Yasnaya Polyana
[[File:L.N.Tolstoy Prokudin-Gorsky.jpg|right|thumb|180px|[[Leo Tolstoy]], influential [[christian anarchist]] and [[Anarcho-pacifism|anarcho pacifist]] theorist]]The Russian [[christian anarchist]] and famous novelist [[Leo Tolstoy]] established a school for peasant children on his estate. Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana and founded thirteen schools for his serfs' children, based on the principles Tolstoy described in his 1862 essay "The School at Yasnaya Polyana". Tolstoy's educational experiments were short-lived due to harassment by the Tsarist secret police, but as a direct forerunner to [[A. S. Neill]]'s [[Summerhill School]], the school at Yasnaya Polyana can justifiably be claimed to be the first example of a coherent theory of democratic education.