Father Sergius

L.N. Tolstoy worked on the work “Father Sergius” for a total of eight years—over several stages, at times interrupting the writing of the story and then returning to it again. As a result, both the original concept of the book and the character of the main protagonist underwent enormous changes.

In St. Petersburg in the 1840s, an event occurred that surprised everyone: the handsome prince, commander of the cuirassier regiment’s life guard, whose prospects were predicted to include both becoming a wing adjutant and a brilliant career under Emperor Nicholas I,—a month before his wedding to a beautiful lady-in-waiting who enjoyed the Empress’s special favor—resigned, severed his ties with his fiancée, gave a small estate to his sister, and went to a monastery, intending to become a monk there. For people who didn’t know the internal reasons, the event seemed extraordinary and inexplicable; for Prince Stepan Kassatksky himself, it became so natural that he couldn’t even imagine how he could have acted otherwise…

“Father Sergius” is an ambiguous and atypical work for L.N. Tolstoy, especially considering that it was written during the period of the writer’s negative attitude toward Orthodoxy. But one thing is undeniable: this book will be useful and interesting to everyone, because in the main character, Stepan Kassatksky, there are traits of each of us.