His special talents merely caused him to find it impossible to reconcile himself to the state of affairs existing around him; and so, instead of progressing, he turned back and sought peace of mind and a firm doctrine in the distant past of primitive Christianity.

Sincere as he undoubtedly is in his propaganda of self-simplification and self-perfection--one might almost call it "self-annihilation"-- his new attitude has wrought great and most regrettable havoc with his later literary work, with some few exceptions.
And yet, in pursuing this course, he did not strike out an entirely new path for himself; his youth was passed in an epoch when the ideal of personal perfection and self-surrender stood in the foreground, and constituted the very essence of Russian progress.
Count L.N.Tolstoy was born on August 28, O.S., 1828 (September 9th, N.S.), in the village of Yasnaya Polyana, in the government of Tula.
His mother, born Princess Volkonsky (Marya Nikolaevna), died before he was two years old, and his father's sister, Countess A.T.

Osten-Saken, and a distant relative, Madame T.A.Ergolsky, took charge of him.

When he was nine years old the family removed to Moscow, and his father died soon afterwards.

Lyeff Nikolaevitch, his brother Dmitry, and his sister Marya then returned to the country estate, while his elder brother Nikolai remained in Moscow with Countess Osten-Saken and studied at the University of Moscow.