Sophia Tolstaya

Sophia Behrs was one of three daughters of a German physician Andrey Evstafievich Behrs (1808–1868) and his Russian wife Liubov Alexandrovna (née Islavinа, 1826–1886). Her maternal great-grandfather, Count Pyotr Zavadovsky, was the first minister of education in Russia's history. Sophia was first introduced to Leo Tolstoy in 1862 when she was 18 years old. At 34, Tolstoy was 16 years her senior. On 17 September 1862 the couple became formally engaged after Tolstoy gave Sophia a written proposal of marriage,[1] marrying a week later in Moscow. At the time of their marriage, Leo Tolstoy was well known as a novelist after the publication of The Cossacks. On the eve of their marriage, Tolstoy gave Sophia his diaries that detailed his sexual relations with female serfs. In Anna Karenina, 34-year-old Konstantin Levin, a semi-autobiographical character behaves similarly, asking his 19-year-old fiancée Kitty to read his diaries and learn of his past transgressions. The diary included the fact that Tolstoy had fathered a child by a woman who remained on the Yasnaya Polyana estate. In Anne Edwards' Sonya: The Life of Countess Tolstoy, she describes Sophia as having a deep fear that Tolstoy would re-enter a relationship with the other woman.

Sophia Tolstaya and daughter Alexandra Tolstaya

The Tolstoys had 13 children, eight of whom survived childhood.[2] The family was prosperous, owing to Tolstoy's efficient management of his estates and to the sales of his works, making it possible to provide adequately for the family. Sophia acted as copyist of War and Peace, copying and editing the manuscript seven times from beginning to end at home at night by candlelight after the children and servants had gone to bed, using an inkwell pen and sometimes needing a magnifying glass to read her husband's notes.[3]

In 1887, Tolstaya regained interest in the relatively new art of photography, which she had learned to practise at age 16.[4] She took over 1,000 photographs that documented her life, including with Tolstoy, and the decline of the pre-Soviet Russian Empire.[5] She was a diarist and documented her life with Leo Tolstoy in a series of diaries which were published in English translation in the 1980s.[3] Tolstaya wrote her memoirs as well, which she titled My Life.[6]

Family of Leo Tolstoy, 1887

After many years of an increasingly troubled marriage — the couple argued over Tolstoy's desire to give away all his private property[7] — Leo left Sophia abruptly in 1910, aged 82, with their daughter Alexandra, and his doctor, Dushan Makovicki (Dušan Makovický). Tolstoy died 10 days later in a railway station, and Sophia was kept away from him (as depicted in the film The Last Station).[4] Following the death of her husband, Sophia continued to live in Yasnaya Polyana and survived the Russian Revolution in relative peace. She died in 1919.

With recent increased interest in Sophia Tolstaya some new biographical works, based on her memoirs and diaries, have been published:

• Ursula Keller/Natalya Sharandak: Sofya Andreyevna Tolstaya: Ein Leben an der Seite Tolstojs. Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2009
• Nina Niktina. Sofya Tolstaya. Moscow, 2010
• Alexandra Popoff. Sophia Tolstoy. A Biography. Free Press, 2010

The family circle at Yasnaya Polyana. c. 1905

• The Later Diaries of Countess Tolstoy 1891-1897 London, Victor Gollancz, 1929 - translated by Alexander Werth
• Autobiography of Sophie Andreevna Tolstoi online at archive.org
• The Memoirs of Sofia Tolstoy, which she titled My Life – at University of Ottawa Press
• Who's to Blame (Russian: Чья вина?), Oktyabr 1994/10, 6-59. German Translation: Eine Frage der Schuld, Zürich 2008.[8]
• Song without Words (Russian: Песня без слов), unpublished in Russia. German Translation: Lied ohne Worte, Zürich 2010.[9]
• Cathy Porter (tr), The Diaries of Sophia Tolstoy (London: HarperCollins, 2010).

• Ursula Keller, Natalja Sharandak. Sofja Andrejewna Tolstaja. Ein Leben an der Seite Tolstojs, Frankfurt, M. Leipzig: Insel Verlag (2009)
• Lew Tolstoj - Sofja Tolstaja: Eine Ehe in Briefen. Ed. and trans. from Russian by Ursula Keller, Natalja Sharandak. Berlin: Insel Verlag (2010)[10]
• Leah Bendavid-Val. Song without words: the photographs & diaries of countess Sophia Tolstoy. Washington, DC: National Geographic (2007)
• Anne Edwards. Sonya: The Life of Countess Tolstoy (1981)
• Cynthia Asquith. Married to Tolstoy (1960)

She was portrayed by Helen Mirren in the 2009 The Last Station, based on the 1990 biographical novel of the same name by Jay Parini,[11] and Leo Tolstoy was portrayed by Christopher Plummer. Both actors were nominated for Academy Awards in their respective categories. Her life was also serialised in August 2010 by BBC's Radio 4 with the title A Simple Life.

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• Writers and their wives: Together in love, work and legacy, rbth.ru, 20 January 2014