10 things religious educators should know about Leo Tolstoy

The BBC’s recent adaptation of War and Peace for television has, of course, aroused interest in Tolstoy again. The hundredth anniversary of his death in 2010 also saw the publication of numerous newspaper and magazine articles; several books; a two-part documentary by the BBC, The Trouble with Tolstoy; and major conferences held in New York and Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy’s estate south of Moscow.

An examination of Tolstoy’s life reveals a complex genius who, in addition to writing two of the most highly regarded novels of all time, engaged in all kinds of artistic, social and political projects. He inspired Gandhi, he made his own shoes, he promoted vegetarianism, he conducted a census in Moscow, he organised soup kitchens to feed the victims of famine, etc.

However, what many people don’t realise is that Tolstoy was an innovative and committed religious educator. Furthermore, he advanced a kind of religious education that, although idiosyncratic, is in many ways an antecedent to popular strands of pedagogical and religious thinking today, particularly in Britain and North America.

1.  Tolstoy founded a school before he wrote War and Peace

Tolstoy was an aristocrat turned teacher. He founded several schools around his estate when he was a young man in order to teach peasant children. This was important at the time as it coincided with the emancipation of the serfs and there was debate over the best way to educate the peasantry.

2.  Tolstoy did experimental educational research

Tolstoy was not satisfied just teaching. His school was experimental and he published the findings of his educational experiments in his own educational journal named after his beloved country estate, Yasnaya Polyana.

Tolstoy’s estate, Yasnaya Polyana, is now a museum preserved as it was when Tolstoy died in 1910. Lessons for peasant children were held in several locations, including in the main house shown here. It is very similar to the Levin’s house described in Anna Karenina.

3. War and Peace was first a lesson plan

Tolstoy’s experience teaching inspired him to write great literature. A key motivation to write his epic, War and Peace, was the enthralled reaction of his class when he told them the story of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in a history lesson.

4. We can learn more from children than from adults

Tolstoy believed that teachers could learn to be better teachers by observing students. But he also believed that writers could learn to be better writers by engaging with children and writing with them. His pedagogical journal contains the stories written by his students and he kept stories written by students in a class he took when he visited London all his life.

5. Tolstoy loved English attitudes to religion and education

Tolstoy loved Dickens because his novels expressed what he considered to be true Christian values. He also greatly admired British Unitarian thinkers and the Quakers. He therefore employed several English Governesses at his estate to teach his own children.

6. Tolstoy taught religious education all his life

Although Tolstoy’s experimental school was closed only two years after it opened, he continued to teach groups of peasant children religious education until his death. He was interested in the way children thought about the Bible and even wrote a version of the Gospels based on their religious thinking.

7. Tolstoy was more Protestant than Orthodox

Tolstoy grew up in an Orthodox household but gave up this Orthodox faith and Trinitarian Christianity altogether. He was eventually excommunicated for his criticism of the Orthodox Church. He had read Kant, Rousseau, Luther and Schleiermacher as a youth and this undermined his belief in any kind of orthodoxy. In his later life he was influenced, and held similar views to the American Transcendentalists and Universalists, including Channing, Thoreau and Emerson.

8. Tolstoy believed in multi-faith religious education

Tolstoy engaged with Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and the Baha’i. He learnt Hebrew to read the Jewish Bible, read the Qur’an and visited Muslim leaders on his trips to the steppes. He corresponded with the Ahmadiyya Muslim movement. One of his last works was a collection of similar teachings from all the world’s religions to show how there was a universal spirituality and morality. His greatest influence remained the Christian Gospels, however, particularly the Sermon on the Mount.

9. Tolstoy thought moral and spiritual education was the most important thing in the world 

Towards the end of his life, Tolstoy increasingly believed that bad religious education led to war, greed and inequality. He believed that if all children were given an authentic religious education, then the world’s problems could be solved. Elements of this ‘true’ religious education included pacifism and Transcendentalism, including awareness of the spiritual and moral teachings of the world’s religions (as Tolstoy saw them).

Tolstoy is buried in a wood in Yasnaya Polyana where he played as a child. One of the students of his experimental school dug his grave. It has been said that it was the first non-Christian burial in Russia for 1,000 years. It is still a site of devotion and newly-wed couples often leave flowers here (which is peculiar perhaps given Tolstoy’s notorious relationship with his own wife).

10. Story telling is the best way of teaching

The lines between art and education were blurred for Tolstoy. He believed good literature was educational and there was nothing better than a short story that delivered a moral lesson. His Azbuka (ABC Book) was a primer for Russian children, but it included many moral parables, his own or adapted from other sources. He eventually gave up writing novels and only wrote simple didactic stories for instructional purposes.

For more information on Tolstoy and education, see Daniel Moulin, Leo Tolstoy (London, Bloomsbury).

Photographs are the author’s own.