ABSTRACT
Count Leo Tolstoy was born into a family of long-standing Russian nobility. His parents died when he was very young and he was brought up by his extended family on the estate which he inherited, Yasnaya Polyana, located about 'one hundred and thirty miles south of Moscow'. The secret purportedly had been written on a green stick which was buried 'on the edge of a ravine in the Zakaz forest' which formed one boundary of the Tolstoy estate. Ernest J. Simmons suggests that Tolstoy's older brother may have referred to the 'Moravian Brothers' in his story but the younger boys had probably 'mistakenly transformed' that expression into the similar-sounding Russian words which they understood as 'Ant Brothers.' Tolstoy had an understanding of bourgeois and socialist political economy sufficient for his purposes. Tolstoy had an understanding of bourgeois and socialist political economy sufficient for his purposes.
