After Tolstoy's Death
In 1911 Tolstoy's widow Sofia Alexandrovna applied to Czar Nicholas II to have Yasnaya Polyana made into a state museum. The Czar refused, but did grant a pension to the family which allowed the house and estate to be preserved as they were.
In 1919 the Soviet Government formally put Yasnaya Polyana under the protection of the state, and in June 1921 Yasnaya Polyana was nationalized and became a state museum, receiving 3147 visitors in its first year.
In October 1941, as the Germans approached Moscow, 110 crates filled with the exhibits of the museum were evacuated to Moscow, and then to Tomsk. The estate was occupied by the Germans for 45 days, who turned the Leo Tolstoy House into a hospital, and German soldiers who died in the hospital were buried around Tolstoy's grave. A fire during the occupation damaged the upper floor of the house. Following the war the estate was restored to the way it looked when Tolstoy lived there.
Read more about this topic: Yasnaya Polyana
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