Yasnaya Polyana

What it is

Yasnaya Polyana is a former estate, now a writer's house museum, located near Tula, Russia. It had belonged to Tolstoy's mother's family before passing to Tolstoy himself. In 1921 it was nationalized and became a state museum.

Why it matters

Leo Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, lived there for much of his life, and wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina there. He also founded a school for peasant children on the estate and is buried in its grounds. The estate shows the world Tolstoy came from and returned to throughout his life, and the gap between his aristocratic birth and his growing concern for the peasants who worked his land.

Look closer

• Why might a wealthy landowner choose to found a school for peasant children on his own estate?
• What does it mean that Tolstoy is buried in the grounds rather than in a church cemetery?
• What might an estate like this hide about the lives of the peasants who worked there?