Describing Tolstoy's crisis of depression and estrangement from the world, A Confession is an autobiographical work of exceptional emotional honesty.  It describes his search for 'a practical religion not promising future bliss but giving bliss on earth'.  Although the Confession led to his excommunication, it also resulted in a large following of Tolstoyan Christians springing up throughout Russia and Europe. 

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves – and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives – and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

Chapter 1

I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith. I was instructed in it both as a child and throughout my boyhood and youth. But when at the age of eighteen I left university in my second year, I no longer believed in any of the things I had been taught.

Judging from various memories, I had never believed very seriously but had merely trusted in what I was taught and in what was professed by my elders; but this trust was very unstable.

I remember when I was eleven years old a high school boy named Volodya, now long since dead, came to see us one Sunday and announced the latest discovery made at school. The discovery was that there is no God and that everything we were being taught was pure invention (this was in 1838). I remember my older brothers taking a great interest in this news and even allowing me to join in the discussion. We all, I remember, became very excited and took the news as something very enthralling and entirely possible.