Tolstoy is a relative of Lev Nikolaevich. Heirlooms
Why do we only know the multi-volume Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, and we hear Alexei Konstantinovich mainly in quotes
September 5, 2017 marks the 200th anniversary of his birth Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, one of the most prominent representatives of this glorious family. And the "distinguished peasant" Lev Nikolaevich, and "Soviet count" Alexey Nikolaevich were recognized as classics during their lifetime - their eldest namesake did not escape this fate. However, his posthumous biography turned out to be less happy: many still quote his lines without knowing who their author was.
Descendants of the prince
The famous Tolstoy family, among whom were not only writers, but also sculptors, artists and other famous people in Russia, originates from the Lithuanian prince Indrisa. A famous Petr Andreevich Tolstoy, diplomat, Russian envoy to Turkey, ally and friend PetraI, awarded the title of count for services to the Fatherland, is the common ancestor of both the creator of “War and Peace” Lev Nikolaevich, and the author of “Peter I” and “Walking in Torment”, “Aelita” and “Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin” Alexey Nikolaevich, and Alexey Konstantinovich . We know the least about the last representative of the famous family. Meanwhile, the cheerful, witty, “troll of the 19th century” deserves to be remembered and reread from time to time.
Exclusive fairy tale
Alexey Konstantinovich, who was Lev Nikolaevich’s second cousin, entered the history of literature when he was still very young. Alyosha grew up without a father, he was raised by his mother's brother Alexey Perovsky. Apparently, the boy was distinguished by his lively disposition and disobedience, so Perovsky resorted to an unusual pedagogical move: he wrote for his nephew (he was 8–9 years old) a terrible fairy tale “The Black Hen, or the Underground Inhabitants.” This fairy tale is considered the first original author's work for children in Russia. That is, it was precisely for the sake of the proper upbringing of Alyosha Tolstoy that a genre that was subsequently so popular was created on Russian soil, to which, by the way, the younger Tolstoys would pay tribute (Alexey Konstantinovich is 11 years older than Lev Nikolaevich and 65 years older than Alexey Nikolaevich).
Typical nobleman
Like his second cousin, Alexey loved hunting. True, unlike the young Lev Nikolaevich, he was not distinguished by a passion for carousing and gambling, although he also knew how to play cards from a young age. But he had remarkable strength: they said that he could easily unbend horseshoes and could use his fingers to drive a nail into a wall. Numerous oddities, unlike the famous author of the epics “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina,” were also not particularly noticed in him, except perhaps for his passion for spiritualism.
Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy lived the typical life of a mid-century Russian nobleman-intellectual. He married late (his future wife, whose name was Sophia- like the wife of Lev Nikolaevich, - could not get a divorce for a long time), had no children, unlike his more literary famous relative, served at court, but at the same time was very skeptical about power . Barefoot, unlike brother Leo, did not travel , in adulthood he preferred to live abroad or on his Chernigov estate.
For the public, he was primarily a successful playwright, but his exceptional wit helped him express his attitude to Russian reality in poems that often simply could not be published in the country. At the same time, we were talking about a funny and at the same time deeply philosophical satire on our entire ridiculous, but so sweet way of life.
By the way: If the museum-estate of Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana is known throughout the world, then not everyone knows about the museum-estate of Alexei Tolstoy, located in Krasny Rog. Meanwhile, the count spent his childhood years there, returned to his favorite places more than once later, and was buried here.
From “History of the State...” to Kozma Prutkov
His famous poem “History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev” was published only after the author’s death, otherwise he would not have fared well. In this mischievous parody of the famous work Karamzin the phrase “Our land is great and abundant, but there is no order in it” from “The Tale of Bygone Years” is played out, and the entire history of Russia appears as a hopeless desire for at least some kind of order. Only once was it possible to achieve temporary success:
Ivan Vasilich the Terrible
He was named because he was a serious, respectable person.
The receptions are not sweet,
But the mind is not lame; This one has established order, At least roll a ball!
I could live carefree
Under such a king; But ah! nothing lasts forever - And Tsar Ivan died!
Later, additions were more than once added to this “History,” which once again confirms the accuracy of Alexei Konstantinovich’s observations and irony.
It is Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy who is the main author of the “works of Kozma Prutkov” - together with his friends, three brothers Zhemchuzhnikov And Alexander Ammosov, he came up with a character that was hilarious in its seriousness, the “director of the Assay Tent,” to whom the corresponding poems and aphorisms were attributed.
Who hasn’t heard pseudo-profound “aphorisms” like “If you read the inscription “buffalo” on an elephant’s cage, don’t believe your eyes”, “Look at the root!”, “Watch out!”, “No one will embrace the immensity”! The mockery of the pompous, arrogant “author” painfully wounded many writers of that time, who, not without reason, recognized their own traits in Kozma Prutkov.
Morphine victim
The trolling was a great success, but the true creators of this parody were not known for a long time - the Zhemchuzhnikovs admitted to the hoax only a few years after Tolstoy’s death. If Leo Tolstoy lived to be 82 years old, and who knows how long he could have lived if it had not been for the pneumonia that took him to the grave, then Alexey died at 58 years old. For many years he suffered from severe headaches that medicine could not cope with. Tolstoy was saved by morphine - the doses became more and more, the deadly “medicine” killed him.
The noble family of the Tolstoys comes from an ancient German family. Their ancestor was Indris, who in the middle of the 14th century left Germany and settled in Chernigov with his two sons. Here he was baptized and received the name Leontia. The ancestor of the Tolstoys was the great-grandson of Indris, Andrei Kharitonovich, who moved from Chernigov to Moscow and here, from Vasily the Dark, received the nickname Tolstoy, which later began to be passed on to his descendants. The first representatives of this family were military men. This tradition was preserved by all generations of Tolstoys, but subsequently many Tolstoys glorified their family both as prominent government officials and as figures of art and literature.
Genealogical table Family of Counts Tolstoy.
Family of Counts Tolstoy(genealogical table).
Vasilchikovs, a noble and princely family descended from the nephew of the Tolstoy founder, Vasily Fedorovich.
Russia is famous throughout the world not only for its production capacity, but also for its great cultural values. Three talented writers united under one name had a huge influence on the development of world classical literature: Lev Tolstoy, Alexey Tolstoy and another Alexey Tolstoy. The short biography of each of these authors is filled with experiences and suffering; selected and most striking facts from the lives of the creators were used as the basis for some of their creations.
Some sources indicate that Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin and Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy were relatives. Their great-grandmothers were sisters. Uninformed readers sometimes mistakenly consider Alexei to be Leo's brother. This is incorrect: although they had the same last name and patronymic, they were born at different times and in different places.
The biography of Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy also attracts literary scholars with its tragedy and magnificent creative period. However, this article will discuss the third of the clan of great writers. About the one who is known to everyone from early childhood from the work “The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Pinocchio” - Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy. He is known to everyone as a subtle lyricist, historical novelist and playwright.
It was then that the historical theme came into the work of Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy. After the February bloodshed comes something the writer does not want to understand or accept. The result of this position is emigration with the family to Europe. Later, after returning to his homeland, the Russian writer will talk about this as a difficult and difficult time. It was here, in the native birch trees, that the first two parts of the trilogy “Walking Through Torment” were completed in 1928.
The biography of Alexei Tolstoy is permeated with events of the Great Patriotic War. It was the pain and tears of the people that prompted the writer to create numerous works of genius, which, alas, were of a dramatic nature: the duology “Ivan the Terrible”, three volumes of the unfortunately never completed novel “Peter I”, the third and final part of “Walking through the Torment” , “I call for hatred” and many others.
Having not accepted the revolution, choosing to emigrate, but ultimately returning to the USSR forever, the author was treated kindly by the Bolsheviks, who did not skimp on gifts and certificates for the writer. Fantastic adventures and fairy tales, war stories and dramatic novels, life far from the Motherland and nights under the whistle of bullets, a huge estate and beloved family, fearless and immortal heroes of works and painful death from cancer, black and white - this is the biography of Alexei Tolstoy, the son of Count Nicholas Tolstoy. A huge number of the author’s works have been filmed, and the plays are still staged to this day. More than fifty works, millions of copies and worldwide fame - this is what is left to descendants
January 10, 2013 marked the 130th anniversary of the birth of one of the brightest and most talented Russian and Soviet writers of the twentieth century, Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy.
Alyosha Tolstoy was born into a noble noble family on January 10, 1883 (December 29, 1882 old style) in the Samara province in the city of Nikolaevsk. His father was a representative of the old family of Counts Tolstoy, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tolstoy (1849 - 1900). He graduated from the Nikolaev Cavalry School, in 1868 he became a cornet and was sent to the Life Guards Hussar Regiment. But for his tendency to “rage” he was removed from military service and prohibited from living in St. Petersburg and Moscow. He moved to the Samara province, where he met his future wife, immediately inflamed with passion for her.
Tolstoy's father was a distant relative of Leo Tolstoy. For those interested in the relationship of three Tolstoys at once - Alexei Konstantinovich, Lev Nikolaevich and Alexei Nikolaevich, I will immediately say that they are distant relatives to varying degrees. The Tolstoys' ancestors came to Rus' from Germany in the 13th century, received their nickname from Grand Duke Vasily, and served Ivan the Terrible, Alexei Mikhailovich and Peter the Great. It was Peter the Great who awarded Pyotr Andreevich Tolstoy the title of count, which had just begun to appear in Russia.
P.A. Tolstoy was the founder of the Russian special services - the Secret Chancellery and was noted for preparing and carrying out the operation to return Tsarevich Alexei, who was subsequently executed, to Russia. He is the common ancestor of all three Tolstoy writers. In the middle of the 18th century, the Tolstoy family split into various branches. In this sense, Lev Nikolaevich and Alexey Nikolaevich are very far from each other in terms of the degree of relationship, but it is still present.
Mother - Alexandra Leontievna Tolstaya (Turgeneva) came from an old noble family of the Turgenevs. She was the granddaughter of the Decembrist N. Turgenev and, as many claimed, a distant relative of the writer Ivan Turgenev, which, however, despite the beauty of the legend, is not necessarily true - perhaps they were namesakes or very distant relatives, evidence for which does not exist, despite on the extensive system of recording noble genealogy in Russia. It is only known that the extensive Turgenev dynasty originated from the Golden Horde nickname Turgen. However, here is what he wrote on this occasion about the new writer A.M. Gorky A.V. Amfitheatrova: “I draw your attention to Count Alexei Nik. Tolstoy. This is a young man, the son of Tolstoy, the provincial leader of the nobility in Samara, a relative of I.S. Turgenev: good blood! The same opinion is shared by M. Voloshin, who wrote this about A.N. Tolstoy: “Fate was pleased to combine in him the names of a number of writers of the forties: on his father’s side he is Tolstoy; on the mother's side - Turgenev, on some side he is close either to Aksakov or to Khomyakov. In a word, the blood of the classics of Russian prose flows in him, black earth, generous, landowner blood.”
Thus, in the personality of Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy, the family branches of the Tolstoys and Turgenevs may have unexpectedly crossed. However, the word “accidental” is more appropriate here, because the noble class, especially the hereditary and noble class, was quite closed, so many were distant relatives of each other. For comparison, let me remind you that almost all the monarchical dynasties of Europe were also relatives, so sometimes this led to the appearance of diseases typical for such cases - for example, hemophilia in the male line of Nicholas II and his wife. This was rare among well-born nobles, since the degree of kinship was much lower.
According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the father of the future writer Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tolstoy was a complex, spontaneous person, but at the same time extraordinary. The Tolstoys' family life did not work out. By this time, there had generally been a crisis of the nobility and the entire system of closed class relations in Russia. Many nobles went bankrupt and squandered their fortunes, while merchants, on the contrary, grew rich, the first capitalists appeared, and the property stratification of the peasant community began. Sometimes, a rich peasant could afford much more than an impoverished nobleman. But the class system was closed, there was no social elevator, and this gave rise to many problems. This was also reflected in family values. What was unthinkable just recently became, if not commonplace, then quite often manifested.
It is difficult to say which of the spouses was right and which was wrong, but Alexandra Leontievna had another person in her life - a small-scale nobleman and liberal zemstvo figure, Alexei Apollonovich Bostrom. A few months before Alyosha was born, his mother left the well-born but impoverished Tolstoy for Bostrom.
This subsequently allowed a version to emerge according to which Alexey Tolstoy, who was already Alexandra Leontievna’s fifth child from Tolstoy, is actually Bostrom’s son, which, however, apart from rumors and guesses, is not confirmed by anything, so it rather belongs to the realm of some myths and legends.
I pay so much attention to the origin of A.N. Tolstoy quite intentionally, since this largely affected his fate and work, influenced his perception of the revolution in Russia and his position in relation to Soviet power and Russian emigration.
Alyosha Tolstoy spent his childhood on the Bostrom estate, and only after he reached the age of 16, his father Nikolai Alexandrovich recognized him as his legitimate son and gave him his last name (before that, Alyosha bore his stepfather’s last name - Bostrom). I. Bunin, referring to Aldanov, claims that A.N. Tolstoy confessed to the latter, as if he had begged his father to recognize him. In fact, this does not at all cast doubt on N.A.’s paternity. Tolstoy, but testifies to the difficult nature of their meeting, which ultimately ended successfully. In any case, it is quite obvious that Alyosha Tolstoy himself could not be held accountable for the actions of his mother to his father.
The estate of Bostrom, where Alyosha spent his childhood, was the Sosnovka farm in the Samara province (now it is the village of Pavlovka in the Samara Krasnoarmeysky microdistrict).
Those years left a deep imprint on the writer’s soul. Later, he himself admitted that he led a mainly contemplative life, observing the change of seasons, natural phenomena, the life of plants and insects, the colors of the sky, forests, meadows, rains and winds, blizzards and the starry sky. He inquisitively tried to understand the world around him, and his keen powers of observation later allowed him to skillfully use this in his literary descriptions.
In 1901, Alexei Tolstoy entered the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology. Here Alexey Tolstoy begins to write and quickly becomes famous in the literary metropolitan world. It's interesting that he started out as a poet. In his early work, notes of imitation of Nekrasov and Nadson, as well as the Symbolists, were clearly visible.
In 1905, Alexey was sent for internship to the Urals, where he lived for more than a month in Nevyansk. Impressed by this trip, the young writer writes his first story, “The Old Tower.”
It should be noted that Alexei Tolstoy’s literary talent was, in a certain sense, hereditary - his mother, who most adored I.S. Turgeneva, she herself was fond of writing and already at the age of 16 she wrote her first story, “Will.” She subsequently became a children's writer.
Once, after listening to the story of A.N. Tolstoy about his childhood and the life of nobles in the Samara province, M. Voloshin told him: “You know, you are a very rare and interesting person. You should probably be the last in literature to bear the old traditions of noble nests.”
This is an opinion about A.N. Tolstoy was quite common in St. Petersburg, and together with the influence of the mother, her passion for I.S. Turgenev and childhood memories significantly influenced the choice of topics at the beginning of Alexei Nikolaevich’s writing career. This is how “noble novels” and stories appeared - “Mishuka Nalymov”, “Cranks”, “The Lame Master”. But there was something in these stories and novels that fundamentally distinguished Tolstoy from the noble everyday life of his predecessors - first of all, they were distinguished by realism in the description of human relationships. The novel “The Lame Master” partially describes the love story of his parents (mother and N.A. Tolstoy). Nostalgic, trying to capture what is passing away, A.N. Tolstoy, however, understands that the nobility, both as a closed estate and as a class, is gradually leaving the forefront of Russian history. All this contemplative life with rentier approaches, in the twentieth century, rapidly moving into the era of industrialization and social change, simply has no future. This was clear to him even before the revolution, which is quite significant.
Serious changes in A.N.’s worldview Tolstoy take place during the First World War, when he was a war front-line correspondent.
It was there, at the front, that A.N. Tolstoy begins to understand the true value of many things: “... I saw real life, I took part in it, tearing off the tightly buttoned black frock coat of the Symbolists. I saw the Russian people." During the war years A.N. Tolstoy visited the allies of England and France.
But the First World War was only the beginning of shocks and life’s troubles, through which A.N. Tolstoy, like many others, had to go through that.
The revolution of 1917 did not cause A.N. Tolstoy with great enthusiasm. When the food supply became really bad in Moscow, A.N. Tolstoy and his family went south and were able to move to Odessa, which at that time was occupied by the troops of the Entente allies.
It is probably worth saying a few words about the writer’s personal life. A.N. Tolstoy was married four times. First, on a native of Samara, Yulia Vasilyevna Rozhnova. They had a son, Yuri, who died as a child. Then A.N. Tolstoy lived with Sofia Isaakovna Dymshits for some time. They had a daughter, Maryana. S.I. Dymshits converted from Judaism to Orthodoxy to marry A.N. Tolstoy, but the wedding never took place.
The writer left for the south with his third family and wife (or officially second) - Natalya Vasilievna Krandievskaya. She wrote poetry, and later memoirs. They had two children - Dmitry and Nikita. A.N. Tolstoy also adopted Kandievskaya’s son from his first marriage, Fyodor.
But Odessa was also uneasy, and in April 1919 the Tolstoys moved first to Constantinople, and then from there to Paris and in 1921 to Berlin.
However, with his position as an emigrant A.N. Tolstoy was also burdened, realizing that he was there, in his own words, “a pariah, a man cut off from his homeland.” At the same time, it was the years of emigration that showed that A.N. Tolstoy became a true master of words. From his pen come such wonderful things as “Nikita’s Childhood”, “Walking Through Torment”, “Aelita”, “The Tale of Troubled Times”. The range of his creative themes is extremely wide. “Aelita” is a beautiful fantasy novel, “The Tale of Troubled Times” is a historical work, “Walking in Torment” was a lively and prompt response to what was happening in Russia. Subsequently, the novel was expanded, and this first version became the initial part called “Sisters.” The novel was already ideologically strengthened in the USSR, but “Sisters” as a whole is much stronger than the subsequent parts (the same happened with Sholokhov, whose “Quiet Don” is noticeably superior to his “Virgin Soil Upturned”). The prototype of Katya Roshchina was his wife N. Krandievskaya. “Nikita’s Childhood” is to a certain extent an autobiographical, nostalgic story for a bygone Russia. The prototype of Nikita was the son of Tolstoy and Krandievskaya Nikita.
At the end of 1921 A.N. Tolstoy begins to get closer to the writers who remained in Soviet Russia and collaborate with publications loyal to the Bolsheviks. Unlike many emigrants, he begins to believe that the victory of the Bolsheviks is not some kind of accident, but, perhaps, a historical fact. All this causes irritation in emigrant circles - publications begin to appear reproaching him for illegitimacy, former cohabitation with a Jewish woman and other actions. Naturally, this only strengthens A.N. Tolstoy in his views and rejection of attempts to turn history back. As a result, in April 1922 A.N. Tolstoy writes “Open Letter to N.V. Tchaikovsky,” one of the leaders of the Russian emigration in France, where he speaks of the need to recognize the Bolsheviks as the only government of Russia and asserts the need for cooperation with the Bolsheviks “to strengthen great power.” This letter actually leads to his break with the white emigration, and A.N. Tolstoy is expelled from the Union of Russian Writers in Paris.
The choice was made, and on September 1, 1923, Alexei Tolstoy returned to Russia. The first novel published, which laid the foundations of Soviet science fiction, was Aelita. The central character of the novel is the Red Army soldier Gusev, an unstoppable optimist and supporter of the world revolution, who immediately arranges it on Mars, having flown there together with the engineer Losev. In 1924, he published the satirical story “The Adventures of Nevzorov, or Ibicus,” where he describes in a humorous form his memories and impressions of life in exile.
Alexey Tolstoy does not shy away from teamwork and, together with a number of other writers, takes part in writing the novel “Big Fires,” which was published in the magazine “Ogonyok.”
Among other works by A.N. Tolstoy, one can note the play “The Conspiracy of the Empress” (1925) and “The Diary of Vyrubova” (1927), which tells about the decomposition and decline of the Romanov family.
He is also actively working on the “Walking in Torment” trilogy, which we mentioned above. It was completed only in 1941. The epic novel "Walking in Torment" describes Soviet power as a natural consequence of the entire centuries-old Russian history. At the same time, the revolution of 1917 is described as an absolutely fair historical act. A.N. Tolstoy writes about this with conviction, and not at all out of a desire to adapt to anyone. Probably, the second was also present to some extent, but still the main thing was precisely the plan and the internal perception of what was happening.
His other science fiction novel “Engineer Garin’s Hyperboloid” is also interesting, in which, in addition to the theme of the responsibility of a brilliant scientist to humanity for his inventions (which is often written about), the issues of life in exile are also considered in a fairly broad context (which is rarely noticed).
Another fantastic work by A.N. Tolstoy is considered to be his story "Blue Cities". This opinion is so strong that “Blue Cities” was even included in the first volume of “Fiction and Adventure” in the series “Library of Russian Classical Literature in 100 Volumes” jointly published by the publishing houses “Drofa” and “Veche” in 2003. Meanwhile, in my opinion, “Blue Cities” have a fairly distant relationship to fantasy (except in a certain sense to adventure, and that’s a stretch). It's about something completely different. About the fate of V.A. Buzheninov, who, after injuries and the vicissitudes of the civil war, cannot find himself in a new life, dreaming of the future, dreaming of the life of the beautiful Moscow of 2023, which he sees in delirium, and which he once tells his comrades about (that’s all the fantastic stuff, actually). He comes to a provincial town, but does not find himself in a peaceful life, cannot find a job, on top of everything, his personal life does not work out - his chosen one, his mother’s pupil, rejects his love, reaches out to those who have more money, to the same wealthy merchants with whom he once fought on the civilian fronts. Blue cities are far away, and this common global happiness that he so dreamed of is still unattainable, but the gloomy reality, oppressive with its hopelessness, is nearby. And then V.A. Buzheninov commits the murder of his hated rival and burns down a city mired in philistinism. In a plot sense, this is a kind of synthesis of Ostrovsky’s “Dowry” and modern stories in the “Afghan syndrome” style. This is not science fiction, but a very serious social drama, showing the problems of Soviet society in the mid-twenties. “Blue Cities,” as it seems to me, seriously refute the frequent accusations of A.N. Tolstoy in conformism.
In 1929 A.N. Tolstoy begins work on the novel “Peter I,” which he wrote until the end of his life and never had time to finish. “Peter I” is the writer’s attempt to rethink Russian history, its key, turning points. The statements that A.N. seem rather primitive to me. Tolstoy took up this novel because I.V. Stalin was impressed by the images of both Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible, and this was supposedly some kind of social order. Of course, Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy did not shy away from this side of life in Soviet Russia, but the novel “Peter I” has nothing to do with his supposed “conformism”. This epic historical work is perhaps the main historical novel (except for Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace) of Russian literature. It is no coincidence that at first I talked so much about the origin of A.N. Tolstoy, his title of count, legally transferred to him by his father, the machinations of ill-wishers about his alleged illegitimacy. It was the era of Peter that changed old Russia, set in motion social elevators that could lift yesterday's pariahs to the very top, who achieved everything thanks to their talent and personal qualities - such as the same former trader at the bazaar, and later the all-powerful Alexander Menshikov. Alexei Tolstoy compared the era of Peter and contemporary Soviet Russia as an era of social transformation, and drew certain parallels between them, as well as between Peter and Stalin (not in the novel, of course, but ideologically). This coincided with Stalin’s understanding of his own historical mission, but this is secondary in relation to A.N.’s own worldview. Tolstoy.
If we talk about works designed to ensure the ideological guidelines of the authorities, then this is not “Peter I”, but rather the story “Bread”, which describes Tsaritsyn during the Civil War. As you know, its defense was led, including by I.V. Stalin, therefore the story is quite interesting in the sense that it reflects Stalin’s view of the civil war.
Of course, A.N. Tolstoy collaborated with the authorities, but this is precisely why he came from exile. Actually, the writer himself never hid this. In 1934, together with other authors, he wrote the book “The Stalin Canal”; in the same year he made a report on dramaturgy at the First Congress of the Union of Writers of the USSR.
In 1935 A.N. Tolstoy married for the fourth (officially third) time to Lyudmila Ilyinichna Krestinskaya-Barysheva. They had no children.
A.N. Tolstoy often visited abroad in 1932-1937 - in Germany, Italy, France, England, Czechoslovakia, Spain. Participated in the first (in 1935) and second (in 1937) congresses of writers in defense of culture.
A.N. Tolstoy or the Soviet (in other words, red) Count was very popular and, after the death of A.M. Gorky, from 1936 to 1938 he headed the Union of Writers of the USSR. Since 1937, he was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and since 1939, an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Unlike A.M. Gorky A.N. Tolstoy did not have too serious doubts about what was happening in the USSR - he immediately accepted the Bolshevik line in its entirety and in the main, and considered everything else secondary. At the same time, A.N. Tolstoy was a very cheerful person, he was not averse to drinking a little and eating well. The Soviet government valued its red count and tried to provide him with all the conditions for life without need, even during a period of famine. This, like his cheerfulness, naturally irritated many. This is what L.V., who knew him for many years, writes in her diary. Shaporina: “Before, Alexey Nikolaevich brought with him a lot of fun; ever since he is increasingly possessed by government enthusiasm, his noise becomes some kind of official demagoguery... When he sees me, he immediately begins historical conversations, always great-power ones. It’s all government pathos now.” It’s unlikely A.N. Tolstoy would have wasted his time on “great power pathos” in purely everyday conversations. This just confirms that his position was based on his inner convictions.
We also cannot agree with the fact that during these years, apart from the story “The Adventures of Pinocchio or the Golden Key,” he did not write anything significant. Working on “Peter I” took a lot of energy, as did social activities. And “The Adventures of Pinocchio” became a real creative success - the very case when the repetition turned out to be much better than the original (“The Adventures of Pinocchio” by Carlo Collodi). However, this was not a repetition, but simply the use of a similar plot.
When the war began, A.N. Tolstoy participated in writing Stalin’s famous appeal, which was read by Molotov. It was then that for the first time there was a call to remember the heroic ancestors - Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Minin and Pozharsky, Suvorov and Kutuzov.
During the war years A.N. Tolstoy returns to journalism, recalling his experience of front-line journalism during the First World War. Almost 60 publications come from his pen. The most famous essay by A.N. Tolstoy's "Motherland". In his works, the writer often turns to the theme of Russian heroes, the eras of Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Mikhail Kutuzov. The main leitmotif is the fight against enemy invasion. At the same time, even at the mental level A.N. Tolstoy compares the skull and bones on the emblems in the buttonholes, the black color of the tanks, the mouse uniform of the fascists and Hitler himself with some common hostile dark force that the Russian people must defeat. It was the appeal to traditional Russian values that formed the basis of his worldview during this period. In 1944, his famous story “Russian Character” was published.
The war once again forces him to take a new look at both the Russian people and the Soviet society of his time. He is waiting for victory, being confident that after it: “The people returning from the war will not be afraid of anything. He will be demanding and proactive.”
A.N. Tolstoy expected victory, but his serious illness turned out to be stronger, and he did not live to see the end of the war quite a bit, a matter of weeks - the writer died on February 23, 1945 and was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. Understanding the meaning of the loss, I.V. Stalin declared state mourning.
Count Leo Tolstoy, a classic of Russian and world literature, is called a master of psychologism, the creator of the epic novel genre, an original thinker and teacher of life. The works of this brilliant writer are Russia’s greatest asset.
In August 1828, a classic of Russian literature was born on the Yasnaya Polyana estate in the Tula province. The future author of War and Peace became the fourth child in a family of eminent nobles. On his father's side, he belonged to the old family of Count Tolstoy, who served and. On the maternal side, Lev Nikolaevich is a descendant of the Ruriks. It is noteworthy that Leo Tolstoy also has a common ancestor - Admiral Ivan Mikhailovich Golovin.
Lev Nikolayevich’s mother, nee Princess Volkonskaya, died of childbirth fever after the birth of her daughter. At that time, Lev was not even two years old. Seven years later, the head of the family, Count Nikolai Tolstoy, died.
Caring for the children fell on the shoulders of the writer’s aunt, T. A. Ergolskaya. Later, the second aunt, Countess A. M. Osten-Sacken, became the guardian of the orphaned children. After her death in 1840, the children moved to Kazan, to a new guardian - their father’s sister P. I. Yushkova. The aunt influenced her nephew, and the writer called his childhood in her house, which was considered the most cheerful and hospitable in the city, happy. Later, Leo Tolstoy described his impressions of life at the Yushkov estate in his story “Childhood.”
Silhouette and portrait of Leo Tolstoy's parents The classic received his primary education at home from German and French teachers. In 1843, Leo Tolstoy entered Kazan University, choosing the Faculty of Oriental Languages. Soon, due to low academic performance, he transferred to another faculty - law. But he did not succeed here either: after two years he left the university without receiving a degree.
Lev Nikolaevich returned to Yasnaya Polyana, wanting to establish relations with the peasants in a new way. The idea failed, but the young man regularly kept a diary, loved social entertainment and became interested in music. Tolstoy listened for hours, and...
Disillusioned with the life of the landowner after spending the summer in the village, 20-year-old Leo Tolstoy left the estate and moved to Moscow, and from there to St. Petersburg. The young man rushed between preparing for candidate exams at the university, studying music, carousing with cards and gypsies, and dreams of becoming either an official or a cadet in a horse guards regiment. Relatives called Lev “the most trifling fellow,” and it took years to pay off the debts he incurred.
Literature
In 1851, the writer’s brother, officer Nikolai Tolstoy, persuaded Lev to go to the Caucasus. For three years Lev Nikolaevich lived in a village on the banks of the Terek. The nature of the Caucasus and the patriarchal life of the Cossack village were later reflected in the stories “Cossacks” and “Hadji Murat”, the stories “Raid” and “Cutting the Forest”.
In the Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy composed the story “Childhood,” which he published in the magazine “Sovremennik” under the initials L.N. Soon he wrote the sequels “Adolescence” and “Youth,” combining the stories into a trilogy. The literary debut turned out to be brilliant and brought Lev Nikolaevich his first recognition.
The creative biography of Leo Tolstoy is developing rapidly: an appointment to Bucharest, a transfer to besieged Sevastopol, and command of a battery enriched the writer with impressions. From the pen of Lev Nikolaevich came the series “Sevastopol Stories”. The works of the young writer amazed critics with their bold psychological analysis. Nikolai Chernyshevsky found in them a “dialectic of the soul,” and the emperor read the essay “Sevastopol in December” and expressed admiration for Tolstoy’s talent.
In the winter of 1855, 28-year-old Leo Tolstoy arrived in St. Petersburg and entered the Sovremennik circle, where he was warmly welcomed, calling him “the great hope of Russian literature.” But over the course of a year, I got tired of the writing environment with its disputes and conflicts, readings and literary dinners. Later in Confession Tolstoy admitted:
“These people disgusted me, and I disgusted myself.”
In the fall of 1856, the young writer went to the Yasnaya Polyana estate, and in January 1857 he went abroad. Leo Tolstoy traveled around Europe for six months. Visited Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland. He returned to Moscow, and from there to Yasnaya Polyana. On the family estate, he began arranging schools for peasant children. With his participation, twenty educational institutions appeared in the vicinity of Yasnaya Polyana. In 1860, the writer traveled a lot: in Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium, he studied the pedagogical systems of European countries in order to apply what he saw in Russia.
A special niche in Leo Tolstoy’s work is occupied by fairy tales and works for children and teenagers. The writer has created hundreds of works for young readers, including good and instructive fairy tales “Kitten”, “Two Brothers”, “Hedgehog and Hare”, “Lion and Dog”.
Leo Tolstoy wrote the school textbook “ABC” to teach children writing, reading and arithmetic. The literary and pedagogical work consists of four books. The writer included instructive stories, epics, fables, as well as methodological advice for teachers. The third book includes the story “Prisoner of the Caucasus.”
Leo Tolstoy's novel "Anna Karenina" In the 1870s, Leo Tolstoy, while continuing to teach peasant children, wrote the novel Anna Karenina, in which he contrasted two storylines: the family drama of the Karenins and the home idyll of the young landowner Levin, with whom he identified himself. The novel only at first glance seemed to be a love affair: the classic raised the problem of the meaning of existence of the “educated class”, contrasting it with the truth of peasant life. "Anna Karenina" was highly appreciated.
The turning point in the writer’s consciousness was reflected in the works written in the 1880s. Life-changing spiritual insight occupies a central place in the stories and stories. “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, “The Kreutzer Sonata”, “Father Sergius” and the story “After the Ball” appear. The classic of Russian literature paints pictures of social inequality and castigates the idleness of the nobles.
In search of an answer to the question of the meaning of life, Leo Tolstoy turned to the Russian Orthodox Church, but even there he did not find satisfaction. The writer came to the conclusion that the Christian church is corrupt, and under the guise of religion, priests are promoting false teaching. In 1883, Lev Nikolaevich founded the publication “Mediator,” where he outlined his spiritual beliefs and criticized the Russian Orthodox Church. For this, Tolstoy was excommunicated from the church, and the writer was monitored by the secret police.
In 1898, Leo Tolstoy wrote the novel Resurrection, which received favorable reviews from critics. But the success of the work was inferior to “Anna Karenina” and “War and Peace”.
For the last 30 years of his life, Leo Tolstoy, with his teachings on non-violent resistance to evil, was recognized as the spiritual and religious leader of Russia.
"War and Peace"
Leo Tolstoy disliked his novel War and Peace, calling the epic “wordy rubbish.” The classic writer wrote the work in the 1860s, while living with his family in Yasnaya Polyana. The first two chapters, entitled “1805,” were published by Russkiy Vestnik in 1865. Three years later, Leo Tolstoy wrote three more chapters and completed the novel, which caused heated controversy among critics.
Leo Tolstoy writes "War and Peace" The novelist took the features of the heroes of the work, written during the years of family happiness and spiritual elation, from life. In Princess Marya Bolkonskaya, the features of Lev Nikolaevich’s mother are recognizable, her penchant for reflection, brilliant education and love of art. The writer awarded Nikolai Rostov with his father’s traits - mockery, love of reading and hunting.
When writing the novel, Leo Tolstoy worked in the archives, studied the correspondence of Tolstoy and Volkonsky, Masonic manuscripts, and visited the Borodino field. His young wife helped him, copying his drafts out clean.
The novel was read avidly, striking readers with the breadth of its epic canvas and subtle psychological analysis. Leo Tolstoy characterized the work as an attempt to “write the history of the people.”
According to the calculations of literary critic Lev Anninsky, by the end of the 1970s, the works of the Russian classic were filmed 40 times abroad alone. Until 1980, the epic War and Peace was filmed four times. Directors from Europe, America and Russia have made 16 films based on the novel “Anna Karenina”, “Resurrection” has been filmed 22 times.
“War and Peace” was first filmed by director Pyotr Chardynin in 1913. The most famous film was made by a Soviet director in 1965.
Personal life
Leo Tolstoy married 18-year-old in 1862, when he was 34 years old. The count lived with his wife for 48 years, but the couple’s life can hardly be called cloudless.
Sofia Bers is the second of three daughters of the Moscow palace office doctor Andrei Bers. The family lived in the capital, but in the summer they vacationed on a Tula estate near Yasnaya Polyana. For the first time Leo Tolstoy saw his future wife as a child. Sophia was educated at home, read a lot, understood art, and graduated from Moscow University. The diary kept by Bers-Tolstaya is recognized as an example of the memoir genre.
At the beginning of his married life, Leo Tolstoy, wanting there to be no secrets between him and his wife, gave Sophia a diary to read. The shocked wife learned about her husband’s stormy youth, passion for gambling, wild life and the peasant girl Aksinya, who was expecting a child from Lev Nikolaevich.
The first-born Sergei was born in 1863. In the early 1860s, Tolstoy began writing the novel War and Peace. Sofya Andreevna helped her husband, despite her pregnancy. The woman taught and raised all the children at home. Five of the 13 children died in infancy or early childhood.
Problems in the family began after Leo Tolstoy finished working on Anna Karenina. The writer plunged into depression, expressed dissatisfaction with the life that Sofya Andreevna so diligently arranged in the family nest. The count's moral turmoil led to Lev Nikolayevich demanding that his relatives give up meat, alcohol and smoking. Tolstoy forced his wife and children to dress in peasant clothes, which he made himself, and wanted to give his acquired property to the peasants.
Sofya Andreevna made considerable efforts to dissuade her husband from the idea of distributing goods. But the quarrel that occurred split the family: Leo Tolstoy left home. Upon returning, the writer entrusted the responsibility of rewriting drafts to his daughters.
The death of their last child, seven-year-old Vanya, briefly brought the couple closer together. But soon mutual grievances and misunderstandings alienated them completely. Sofya Andreevna found solace in music. In Moscow, a woman took lessons from a teacher for whom romantic feelings developed. Their relationship remained friendly, but the count did not forgive his wife for “half-betrayal.”
The couple's fatal quarrel occurred at the end of October 1910. Leo Tolstoy left home, leaving Sophia a farewell letter. He wrote that he loved her, but could not do otherwise.
Death
82-year-old Leo Tolstoy, accompanied by his personal doctor D.P. Makovitsky, left Yasnaya Polyana. On the way, the writer fell ill and got off the train at the Astapovo railway station. Lev Nikolaevich spent the last 7 days of his life in the stationmaster's house. The whole country followed the news about Tolstoy’s health.
The children and wife arrived at the Astapovo station, but Leo Tolstoy did not want to see anyone. The classic died on November 7, 1910: he died of pneumonia. His wife survived him by 9 years. Tolstoy was buried in Yasnaya Polyana.
Quotes by Leo Tolstoy
- Everyone wants to change humanity, but no one thinks about how to change themselves.
- Everything comes to those who know how to wait.
- All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
- Let everyone sweep in front of his own door. If everyone does this, the whole street will be clean.
- It's easier to live without love. But without it there is no point.
- I don't have everything I love. But I love everything I have.
- The world moves forward because of those who suffer.
- The greatest truths are the simplest.
- Everyone is making plans, and no one knows whether he will survive until the evening.
Bibliography
- 1869 – “War and Peace”
- 1877 – “Anna Karenina”
- 1899 – “Resurrection”
- 1852-1857 – “Childhood”. "Adolescence". "Youth"
- 1856 – “Two Hussars”
- 1856 – “Morning of the Landowner”
- 1863 – “Cossacks”
- 1886 – “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”
- 1903 – “Notes of a Madman”
- 1889 – “Kreutzer Sonata”
- 1898 – “Father Sergius”
- 1904 – “Hadji Murat”
