Tolstoy Farm

The 1,100-acre collective farm Gandhi and his German architect friend Hermann Kallenbach founded in May 1910 near Lawley station, 30 kilometres outside Johannesburg, during the Transvaal Satyagraha campaign. Named after Leo Tolstoy (with whom Gandhi had corresponded 1908-1910), Tolstoy Farm was a refuge for the families of Indian satyagrahis who had been imprisoned, so they could sustain the resistance campaign. About 60 families lived at Tolstoy Farm (1910-1913) in strict austerity — vegetarian food, manual labour, shared chores, basic education. Gandhi's own two sons grew up here. The farm closed in 1913 after the satyagraha succeeded. The 2010 South African centenary memorial on the site recognises Tolstoy Farm as the laboratory in which the Phoenix-Sabarmati-Sevagram sequence of ashram-communities was developed.