Leo Tolstoy: the forgotten genius?

Leo Tolstoy is widely considered in the west to be the greatest writer of all time and this year sees the release of a film, The Last Station, to mark the centenary of his death. So why is his native Russia lukewarm about the literary genius?

by Luke Harding, The Guardian, Wednesday 6 January 2010


Left Leo Tolstoy - as portrayed by Christopher Plummer in The Last Station. Photograph: Stephan Rabold

For Tolstoy fans, 2010 is set to be a wonderful year. One hundred years after the great Russian novelist fled from his country estate outside Moscow – dying three weeks later in a small provincial railway station – the world is gearing up to celebrate him. In Germany and the US there are fresh translations of Anna Karenina; in Cuba and Mexico Tolstoy bookfairs; worldwide, a new black- and-white documentary. Dug up from Russia's archives and restored, the ­ original cinema footage shows an elderly Tolstoy playing with his poodles and vaulting energetically on his horse.

Next month also sees the UK premiere of The Last Station, an accomplished new drama about Tolstoy's final days. Starring Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer and James McAvoy, this witty biopic recounts the eventful last two years of his life. Under siege from fin de siècle paparazzi, Count Tolstoy and his wife Sofya Andreevna squabble over his literary estate. Tolstoy wants to leave the copyright to humanity; the countess wants the revenues herself. Tired of marital conflict, Tolstoy runs away, then falls ill and dies on his train journey south.

Based on the novel by Jay Parini, the film's central figure is Tolstoy's young private secretary, Valentin Bulgakov (McAvoy). During his later years, the novelist rejected property and fleshly pleasures, but Bulgakov's vow of Tolstoyan celibacy proves predictably short-lived: an attractive Tolstoy commune-member, Masha, relieves him of his virginity. There are strong performances from Mirren, Plummer and McAvoy, and the screenplay is pleasingly deft. Asked by Mrs Tolstoy whether he has read War and Peace, Bulgakov stammeringly replies: "Many times." There is a pause. He then concedes: "Well, twice."

One country, however, has so far conspicuously failed to share in this global Tolstoy mania – Russia. Rumour has it that Vladimir Putin toured Tolstoy's country estate incognito as a young KGB spy, but so far the Kremlin is not planning any major event to mark the centenary of Tolstoy's death on 20 November. Not only that, but the makers of The Last Station ended up shooting the film not among the birch trees and northern skylines of Tolstoy's Russia, but in the somewhat more genteel surroundings of rustic eastern Germany.

The movie's American director, Michael Hoffman, had intended to film The Last Station in Yasnaya Polyana, or Clear Glade, Tolstoy's pastoral family estate near Tula, 125 miles south of Moscow. "We wanted to do it in Russia, we really did," Andrei Deryabin, the film's co-producer, explains somewhat wistfully. "But there were no decent loos. There wasn't the infrastructure. The hotels were lousy. Nor were there any security guarantees for the actors. In the end, filming in Russia proved far too expensive."
The full Guardian story online.