Pollution Perils Tolstoy Family Estate
The family estate of Leo Tolstoy, where the great Russian writer spent much of his life, is seriously threatened by pollution from a nearby chemical works, a Moscow newspaper disclosed Tuesday.
Twice in the last two decades, large numbers of trees at the estate, Yasnaya Polyana, were killed by fumes of ammonia, carbides and sulfuric acid from the neighboring Azot chemical fertilizer factory, the newspaper Soviet Russia reported.
But despite a government decision in 1983 calling for urgent measures to halt the pollution, local officials apparently had done little or nothing that would curtail production.
Yasnaya Polyana, where Tolstoy worked on the novels “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina,” is near Tula, 120 miles south of Moscow. It is now a museum.
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