Leo Nikolayevich, Count Tolstoy 1828-1910, based his last major novel, RESURRECTION upon a real incident. It is the story of the prostitute Ekaterina Maslova, wrongly charged and sentenced for the murder of a client, and Prince Dmitrii Ivanovich Nekhliudov who had long ago abandoned her and their child in his youth and now serves on the jury that condemns her while suffering agonizing pangs of remorse. When Maslova is sentenced to serve four years in a penal colony in Siberia, the Prince follows her and eases her sentence from a criminal to a "political" one. A classic novel of conscience.

Tolstoy's ideas on nonviolent resistance were to have a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Bevel.