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2377 - Moscow, Russia

I received a great card from Stanislav in Moscow. It is a photo of Yasnaya Polyana, the former home of Leo Tolstoy, and houses the Tolstoy museum today.  It is located about 200 km from Moscow.

Leo Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana in 1828. He is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. His best two novels are War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He has also written countless plays and philosophical essays.

Tolstoy was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905, and 1906, and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909 - none of which he won.

In 1870 he experienced a spiritual awakening and became a Christian anarchist and pacifist. His ideas about non violent resistance, expressed in The Kingdom of God is Within You. This book had profound effects on both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Tolstoy died in Astapova.

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