Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoy
| Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy | |
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Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy.
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| Born | Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy 10 January 1883 Pugachyov, Samara Governorate (then Nikolaevsk), Russian Empire |
| Died | 23 February 1945 (aged 62) Moscow, Russia |
| Occupation | Novelist, poet, journalist, Short story writer |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Period | 1907–1945 |
| Genre | Science fiction, historical fiction |
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Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Алексе́й Никола́евич Толсто́й; 10 January 1883 [O.S. 29 December 1882] – 23 February 1945), nicknamed the Comrade Count, was a Russian and Soviet writer who wrote in many genres but specialized in science fiction and historical novels.
During World War II, he served on an Extraordinary State Commission which "ascertained without reasonable doubt" the mass extermination of people in gas vans by the German occupiers. His work in the investigation of atrocities committed in the Stavropol region was recognized by Soviet prosecutors during the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals.
Aleksey was the son of Count Nikolay Alexandrovich Tolstoy (1849–1900) and Alexandra Leontievna Turgeneva (1854–1906). His mother was a grand-niece of Decembrist Nikolay Turgenev and a relative of the renowned Russian writer Ivan Turgenev. His father belonged to the Tolstoy family of Russian nobles and was a remote relative of Leo Tolstoy.
According to author and historian Nikolai Tolstoy, a distant relative,
The circumstances of Alexei Tolstoy's birth parallel in striking resemblance those of another relative, Alexei Constantinovich, the great lyric poet, after whom he was named. His father had been a rake—hell cavalry officer, whose rowdy excesses proved too much even for his fellow hussars. He was obliged to leave his regiment and the two capital cities, and retired to an estate in Samara, Russia. There he met and married Alexandra Leontievna Turgenev, a lively girl of good family, but slender means. She bore him two sons, Alexander and Mstislav, and a daughter Elizabeth. But the wild blood of the Tolstoys did not allow him to settle down to an existing domestic harmony. Within a year the retired hussar had been exiled to Kostroma for insulting the Governor of Samara. When strings were eventually pulled to arrange his return, he celebrated it by provoking a fellow-noble to a duel. This was more than his high-spirited wife could stand. She found life intolerable with the turbulent Count and inevitably fell in love with a staid, kindly young gentleman of suitably liberal and anti-aristocratic proclivities named Alexei Appollonovich Bostrom. In May 1882, already two months pregnant with her fourth child, Alexandra fled into the arms of her lover. The scandal that followed was appalling. The Count loosed off his revolver at Bostrom and was exculpated by the courts, whilst the ecclesiastical court in granting a divorce ruled that the guilty wife should never be allowed to remarry. In order to keep the expected baby, Alexandra was compelled to assert that it was Bostrom's child. Ostracized by society and even for some years by her own parents, she left with her lover for Nikolaevsk, where he held a modest post in local government.
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