What caused Leo Tolstoy’s religious crisis after completing Anna Karenina?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Portrait of Leo Tolstoy with a long white beard, wearing a dark shirt and looking slightly to the side. — Leo Tolstoy Russian writer Leo Tolstoy is widely regarded as one of the world's greatest novelists. His masterpieces are *War and Peace* (1865–69) and *Anna Karenina* (1875–77).

After completing Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy experienced a profound existential crisis characterized by a paralyzing fear of death and a sense that all human activity was ultimately pointless. This internal struggle, which he documented in his work My Confession, led him to seek meaning through religion.1

While he initially turned to the Russian Orthodox Church, he quickly concluded that it and other Christian institutions were corrupt and had distorted the true message of Christianity. Consequently, he rejected traditional dogmas, sacraments, and miracles, instead focusing on his own interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, particularly those found in the Sermon on the Mount. This shift marked the beginning of his life-long effort to develop and propagate a new faith centered on moral tenets such as nonresistance to evil and pacifism.1