Leo Tolstoy declared: “Look at the society of women as a necessary nuisance of social life and, as much as possible, move away from them” - and clarified that the women’s question is “not that women should begin to lead life, but that so that they stop ruining her.” Why, for what reason, did such impartial judgments arise about the fair half of humanity? What events in the life of the great writer, who is rightly called the patriarch of world literature, led to such conclusions? The author of the book answers these and many other questions concerning the life and love of Tolstoy, analyzing works of art, the diaries of Lev Nikolayevich and the memoirs of his contemporaries about him.