In Chechnya people are interested in the life and works of Leo Tolstoy in the Caucasus.
It is thought that Tolstoy wrote his first works in the Caucasus, including "Childhood" and "Cossacks". Tolstoy went to the Caucasus in the 1840s. He lived with Chechen people from 1851 to 1854. Later he wrote that he "tried to understand the mentality of the local tribes," their traditions and values.
During the Caucasus War of the XIX century Tolstoy arrived in the village of Starogladov, where he lived with a family of wealthy Cossacks. He took part in 17 military campaigns. For the rest of his life Tolstoy remembered the Caucasus.
In the village of Starogladov there is a Tolstoy literary and ethnographical museum. It cooperates closely with the major Tolstoy museum in Yasnaya Polyana in the Tula region. During the war, the Tolstoy museum was the only one which wasn't closed. The monument to Tolstoy wasn't destroyed. The museum was reconstructed in 2002, with the help of the Yasnaya Polyana administration.
Today the museum has 4 exhibition halls containing 3,000 items. In June 2011 Chechnya will celebrate the 160th anniversary of Tolstoy's arrival in the Caucasus.
Timur Utsayev. Grozny. Exclusively to VK.
