Chapter 3 - Tolstoy’s Family

Summary

This chapter traces the history of the Tolstoy family, dating Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy’s ancestry back to the fourteenth century. It begins with a brief explanation of the Tolstoy family’s complicated genealogy, distinguishing between the titled branch and the untitled Tver and Kutuzov branches. Next there is a brief overview of the Tolstoy family’s most famous scions, ranging from prominent statesmen to flamboyant individuals whose colorful lives consolidated the family reputation for eccentricity. There is also a brief discussion of the distinguished and troubled history of the Volkonsky family, Tolstoy’s maternal ancestors. The chapter then focuses on Tolstoy’s immediate family – his parents, brothers, sister, aunts and, of course, his wife Sofia Andreevna and their children. There is commentary on what they meant to him, both personally and creatively, and on how he drew on them, as well as his more distant forebears, to breathe flesh and blood into the iconic characters of his two great novels.