Leo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (audio-ru?e? ??????????? ????????Ru-Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy.ogg, IPA-rul?ov n??k??la?v??t? t?l?stoj; OldStyleDateSeptember 91828August 28 - OldStyleDateNovember 201910November 7), was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist fiction (literary realism).

Tolstoys further talents as essayist, dramatist, and educational reformer (Education reform) made him the most influential member of the aristocratic Tolstoy family. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist (Christian anarchism) and pacifist (Christian pacifism). His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi) and Martin Luther King, Jr.