Tolstoy’s “ABC Book”. A New Approach to Child Development

Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist, was also an excellent educator, teacher and maker of a primer, the ABC Book (Azbuka, 1872). This paper analyzes the ABC Book as the most relevant synthesis of Tolstoy’s pedagogy, based on the concept of child development. Rejecting the psychological theories of his time, Tolstoy promoted a didactic scheme of free and global education (“obrazovanye”) of pupils, seen as real beings with their own needs, attitudes, and feelings. The author of this paper concentrates mainly on the short stories of the ABC Book, which are the best result of Tolstoy’s educational endeavours. In particular, the role of young learners as Tolstoy’s interlocutors and active participants in their upbringing process is emphazised; in fact, pupils are both protagonists and narrators of the stories. In this way, Tolstoy encouraged children’s spiritual growth, since their moral models were other children, the same little heroes of Tolstoy’s tales.