Leo Tolstoy (August 28, 1828, the estate of Yasnaya Polyana in Tula Province - 7 November 1910 Astapovo station (now the station Leo Tolstoy) Ryazan-Ural railroad..) - Earl, Russian writer.The first years of Tolstoy's life took place in his parents' estate Yasnaya Polyana, near the town of Tula. Very early, at the age of eighteen months, he lost his mother, Maria Nikolaevna, a woman emotional and strong. Tolstoy knew many family stories about my mother. The image of her was fanned for him the lightest feelings. Father Nikolai Ilyich, a retired colonel, was a friend of the Decembrists and Islenevym Koloshin. He had a pride and independence in relations with the authorities. For Tolstoy, the father was the epitome of beauty, strength, passionate, love of gambling pleasures of life. From him he inherited a passion for hunting with hounds, the beauty and excitement that many years later Tolstoy expressed in the pages of the novel War and Peace in the description of harassment wolf hounds old Count Rostov