Leo Tolstoy's literature and ethnographic museum was opened in the Starogladovskya village in Chechnya on December, 6. The sixth Russian museum dedicated to life and work of the great Russian writer is located where Tolstoy had lived during his stay in the North Caucasus.
Actually, Tolstoy's museum has existed in Chechnya since 1980. But 13 years of war could not but take its affect on it: the building was practically damaged, and it took some time to rebuild it and create new exhibition rooms. The republican authorities initiated the construction of a building that would resemble a 19th century Russian mansion. Leo Tolstoy's museum in Yasnaya Polyana (outside the city of Tula) was responsible for the exhibition itself. Director of the Yasnaya Polyana museum, Vladimir Tolstoy, commented on the issue in an interview with the VOR:
"We`d like the visitors to have an idea of Leo Tolstoy's life and creative work in general. Certainly, the Caucasus is the leitmotif of our exhibition because Tolstoy first arrived in the Caucasus when he was 23 and wrote his first stories there. His final work, which was published after his death in 1910- a short novel titled Hadji Murat, also has the Caucasus as its recurring theme. To these places the author also dedicated his romantic novel Cossacks and lyrical Childhood, -it was written exactly in the Starogladovskaya village in Chechnya".
Leo Tolstoy spent two and a half years in the Caucasus (starting from 1851). He joined the army and participated in a so-called Caucasus War against mountain dwellers of the North Caucasus. Tolstoy's personal experience made him a harsh critic of ‘war romanticism' and later a pacifist. Visitors to the writer's museum in Chechnya will see copies of photographs, manuscripts and other Tolstoy's belongings, including replicas of his arms and also the items of the Caucasian household utensils the museum is still going to collect with the help of the locals.
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