But it was only in the Crimea that Tolstoy began to feel a close attachment to the serfs in uniform – those ‘simple and kind men, whose goodness is apparent during a real war’. He was disgusted with his former life – the gambling, the whoring, the excessive feasting and drinking, the embarrassment of riches, and the lack of any real work or purpose in his life. And after the war, he threw himself into the task of living with the peasants in ‘a life of truth’ with new determination.
