Resurrection: 2025 Translation

by Leo Tolstoy, Sergey Adana (Translator)

Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection , published in 1899, stands as the great Russian author's final completed novel and perhaps his most explicitly moral work. Written during the twilight of his literary career, this powerful narrative represents the culmination of Tolstoy's spiritual and philosophical evolution, embodying the Christian anarchist beliefs that had come to define his later years. Unlike the sweeping historical epics War and Peace and Anna Karenina that established his reputation, Resurrection serves as both a gripping story of personal redemption and a searing indictment of Russian society's institutional failures.

The novel follows Prince Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhlyudov, a wealthy aristocrat who serves on a jury and recognizes the defendant—a prostitute named Maslova accused of poisoning a merchant—as Katyusha, a servant girl he had seduced and abandoned years earlier. This shocking recognition triggers a profound moral awakening in Nekhlyudov, who realizes that his actions set Katyusha on the path that led to her current degradation. Overwhelmed by guilt and a newfound sense of responsibility, he resolves to marry her and follows her to Siberia when she is sentenced to hard labor, despite her initial rejection of his proposal.

Resurrection emerged from Tolstoy's deep engagement with social reform movements of the late nineteenth century. The author had become increasingly concerned with issues of poverty, criminal justice, and land reform, and these preoccupations saturate the novel. Through Nekhlyudov's journey, Tolstoy exposes the brutal realities of the Russian penal system, the arbitrary nature of legal proceedings, and the stark divisions between social classes. The novel draws heavily from Tolstoy's own experiences visiting prisons and his correspondence with political prisoners, lending an documentary authenticity to its depictions of institutional cruelty.

Resurrection occupies a unique position in world literature as both a compelling personal drama and a comprehensive critique of systemic injustice. Tolstoy's unflinching examination of how social structures create and perpetuate human suffering resonates far beyond its Russian setting, speaking to universal questions about individual responsibility, collective guilt, and the possibility of moral transformation. The novel's exploration of themes such as sexual exploitation, economic inequality, and the corrupting influence of power remains strikingly relevant to contemporary readers.

For modern audiences, Resurrection offers insight into both Tolstoy's artistic evolution and the social conditions that shaped late imperial Russia. The novel serves as a bridge between literature and activism, demonstrating how narrative art can illuminate social problems and advocate for reform. While it may lack the psychological depth and narrative innovation of Tolstoy's earlier works, Resurrection compensates with its moral intensity and its author's unwavering commitment to confronting uncomfortable truths about human nature and social organization.

Reading Resurrection today requires an appreciation for both its historical context and its enduring moral questions. Tolstoy's final novel stands as a testament to literature's capacity to challenge readers' assumptions about justice, responsibility, and the possibility of personal and social transformation.

532 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 10, 2025

About the author

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.

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 and anarcho-pacifist. 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 Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.