around the ash tree there were benches for eight musicians and music stands. The area was surrounded by rose hips and lilacs, and the round area was covered with sand.

“I woke up,” the Cossack boy shouted, running through the alley with a bowl of hot water. The musicians began to stir, disappeared behind the alley and laid out the notes and, slightly forming, looking at the bandmaster who stood in front of them, began to play one of Heyden’s symphonies. The musicians were more bad than good. The prince was not a big fan and never sang in his life, even in his youth, but he believed that he needed to have musicians, and he had musicians. Exactly at seven o'clock, before the clock struck, the prince came out of the porch in stockings and shoes, in a simple gray camisole with a star and a round hat and with a crutch in his hands. The prince was fresh for his age, his head was powdered, his clean beard was blue, and clean-shaven. The cambric linen of the cuffs and shirt-front was of extraordinary cleanliness. He stood straight, carried his head high, and his black eyes from under his thick, wide, black eyebrows looked proudly and calmly over his bent dry nose, his thin lips were firmly folded.”

The prince took his morning walk to the music, giving orders to the architect who followed at a respectful distance from him, then listened to the manager he had called, scolded him for his sluggishness in business, and demanded that he alternately call on the elected official and then the headman. From a distance they took off their hats, bowed and said: “We wish you good health, Your Excellency!” The prince, if it was cold, allowed them to put on a hat.

An hour passed like this. “The prince walked the fourth mile along the alleys, calculated step by step, looked at the huge gold watch and headed towards the house.”

Lev Nikolaevich said: “My grandfather was considered a very strict master, but I had never heard stories about his cruelties and punishments, so common at that time. I think that they were, but the enthusiastic respect for importance and rationality was so great in the serfs and peasants of his time, whom I often questioned about him, that although I heard condemnations of my father, I heard only praise for intelligence, thriftiness and care about the peasants and, in particular, my grandfather’s huge servants.”

In relation to his daughter, the prince did not allow himself any tenderness, and he raised her like a man, not recognizing the so-called female upbringing, according to which girls were not taught exact sciences and practical economic skills were not instilled.

When Princess Marya turned 19 years old, the old prince decided to take her to St. Petersburg. But not in order to show her off in society or at the court, not for entertainment at balls and the supervision of suitors, but in order to expand her mental and spiritual development.

In St. Petersburg they explore the Hermitage, visit the Academy and the Panopticon. The princess carefully keeps “daily notes”, in which we discover observation, sharpness of mind, and independence of view. She is interested in art and theater, enthusiastically visits glass, trellis, and weaving factories with her father, climbs aboard a Prussian ship, and gets acquainted with navigation instruments and the science of sailing ships.

They lived in the house of Varvara Vasilyevna Golitsyna. the widow of an old friend and colleague of Prince N.S. Volkonsky - Chief General of Prince Sergei Fedorovich Golitsyn.

Every day, numerous of his acquaintances and relatives came to Varvara Vasilievna’s house to visit Prince N.S. Volkonsky - to pay tribute to Catherine’s nobleman and to meet his reclusive daughter. Meanwhile, the princess herself, not without interest, watched the high-society guests, entering their characteristics into her “day notes” with her characteristic accuracy and humor.

Prince S.S. Golitsyn, for example, “talking about the Freemasons, although no one asks him, tries in every possible way to arouse curiosity and, while he insists that the secrets of this society cannot be revealed, it is clear that he impatiently wants to tell everything.” And he notices the peculiarity of Princess Yusupova that she “speaks little due to some laziness or disdain for those with whom she speaks.”

Of course, for the young princess there was also a society that was pleasant to her, and she happily spent time with her peers: she went to Tsarskoe Selo, which delighted her, admired the “proportionality of the streets” of St. Petersburg, “the space of the Neva River and the beauty of the Neva perspective,” the lattice of the Summer Garden, the house of Peter, which, in her words, “inspires awe in every Russian who loves his fatherland.”

Trips such as this one to St. Petersburg, or later to Moscow, were rare. My whole life passed in Yasnaya Polyana according to the routine that my father had once established. There was little external entertainment, but the inner life went on all the more intensely. In addition to the large library of Prince Nikolai Sergeevich, which she, of course, used, Princess Marya herself was in charge of about 160 volumes in Russian, French, German, English and Italian. We know from the “catalog of books” compiled by the princess that there were “Fables and Tales” by Chemnitser, and “Poems” by Dmitriev, and Karamzin, and other Russian writers of the 18th century, “Collected Travels” by Kampe, the book “On Treating People "Knigge, "Sentimental Journey" by Stern, "The New Robinson" by Kampe, Goldoni's comedies, bilingual dictionaries, textbooks on various disciplines and anthologies. The library was constantly replenished with new literature sent to Yasnaya Polyana. |

Princess Marya Nikolaevna not only read a lot, but also translated into Russian and French, she herself wrote fairy tales and a story inspired by her life in the estate, plays and vaudevilles for the home stage. Her poems written in Russian and French have also been preserved.

When guests arrived or her father took her out into the world, excitement reigned around her, many refused to take part in general games and entertainment in order to listen to her: she was known as a wonderful storyteller. “They say,” writes Ilya Lvovich Tolstoy, “that she was short, ugly, but unusually kind and talented, with large, clear and radiant eyes.”

An interesting “Collection of Sayings” was compiled by her even before her marriage and testifies to the fact that she thought a lot about the issues of life, its moral principles, that is, about the very issues that her son, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, would decide throughout his life. Here is one of the sayings: “In early youth you look for everything outside of your Self. We call for happiness by turning to everything that surrounds us. But. little by little, everything turns us inward.”

On February 3, 1821, Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky, the stern but loving father of Princess Marya, died.

A year after her father’s death, Maria Nikolaevna married Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy.

From the ancient princely family of the Volkonskys. He owned the Yasnaya Polyana estate, which passed as a dowry to his daughter Maria when she married Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy.

Lev Tolstoy

Military service

Information about Volkonsky’s service is sparse and not always accurate. Enrolled, according to the custom of that time, in military service as a child, N.S. Volkonsky at the age of 27 - captain of the guard, was in the retinue of Catherine II at her meeting with the Austrian Emperor Joseph II in Mogilev, and 7 years later accompanied the empress on her trip across Crimea. In 1781 he became a colonel, in 1787 - a brigadier, in 1789 - a major general attached to the army. There are data and family legends about Volkonsky’s participation during the Russian-Turkish War in the capture of Ochakov (December 6, 1788). In 1793 he had to be ambassador in Berlin, in 1794 he was with troops in Lithuania and Poland.

In 1794, for unknown reasons, he took leave for two years. With the accession of Paul I, Volkonsky returned to service and was appointed military governor of Arkhangelsk. In 1799 he retired and began raising his only daughter.

Written testimonies of Leo Tolstoy about his grandfather - Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky

• “My mother lived her childhood partly in Moscow, partly in the village with an intelligent, proud and gifted man, my grandfather Volkonsky” (L.N. Tolstoy, vol. 34, p. 351).
• “My grandfather was considered a very strict master, but I never heard stories about his cruelties and punishments, so common at that time... I heard only praise for his intelligence, thriftiness and care for the peasants and, in particular, my grandfather’s huge servants” ( Tolstoy L.N. t. 34, p. 351).
• “He probably had a very subtle aesthetic sense. All his buildings are not only durable and comfortable, but extremely elegant. The park he laid out in front of the house is the same” (L.N. Tolstoy, vol. 34, p. 352).
• “Continuing to serve under Paul with his petty nagging was too burdensome for the prince’s proud, independent character. He decided to change his life, move away from the court with its intrigues and start raising his daughter - she was already nine years old. The prince spent the last twenty-two years of his life with his daughter in Yasnaya Polyana. Volkonsky was not forgotten in his solitude... Even Alexander I, during one of his travels, passed by Yasnaya Polyana, returned to pay a visit to the old prince.”

Moscow Volkonsky House

In Moscow, in 1816, he purchased a house on Vozdvizhenka Street, 9, from Praskovya Grushetskaya, the daughter of Senator and Major General Vasily Vladimirovich Grushetsky (from the noble Grushetsky family), who owned this house since 1774 (the Volkonskys were once related to the Grushetskys - room steward (1681-1692) and boyar Mikhail Fokich Grushetsky was married to Princess Avdotya Volkonskaya, daughter of the Tsar's steward V.I. The building belongs to the city estate con. XVIII century, rebuilt after the fire of 1812 and representing in the first. floor. XIX century a magnificent example of an Empire ensemble with symmetrically located gates and wings. Volkonsky owned this house for five years, which is why this house is also known in Moscow as the main house of the estate of the Volkonsky princes, or as the “Bolkonsky house” from War and Peace. In the early 1830s. he passed to the Ryumins, Ryazan landowners. According to a contemporary, the son of the writer M. N. Zagoskin, their “luxurious dinners and dance evenings on Thursdays always attracted a large company.” L.N. Tolstoy knew this house well - he had been here as a young man at balls, where he courted the lovely princess Praskovya Shcherbatova. “Bored and drowsy, I went to the Ryumins, and suddenly it washed over me. Praskovya Shcherbatova is lovely. This hasn’t been fresher for a long time.” The princess soon married Count A.S. Uvarov and became one of the most famous figures in Russian archeology.

Prince, zemstvo figure, actual state councilor, deputy of the 1st and 3rd State Dumas.

Born on February 17, 1848 in the family estate of the village of Zimarovo, Ranenburg district, Ryazan province. Came from a noble family. Father Sergei Vasilyevich (1819-1884), retired second lieutenant, zemstvo figure of the era of reforms of Emperor Alexander II. Mother Nadezhda Petrovna (nee Kolobova).

In 1862, V.O. was invited to Zimarovo as a tutor for Nikolai Volkonsky. Klyuchevsky, who at that time had just completed his first year at Moscow University. It was he who instilled in his student a love of history. In 1872, Volkonsky graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of Moscow University and entered the service in the Economic Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

From 1875 to 1878 he was a member of the new Ryazan governor N.S. Abaze, accompanied him, as the chief commissioner of the Red Cross, to the Danube Army during the Russian-Turkish War (1877-1878). After the end of the war, Volkonsky left to continue his education in Europe, listening to lectures at the Universities of Vienna and Berlin.

Since 1874, he has been regularly elected as a member of the Ranenburg district and Ryazan provincial zemstvo assemblies. In 1875, he carried out an audit of the auxiliary peasant funds of the Ranenburg district.

Volkonsky advocated complete independence of zemstvo institutions in the distribution of public funds.

In 1883 he married Anastasia Andreevna (née Malevanna). This marriage produced six children.

Since 1891, member of the Ryazan provincial government, and in 1897-1900. its chairman. He worked on food issues and participated in the campaign to combat hunger.

Since 1899, member of the Ryazan Scientific Archival Commission (RUAC). He headed the work on preparing for publication the works of the Ryazan public figure and historian A.D. Povalishin, and also at the request of the latter began work on materials on the history of landowners' farms in the Ryazan province. Volkonsky’s work “Conditions of Landownership under Serfdom” was published in 1897 and received a wide public response. It has been called by critics one of the most significant studies on the economic history of serfdom. Volkonsky supported the historical and ethnographic museum created at the RUAK, to which he repeatedly donated valuable exhibits, which still form the basis of the ethnographic fund of the Ryazan Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve.

Published in a number of periodicals: in the magazine “Bulletin of Europe”, the newspaper “Russian Vedomosti”, in “Proceedings of the Ryazan Scientific Commission”.

At the beginning of the 20th century. Volkonsky was actively involved in social and political life: he took part in Moscow meetings of the semi-legal "Conversation" circle, participated in zemstvo congresses of 1904-1905, and advocated for the constitutional structure of Russian society.

After the First Russian Revolution in November 1905, Volkonsky became one of the founders of the liberal-conservative party “Union of October 17”, regularly participated in meetings of the St. Petersburg Central Committee, then joined the Moscow branch of the Central Committee, at the same time heading the Ryazan provincial department of the party.

In 1906 he was elected leader of the nobility of the Sapozhkovsky district of the Ryazan province. On April 14, 1906, he was elected to the First State Duma from the Ryazan province, and was a member of the agrarian commission. Didn't get into the Second Duma. In March 1907, Volkonsky was elected to the State Council from the Ryazan provincial zemstvo assembly, but already on October 17 of the same year he was forced to resign from his position in connection with his election to the III State Duma, where he was a member of the “Union of October 17” faction and was a member of the land council. commissions, commissions on resettlement affairs, to develop a bill to amend the current legislation on peasants, upon request, on local self-government. Volkonsky was a supporter of the property qualification for holding all elected positions, since he believed that only the presence of property can form a civil worldview that allows one to responsibly perform public functions.

February 22, 1910 Prince N.S. Volkonsky died suddenly in his Moscow apartment on Granatny Lane at the age of 62. He was buried in the family crypt at the Church of the Bogolyubskaya Mother of God in the village of Zimarovo, Ranenburg district, Ryazan province.

Essays:

Conditions of landowner farming under serfdom. Ryazan, 1898.

The activities of Dmitry Dmitrievich Dashkov on public education in the Ryazan zemstvo and his reports to the provincial zemstvo assembly for 1869-1875 / Edited and with a foreword by N.S. Volkonsky. Ryazan, 1903.

On the issue of local affordable and cheap credit. Petrozavodsk, without a year.

Materials for the history of the Ryazan provincial zemstvo / With notes and foreword by Prince N.S. Volkonsky. Part 1-2. Ryazan, 1903-1904.

There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.
L. N. Tolstoy

Yasnaya Polyana is the state museum-estate of L. N. Tolstoy. If we follow the judgment of the greatest Russian philosopher and writer, expressed in the epigraph, Yasnaya Polyana is a majestic estate. It’s just that the estate is rich not in luxury, from which Lev Nikolaevich carefully fenced himself off all his life, but in the simplicity that can be read in all architectural buildings and the arrangement of gardens, the kindness established by Tolstoy on the estate in relation to the peasants, and the truth, carefully preserved by the museum workers on the shelves with books writer.

Yasnaya Polyana received its strange name, according to one version, from the vast sunny valley located at the turn to the estate, according to another - from the Yasenka River, which flows nearby, or the village of Yasenka, standing on it.

L. N. Tolstoy was born in Yasnaya Polyana in 1828, lived most of his life, wrote all his main works in this estate, and here he was buried in 1910.

Even if you haven’t seen Yasnaya Polyana yet, you can imagine it by reading the description of the Bald Mountains in the novel “War and Peace.” The prototype of the Bolkonsky estate was Lev Nikolaevich’s own estate, as, indeed, the prototypes of all the main characters of the epic were the writer’s relatives and friends. You will be able to see their portraits in the house-museum of L. N. Tolstoy and, of course, you will immediately recognize from whom the author of “War and Peace” “copied” Ilya Andreevich Rostov, from whom – Natasha Rostova herself, from whom – Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky , from whom - Pierre Bezukhov.

History of Yasnaya Polyana

The family estate of the great Russian writer and philosopher is located in the Shchekinsky district of the Tula region.

The estate was founded back in the 17th century. Initially, it belonged to the Kartsev family: in 1627, for their faithful service to the tsar, boyar Grigory Kartsev and his son Stepan were granted land in Solovsky (later Krapivensky) district. In 1763, Yasnaya Polyana was bought by Prince S. F. Volkonsky. In 1822, his only heir, Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya, married Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy - since then, “Yasnaya Polyana” has forever been assigned to the Tolstoy family.

However, the main merit in creating the appearance of the estate belongs not to Tolstoy, but to the grandfather of the great writer, Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky. It was he who created the harmonious world of Yasnaya Polyana, which everyone can visit today.

Sights of Yasnaya Polyana

The first architectural creation that every visitor to Yasnaya Polyana encounters is the white entrance turrets. After passing through them, you will see the Big Pond on the left - the largest in size of the three ponds on the estate. From the entrance gate, a prespekt leads far into the distance - a birch alley, planted before the Bolkonskys came to the estate - around 1800. If you go straight along the road, you will come to the house of L.N. Tolstoy.

N. S. Volkonsky erected an entire architectural ensemble in a picturesque garden, including a large manor house and two two-story outbuildings on the sides. It was also planned to connect both wings with the main Yasnaya Polyana house with galleries, but this idea was never realized.

Main Yasnaya Polyana house

Unfortunately, today in the estate you will not see the main manor house, in which L.N. Tolstoy was born in 1828 and spent his childhood. The large Yasnaya Polyana house was sold by the writer himself in 1854 for debts to a neighboring estate. At that time, the young count had just returned from service in the Caucasus, where he voluntarily went for patriotic reasons in 1852. Tolstoy had already gained popularity as a writer, but the people did not know their hero by sight: he was constantly fighting somewhere, he had no time for fans, no time for royalties.

House-Museum of L. N. Tolstoy

In 1856, realizing that war is a senseless evil, Tolstoy returned to his homeland - Yasnaya Polyana. He had to live in one of the outbuildings, since there was no longer a house. In 1862, the 34-year-old count, convinced that you can only marry, like die, once, finally meets his ideal and marries 18-year-old Sofya Andreevna Bers. Tolstoy brings the Moscow young lady, who, according to contemporaries, has nineteen talents, to the village and turns into the wife of his dreams. Sofya Andreevna gave him 13 children, five of whom died before reaching adolescence; throughout the 48 years of their marriage, she copied Lev Nikolaevich’s diaries and works of art in legible handwriting; she ran the house, raised children, and in the last years of Tolstoy’s life, when he decided to completely retire and literally run away from the nobility, she was in charge of all of Yasnaya Polyana. The successful choice of his wife allowed Lev Nikolaevich to engage in self-improvement all his life, study 14 foreign languages, become an encyclopedic educated person, and become famous as a talented teacher, philosopher and writer.

It is clear that for such a large family as Tolstoy’s, the outbuilding was cramped. It was significantly expanded, and it became completely different from the second outbuilding; it was transformed into a house in which the writer lived for 50 years.

Today in the house-museum of L. N. Tolstoy you can see the same situation that was at the time the writer left Yasnaya Polyana in 1910. Here are presented the personal belongings of Lev Nikolaevich, his library consisting of 22,000 books, portraits of family members, the writer’s workplace, where great works of Russian literature were born.

Kuzminsky wing

The Kuzminsky wing is the only one of the three buildings of the ensemble that managed to preserve its original appearance. It was here that L.N. Tolstoy’s school for peasant children operated from 1859 to 1862. As you know, the Count himself gave lessons here, which was nonsense for the world community of that time. Later this outbuilding served as a guest house. Most often, Sofia Andreevna Tolstoy’s sister Tatyana Andreevna Kuzminskaya and her family stayed there: the surname of this guest gave the name to the previously unnamed wing.

Volkonsky House

Volkonsky's house is the oldest building in Yasnaya Polyana. There is an assumption that it was here that the “chief architect” of the estate, L.N. Tolstoy’s grandfather, N.S. Volkonsky, lived. During the time of the writer himself, servants lived in the Volkonsky House, there was a laundry room and a “black kitchen”. In the eastern wing, Tolstoy's daughter Tatyana organized her art workshop.

Today, the Volkonsky House is an administrative building - the residence of the director of the Yasnaya Polyana museum-estate, the great-great-grandson of the famous writer, V. I. Tolstoy.

Other architectural sights of Yasnaya Polyana

In the estate of L.N. Tolstoy, some outbuildings are still functioning: a stable and a carriage house, an inventory shed, a granary and a barn, a greenhouse. The greenhouse, by the way, was also created under N. S. Volkonsky, and as a girl, L. N. Tolstoy’s mother loved working in it.

Of course, in Yasnaya Polyana there are many ancient buildings that have lost their main purpose today and have simply turned into museum exhibits. These include a coachman's shop, a blacksmith's shop and a carpenter's shop, a bathhouse on the Middle Pond, a bathhouse, a gazebo-tower, and a garden house in which one of Leo Tolstoy's daughters treated peasants.

Of particular interest to tourists are the birch bridge located to the right of the prespekt, in the ravine, and the writer’s favorite bench in “Yolochki”. The newlyweds take pictures on the bridge; anyone can sit on the bench and think, like Lev Nikolaevich did in his time.

Natural composition of Yasnaya Polyana

Tolstoy's estate still pleases the eye with its picturesque parks, well-kept gardens and clean forests. Once in Yasnaya Polyana, you can immerse yourself in the atmosphere of a Russian noble estate of the 19th century.

A day won't be enough to explore all of the estate's woodlands, but a walk through any of them will be a real pleasure. If you are attracted by old plantings of the 17th century, go to Kliny Park; if you like silence and solitude, make your way to Yolochki to Lev Nikolaevich’s bench or to Chepyzh to admire the 300-year-old enormous oak trees. If you shy away from dense forests and prefer to relax in the sun, take a walk on Kosaya Polyana or get to the Voronka River, which flows right through the estate.

Old Order - silence zone

There is no point in describing the numerous gardens and ponds of Yasnaya Polyana; it is better to see them once with your own eyes. However, one estate forest still requires special attention. This is the Old Order forest, where Leo Tolstoy loved to play as a child with his brothers. The elder brother Nikolai then came up with a story about a green stick, which was supposedly buried on the bank of a ravine in Stary Zakaz. The children firmly believed that if this very stick was found, there would be no more troubles in the world, and for a long time they tried to find it. Shortly before his death, the philosophically inclined L.N. Tolstoy remembered the parable of his beloved brother about a green stick that brings universal happiness. The writer felt very bad then: he was excommunicated from the church for the theory of the earthly origin of Jesus, his wife, on whom all the estate and publishing affairs hung, did not share the ascetic views of her husband, and the children also could not follow the example of their father. Then Tolstoy, suffocating in his home, in a loving noble family, puts on peasant bast shoes and runs away from Yasnaya Polyana to die on the way.

On the eve of his death, the writer often had difficult thoughts. The anathema also haunted him for a long time: he suffered from the fact that he would never be buried in an Orthodox cemetery next to his relatives. But soon Lev Nikolayevich found solace in his own thoughts: he realized that a person is a soul, and it does not matter where after death it will dump its mortal body. Tolstoy bequeathed: “So that no rituals are performed when burying my body in the ground; a wooden coffin, and whoever wants, will take or carry Old Order into the forest, opposite the ravine, in place of the green stick.” L. N. Tolstoy's last will was exactly fulfilled in November 1910.