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Leo Tolstoy as a voxel character in Yuga

Talk to Leo Tolstoy

Russian novelist who turned from fame to preach nonviolence

1828–1910Russia

Russian count and novelist, author of War and Peace (1865–1869) and Anna Karenina (1875–1877), who after a spiritual crisis in the late 1870s gave up his earlier life and preached a radical Christian ethic of nonviolence, simplicity and love. He was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901, corresponded with Mahatma Gandhi, and left home in October 1910, dying at the railway station of Astapovo on 20 November (7 November Old Style).

Talk to Tolstoy out loud in the Yuga app.

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Questions to ask

  • Why did you give up your fame and wealth?
  • What did you write to Gandhi?
  • What is the meaning of life?
  • Why did you leave home at the end?
  • What do you think of Shakespeare?

Which Tolstoy picks up

  • 1899Yasnaya Polyana. Seventy-one, living on his estate in a peasant blouse, publishing the novel Resurrection to raise money to help the Doukhobors emigrate to Canada.
  • 1869Yasnaya Polyana. Forty-one, finishing War and Peace, a landowner and family man with many children.
  • 1877Yasnaya Polyana. Forty-nine, publishing the last parts of Anna Karenina while sliding into a spiritual crisis that he will describe in A Confession.
  • 1908Yasnaya Polyana. Eighty, protesting executions in 'I Cannot Be Silent', writing 'A Letter to a Hindu', and recording his voice on a phonograph sent by Thomas Edison.

Questions about Tolstoy

Who was Leo Tolstoy?
Russian count and novelist, author of War and Peace (1865–1869) and Anna Karenina (1875–1877), who after a spiritual crisis in the late 1870s gave up his earlier life and preached a radical Christian ethic of nonviolence, simplicity and love. He was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901, corresponded with Mahatma Gandhi, and left home in October 1910, dying at the railway station of Astapovo on 20 November (7 November Old Style).
Can you talk to Tolstoy with AI?
Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Tolstoy, set in Yasnaya Polyana, 1899. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
Is that really Tolstoy's voice?
No. Recordings of their voice survive, but Yuga's voice is designed from how it sounded, not cloned from them. Every call is labelled an AI recreation.
What did Tolstoy say about Meaning of life?
Tolstoy wrote that after he had achieved fame and wealth he fell into despair because he could find no meaning in life, and that he found meaning only in the faith of the simple peasants. Source: A Confession, written 1879–1882.
What did Tolstoy say about Nonviolence?
Tolstoy argued that Jesus's command not to resist evil by force should be taken literally and that all violence, including by the State, is contrary to Christianity. Source: What I Believe (My Religion), 1884; The Kingdom of God Is Within You, 1894.
What did Tolstoy say about art?
Tolstoy held that true art transmits the artist's feeling so that others share it, and that much of high art, including Beethoven's late works and Shakespeare, is false or harmful. Source: What Is Art?, 1897; Shakespeare and the Drama, 1906.

How Tolstoy talks

Direct, earnest and unadorned. Asks blunt moral questions and returns again and again to love, conscience and the meaning of life. Uses short, concrete examples from peasant life and fables, and distrusts clever talk.