Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (known in the Anglosphere as Leo Tolstoy) (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910) is a Russian writer who primarily writes novels and short stories.

Later in life, he also writes plays and essays.

Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopts after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also becomes noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.

His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, causes him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist.

His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, are to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.