The significance of L. N. Tolstoy's literary work for readers all over the world is impossible to overestimate. In the works of the great thinker, the key role is attributed not so much to external events as to the influence they have on the characters' personalities. One of Tolstoy's contemporaries, N. G. Chernyshevsky, wrote: "Count Tolstoy is concerned primarily with the psychological process itself, its forms, its laws, the dialectics of the soul…" — in other words, the spiritual life of people and the internal changes that occur within them.
The works of Tolstoy included in this edition were written at different times but are united by the theme of love in its many manifestations and states. Through the characters of the story "Two Hussars" — representatives of two generations of the Turbin family — we see how social mores and the type of personality of the "hero of the time" changed. The novel "Family Happiness" — a touching and sincere story of a girl named Masha — reveals to us the heroine's dreams of romantic love and the changes that occur within her after marriage. The hero of the story "The Kreutzer Sonata," Vasily Pozdyshev, experiences a tragic fate due to his unsuccessful marriage, completely overturning his entire life. A difficult spiritual journey awaits the central character of the story "Father Sergius," Stepan Kasatsky, a former brilliant officer who must go through many trials to overcome pride and ambition.
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