Leo Tolstoy museum station is located in the North of the Lipetsk region. Until 1918, it was called Astapovo. This railway station was built in 1890, like hundreds of other stations throughout Russia, but in 1910 an event occurred on it that made it a landmark. On November 7, 1910, the great Russian writer Lev Tolstoy died in the stationmaster`s house.
At the end of the 19th century, the Bogoyavlensk-Ranenburg-Lebedyan-Dankov railway line was laid in these places. In 1899, a railway line was laid from Ranenburg station (in the city of Chaplygin) to Smolensk via the Kaluga region. Astapovo station was built to fill steam locomotives with water. Two large water towers were built near the station for this purpose, one of which collapsed in 2019.
On the evening of October 31, 1910, the Smolensk-Kozlov passenger train arrived at Astapovo station. In a class 3 compartment of this train was Leo Tolstoy, who had secretly left his estate in Yasnaya Polyana. He visited the Optina Pustyn Monastery in the Kaluga region and continued his journey. He was accompanied by his daughter Alexandra and doctor Dusan Makovitsky. On the train, Leo Tolstoy caught a cold and got pneumonia, he had a high fever.
Stationmaster Ivan Ozolin gave Tolstoy his home, where he spent the last 7 days of his life. On November 3, 1910, Leo Tolstoy made the last entry in his diary: "That`s my plan. Do what you must, and let it be what it will be." The pneumonia was progressing, and the doctors were powerless to save his life.
By the end of his life, Tolstoy was very much immersed in his religious teachings. He even was excommunicated from the Church due to this teaching. This greatly complicated his relationship with his wife and with a large part of the people around him. Tolstoy`s wife, Sofya Andreyevna, arrived at Astapovo station from Yasnaya Polyana, but the writer did not want to see her. He said: "I don`t want anyone to bother me."
Only on the morning of November 7, when Leo Tolstoy was already unconscious, she entered to the room and say goodbye to her husband. Great Russian writer died at 6: 5 a.m., after which the funeral cortege moved to Yasnaya Polyana estate, where Tolstoy bequeathed himself to be buried in a grave without a cross.
Nowadays, the Astapovo station is renamed the village of Lev Tolstoy. A memorial Museum has been created in the house of stationmaster Ozolin. All the historical buildings of the 19th century have been preserved within a radius of 1 kilometer around the station, and they have also become part of the memorial museum of Leo Tolstoy. To mark the centenary of the writer`s death in 2010, a literary Museum dedicated to the writer`s work was opened at Lev Tolstoy station.
