August
4 weekly readings
The Big Dipper
Bol'shaya Medveditsa / Kovsh
From the English (retold by Tolstoy)
A folk tale about the origin of the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) constellation. Tolstoy adapted this from an English source, emphasizing themes of compassion, self-sacrifice, and spiritual transformation t
Solitude
Odinochestvo
Guy de Maupassant
This is Maupassant's famous philosophical meditation on human loneliness, presented as a late-night conversation in Paris. The speaker argues that despite all our efforts at connection—through love, f
Catholicism and Christianity
Katolitsizm i khristianstvo
Friedrich Nietzsche
This striking passage is from Nietzsche's *The Antichrist* (1888), paradoxically included by Tolstoy—an arch-enemy of Nietzsche's philosophy—because it supports his own critique of institutional Chris
On the Liberation of Land, According to the Teaching of Henry George
Ob osvobozhdenii zemli, po ucheniyu Genri Dzhordzha
S. D. Nikolaev (edited by Leo Tolstoy)
This essay presents Henry George's "single tax" theory in accessible language for Russian peasant readers. George (1839–1897) was an American political economist whose book *Progress and Poverty* (187