I'd be a little skeptical of Dostoyevski's description, if Ustinov is accurately reporting it. I've read numerous biographies, sympathetic and un-, and don't see much evidence of this. What Dostoyevski is no doubt referring to were Tolstoy's strenuous efforts to abandon the elite world of the Russian aristocracy and lead a simple, rural existence similar to the peasants whom he loved. Also to try to live what he considered to be a genuinely Christian life, which often brought him into direct conflict, not just with the government and the Church (which excommunicated him), but with his own family, especially his wife. So to his contemporaries, steeped in the world he was he was abandoning, his efforts to plow the fields, make his own boots, renounce his title, give away his land, advocate pacifism and vegetarianism, etc. appeared very eccentric and as signs of mental instability. Not so to those who shared many of his his radical religious/political views, one of whom was Gandhi, who thought him much saner than those calling him crazy.