RESUMO
The article is devoted to Leo Tolstoy's ideas about breastfeeding that he expressed eloquently in his novels, educational articles, and philosophical essays. Tolstoy's perspective on breastfeeding is discussed in his novella The Kreutzer Sonata and in his nonfiction of the late 1880s. His basic ideas had been shaped through his own experience and family life. Also important was his correspondence with the American physician, Alice Bunker Stockham, MD, an author of Tokology: A Book for Every Woman, and Tolstoy's editorial work on the medical brochure written by the head of Moscow Children's Hospital, E.A. Pokrovsky. Tolstoy's literary and historical accounts of breastfeeding promotion can help to understand the current day practices and ways in which cultural traditions are incorporated into infant care in contemporary Russia.