Leo Tolstoy - a genius whose greatness has been obscured from us rather than enhanced by his duality; a realist who strove to demolish the mysticism of Christianity, and became himself a mystic in the contemplation of nature. The derivation of Tolstoy's fiction from the classical school of Russian realism begun by Pushkin can hardly be doubted. Unlike Dostoevsky, who creates a world of his own in the image of the real world, Tolstoy accepts the real world, and his picture of it is fresh and interesting because he sees so much more of it than his readers, but its commonplaces, observed through the prism of his imagination, take on new meaning. That is, he is able to perceive genuine poetry in the average which so often embodies the reality of man's dreams and hopes. In this volume we present a selection of long and short stories by Leo Tolstoy. All stories are complete & unabridged.