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Tolstoy is widely regarded as one of the
greatest of all novelists, particularly noted for his masterpieces
War and Peace and
Anna Karenina; in their scope,
breadth and realistic depiction of Russian life, the two books stand
at the peak of realistic fiction.
As a moral philosopher he was notable for his ideas on nonviolent
resistance through his work The Kingdom of God is Within You,
which in turn influenced such twentieth-century figures as Mahatma
Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Tolstoy was an extremely wealthy member of the Russian nobility.
He came to believe that he was undeserving of his inherited wealth,
and was renowned among the peasantry for his generosity.
He died of pneumonia at Astapovo station in 1910 after leaving
home in the middle of winter at the age of 82. His death came only
days after gathering the nerve to abandon his family and wealth and
take up the path of a wandering ascetic—a path that he had agonized
over pursuing for decades. Thousands of peasants lined the streets
at his funeral.
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