The Influence of Tolstoy on Russian Literature

War and Peace was not Tolstoy's first novel. By his own admission, Anna Karenina was his first novel. Russia had started producing novels maybe in the 40s, the 1840s. Most would say that the first Russian novel is Gogol's dead souls. He was enabled to start writing novelistically by Puskin,. The father of ostensibly more modern Russian literature. Told us he disdain Shakespeare, Cervantes, Wagner, Beethoven.