Crimean War starts Commissioned, serves on Danube front. November: transferred at own request to Sevastopol, then under siege by allied forces Boyhood

1855 Death of Nicholas I; accession of Alexander II In action until the fall of Sevastopol in August. Gains celebrity with ‘Sevastopol in December’ and further sketches, ‘Sevastopol in May, ’Sevastopol in August 1855’ (1856), ‘Memoirs of a Billiard Marker’, ‘The Woodfelling’

1856 Peace signed between Russia, Turkey, France and England Turgenev’s Rudin In St Petersburg, moves in literary circles; associates with Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov, Nikolay Nekrasov, Afanasy Fet and others. Leaves the army. Death of brother Dmitry ‘The Snowstorm’, ‘Two Hussars’, ‘A Landowner’s Morning’

1857 February-August. First trip abroad, to Paris (lasting impression of witnessing an execution by guillotine), Geneva and Baden-Baden Youth, ‘Lucerne’

1858 Long-term relationship with peasant woman on estate, Aksinya Bazykina, begins ‘Albert’

1859 Goncharov’s Oblomov; Turgenev’s The Home of the Gentry Founds primary school at Yasnaya Polyana ‘Three Deaths’, Family Happiness

1860 Death of brother Nikolay from tuberculosis Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the House of the Dead (1860-61). Turgenev’s On the Eve

1860 — 61 Emancipation of serfs (1861). Other reforms follow: Elective District Councils (zemstvos) set up (1864); judicial reform (1865). Formation of revolutionary Land and Liberty movement. Commencement of intensive industrialization; spread of railways Serves as Arbiter of the Peace, dealing with post-Emancipation land settlements. Quarrels with Turgenev and challenges him (no duel). Travels in France, Germany, Italy and England. Loses great deal of money through gambling. Meets Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in Brussels

1862 Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons Starts a magazine at Yasnaya Polyana on education for the peasants; abandons it after less than a year. Police raid on Yasnaya Polyana. Considers emigrating to England and writes protest to the Tsar. Marries Sofya Andreyevna Behrs (b. 1844)

1863 Polish rebellion Birth of first child, Sergey (Tolstoy and his wife were to have thirteen children - nine boys and four girls - of whom five die in childhood). Begins work on a novel, ‘The Decembrists’, which is later abandoned, but develops into War and Peace ‘Polikushka’, The Cossacks

1865 Nikolay Leskov’s ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk’ First part of War and Peace (titled 1805)

1866 Attempted assassination of Tsar Alexander II Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment

1867 Turgenev’s Smoke Visits Borodino in search of material for battle scene in War and Peace

1868 Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot

1869 Publication of War and Peace completed

1870 — 71 Franco-Prussian War. Municipal government reform Dostoyevsky’s Devils Studies ancient Greek. Illness; convalesces in Samara (Bashkiriya). Begins work on primer for children. First mention of Anna Karenina. Reads Arthur Schopenhauer and other philosophers. Starts work on novel about Peter the Great (later abandoned)

1872 ‘God Sees the Truth but Waits’, ‘A Prisoner of the Caucasus’

1873 Begins Anna Karenina. Raises funds during famine in Bashkiriya, where he has bought an estate. Growing obsession with problems of death and religion; temptation to commit suicide

1874 Much occupied with educational theory

1875 Beginning of active revolutionary movement

1875 — 7 Instalments of Anna Karenina published

1877 Turgenev’s Virgin Soil Journal publication of Anna Karenina completed (published in book form in 1878)

1877 — 8 Russo-Turkish War

1878 Reconciliation with Turgenev, who visits him at Yasnaya Polyana. Works on ‘The Decembrists’ and again abandons it. Works on A Confession (completed 1882, but banned by the religious censor and published in Geneva in 1884)

1879 Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov

1880 Works on A Critique of Dogmatic Theology

1881 Assassination of Tsar Alexander II. With accession of Alexander III, the government returns to reactionary policies Death of Dostoyevsky Writes to Tsar Alexander III asking him to pardon his father’s assassins

1882 Student riots in St Petersburg and Kazan Universities. Jewish pogroms and repressive measures against minorities Religious works, including new translation of the Gospels. Begins ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ and What Then Must We Do? Studies Hebrew

1883 Deathbed letter from Turgenev urging Tolstoy not to abandon his art

1884 Family relations strained; first attempt to leave home.