title: The Cossacks and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)
author:  Leo Tolstoy 
description: <b>Count Leo Tolstoy</b> was born on September 9, 1828, in Yasnaya Polyana, Russia. Orphaned at nine, he was brought up by an elderly aunt and educated by French tutors until he matriculated at Kazan University in 1844. In 1847, he gave up his studies and, after several aimless years, volunteered for military duty in the army, serving as a junior officer in the Crimean War before retiring in 1857. In 1862, Tolstoy married Sophie Behrs, a marriage that was to become, for him, bitterly unhappy. His diary, started in 1847, was used for self-study and self-criticism; it served as the source from which he drew much of the material that appeared not only in his great novels <b>War and Peace</b> (1869) and <b>Anna Karenina</b> (1877), but also in his shorter works. Seeking religious justification for his life, Tolstoy evolved a new Christianity based upon his own interpretation of the Gospels. Yasnaya Polyana became a mecca for his many converts At the age of eighty-two, while away from home, the writer suffered a break down in his health in Astapovo, Riazan, and he died there on November 20, 1910.<br><br><b>David McDuff </b>was educated at the University of Edinburgh and has translated a number of works for Penguin Classics, including Dostoyevsky&rsquo;s <b>The Brothers Karamazov</b>.
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  # The Cossacks
  
  
  ## A Tale of 1852
  
  
  ### ***
  
  
  ### Leo Tolstoy
  
  
  Translated by Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude
  
  
  
  
  
  Published in 1863
  
  
  
  
  
  #####
  
  
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  ### Chapter I
  
  
  All is quiet in Moscow. The squeak of wheels is seldom heard in the snow-
  covered street. There are no lights left in the windows and the street lamps
  have been extinguished. Only the sound of bells, borne over the city from the
  church towers, s