Moscow Guide
Krasnaya Presnya, Fili and the southwest
Tolstoy's House
Address: On the left-hand side of ulitsa Lva Tolstovo
Opening time: 10am–6pm; closed Mon & the last Fri of each month
Price: R200
A tall brown fretwork fence with a plaque announces the Tolstoy House-Museum (muzey-usadba L.I. Tolstovo). Count Lev Tolstoy purchased the wooden house in October 1882 to placate his wife, Sofia Andreevna, who was tired of provincial life at Yasnaya Polyana and feared that their children's education was suffering. By this time, Tolstoy had already written War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and seemed bent on renouncing his wealth and adopting the life of a peasant – to the fury of Sofia. The children generally sided with her but felt torn by love for their father, who found it hard to reconcile his own paternal feelings with the dictates of his conscience. To strain relations further, Tolstoy alternated between anguished celibacy ("I know for certain that copulation is an abomination") and boundless lust for his wife, who bore thirteen children (eight of whom lived) and wrote: "I am to gratify his pleasure and nurse his child, I am a piece of household furniture, a woman!"