Lev Tolstoy's Unhappy Family

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy died almost a century ago (on November 7, 1910), at the age of eighty-two, in the home of a railway station attendant in Astapovo. Unlike Pushkin and Dostoyevsky, whose descendants are few, the Tolstoys (Sonya and Lev) were blessed with

13 children. While only eight survived to adulthood, six of them produced 31 grandchildren, and, at last count, almost 200 living direct descendants. Unfortunately, however, the couple’s 48-year marriage, which began happily, unraveled dramatically in later years, forcing the children to take sides.