What the Orthodox Religion Really Is by Leo Tolstoy. From The American Monthly Review of Reviews, Vol. 29 (1904) pp. 344-345. TOLSTOY ON THE ORTHODOX RELIGION OF RUSSIA. COUNT TOLSTOY has written for the Revue de Paris an article entitled “What the Orthodox Religion Really Is.” He indicts the Russian national Church for apostasy to the tenets of the founder of Christianity on almost every count, and gives this description of the orthodox religion, which, he declares, is losing its hold on the people: