Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy biography. Brief biography of Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy Successful "experiments of the pen"

Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy is a man with an amazing destiny. Being a descendant of a noble noble family, he built a career in the Soviet Union, returning from emigration. In his later works, the reader will find the exaltation of Stalin, which, with the light hand of a talented author, has acquired the scale of a personality cult. How was his "going through the torments"? Why did he choose this path for himself?

Alexey was born on January 10, 1883 in Nikolaevsk (Samara province). His parents were influential and wealthy nobles. My father held the honorary post of marshal of the nobility and was a representative of the ancient Tolstoy family. However, relations in the family did not go well: his mother left her husband immediately after the birth of her son and cohabited with A.A. Bostrom. The boy lived on his estate and was brought up by an educated and intelligent mother, but the family drama worried him very much and did not let go throughout his life. In 1898 they moved to Samara, where the future writer graduated from college.

Youth

Petersburg followed Samara, where the young man studied at a technical specialty (department of mechanics). A trip to the Urals (1905) ignited the young man's imagination, he composed poems that were published in the Kazan newspaper "Volzhsky Listok" in 1906. Recognition in the literary field inspired Alexei to quit his studies and take up writing. He leaves for Paris.

A year later, he publishes the first collection of lyrical poems. A year later, the book "Beyond the Blue Rivers" was published, but the author was still in search. He found his "I" only in prose, writing "Magpie's Tales". Further, Alexei Tolstoy begins to work closely with publishing houses, where his stories are published with great willingness. Then a collection of short prose "Zavolzhye" and two novels "Eccentrics" and "The Lame Master" appear. The novice writer is praised by the recognized master of the word - M. Gorky, and with him other critics. Alexei Nikolaevich gets a job at Russkiye Vedomosti and becomes a war correspondent in the First World War.

Emigration

The writer condemned the revolution, as did most of the representatives of his class. He moves to Paris with his family. Being in the midst of the raging waves of history, he is fascinated by the past of his country and works on historical works. From 1918 to 1923, he rushes between Berlin and Paris, where various emigrant circles with the opposite ideology are formed. He chooses "On the Eve", where all members are more loyal to communism than the Paris Writers' Union. According to him, several years in a foreign land is the darkest period in his life. In exile, the novel "Aelita" and the novels "Black Friday", "The Manuscript Found Under the Bed", "Nikita's Childhood" were written.

Return and recognition

Thanks to the preserved friendship with M. Gorky, Tolstoy finds an opportunity to return to his homeland. He is working on the trilogy "Walking Through the Torments" and the novel "Black Gold", writes the famous "Pinocchio". In his prose, one can trace the desire to find folk roots in Bolshevism. He sees the highest truth in the new ideology and wants to convey it to the entire opposition-minded intelligentsia, to which he recently counted himself. In 1932, he met Gorky personally and became his closest associate. Two years later, he is already preparing the All-Union Congress of Writers, and three more years later he becomes a deputy of the Supreme Council. In the same year, he wrote the story "Bread", which became the basis for the exaltation of Stalin's personality in the popular mind. There he gives the revolutionary events an ideologically correct interpretation.

The author was captivated by the idea of ​​a strong state ruler, only in him he saw salvation for his country. Therefore, he continues to work on the historical novel "Peter the Great", and for the script of the film about him he receives the Order of Lenin. In 1939, Tolstoy received the title of Academician of Sciences, and in 1943 - the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and a prize of 100,000 rubles for the trilogy "Walking Through the Torments".

Death

In 1944, a tumor was found in Alexei Tolstoy's lung. After being diagnosed, he lived less than a year and died in February 1945, just a little short of the Great Victory. During the war he wrote many essays, short stories and articles. He also paid special attention to the personality of another strong monarch in Russian history - Ivan the Terrible, devoting a dilogy to him.

A. N. Tolstoy was born on December 29, 1882 (January 10, 1883). Father - Count Nikolai Alexandrovich Tolstoy (1849-1890), although some biographers attribute paternity to his unofficial stepfather - Alexei Apollonovich Bostrom.

Mother - Alexandra Leontievna (1854-1906), nee Turgeneva - writer, great-aunt granddaughter of the Decembrist Nikolai Turgenev, by the time A. N. Tolstoy was born, she left her husband and cohabited with her lover. Officially, she could not marry A. A. Bostrom because of the definition of a spiritual consistory.

The childhood years of the future writer were spent in the small estate of A. A. Bostrom on the Sosnovka farm, not far from Samara (at present, the village of Pavlovka, the Krasnoarmeisky microdistrict).

In the spring of 1905, as a student at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, Alexei Tolstoy was sent to work in the Urals, where he lived in Nevyansk for more than a month. Later, according to the book “The Best Travels in the Middle Urals: Facts, Legends, Traditions”, Tolstoy devoted his very first story “The Old Tower” to the Nevyansk Leaning Tower.

During World War I, he was a war correspondent. Traveled to France and England (1916).

In 1918-1923, Alexei Tolstoy was in exile (Constantinople, Berlin, Paris), the impressions of which he reflected in the satirical story The Adventures of Nevzorov, or Ibicus (1924). In 1927 he took part in the collective novel "Big Fires", published in the magazine "Spark".

In the trilogy "Walking Through the Torments" (1922-1941), he seeks to present Bolshevism as having a national and popular soil, and the revolution of 1917 as the highest truth comprehended by the Russian intelligentsia.

The historical novel "Peter I" (books 1-3, 1929-1945, unfinished) - perhaps the most famous example of this genre in Soviet literature, contains an apology for a strong and cruel reformist government.

Tolstoy's works, the story "Aelita" (1922-1923) and the novel "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin" (1925-1927) became classics of Soviet science fiction.

The story "Bread" (1937), dedicated to the defense of Tsaritsyn during the Civil War, is interesting in that it tells in a fascinating artistic form that vision of the Civil War in the Russian Empire, which existed in the circle of I.V. Stalin and his associates and served as the basis for the creation of Stalin's personality cult. At the same time, the story pays detailed attention to the description of the warring parties, the life and psychology of people of that time.

Among other works: the story "Russian character" (1944), drama - "Conspiracy of the Empress" (1925), about the decay of the tsarist regime; Vyrubova's Diary (1927).

At the First Congress of Writers (1934) he made a report on dramaturgy.

Was abroad (Germany, Italy - 1932, Germany, France, England - 1935, Czechoslovakia - 1935, England - 1937, France, Spain - 1937). Member of the First (1935) and Second (1937) Congresses of Writers in Defense of Culture.

In 1936-1938, after the death of A. M. Gorky, A. N. Tolstoy headed the Union of Writers of the USSR.

A. N. Tolstoy - Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939), deputy of the USSR Supreme Council of the 1st convocation since 1937.

Member of the Commission for the Investigation of the Atrocities of the Fascist Occupiers. He was present at the Krasnodar process. One of the actual co-authors of the famous Molotov-Stalin appeal of 1941, in which Soviet leaders urge the people to turn to the experience of their great ancestors - Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Minin and Pozharsky, Suvorov and Kutuzov.

A. N. Tolstoy died on February 23, 1945. He was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery (plot No. 2). In connection with his death, state mourning was declared.

A family

Origin

Roman Gul, in his memoirs, claims that A.N. Tolstoy was not the biological son of Count Nikolai Tolstoy (referring to other, undisputed sons of the Count, who allegedly had a negative attitude towards Alexei, who participated in the division of the inheritance of Nikolai Tolstoy).

Aleksey Varlamov (the author of Tolstoy's biography, published in 2006 in the ZhZL series) points out that Gul's testimony raises serious doubts (given the memoirist's negative attitude towards A. N. Tolstoy). However, the same author cites written evidence in favor of a different version: Alexandra Leontievna Tolstaya at one time swore to the priest that the father of the child was A. A. Bostrom. Perhaps later, Alexandra Leontievna realized that it was much better for her son to be a legitimate count, and began a long-term lawsuit about the legality of his birth, surname, patronymic and title. This litigation ended in success only in 1901, when A. N. Tolstoy was already 17 years old.

Sergei Golitsyn in the book "Notes of a Survivor" mentions:

Wives and children

1. Yulia Vasilievna Rozhanskaya, a native of Samara
   1. son Yuri, died in childhood
2. Sofya Isaakovna Dymshits, an artist, a Jew, after several years of cohabitation with Tolstoy, converted to Orthodoxy in order to legally marry him, but the wedding did not take place.
   1. daughter Maryana (Marianna) (1911-1988), husband E. A. Shilovsky (1889-1952).
3. Krandievskaya, Natalya Vasilievna (1888-1963), poetess, memoirist - in 1914-1935. Prototype of Katya Roshchina from "Walking through the torments"
   1. Dmitry, composer, three wives (one of them is Tatyana Nikolaevna), one child from each marriage
   2. Nikita (1917-1994), physicist, the story "Nikita's Childhood" is dedicated to him, wife Natalya Mikhailovna Lozinskaya (daughter of the translator Lozinsky), seven children (including Tatyana Tolstaya), fourteen grandchildren (including Artemy Lebedev)
   3. (adoptive) Fyodor Krandievsky - son of Krandievsky from his first marriage, grew up in the family of Tolstoy
4. Love (in other source. Lyudmila) Ilyinichna Krestinskaya-Barshcheva. There were no children.

Creation

Creativity of the war period

During the war years, Alexei Tolstoy wrote about 60 journalistic materials (essays, articles, appeals, sketches about heroes, military operations), starting from the first days of the war (June 27, 1941 - “What we are defending”) and until his death at the end of winter 1945. The most famous work of Alexei Tolstoy about the war is the essay "Motherland".

In these articles, the writer often turns to folklore, to episodes of Russian history. The articles often refer to Russian folk tales (in Army of Heroes, Alexei Tolstoy compares Hitler to a fairy tale wolf). In "Russian Warriors" the writer quotes "The Tale of Igor's Campaign". Other articles mention the fight against Khan Mamai, the victories of Alexander Nevsky and Mikhail Kutuzov.

Aleksey Tolstoy consistently deduces a certain “Russian character”, noting certain features characteristic of the Russian people: “renunciation of the habitual in difficult people to moral perfection" ("To the Writers of North America"), "disregard for one's life and anger, intelligence and tenacity in a fight" ("Why Hitler must be defeated").

Aleksey Tolstoy ridicules the psychological methods of warfare of the Nazis ("Daredevils"), comparing "the skull and bones ... in buttonholes, black tanks, howling bombs" with the horned masks of savages. Thus, Tolstoy tried to combat various myths about the enemy that were circulating among the soldiers.

Addresses in St. Petersburg

• 1907-1910 - profitable house of I. I. Dernov (Tavricheskaya street, 35);
• 1910-1912 - profitable house of I. I. Kruglov (Nevsky prospect, 147);
• 1925 - May 1928 - tenement house on the embankment. river Zhdanovka, 3;
• May 1928 - May 1930 - Detskoe Selo, Moskovskaya street, 8;
• May 1930 - early 1938 - Writers' Creativity House (Children's Village, Proletarskaya Street, 6).

Awards and prizes

• 1941 - Stalin Prize of the first degree for parts 1-2 of the novel "Peter I".
• 1943 - Stalin Prize of the first degree for the novel "Walking through the torments" (transferred to the Defense Fund for the construction of the Grozny tank).
• 1946 - Stalin Prize of the first degree for the play "Ivan the Terrible" (posthumously).
• Order of Lenin (1938)
• Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1943)
• Order of the Badge of Honor (1939)

Memory

Tolstoy in the Moscow region

Some places near Moscow are associated with the name of A. N. Tolstoy: he visited the House of Creativity of Writers in Maleevka (now the Ruzsky district), in the late 1930s he visited Maxim Gorky at his dacha in Gorki (now the Odintsovo district), together with Gorky visited in 1932, the Bolshevskaya labor commune (now the territory of the city of Korolyov).

For a long time he lived in a dacha in Barvikha (now the Odintsovo district). In 1942, he wrote his military stories here: “Mother and Daughter”, “Katya”, “Stories of Ivan Sudarev”. Here he began the third book of the novel "Walking through the torments", and at the end of 1943 he worked on the third part of the novel "Peter I".

In philately

• Stamps

A. N. Tolstoy on a postage stamp of the USSR

A. N. Tolstoy on a Russian postage stamp

Artworks

Poems about nature

• Blagovest
• You are my land, dear land

Novels

• The Adventures of Nevzorov, or Ibicus (1924)
• Hyperboloid engineer Garin (1927)
• Emigrants (1931)
• The Road to Calvary. Book 1: Sisters (1922)
• The Road to Calvary. Book 2: Year Eighteen (1928)
• The Road to Calvary. Book 3: Gloomy Morning (1941)
• Peter the Great

Novels and stories

• Old Tower (1908)
• Arkhip (1909)
• Cockerel (A Week in Turenev) (1910)
• Matchmaking (1910)
• Mishuka Nalymov (Zavolzhye) (1910)
• Actress (Two Friends) (1910)
• Dreamer (Aggey Korovin) (1910)
• The Adventures of Rastegin (1910)
• Khariton's gold (1911)
• Love (1916)
• Fair Lady (1916)
• Peter's Day (1918)
• Ordinary Man (1917)
• Simple Soul (1919)
• Four centuries (1920)
• In Paris (1921)
• Count Cagliostro (1921)
• Childhood of Nikita (1922)
• Tale of the Time of Troubles (1922)
• Aelita (1923)
• Seven Days the World Was Robbed, alias: Union of Five (1924)
• Seasoned Man (1927)
• Frosty Night (1928)
• Viper (1928)
• Bread (Defense of Tsaritsyn) (1937)
• Ivan the Terrible (The Eagle and the Eaglet, 1942; Difficult Years, 1943)
• Russian character (1944)
• Strange Story (1944)
• ancient path
• Black Friday
• On the island of Halki
• The manuscript found under the bed
• In the snow
• Mirage
• Murder of Antoine Rivaud
• On a fishing trip

Work in progress

• Egor Abozov (1915)
• Peter I (3 volume)

Fairy tales

• Mermaid Tales
• Magpie tales
• The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Pinocchio (1936)
• Ravenous Boot
• The sorcerer's daughter and the enchanted prince

Plays

• Death of Danton
• Death of Fyodor Ivanovich
• Rapists (Lazy) (1913)
• killer whale
• Rocket
• The Conspiracy of the Empress (1925)
• Miracles in the Sieve… (1926)
• Love is a golden book
• Peter the Great
• Ivan the Terrible (1943)
• Evil spirits (another name: Uncle Mardykin)
• Machine Riot

Works about the war

• army of heroes
• "Blitzkrieg" and "Blitzcrah"
• To the Writers of North America
• Moscow is threatened by the enemy
• You won't defeat us!
• Why Hitler must be defeated
• motherland
• Russian character
• Cycle "Stories of Ivan Sudarev"
• Black days of Hitler's army
• What do we protect
• I call for hate

Screen versions of works

• 1924 - Aelita
• 1928 - Lame master
• 1937-1938 - Peter the Great
• 1939 - Golden Key
• 1957 - Going through the throes: Sisters (1 episode)
• 1958 - Going through the throes: The eighteenth year (series 2)
• 1958 - The Adventures of Pinocchio (cartoon)
• 1959 - Going through the throes: Gloomy morning (series 3)
• 1965 - Engineer Garin's hyperboloid
• 1965 - Viper
• 1971 - Aktorka
• 1973 - The collapse of engineer Garin
• 1975 - The Adventures of Pinocchio ("The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Pinocchio")
• 1977 - Going through the throes (TV series)
• 1980 - Youth of Peter
• 1980 - At the beginning of glorious deeds
• 1982 - Adventures of Count Nevzorov
• 1984 - Formula of Love ("Count Cagliostro")
• 1986 - Antics in the old spirit
• 1992 - Nikita's childhood
• 1992 - Beautiful stranger
• 1996 - Dear friend of long forgotten years
• 1997 - The latest adventures of Pinocchio

“Tolstoy was the brightest personality and dazzling talent. He did not repeat anyone in anything and at the same time was a subtly tangible connection with our undying heritage of the 19th century, - said the writer K. Fedin, responding to his death. - "Peter I" he built a magnificent monument to himself with his masterful hands ... "

Count Tolstoy or Vostrom? The birth of Alyosha was preceded by a crack that split the marriage of Count Nikolai Alexandrovich Tolstoy and Alexandra Leontievna, nee Turgeneva. The count passionately loved his "holy" Sasha; Over the years, Alexandra Leontievna became more and more burdened by this feeling. The small-scale nobleman Aleksei Apollonovich Vostrom, “a handsome young man, a liberal, a reader of books, a man with requests” (as A. N. Tolstoy described him), of course, understood her, her spiritual interests much better. It was mutual passionate love. Alexandra Leontievna left her husband and children and went to Vostroy, in whose house Alexei Tolstoy was born on December 29, 1882 (January 10, 1883).

These turbulent events did not in any way affect the serene childhood of little Alyosha, to whom Vostrom treated with paternal tenderness and whom the boy himself called in letters "dear, dear, charming, golden, diamond Daddy." Later contemporaries, such as Bunin, wondered: "Was he really Tolstoy?" But this was probably due to the fact that A. Tolstoy, who was proud of his count title, did not say anything to anyone about his father, whom he saw as a seventeen-year-old youth only in a coffin.

"Childhood of Nikita". The early years of A. Tolstoy passed in the small estate of Bostrom - Sosnovka, forty miles from Samara. He, according to his own recollections, “grew up alone, in contemplation, dissolution, among the great phenomena of earth and sky. July lightning over the dark garden; autumn mists like milk; a dry twig sliding under the wind on the first ice of the pond; winter blizzards, falling asleep with snowdrifts of the hut to the very chimneys; spring noise of waters; the cry of rooks arriving at last year's nests; people in the cycle of the seasons; birth and death are like the rising and setting of the sun, like the fate of grain...”.

The native is especially strong and brightly seen from a distance. In 1920, in exile, in distant Paris, Tolstoy wrote one of the best stories about childhood in all great Russian literature - Nikita's Childhood. This major work, based on autobiographical material, is permeated with the sun, joy, and happiness of childhood. The story preserves the name of the estate, the name and patronymic of Arkady Ivanovich's mother and home teacher, and the nickname of Mishka Koryashonok's "main friend", precious dust particles and sparkles of childhood are carefully recreated.

The memory of childhood and the feeling of the Motherland. Ho, in addition to the autobiographical basis, this work conveys a keen sense of the little hero of Russian nature, the beauty of the Trans-Volga region, the uniqueness of rural life and way of life that goes back centuries. Much later, in the article “To Young Writers,” Tolstoy described how the memory of childhood was combined with a sense of history in the work on the novel “Peter the Great”:

“How did the people of a distant era come to me alive? I think if I had been born in a city, and not in a village, I would not have known thousands of things from childhood - this winter blizzard in the steppes, in abandoned villages, Christmas time, huts, fortune-telling, fairy tales, a torch, barns that smell in a special way , I probably could not describe old Moscow in this way. Pictures of old Moscow sounded in me like deep childhood memories. And from here came the feeling of the era, its materiality.

And around Sosnovka, “noble nests” were scattered, already completely different from those that were sung by I. S. Turgenev. They were inhabited by owners like Tolstoy's uncle Grigory Konstantinovich Tatarinov, the patriarch of the family on the mother's side - "Ganechka", who, according to the second wife of the writer S. I. Dymshits, "flirted with all sorts of eccentricities." From here, from childhood, came bright works about the old Trans-Volga region (the 1911 novel "Eccentrics" and 1912 "The Lame Master", a cycle of stories later called "Under the Old Limes"), where a string of violent and ridiculous petty tyrants and idlers and where, after Shchedrin, after Bunin with his Sukhodol, Tolstoy "buried" the manor, provincial nobility.

Speaking about the atmosphere in which Alexei Tolstoy “began”, one cannot fail to note the literary talent of Alexandra Leontievna, who undoubtedly influenced the fate of her son. Her novels "Outback", "Sister Verochka", "Leaders" left their mark on fiction at the turn of the century. And in the stories “Nannies”, “Girlfriend”, “Two Worlds”, “How Yura Gets Acquainted with the World of Animals”, undoubtedly, the experiences and cares about the beloved child were reflected. And of course, native Sosnovka forever planted in the young soul the precious seeds of love for the fatherland.

In these early impressions one can guess the origins of that patriotic, deeply national principle, which then so vividly colored all of Tolstoy's work. Four decades will pass, the formidable lightning of the Great Patriotic War will cut through the sky of Russia, the fiery essays of the writer will sound alarmingly: “I call for hatred”, “Where did the Russian land come from”, “Russian warriors”, “Motherland”. But here are the lines from a youthful diary: “Motherland! .. My God, how many feelings, thoughts, joy and grief are in this word. How bitter and sweet it sometimes sounds. Poor, poor, lost among the vast steppes of a small farm. My poor garden ... Oh, how I feel sorry for all this ... "

Studying in Samara and Syzran. Sosnovka was sold by Bostrom in 1899. By that time, Tolstoy entered the 4th grade of a real school in Syzran, and then transferred to a real school in Samara, from which he graduated in 1901.

The horizons of the young Tolstoy are expanding. He is fond of the theatre, attends the performances of the corpse touring in Samara, which are staged by Shakespeare, Schiller, Ibsen, Rostand, he himself participates in amateur productions. In a drama circle, Tolstoy meets his future wife, Yu. V. Pozhanskaya. However, the humanitarian orientation of interests is not yet becoming the leading one: after graduating from the Samara real school (where, unlike gymnasiums, the emphasis was on studying the exact and natural sciences), Tolstoy enters the mechanical department of the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology. In September 1901, together with Rozhanskaya, who was admitted to the capital's medical courses, he left Samara for St. Petersburg.

Petersburg. The northern capital captivates the young Tolstoy with a rich cultural life. The "spite of the day", the growing dissatisfaction with the order in society also does not bypass him. Finding himself in a freedom-loving environment, Tolstoy participates in February 1902 in a strike by students of the Technological Institute.

However, the revolutionary speeches of the students take place as if on a tangent - Tolstoy devotes himself to study and work. In the spring of 1904, having switched to the 4th year, he worked at the Baltic Cannon and Foundry Plant, studying turning, methods of metal processing, and in the last year of the Technological Institute he had an internship at the Nevyalovsky plant in the Urals. Thorough engineering training, knowledge of technology came in handy later, when the writer created his fantastic works - the novels Aelita (1923) and The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin (1927), the story The Union of Five (1925).

It's time to search for yourself, love, creativity. In June 1902, Tolstoy and Rozhanskaya were married in the ancestral village of Turenev, Stavropol district, Samara province; in January of the following year, a son, Yuri, was born, who died at the age of five. The first marriage was unsuccessful. When Tolstoy, continuing his education, entered the Royal Saxon Higher Technical School in Dresden in 1906, he met the novice artist Sofya Isaakovna Dymshits.

To a certain extent, he repeats the act of his mother: being married and having a child, he feels an irresistible desire for spiritual closeness, which Rozhanskaya could not give, who wanted to see Tolstoy as an engineer and was indifferent to art. Tolstoy parted with his first wife and plunged headlong into literary work.

Takeoff. The rapid rise of Tolstoy's talent is striking. After his early poems, where he imitates “the most wretched writers of the last century, mediocre imitators of Nekrasov” (K. Chukovsky), after the epigone-decadent book Lyric, which Tolstoy himself was ashamed of, his literary gift flares up. Starting with the story "The Old Tower" (1908), where the mystical plot is combined with rich images of Ural engineers, technicians, teachers, the writer turns to the "gold mine" of the Volga region, resurrecting stories, legends and, most importantly, the impressions of his childhood, artistically transformed and grotesque pointed: "Competitor", "Arkhip", "Death of the Nalymovs", "Dreamer" ("Aggey Korovin"), "Cockerel" ("Week in Turenev"), "Mishuka Nalymov" ("Trans-Volga"), etc.

An artist by the grace of God, a man of phenomenal imagination and observation, in the pre-revolutionary period Tolstoy tried himself, it seems, in all genres, brilliantly imitating various literary movements of that time - he wrote symbolist poems, and folk tales with a deft imitation of popular prints, and realistic prose with fractures of the Russian soul, and stylized as a gallant XVII century. novels and plays. Was it a desire to imitate fashion, a thirst for fame, success? Maybe. But the main thing, nevertheless, was something else - in the game of youth, freedom and a smile, in the reserves of unspent spiritual purity, in the desire to show what he was capable of, in the mischief of a strong man. The silushka shimmered through the veins so much that Tolstoy's talent overflowed. One of the masters of symbolism, Fyodor Sologub, with a hint of disapproval, threw in his hearts: "He is talented with his belly." He reproached the young Tolstoy and A. Blok for an "immature attitude to life", at the same time noting both "blood", and "fat", and "lust", and "nobility", and "talent".

Going through the torments - biography, fate, Tolstoy's novel. It must be assumed that well-being, especially spiritual well-being, is not the destiny and destiny of a great writer who visits “this world in its fatal moments” (F. Tyutchev) and who needs to go through suffering, feel - with all his skin - the pain of the era. Together with the Russian intelligentsia, Tolstoy drank this full cup of suffering on the paths and crossroads of the revolution and the Civil War, finding a capacious and responsible definition of what he had gone through - "going through the torments." This is the name of the ancient legend about the visit of the Mother of God to the place of torment of sinners.

Not accepting the new order, Tolstoy in 1919, through Odessa, leaves Russia and settles in émigré Paris. At this time, he shares the hopes and aspirations of the white exiles and sees the vocation of the émigré writer in incorruptible, principled honesty and freedom of creativity: revolution, world justice, universal equality. And the eccentrics would have gold, and glory, and hot contentment. But journalists, from small to large, rejected the world revolution - excuse me: robbery and robbery ... ”(1921 article“ Concert on October 22 ”). In the future, however, Tolstoy, together with his third wife, the poetess Natalya Krandiyevskaya, underwent a fairly rapid evolution.

Call of the Motherland. Undoubtedly, everyday difficulties and troubles of life in exile, the danger of impending vegetation and even emigrant poverty had a significant impact on Tolstoy. And yet the main thing was different. There was one passion that lived, shone from within his talent, now flickering and going far into the depths, now coming to the surface and demanding direct expression, but always warming his works with a special warmth - “the greatest concept, mysterious in its terrible power: the word is the fatherland ".

This passion lived both in his story "Nikita's Childhood", and in the stories and stories of the emigre period, and it also led him further, demanding an epic resolution. This is how the idea of ​​the first book of the epic novel "Walking through the torments" - "Sisters" (1919-1921) is formed. In the preface to the first edition, published in Berlin, where Tolstoy moved from Paris, he wrote:

“This novel is the first book in the trilogy “Walking through the torments”, covering the tragic decade of Russian history. Three days in February, when, as in a dream, the Byzantine pillar of the empire staggered and collapsed and Russia saw itself naked, impoverished and free, the story of the first book ends.

In 1922, Tolstoy decided to return to the already new, Soviet Russia and addressed an open letter to N.V. Tchaikovsky, chairman of the Executive Bureau of the Committee for Assistance to Emigrant Writers, explaining his step: . And my conscience calls me not to climb into the basement, but to go to Russia and, at least for my own carnation, but to hammer a Russian ship into a Russian ship battered by storms. Following the example of Peter. It is characteristic that, having decided on this act, which caused indignation in emigrant circles, the writer turns to the name and example of the king-transformer, the hero of his future novel.

"Walking through the torments" - from novel to epic novel. The hurricane of the revolution swept away, disintegrated the usual ideas, traditional concepts and values. At the break of powerful tectonic shifts, a completely new human breed was exposed. The principles of good and evil were illuminated and enlarged. Tolstoy defined the task of new literature in comprehending the era in this way: “The consciousness of grandiosity is what should be in every creative person. The artist must understand not only Ivan or Sidor, but from millions of Ivans or Sidorov to give birth to a common person - a type. Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Gogol created not only types of man, but types of epochs... a hurricane of revolution swept over the country. Enough to the very sky. Scattered coals around the world. There were heroic deeds. There were tragic acts. Where are the novelists who have collected millions of wills, passions and deeds into great epics?

These lines were written when the first book of M. Sholokhov's brilliant novel The Quiet Flows the Don had not yet appeared, when Tolstoy himself, having completed the novel The Sisters, was still thinking about its continuation - The Eighteenth Year (1928), where the scale of the image changed dramatically historical events. Ho even then, in the earliest version of the first book of the trilogy, the guiding star for the heroes and their author was the theme of the Motherland, Russia. Already the epigraph to the first book of the trilogy - "Sisters": "Oh, Russian land ..." (from "The Tale of Igor's Campaign") - conveys Tolstoy's desire to comprehend the historical path of the country, its fate. Pictures of the “private life” of the sisters Bulavin, Telegin, Roshchin, intertwined with the chronicle of the historical events of the pre-revolutionary era, are subject to moral issues - the ideas of the spiritual strength and integrity of man, his right to happiness.

Fortunately, in love, pure and reverent feeling, Telegin and Dasha, Roshchin and Katya go through thorns. Here we approach, as it were, the holy of holies of the artist, who, with special tact, such chastity and spirituality, so rare for the literature of the beginning of our century, speaks of love: your tender, beloved heart...” It is not for nothing that the first part of the trilogy ends with this monologue. Two beautiful Russian women, Katya and Dasha Bulavina, walk through the pages of the novel, ennobling and elevating life, filling it with light and meaning. In the depiction of love, Alexei Tolstoy is the direct heir of Turgenev, with his gentle, meek heroines. A woman highlights the essence of a personalka, whether it be the decadent poet Bessonov surrounded by the “black smoke of her fantasy” or Telegin, who is straightforward in everything.

But the problem of happiness takes on a philosophical meaning in the trilogy: it is wider and deeper than the question of personal happiness - happiness in love, in family life; it is a question of man's relation to his homeland, of his role in unfolding historical events. This question of questions, subordinating the biographies of Telegin and Roshchin, passes through the whole epic like a penetrating beam.

Tribute to time. On the work of Tolstoy in the late 20s - 30s. and, of course, the epic about the revolution and the Civil War could not but be affected by the harsh influence of the dominant Bolshevik doctrine, and later the cult of I.V. Stalin. The author even changed the tone of the first book of the novel, at the end of which Roshchin and Katya walk past “the mansion of the famous ballerina, where now, having driven out the hostess, the central committee of one of the parties fighting for power, colloquially referred to as the Bolsheviks, was located,” and he says to her: “Here it, a snake nest, where - well, well ... Next week we will liquidate this nest ... ”Reviewing the novel, which was published in the émigré Parisian journal Sovremennye Zapiski, the Soviet critic V. Polonsky noted not without poison: “This nest in the future narrative will probably not be the last place. We look forward to continuing with great curiosity." However, in subsequent, already Soviet editions, the first book of the trilogy underwent significant editing. Naturally and unconstrainedly, Tolstoy replaced some characteristics and pages with others, sometimes opposite ones (“I don’t understand, I don’t understand ...” Roshchin now mutters in confusion, walking with Katya past the same mansion).

Such a “change of milestones” sometimes led to a violation of historical truth, when, for example, in the story “Bread” (1937), Tolstoy not only exaggerated the role of I. V. Stalin in the struggle for Tsaritsyn, but also attributed to him the military merits of S. S. Kamenev and other military leaders (or when, in the dramaturgical dilogy about Ivan the Terrible "The Eagle and the Eaglet" and "Difficult Years", 1941-1943, he deliberately softened, in order to please the then requirements, some disgusting features of his personality and reign). Ho talent and here saved Tolstoy. No wonder merciless in everything related to ideology, I. A. Bunin noticed in his talent "a great ability to assimilate with the environment in which he is." “Here,” Bunin said, “he wrote his servile year of 1918, and at the time of writing he was against these (that is, white. - O. M.) generals. He has that kind of personality."

We should also not forget that such "custom" works as the story "Bread" were written in an atmosphere of suspicion, slander and widespread repression. According to the memoirs of Tolstoy's son Nikita Alekseevich, a prosecutor who once came to the writer's dacha said: “Aren't you surprised, Alexei Nikolaevich, that you haven't been imprisoned yet? After all, you are a former count and a former emigrant! Don't you see that everyone is swept up around? -- and told Tolstoy that the NKVD authorities "received 1,200 denunciations" against him. In addition, just in 1937, the uncle of Tolstoy's fourth wife Lyudmila Ilyinichna, Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs N. N. Krestinsky, was arrested as a Trotskyist, and then shot. Only Stalin's "protection certificate" may have saved the writer from repression.

Tolstoy during the Great Patriotic War. The third book of "Walking Through the Torments" - "Gloomy Morning" - was completed on June 22, 1941, when the fascist hordes invaded our country. Simultaneously with passionate journalism, Tolstoy wrote The Stories of Ivan Sudarev (1942-1944), where he strives to convey the best features of the Russian national character in an extremely democratic, deliberately intelligible form. In the guise of the narrator - the soldier Ivan Sudarev - there is a perceptibly deeply folk, I would like to say, Terkin beginning. At the same time, he refers to the events of the XVI century. (the dilogy "Ivan the Terrible"), in which he seeks to see, first of all, an example of the manifestation of the "wonderful strength of the resistance of the Russian people" to his enemies. He continues to work on the book of his life - the epic "Peter the Great".

Contemporaries called Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy the “Red Count”, emphasizing the paradox of his biography: in 1917, the Bolsheviks got rid of the titles and their holders, but Tolstoy managed the impossible. "Comrade Count" became the embodiment of a compromise: hating the Bolsheviks, he faithfully served the regime and managed to receive three Stalin Prizes.

Childhood and youth

The writer was born in January 1883 in the city of Nikolaevsk, Samara province. The childhood of the author of "Count Cagliostro" and "Walking Through the Torments" was spent on the estate of an impoverished landowner who served in the zemstvo council, Alexei Bostrom, on the Sosnovka farm near Samara.

Who was the genetic father of Alexei Tolstoy - they argue today. The mother of the writer Alexandra Leontievna Turgeneva ran away from her husband, a wealthy Samara landowner, officer of the Life Guards Hussars and Count Nikolai Alexandrovich Tolstoy, while pregnant. She went to Bostrom, leaving her husband three children. Biographers and contemporaries of Alexei Tolstoy called the father of the writer landowner Bostrom. Until the age of 13, the prose writer bore his surname and considered his own father. Alexandra Leontyevna never married Alexei Bostrom: the church did not allow her.

When Alyosha grew up, his mother began a 4-year lawsuit, wanting to return the title of count, surname and patronymic of her first husband to her son. The lawsuit ended on the 17th anniversary of Alexei Nikolaevich: in 1901 he became Count Tolstoy, not knowing the person whose patronymic and surname he got.

Love for literature and writing was instilled in Alexei Tolstoy by his mother, the great-niece of Nikolai Turgenev. She signed her writings - novels and children's books - with the pseudonym Alexander Bostrom.

The future author of The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin received his initial education at home. But in 1897 the family moved to Samara, where Tolstoy became a student at a real school. In 1901, the young man continued his education in St. Petersburg, entering the Faculty of Mechanics of the Technological Institute.

Literature

A collection of poems by Tolstoy "Lyric" was published in 1907. Critics noted in the early work of 24-year-old Alexei Tolstoy the influence of Semyon Nadson: the young writer imitated the masters. Later, Alexey Nikolayevich was ashamed of the authorship of the collection and tried not to think about poetry.

The first story "The Old Tower" appeared after a trip to the Urals, where the student was sent for practice. For a month and a half, Alexei Tolstoy lived in ancient Nevyansk, where he collected legends, historical information about the region and its sights, including the Nevyansk Leaning Tower.

In 1907, Alexei Nikolaevich left the institute and devoted himself to writing. According to Tolstoy, he "attacked on his theme", prompted by the stories of his mother and relatives: it was the outgoing world of the nobility, whose representatives the writer called "eccentrics, colorful and ridiculous."

The collection of novels and short stories Zavolzhie was received favorably by critics, including Aleksey Tolstoy, who was dissatisfied with the result, calling himself "an ignoramus and an amateur."

In his student years, under the influence of Alexei Remizov, Tolstoy set about improving the language. The richest material turned out to be ancient fairy tales, folklore, the writings of Habakkuk and judicial acts of the 17th century. Soon appeared "Magpie's Tales" and the second (last) collection of poetry "Beyond the Blue Rivers".

Alexei Tolstoy did not write more poetry. But stories, fairy tales, novels and novels were born in huge numbers - the writer worked tirelessly, surprising his colleagues with incredible efficiency. In 1911, he wrote the novel "Two Lives", the following year the novel "The Lame Master" appeared, then the story "For Style" and short stories. Tolstoy's plays were staged at the capital's Maly Theatre. At the same time, the writer managed to attend parties, opening days, salons and all theatrical premieres.

The First World War made Alexei Tolstoy a war correspondent: he wrote front-line essays for the Russkiye Vedomosti newspaper, visited France and Britain. In 1915-16, the stories "On the Mountain", "Under Water", "The Beautiful Lady" appeared. The writer also did not forget about dramaturgy - in 1916 the comedies "Unclean Force" and "Killer Whale" were released.

The revolutionary events of October 1917 Aleksey Tolstoy took with caution. In the summer of 1918, he moved his family to Odessa to escape the Bolsheviks. The story “Count Cagliostro” and the comedy “Love is a golden book” appeared in the southern city.

From Odessa, the Tolstoy family emigrated to Constantinople, then to Paris. The move did not affect the writer's work capacity: Alexei Tolstoy continued to work without straightening his back. In France, the story "Childhood of Nikita" and the first part of the trilogy "Walking through the torments" were born.

Life abroad seemed to the Russian writer dreary and uncomfortable. Accustomed to luxury and comfort, Count Tolstoy was burdened by the disorder of life. In the autumn of 1921, he moved his family to Berlin, where he stayed for two years. Relations between Alexei Nikolaevich and the emigrant world deteriorated.

At the end of the summer of 1923, Alexei Tolstoy returned to Soviet Russia forever. His return caused a stormy and ambiguous reaction: emigrant circles called the act a betrayal and showered curses on the "Soviet count". The Bolsheviks accepted the writer with open arms: Tolstoy became a personal friend, a frequenter of the Kremlin receptions, received membership in the Academy of Sciences, and was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Aleksey Nikolaevich not exactly accepted - he resigned himself to the new system, as if with inevitability. He was presented with an estate in Barvikha, they gave him a car with a driver.

Alexei Tolstoy finalized the trilogy "Walking Through the Torments" and presented dozens of essays to young readers. For children, he remade Carlo Collodi's fairy tale about the adventures of Pinocchio, calling his story "The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Pinocchio."

In 1924, a story was born, which literary critics consider the best work of Alexei Tolstoy - "The Adventures of Nevzorov, or Ibicus." The writer presented the world with fascinating fantastic works - the novels "Aelita" and "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin", the utopian story "Blue Cities". But readers accepted the fantastic writings of the “Comrade Count” with caution, and colleagues, Yuri Tynyanov, were skeptical. Only Maxim Gorky appreciated the new novels of the author, who predicted the glory of novels in the fantasy genre.

In 1937, Alexei Tolstoy wrote the story "Bread", in which he spoke about the outstanding role of Stalin in the defense of Tsaritsyn during the years of the civil war. But the main book on which the writer worked for the last 16 years of his life was the historical novel "". After reading the work, even Ivan Bunin, who did not like Tolstoy, became generous with praise.

During the Great Patriotic War, Alexei Tolstoy wrote the drama-dilogue "" and the story "Russian Character".

But there are works attributed to the pen of the "red count", from which he denied, not wanting to recognize authorship. This is an erotic story "Banya", which is called the first pornographic work of pre-revolutionary Russia. But they did not find confirmation that the story was written by Alexei Tolstoy: there were no traces of work left in the letters or drafts of the writer. Some critics suggest that Banya was written, but there are those who point to Nikolai Leskov.

Perhaps Alexey Nikolayevich was among the "suspects" due to a reasonable assumption about the authorship of another work, which also contains elements of pornography. This is Vyrubova's Diary, which appeared in 1927 - a vulgar libel written (presumably) by Alexei Tolstoy and Pavel Shchegolev on the order of the authorities in order to discredit the royal family.

The works of Alexei Tolstoy have been filmed. Some ("Lame master", "Walking through the torment") 3-4 times. The films "Formula of Love", "Peter the Great", "Youth of Peter", "Golden Key", "Aelita", "Engineer Garin's Hyperboloid" and "Nikita's Childhood" are based on the works of the "Soviet count".

Personal life

The writer was called a ladies' man and a bon vivant. There were four marriages in the life of Alexei Tolstoy. The first is with Yulia Rozhanskaya, the daughter of a collegiate adviser. The writer met a girl in Samara, at a play rehearsal in an amateur theater. In 1901, after a summer spent together at the Rozhanskys' dacha, Tolstoy persuaded Yulia to leave for St. Petersburg, where she entered a medical institute. The following year the couple got married, and in January 1903 their son Yuri was born (he died in 1908).

During the revolutionary events, Alexei Tolstoy went to Germany, where he met the artist Sofya Dymshits. He officially separated from his first wife in 1910. Jewish Sophia converted to Orthodoxy and married Tolstoy. In 1911, a daughter, Marianna, was born.

Soon, the loving writer drew attention to the poetess Natalya Krandievsky and left his second wife. In 1914, Tolstoy and Krandievskaya got married, the marriage lasted until 1935. In union with Natalya Vasilyevna, who became the prototype of Katya from "Walking Through the Torments", the sons Nikita and Dmitry were born.

In August 1935, the beautiful secretary Lyudmila Krestinskaya-Barsheva came to the Tolstoy's house. In October, Lyudmila, who was strikingly younger than Alexei Nikolaevich, became his wife. Together they lived until the death of the writer.

Death

In 1944, doctors diagnosed Alexei Tolstoy with a terrible diagnosis: rapidly progressing lung cancer. For six months the writer was tormented by hellish pains. He died in February 1945 in Moscow, not having lived to see the Victory.

They buried Alexei Tolstoy at the Novodevichy cemetery, declaring state mourning.

In October 1987, a museum was opened in the capital on Spiridonovka Street, where the writer and his wife Lyudmila lived in recent years.

Quotes by Alexei Tolstoy

• This world will inevitably perish. Here, only thrushes live intelligently.
• It must be when a person has everything - then he is truly and unhappy.
• The soldiers were required to stubbornly and obediently die in the places indicated on the map.
• People cannot be left without leaders. They are drawn to get on all fours.
• Here they fought their own: brother against brother, father against son, godfather against godfather - that means, without fear and mercilessly.
• It is necessary that the amount of gold be limited, otherwise it will lose the smell of human sweat.

Bibliography

• 1912 - "The lame master"
• 1921 - "Count Cagliostro"
• 1922 - "Childhood of Nikita"
• 1923 - "Aelita"
• 1924 - "The Adventures of Nevzorov, or Ibicus"
• 1927 - "Hyperboloid engineer Garin"
• 1922 - “Walking through the torments. Sisters"
• 1928 - “Walking through the torments. 18th year"
• 1941 - “Walking through the torments. Gloomy morning»
• 1934 - "Peter the Great"
• 1942 - "Ivan the Terrible. Eagle and eagle»
• 1943 - "Ivan the Terrible. Difficult years"

Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy is a writer of many-sided and bright talent. He created novels about the present and the historical past of our Motherland, stories and plays, scripts and political pamphlets, an autobiographical story and fairy tales for children.

A. N. Tolstoy was born in the city of Nikolaevsk, Samara province - now the city of Pugachev, Saratov region. He grew up in an atmosphere of wild life of ruined Trans-Volga landowners. The writer vividly depicted this life in his stories and novels written in 1909–1912. ("Mishuka Nalymov", "Eccentrics", "The Lame Master", etc.).

Tolstoy did not immediately accept the Great October Socialist Revolution. He emigrated abroad.

“Life in exile was the most difficult period of my life,” Tolstoy later wrote in his autobiography. “There I understood what it means to be a guy, a person cut off from his homeland, weightless, barren, not needed by anyone under any circumstances.”

Longing for the Motherland evoked childhood memories, pictures of native nature in the writer's memory. This is how the autobiographical story "Nikita's Childhood" (1919) appeared, in which one feels how deeply and sincerely Tolstoy loved his homeland, how he yearned away from it. The story tells about the childhood years of the writer, pictures of Russian nature, Russian life, images of Russian people are beautifully depicted.

In Paris, Tolstoy wrote the science fiction novel Aelita.

Returning to his homeland in 1923, Tolstoy wrote: “I became a participant in a new life on earth. I see the challenges of the era.” The writer creates stories about Soviet reality ("Black Friday", "Mirage", "Union of Five"), the science fiction novel "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin", the trilogy "Walking Through the Torments" and the historical novel "Peter I".

Tolstoy worked on the trilogy "Walking through the torments" ("Sisters", "The Eighteenth Year", "Gloomy Morning") for about 22 years. The writer defined its theme as follows: "This is the lost and returned Motherland." Tolstoy tells about the life of Russia during the period of revolution and civil war, about the difficult path to the people of the Russian intellectuals Katya, Dasha, Telegin and Roshchin. The revolution helps the heroes of the trilogy to determine their place in the nationwide struggle for socialism, to find personal happiness. The reader parted with them at the end of the civil war. A new stage in the life of the country begins. The victorious people begin to build socialism. But, saying goodbye to his regiment, the heroes of the novel Telegin say: “I warn you - there is still a lot of work ahead, the enemy has not yet been broken, and it is not enough to break him, he must be destroyed ... This war is such that it must be won, it cannot be do not win ... Rainy, gloomy morning we went into battle for a bright day, and our enemies want a dark night of robbers. And the day will rise, even if you burst with annoyance ... "

The Russian people appear in the epic as the creator of history. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, he fights for freedom and justice. In the images of representatives of the people - Ivan Gora, Agrippina, Baltic sailors - Tolstoy reflects the steadfastness, courage, purity of feelings, devotion to the Motherland of the Soviet people. With great artistic power, the writer managed to capture the image of Lenin in the trilogy, to show the depth of thoughts of the leader of the revolution, his determination, energy, modesty and simplicity.

Tolstoy wrote: “In order to understand the secret of the Russian people, its greatness, you need to know its past well and deeply: our history, its root knots, the tragic and creative eras in which the Russian character was tied up.”

One of these eras was the Petrine era. A. Tolstoy turned to her in the novel "Peter I" (the first book - 1929-1930, the second book - 1933-1934). This is a novel not only about the great reformer Peter I, but also about the fate of the Russian nation in one of the "tragic and creative" periods of its history. The writer truthfully tells about the most important events of the Petrine era: the Streltsy rebellion, the Crimean campaigns of Prince Golitsyn, Peter's struggle for Azov, Peter's travels abroad, his reformative activities, the war between Russia and the Swedes, the creation of the Russian fleet and the new army, the founding of St. Petersburg and etc. Along with all this, Tolstoy shows the life of the most diverse sections of the population of Russia, the life of the masses.

Creating the novel, Tolstoy used a huge amount of material - historical research, notes and letters of Peter's contemporaries, military reports, court archives. "Peter I" is one of the best Soviet historical novels, it helps to understand the essence of a distant era, brings up love for the Motherland, legitimate pride in its past.

For young children, Tolstoy wrote the fairy tale "The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Pinocchio." On the material of the fairy tale, he made a film script and a play for the children's theater.

During the Great Patriotic War, A. Tolstoy spoke about the strength and heroism of the Soviet people in the fight against the enemies of the Motherland. His articles and essays: “Motherland”, “Blood of the people”, “Moscow is threatened by the enemy”, the story “Russian character” and others inspired the Soviet people to new feats.

During the war years, A. Tolstoy also created the dramatic story "Ivan the Terrible", consisting of two plays: "The Eagle and the Eaglet" (1941-1942) and "Difficult Years" (1943).

The remarkable writer was also an outstanding public figure. He was repeatedly elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, was elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

A patriotic writer and humanist, an artist of a wide creative range, a master of a perfect literary form, who owned all the riches of the Russian language, Tolstoy went through a difficult creative path and took a prominent place in Russian Soviet literature.