Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was born into the Russian aristocracy, spent his youth in aimless dissolution, and joined the army in a bid to escape his gambling debts. Sevastopol Tales, based on his experience serving as an artillery officer in the Crimean War, helped to establish his fame as a writer in the 1850s. The war helped transform him into a passionate pacifist and social agitator. He started a series of schools for the recently emancipated serfs of Russia, as well as publishing a number of literary masterpieces, most famously the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He gradually became a near-messianic figure, both lauded and persecuted by the Russian authorities. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prizes in Literature and Peace, but never won.