Leo Tolstoy opened his school for peasant children at Yasnaya Polyana in 1859.
The school reflected Tolstoy’s belief that education should encourage independent thought rather than rely on rigid discipline and memorization. He welcomed children of local peasants to the estate and experimented with lessons that gave pupils greater freedom than was usual in Russian schools of the period.
Tolstoy also wrote about the experiment in a pedagogical journal and studied educational methods during travels in western Europe. His school was not simply a charitable project; it was part of a broader attempt to understand how children learn and how social institutions shape them.
The school’s founding is sometimes confused with Russia’s emancipation of the serfs, which occurred in 1861. Tolstoy’s educational work began before that reform and was connected to his growing interest in the lives and rights of peasants.