Throughout Anna Karenina, it is impossible not to think that it is largely based on personal experience. Tolstoi creates Levin in his own likeness and places much of his personal philosophy into the actions and thoughts of Levin.
Anna
Anna is said to be based on Pushkin’s eldest daughter (Maria Hurtang).
His sister cheated on his brother in-law multiple times
One of his writer friends once had an affair with a women named Anna, and when she was rejected for a German mistress, she allegedly threw herself under a train. She also apparently left a note that read: “You are my murderer. Be happy, if an assassin can be happy. If you like, you can see my corpse on the rails at Yasenki” addressed to her lover.
A Romantic Courtship
Not only was the character of Anna based upon his own life, Tolstoi’s marriage to Sonya Behrs was used as the prototype for the courtship between Levin and Kitty. As marriages in that age went, Tolstoi apparently picked the family that he wanted to marry into before choosing a bride. When he proposed to Sonya, Tolstoi used the same trick as Levin and began to write a love letter in chalk on the table. They were so in love that Sonya was able to understand the message. Before the wedding, he gave her his diary to read. Like Kitty, she was not very happy with the contents. They were apparently very jealous couple and a scene similar to the one in Part 6 where Levin kicks the visitor out of their house occurred in real life.
The Marriage that Falls Apart
While the beginning of his marriage to Sonya may have resembled Levin’s relationship with Kitty, near the end of his marriage, it slowly devolved into a marriage much like that of Stiva and Dolly. Sonya gave birth to many children and devoted all of her energy to her children, like Dolly. Tolstoi, like Stiva, began to become tired of his wife and started fantasizing about cheating on his wife.
Philosophical Views and Levin
Tolstoi used Levin as a mouth piece for his personal ideas about religion, politics and philosophy.
Tolstoi throughout his life loved peasants and did everything he could to try and understand them as Levin did in Anna Karenina.Like Levin, many of these actions were not appreciated by the peasants and did not change their lives in the ways they wanted them to be changed. This also appears when Vronsky and Anna decide to build a hospital for the peasants.
Tolstoi had a religious realization at his life, much as Levin has at the end of the novel. Tolstoi slowly found redemption and meaning in life through religion instead of the atheist way of life. Tolstoi renounced his earlier beliefs, started reading the gospel, and not only became a Christian, but also attempted to spread his ideas around both his intellectual community and his home life.