Leo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910), was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists for his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Tolstoy's further talents as essayist, dramatist, and educational reformer made him the most influential member of the aristocratic Tolstoy family. Resurrection was the last novel written by Tolstoy, and was first serialized in the popular weekly Niva. Tolstoy intended the novel as an exposition of injustice of man-made laws and the hypocrisy of institutionalized church.