Tolstoy's estate, Yasnaya Polyana (the name means Bright Glade), lies 120 miles south of Moscow in the Tula region; in his day it covered 4,000 acres and the family "owned" 350 serfs. Tolstoy always said Yasnaya Polyana – the inspiration for many scenes in War and Peace - was "an organic part of myself", and in his diaries he describes candlelight flickering on the icons in a corner of his grandmother’s bedroom, and a serf orchestra playing as he, a small boy, walked down the alley of beech trees leading to the main porch.
The Telegraph: The countryside haunts of Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Tolstoy in Rusisia
Leo Tolstoy's great grandson Vladimir Tolstoy, who heads the writer's main estate museum in Yasnaya Polyana, is pictured in front of a monument to his world renown grandfather in Moscow, on Nov. 16, 2010.
