On this day, 9 September 1828, legendary author and Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy was born in Tula province, Russia. His greatest work, War and Peace, contains an epilogue dotted throughout which when I (author of this post) read it as a teenager was my first exposure to the idea of “people’s history”. And that history is not the story of “great men” but the overlapping stories of millions and billions of us: ordinary people. This is Tolstoy’s classic text outlining his political ideas: https://libcom.org/library/kingdom-god-within-you-leo-tolstoy
About the design: Tattoo artist Nastia Jakovleva, who was born in Leningrad (today St. Petersburg) and lives in Berlin, has placed the love of Andrei Nikolayevich and Natasha Rostova at the center of her drawing. Andrej and Natascha are two of the main protagonists from “War and Peace”. The drawing shows Andrei and Natasha at their first dance at the New Year’s Eve ball in 1809. While the dancing couple and their love stands for peace, the background symbolizes the horrors of war. The epic quote “Everything I know, I know because of love” – also from the book – completes this extraordinary design.
