In 1856, before Tolstoy signed a contract with The Contemporary, he promised a story to its main rival, Notes of the Fatherland.
It was the era of a new tsar, when writers could say more about problems in Russia such as the serfdom, and when Turgenev published A Hunter's Notes.
However, Tolstoy didn't continue working on it, and instead, he extracted a story from the written part of his novel.
The story tells about Nekhliudov's efforts to become a good manager of his property and to assist his serfs at the same time.
Nikolai Chernyshevsky wrote in The Contemporary "that Tolstoy reproduces with remarkable mastery not only the external conditions of the everyday life of the inhabitants, but what is much more important, their point of view on things.