Terming Leo Tolstoy a Gandhi of Russia, his biographer Rosamund Bartlett felt that the great Russian is all the more relevant in world today battling against poverty and repressive regimes. Speaking on the occasion of DSC Jaipur Literature Festival on Friday, She said that Tolstoy was without doubt the greatest Russian of 19th century.
Explaining the reason behind writing a biography, Tolstoy: A Russian Life, especially in 2010, she said, "First of all, it was the centenary year of Tolstoy's death. Secondly, with the introduction of perestroika and glasnost by Mikhail Gorbachev, a lot more information was available today on him, helping me extensively in compilation of the book."
Speaking on the rocky relationship of Tolstoy with Russian regime, the biographer said that the great Russian was an eyesore to the political establishment of the day, leading to his ex-communication by the orthodox church in 1901. "He maintained that religion is the cause of horror in the world," added Bartlett.
On the legacy of Tolstoy, she said, "I was greatly surprised to discover the extent of Tolstoy's importance as a political figure in Russia, beginning in the 1860s, before he wrote War and Peace, and culminating with the international media event of his death in 1910."
On the question of what happened to Tolstoy and his artistic and religious legacy after 1917, she said that Russia's lukewarm response to his death centenary dates back to the times of Czar and the Bolshevik revolution.
Moreover, his large volume of spiritual writings was published only once and in small numbers, leaving generations of Russians growing up in the 20th century without any knowledge of them. Today, Tolstoy remains a threat to the Russian establishment because of his anarchic ideas and his never-ending quest for truth, she added.
According to Bartlett, Tolstoy besides being a novelist, was an educationist, social reformer, and moreover, a pacifist.
