Many consider War and Peace the longest novel written, but that is not the case. War and Peace has 600,000 words. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand has 645,000 words. The Gothic horror story, Varney the Vampire, written in the 1840's has 667,000 words. The longest book out there was written in Tamil, entitled Venmurasu with 3,680,000 pages.
War and Peace involved more than 500 characters, and portions of it are written in French. "French has always played a prominent role in the Russian court. Even though in the 19th century it was no longer the main language spoken by the nobles, it was still considered to be the language of money and power. Tolstoy wanted to mock that conviction, and to do that he made the nobles in his monumental work speak more French than necessary. As a result, speaking Russian might not be enough to read War and Peace in the original."~Marta Wiejak
"Stalin used War and Peace as a propaganda tool during WWII. Russia’s victory over Napoleon in 1812 speaks so strongly to the Russian national psyche that when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin swiftly reached for Tolstoy’s works as a means of promoting a patriotic defence of the motherland. Reprints of the 1812 passages of War and Peace were mass produced, and some sections were even posted on billboards in Moscow for public consumption. This led to the fact that during the Great Patriotic War, as the Russians call WWII, Tolstoy was the most published author in the country, exceeding even Lenin."~Dr Sarah Hudspith
Writers from Dostoevsky to Virginia Woolf declared Tolstoy “the greatest of all novelists.” However, he wrote more on political philosophy than he did of fiction, his views being a sort of libertarian-anarchism with a healthy distaste of government power and revolution. He wrote: "In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful."
Also: "All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do."
"In our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself."
"Not only does the action of Governments not deter men from crimes; on the contrary, it increases crime by always disturbing and lowering the moral standard of society."
"Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government."
"The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens … Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere."
Also: "All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do."
"In our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself."
"Not only does the action of Governments not deter men from crimes; on the contrary, it increases crime by always disturbing and lowering the moral standard of society."
"Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government."
"The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens … Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere."
He also worked on the New Testament by simply rewriting it. For instance, his John 1:1 reads, "In the beginning stood the intelligence of life, as the foundation of all things. Intelligence of life became in the place of God. Intelligence of life is God."
Tolstoy may have been interested in Theosophy, and he was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church for rejecting religious rituals.
Tolstoy on War and State By Vasko Kohlmayer
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2011/12/vasko-kohlmayer/tolstoy-on-war-and-state/
"First Tolstoy, then Dostoyevsky. First antidote, then poison"
Philologist Lev Sobolev about why the ideas of Leo Tolstoy are still relevant
https://realnoevremya.com/articles/3002-interview-with-lev-sobolev-about-leo-tolstoy
Also: 12 Quotes from Leo Tolstoy on Truth, Violence, and Government
https://fee.org/articles/12-quotes-from-leo-tolstoy-on-truth-violence-and-government/
Also: Tolstoyan movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolstoyan_movement
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