Dimitar Dimov

When one thinks of Tolstoy and the indelible mark that his works leave on the soul of the reader, one feels struck both by the magnificent scope of his work and by the vital truth reflected in it. We can read the works of revolutionary democrats, patiently study historical treatises, delve into the subtexts of yellowed archives of the nineteenth century, and finally, with the experience of modernity and the knowledge of historical materialism, understand the meaning of all the events of that time, but a stirring and convincing idea of ​​the dramatic human conflicts in the vast Russian land and its people of the pre-revolutionary era can only be obtained after reading the many thousands of pages of Tolstoy. Objective laws inexorably govern the course of social development. But we can hardly deny that the moral qualities in a people, created by historical conditions and its traditions in the struggle for freedom, accelerate or slow down the action of these laws. Tolstoy, having reached that supreme synthesis between the intellectual and emotional attitude to reality, from which the art of realism is born, manages to reflect with unsurpassed artistic mastery the vital drive and the deep contradictions in the Russian people in the nineteenth century. And it is precisely with this drive and with the already overcome social contradictions, with its experience of the struggle against countless invaders and with its revolutionary traditions that the Russian people today affirm life and lead all of humanity forward, respecting the rights and qualities of all other peoples. Hence arises not only the long-standing universal significance of Tolstoy as an artist and moral personality, but also his very specific contemporary significance in today's urge of the peoples towards liberation from spiritual and economic slavery, towards peace and socialism.