At the age of seven he was enrolled in military service. From 1781 he was a colonel, from 1787 he was a brigadier, from 1789 he was a major general. Participant Russian-Turkish war 1787-1791 and the assault on Ochakov. In 1787, among the retinue of Catherine II, he accompanied the Empress during her trip to the Crimea. In 1793 he was Ambassador Extraordinary to Berlin on the occasion of the marriage of Prince Friedrich-Wilhelm. He left the service the following year. There are suggestions that the reason for the resignation was Volkonsky's quarrel with Prince Potemkin.
With the accession of Paul I in 1796, he resumed his service. Volkonsky was appointed military governor of Arkhangelsk, but it turned out to be impossible for the prince to serve under Paul, and he was soon forced to resign and retire to Yasnaya Polyana, where he spent twenty-two years.
Nikolai Sergeevich took up the reconstruction of the estate, for which he invited architects and gardeners. Under him, a park was laid out, ponds were arranged, new buildings appeared. Actually, he created the estate, which, together with the dowry of his daughter, passed to her husband Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy and still exists today. Volkonsky's grandson, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, wrote about his grandfather: “Probably, he had a very subtle aesthetic sense. All his buildings are not only durable and comfortable, but extremely elegant. Such is the park he laid out in front of the house.
Nikolai Sergeevich also owned a house in Moscow on Vozdvizhenka Street.
Prince Nikolai Sergeevich was a man of a sharp and subtle mind, distinguished by a demanding and stern disposition. His daughter Maria in the story "Russian Pamela, or No Rules Without Exception" described her father under the name Prince Razumin. Lev Nikolaevich wrote: “My grandfather was considered a very strict master, but I never heard stories about his cruelties and punishments, so common at that time ... I heard only praises for the mind, thriftiness and care for the peasants and, in particular, the huge household my grandfather." In the novel "War and Peace" in the image of Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, the writer reflected the features of his grandfather.
Volkonsky was married to the youngest daughter of Prince Dmitry Yuryevich Trubetskoy - Ekaterina Dmitrievna. Had two daughters: Varvara, who died in infancy; Maria - married to retired lieutenant colonel Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy.
Nikolai Sergeyevich passionately loved his only daughter, who lost her mother early. He made every effort for her upbringing and education. Teachers were invited for Maria, who taught her German, French, English, Italian and the humanities. Mathematics and other exact sciences were taught by the prince himself to his daughter. The program also included the basics Agriculture, which, according to Volkonsky, the future mistress of a large estate should have had.
Volkonsky died in Moscow and was buried in the Andronikov Monastery. In 1928, his ashes were transferred to the Kochakovsky necropolis near Yasnaya Polyana in the Tula province.
There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.
L. N. Tolstoy
Yasnaya Polyana is the state museum-estate of Leo Tolstoy. If we follow the opinion of the greatest Russian philosopher and writer, which is given in the epigraph, Yasnaya Polyana is a majestic estate. But the estate is rich not in luxury, from which Lev Nikolayevich diligently fenced himself off all his life, but in simplicity, which is read in all architectural buildings and the arrangement of gardens, the kindness established by Tolstoy on the estate in relation to the peasants, and the truth, carefully stored by the museum workers on the shelves with books writer.
Yasnaya Polyana got its strange name, according to one version, from the vast sunny valley, located at the turn to the estate, according to another - from the Yasenka river, which flows nearby, or the village of Yasenka, standing on it.
L. N. Tolstoy was born in Yasnaya Polyana in 1828, lived most of his life, wrote all his main works in this estate, and here he was buried in 1910.
Even if you have not seen Yasnaya Polyana yet, you can imagine it when reading the description of the Bald Mountains in the novel War and Peace. The prototype of the Bolkonsky estate was Lev Nikolayevich's own estate, as, indeed, the writer's relatives and friends became the prototypes of all the main characters of the epic. You can see their portraits in the house-museum of Leo Tolstoy and, of course, you will immediately recognize from whom the author of "War and Peace" "copied" Ilya Andreevich Rostov, from whom - Natasha Rostova herself, from whom - Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky , from whom - Pierre Bezukhov.
History of Yasnaya Polyana
The family estate of the great Russian writer and philosopher is located in the Shchekino district of the Tula region.
The estate was founded in the 17th century. Initially, it belonged to the Kartsev family: in 1627, boyar Grigory Kartsev and his son Stepan were granted land in the Solovskiy (later Krapivenskiy) district for their faithful service to the tsar. In 1763 Prince S. F. Volkonsky bought Yasnaya Polyana. In 1822, his only heir, Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya, married Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy - since then, Yasnaya Polyana has been forever attached to the Tolstoy family.
However, the main merit in creating the image of the estate belongs not to Tolstoy at all, but to the grandfather of the great writer, Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky. It was he who created the harmonious world of Yasnaya Polyana, which everyone can visit today.
Sights of Yasnaya Polyana
The first architectural creation that every visitor to Yasnaya Polyana encounters is the white entrance turrets. Passing through them, you will see the Great Pond on the left - the largest in size of the three ponds of the estate. From the entrance gate, a preshpekt leads far into the distance - a birch alley, planted even before coming to the Bolkonsky estate - around 1800. If you go straight along the prefecture, you will get to the house of L. N. Tolstoy.
N. S. Volkonsky erected a whole architectural ensemble in a picturesque garden, including a large manor house and two two-story outbuildings on the sides. It was also planned to connect both wings with the main Yasnaya Polyana house with galleries, but this idea never came to fruition.
Main Yasnaya Polyana house
Unfortunately, today in the estate you will not see the main manor house, in which in 1828 Leo Tolstoy was born and spent his childhood. The large Yasnaya Polyana house was sold by the writer himself in 1854 for debts to a neighboring estate. Then the young count had just returned from service in the Caucasus, where he voluntarily went for patriotic reasons in 1852. Tolstoy already then gained popularity as a writer, but the people did not know his hero by sight: he constantly fought somewhere, he had no time for fans, no time for fees.
House-Museum of Leo Tolstoy
In 1856, realizing that war is a senseless evil, Tolstoy returns to his homeland - to Yasnaya Polyana. He had to settle in one of the outbuildings, since there was no longer a house. In 1862, the 34-year-old count, convinced that one can marry, like dying, only once, finally meets his ideal and marries 18-year-old Sofya Andreevna Bers. The Moscow young lady, who, according to contemporaries, has nineteen talents, Tolstoy brings to the village and turns into the wife of his dreams. Sofya Andreevna gave him 13 children, five of whom died before reaching adolescence; all 48 years of marriage, she rewrote diaries in legible handwriting and works of art Lev Nikolaevich; ran the house, raised the children, and last years life of Tolstoy, when he decided to retire completely and already literally run away from the nobility, she was in charge of all of Yasnaya Polyana. Good choice wife allowed Lev Nikolaevich to engage in self-improvement all his life, to study 14 foreign languages, to become an encyclopedically educated person, to become famous as a talented teacher, philosopher and writer.
It is clear that for such big family like Tolstoy's, the wing was cramped. It was significantly expanded, and it became completely different from the second wing, it was transformed into a house in which the writer lived for 50 years.
Today, in the house-museum of L. N. Tolstoy, you can see the same atmosphere that was at the time of the writer’s departure from Yasnaya Polyana in 1910. Here are the personal belongings of Lev Nikolaevich, his library, consisting of 22,000 books, portraits of family members, workplace writer, where the great works of Russian literature were born.
Wing Kuzminsky
The wing of the Kuzminskys is the only one of the three buildings of the ensemble that has managed to retain its original appearance. It was in it from 1859 to 1862 that L. N. Tolstoy's school for peasant children operated. As you know, the count himself gave lessons here, which was nonsense for the then world community. Later, this outbuilding served as a guest house. Most often, Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya's sister Tatyana Andreevna Kuzminskaya stayed in it with her family: the name of this guest gave the name to the previously unnamed wing.
Volkonsky House
The Volkonsky House is the oldest building in Yasnaya Polyana. There is an assumption that it was here that the “chief architect” of the estate, the grandfather of L. N. Tolstoy, N. S. Volkonsky, lived. At the time of the writer himself, servants lived in the Volkonsky House, a laundry room and a “black kitchen” were located. In the east wing, Tolstoy's daughter Tatyana organized her art workshop.
Today, the Volkonsky House is an administrative building - the residence of the director of the museum-estate Yasnaya Polyana, the great-great-grandson of the famous writer, V. I. Tolstoy.
Other architectural sights of Yasnaya Polyana
In the estate of L. N. Tolstoy, some outbuildings are still functioning: a stable and a carriage house, an inventory shed, a living room and a barn, a greenhouse. The greenhouse, by the way, was also created under N. S. Volkonsky, and as a girl, L. N. Tolstoy's mother loved to work in it.
Of course, in Yasnaya Polyana there are many ancient buildings that have lost their main purpose today and have simply turned into museum exhibits. These include a coachman's, blacksmith's and carpenter's, a bathhouse on the Middle Pond, a bathhouse, a gazebo-tower, a garden house in which one of the daughters of Leo Tolstoy treated the peasants.
Of particular interest to tourists are the birch bridge, located to the right of the preshpekt, in the ravine, and the writer's favorite bench in Yolochki. The newlyweds are photographed on the bridge, everyone can sit on the bench and meditate, like Lev Nikolayevich did in his time, everyone.
Natural composition of Yasnaya Polyana
Tolstoy's estate still pleases the eye with its picturesque parks, well-groomed gardens and clean forests. Once in Yasnaya Polyana, you can immerse yourself in the atmosphere of a Russian noble estate of the 19th century.
You won't have a day to walk around all the woodlands of the estate, but a walk through any of them will give you a real pleasure. If you are attracted by the old plantings of the 17th century, go to the Kliny park, if you like silence and solitude, make your way to the Yolochki to the bench of Lev Nikolaevich or to Chepyzh to admire 300-year-old wide oaks. If you are averse to dense forests and prefer to relax under the sun, take a walk in the Oblique Glade or get to the Voronka River, which flows right through the estate.
Old Order - a zone of silence
It makes no sense to describe the numerous gardens and ponds of Yasnaya Polyana, it is better to see them once with your own eyes. However, one manor forest still requires special attention. This is the forest of the Old Order, in which Leo Tolstoy liked to play with his brothers as a child. The older brother Nikolai then came up with a story about a green stick, which was supposedly buried on the bank of a ravine in the Old Order. The children firmly believed that if this wand was found, there would be no more troubles in the world, and for a long time they tried to find it. Shortly before his death, the philosophically minded Leo Tolstoy remembered the parable of his beloved brother about the green stick that brings world happiness. The writer then felt very bad: he was excommunicated for the theory of the earthly origin of Jesus, the wife, on whom all the estate and publishing affairs hung, did not share the ascetic views of her husband, the children also could not follow the example of their father. Then Tolstoy, suffocating in his native home, in a loving noble family, puts on peasant bast shoes and runs away from Yasnaya Polyana to die on the way.
On the eve of the writer's death, heavy thoughts often visited. Anathema also haunted him for a long time: he suffered from the fact that he would never be buried in an Orthodox cemetery next to his relatives. But soon Lev Nikolaevich found solace in his own reflections: he realized that a person is a soul, and it doesn’t matter where after death she dumps her mortal body. Tolstoy bequeathed: “So that no rituals are performed when my body is buried in the ground; a wooden coffin, and whoever wants to, will take or carry the Old Order into the forest, opposite the ravine, in place of the green stick. The last will of Leo Tolstoy was exactly carried out in November 1910.
In 1928, in connection with the liquidation of the cemetery of the Spas-Androniev Monastery in Moscow, the ashes of N.S. Volkonsky and the monument were transferred to the Kochakovsky cemetery.
"Prince N.S. Volkonsky should interest us not only because he is the grandfather of L.N. Tolstoy and that his grandson inherited some of his character traits, but also as one of the prominent and typical representatives of his era and his environment, as a prototype of the book Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky in "War and Peace" and as the former owner of Yasnaya Polyana, where he planned the estate, planted a park and erected buildings that still exist, "- this is how the son of the writer Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy, the author, began his story about N.S. Volkonsky published in the late 20s of the book "Mother and grandfather of L.N. Tolstoy".
The coat of arms of the Volkonsky family included the coats of arms of the Kyiv and Chernigov princes, which was a sign of an ancient and noble family. The surname is formed from the name of the Tula-Kaluga river Volkona, at the location of the Volkonsky estates. The first of the princes Volkonsky - Ivan Yurievich - died in 1380 on the Kulikovo Field. Many of his descendants became famous in the military field.
Recorded, according to the custom of that time, for military service as a child, N.S. Volkonsky at the age of 27 - captain of the guard, was in the retinue of Catherine II at her meeting with the Austrian emperor Joseph II in Mogilev, and after 7 years accompanied the empress on her trip across the Crimea. In 1781 he became a colonel, in 1787 - a brigadier, in 1789 - a major general, who was with the army. There are data and family traditions about the participation of Volkonsky during the Russian-Turkish war in the capture of Ochakov (December 6, 1788). In 1793 he had to be ambassador in Berlin, in 1794 - to be with the troops in Lithuania and Poland.
He had a chance to go through a two-year vacation, which happened, according to Leo Tolstoy, because of a quarrel with the all-powerful Potemkin. Under Pavel, he, the chief of the Azov Musketeer Regiment, was dismissed from service for a year and a half, and then accepted into the service with a promotion (lieutenant general) and immediately, on December 27, 1798, he was appointed military governor of Arkhangelsk.
Biographer L.N. Tolstoy N.N. Gusev notes on this occasion: “Only a military general could be appointed as a military governor in this city, which, obviously, Volkonsky seemed to Pavel ... having received information about the alleged landing of the French in Arkhangelsk, Pavel ... appointed Volkonsky as the commander of a special corps left for this occasion ... "The name of one of the remote farms of Volkonsky, Grumant, which still exists, is transferred to the Yasnaya Polyana land, transferred to the Yasnaya Polyana land, which corresponds to the ancient name of the Svalbard archipelago.
Regarding Volkonsky's interference in one of the minor civil cases, he received a reprimand from the tsar.
November 23, 1799 was followed by Paul's decree on dismissal from service at the request of the General of Infantry, Prince N.S. Volkonsky. The writer's grandson S.M. Tolstoy wrote about this in his book Tolstoy and Tolstoy: intrigues and raise her daughter - she was already nine years old. The last twenty-two years of his life, the prince spent with his daughter in Yasnaya Polyana. Volkonsky was not forgotten in his solitude ... Even Alexander I, during one of his travels, passing by Yasnaya Polyana, returned to pay a visit to the old prince."
N.S. Volkonsky was married to Ekaterina Dmitrievna Trubetskoy, a representative of old kind with aristocratic traditions and broad cultural interests. One of Volkonsky's daughters died in early childhood. The second daughter, Maria, the future mother of Leo Tolstoy, was only two years old when her mother died. The childhood of M.N. Volkonskaya passed in Moscow, where at that time the Volkonskys also owned houses No. 9 and No. 11 on Vozdvizhenka.
Yasnaya Polyana was acquired in 1763 by the father of N.S. Volkonsky, Sergei Fedorovich, from the landowner Pozdeev, a descendant of the voevodas, then she passed to N.S. Volkonsky, as the youngest son in the family. The image of his grandfather at that time, probably close to the real one, is reproduced by L.N. his beard was blue, clean-shaven. The cambric linen of the cuffs and shirt-front was of extraordinary cleanliness. He held himself straight, carried his head high, and black eyes from under thick, black eyebrows looked proudly and calmly over a curved, dry nose. Thin lips were folded firmly. " This is exactly how he is depicted in two of his portraits preserved in Yasnaya Polyana, in old age and in his younger years. The image of N.S. Volkonsky formed the basis of the image of Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky in the novel "War and Peace".
Features of the Yasnaya Polyana way of life provided material for describing the Lysyye Gory estate. "He was strict, but merciful," they say in a sketch for a novel about a gentleman in this village. "The peasants of the Bald Mountains ... worked merrily, on good horses and had an appearance of prosperity greater than one can now meet." "In "Memoirs" (1903) Tolstoy adds: "... I heard only praises for the mind, economy and care for the peasants and, in particular, the huge household of my grandfather." We also read in the same place: "All of his buildings are not only durable and comfortable but extremely graceful. Such is the park he laid out in front of the house. "The description of the prince's walk to the sounds of a serf orchestra, reproduced in the sketches for War and Peace, goes back to the real moments of the Yasnaya Polyana estate history. Tolstoy wrote about the same in his Memoirs:" three girths of an elm that grew in a wedge of a linden alley and around which benches and music stands were made for musicians.
The buildings of that time include the famous entrance turrets of the estate, on which the gates were hung, and two identical stone two-story outbuildings at that time, of which the right one will become the home of L.N. for a long time. Tolstoy. Construction began between the outbuildings big house, completed under the writer's father, but then sold for export. The beautiful building, occupied by Tolstoy's grandfather as a carpet factory - now called "Volkonsky's house", may have been a residential manor house in earlier times.
“N.S. Volkonsky showed exceptional concern for giving an excellent upbringing to his daughter,” writes Tolstoy’s grandson S.M. Tolstoy in the above-mentioned book. “Teachers and governesses taught her German, English, Italian languages and the humanities. French she owned like a native, it was common in noble families of that time. But Marie also knew Russian well, which the girls of her circle could not boast of. Finally, with regard to mathematics and other exact sciences, Prince Volkonsky himself taught them to his daughter ... The education system developed by Volkonsky also provided for the study of the basics of agriculture, which was necessary for managing such an estate as Yasnaya Polyana. detailed agronomic recommendations are written in neat handwriting on paper; in other notebooks - information on astronomy, geography, history ...
By the time of her entry into the world, Princess Maria Volkonskaya had become a reasonable, lively and independent girl.
There is no information about the circumstances of the death of the prince, who died in Moscow. He was buried in the Androniev Monastery. A connoisseur of Yasnaya Polyana antiquity, the oldest employee of the L.N. Tolstoy Museum in Yasnaya Polyana N.P. Puzin writes in his book "The Kochakovsky Necropolis", referring to the cemetery at the Kochakovsky Church near Yasnaya Polyana: "On the east side, between the crypt and the fence, there is the grave of Tolstoy's maternal grandfather, Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky.
In 1928, in connection with the liquidation of the cemetery of the Spas-Androniev Monastery in Moscow, the ashes of N.S. Volkonsky and the monument were transferred to the Kochakovsky cemetery.
His tombstone is a red marble stele rounded at the top, on which is carved in type early XIX century:
"The General of Infantry and Cavalier Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky was born on March 30, 1753; died on February 3, 1821."
In the Yasnaya Polyana Museum for many years, a story has been heard every day about Leo Tolstoy's grandfather, the builder of the estate, a man whom the writer called in "Memoirs" "smart, proud, gifted."