Childhood. Adolescence. Youth

The story "Childhood," first published in 1852 in the magazine "Sovremennik," became the literary debut of L. N. Tolstoy, an outstanding Russian writer and thinker, a classic of Russian literature. Relying on childhood memories and diary entries, Tolstoy, however, did not write an autobiography or memoirs. The author sought to reveal the universal laws of human soul development, its mysterious changing "dialectics," to "express such secrets that cannot be conveyed in simple words," which is precisely the main goal of art, as the author believed. Subsequently, the story "Childhood" together with "Adolescence" (1852–1854) and "Youth" (1855–1857) merged into a trilogy and became "not only a repository of future literary ideas but also a kind of absolute point on the journey, once and for all an open continent on the map of the Tolstoyan world" (I. N. Sukhik).