He was a vegetarian

Around the age of 50, in the latter portion of his life, Leo Tolstoy made the decision to switch to vegetarianism. He believed that everyone would eventually become a vegetarian in the future. He was fascinated about becoming a vegetarian and had a strong belief that slaughtering and eating animals was evil and inhumane.

Like war and serfdom, Leo Tolstoy grew to believe that eating and killing animals was a nightmare to which his culture had become all too accustomed. Tolstoy, like many animal rights activists today, used a detailed description of a slaughterhouse to express his abhorrence of meat consumption: "If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because, to say nothing of the excitation of the passions caused by such food, its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling—killing."

After becoming a vegetarian, he published an article, called The Vegetarian. Vegetarianism is also included in his works. Therefore, he made a great contribution to Russian society, in terms of a vegetarian diet and lifestyle.