At the beginning of the 20th century, people from all corners of Russia and the four corners of the world flocked to seek advice from the most famous Russian novelist still alive: Leo Tolstoy. Life master, guru or coach: an astonishing destiny for an author who seemed to have done everything in his power to make a mess of his life, and who was well aware that he was an example to no one. Yet there is one area in which Tolstoy wanted to be a master: his school. His life was punctuated by great pedagogical undertakings, both theoretical and practical, which sometimes served as an escape route, sometimes as a laboratory for the writer’s work.
To enter Tolstoy’s school is to penetrate to the heart of a man’s passion, but also to face up to the contradictions of an author who imagined and experimented with a radically original form of learning, for better or for worse. It also takes us back to the effervescence of pre-Revolutionary Russia, at a time when the great Russian novel was enjoying its heyday, and when the country was ravaged by famine and terrorist attacks, riven by fierce intellectual debate and racked by concerns about its identity and destiny.
