Retired to Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy lived the last years of his life as a non-Christian patriarch, in defiance of any secular or religious authority and in a permanent struggle with himself. The immense success brought by his novels was long behind him, as were St. Petersburg society, formal relations with his peers, and power games. Tolstoy remained alone with God, with his infinite certainties and questions. He rejected any form of social revolution, but also the religious dogmatism of the official church. His faith and his troubles were expressed simply and obsessively in the pages of his diary from 1907-1910.