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Brief biography of Alexei Tolstoy. Brief biography of Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy Again in Russia

Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on January 10, 1883 (December 29, 1882 - old style) in the family of Nikolai Alexandrovich Tolstoy and Alexandra Leontievna Turgeneva. True, in all the biographies of Tolstoy it is noted that it was not his own father who raised the boy, but his stepfather, Bostrom Alexei Apollonovich, whom Alexei Tolstoy's mother married. On the Sosnovka farm, which belonged to his stepfather, the childhood of the future writer passed. The boy was educated by a visiting teacher.

In 1897 the family of Alexei Tolstoy moved to Samara. There the young man entered the school, and upon graduation in 1901 he left for St. Petersburg to continue his education at the Institute of Technology.

The beginning of literary activity

In 1907, shortly before defending his diploma, Alexei suddenly decides to leave the institute in order to study literature. The attempt to write in 1905, when Tolstoy published several of his poems in a provincial newspaper, he considered a great success, so the decision to leave the institute was relatively easy for the future writer. In the same 1907, Tolstoy published a collection of poems "Lyrics", and in 1908 the magazine "Neva" also published the prose of the beginning writer Tolstoy - the story "The Old Tower".

In 1908, his second book of poems, Beyond the Blue Rivers, was published. Already in Moscow, where the writer moved in 1912, he began cooperation with Russkiye Vedomosti, where he published his prose of a small genre (mainly stories and essays) on an ongoing basis.

When the First World War began, Tolstoy decided to go to the front as a war correspondent. As a journalist during the war, the writer traveled to England and France.

Years of emigration

The February Revolution aroused in Tolstoy a keen interest in the issues of Russian statehood. This event became a kind of impetus, after which the writer seriously engaged in the study of the Petrine era. He spent a long time studying historical archives, studying the history of Peter the Great and taking a keen interest in the fate of people from his inner circle. But Alexey Nikolaevich took the October Bolshevik coup very negatively.

In 1918, historical motifs appear in his prose. He writes the stories "Peter's Day" and "Obsession". Even in a brief biography of Alexei Nikolayevich Tolstoy, it is worth mentioning that later this passion for the time of Peter the Great, all the knowledge gained about this great era of change, will result in a wonderful historical novel "Peter the Great".

In the next two years, three more books by the author saw the light of day: the fantastic novel Aelita, the story Black Friday and The Manuscript Found Under the Bed. The author also returned to the science fiction genre in the book "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin".

But the real bestseller was the book "The Golden Key", which told about the exciting adventures of the wooden boy Pinocchio (it is recommended for extracurricular reading for 5th grade students, but the fairy tale is certainly suitable for elementary school). The fairy tale was written based on the book "Pinocchio" by the Italian author Carlo Collodi. While in exile, Tolstoy began to work on the trilogy "Walking through the torments", which would become the most important work in the writer's life.

Return to the USSR

After emigration, old friends turned away from Tolstoy, but in Berlin, in 1922, he made a new friend - Maxim Gorky, whom he met when the latter came to Germany. A year later, in 1923, Alexei Nikolaevich decided to return to his homeland. Here he continued to work on the trilogy "Walking through the torments" ("Sisters", "The Eighteenth Year", "Gloomy Sky"). Thematically, the trilogy adjoins the story "Bread", written in 1937, which is considered the most unsuccessful work. In it, he distorted the historical truth, falsely described the personality of Stalin and the events of the bloody and hungry time. Because of this hypocritical propaganda, historical truth, moral traditions, and the very work of the writer could not but suffer.

Tolstoy as a citizen and Tolstoy as an artist are two different people. Of course, he saw how his acquaintances and friends were dying from Stalinist repressions, but he never provided any help to anyone, although he was close to Stalin and favored by the authorities. He simply ignored requests for help.Show rating

Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on December 29 (January 10 n.s.) in the city of Nikolaevsk (now Pugachev) of the Samara province in the family of a landowner. Childhood years were spent on the Sosnovka farm, which belonged to the writer's stepfather - Alexei Bostrom, who served in the Zemstvo administration of the city of Nikolaevsk - Tolstoy considered this man his father and bore his surname until the age of thirteen.
Little Alyosha almost did not know his own father, Count Nikolai Alexandrovich Tolstoy, an officer of the Life Guards Hussar Regiment and a noble Samara landowner. His mother, Alexandra Leontyevna, contrary to all the laws of that time, left her husband and three children, and, pregnant with her son Alexei, went to her lover. In her nee Turgenev, Alexandra Leontievna herself was no stranger to writing. Her writings - the novel "The Restless Heart", the story "The Outback", as well as books for children, which she published under the pseudonym Alexandra Bostrom - had considerable success and were quite popular at that time. Alexei owed his mother to his sincere love for reading, which she was able to instill in him. Alexandra Leontievna tried to persuade him to write as well.
Alyosha received his initial education at home under the guidance of a visiting teacher. In 1897 the family moved to Samara, where the future writer entered a real school. After graduating in 1901, he went to St. Petersburg to continue his education. Enters the department of mechanics of the Technological Institute. By this time, his first poems, not free from the influence of the work of Nekrasov and Nadson, belong. Tolstoy began with imitation, as evidenced by his first collection of poems, Lyric, published in 1907, of which he was then extremely ashamed - so much so that he tried never to even mention it.
In 1907, shortly before defending his diploma, he left the institute, deciding to devote himself to literary work. Soon he “attacked on his own topic”: “These were the stories of my mother, my relatives about the outgoing and departed world of the ruined nobility. A world of eccentrics, colorful and ridiculous... It was an artistic find.” Alexey Nikolaevich Tolstoy
After the novels and short stories that later compiled the book Zavolzhye, they began to write a lot about him (A. M. Gorky received an approving review), but Tolstoy himself was dissatisfied with himself: “I decided that I was a writer. But I was an ignoramus and an amateur ... "
While still in St. Petersburg, under the influence of A.M. Remizov, he took up the study of the Russian folk language “from fairy tales, songs, from the records of“ Words and Deeds ”, that is, judicial acts of the 17th century, according to the writings of Avvakum .. Passion for folklore gave the richest material for the "Forty Tales" and the poetic collection "Beyond the Blue Rivers" permeated with fabulous and mythological motifs, after publishing which Tolstoy decided not to write more poetry.
... In those first years, the years of accumulation of skill, which cost Tolstoy incredible efforts, he just did not write stories, fairy tales, poems, novels, and all this in huge quantities! - and where only it was not published. He worked without straightening his back. The novels "Two Lives" ("Eccentrics" - 1911), "The Lame Master" (1912), stories and novels "For Style" (1913), plays that were staged at the Maly Theater and not only in it, and much more - all was the result of relentless sitting at the desk. Even Tolstoy's friends were amazed at his efficiency, because, among other things, he was a frequenter of many literary gatherings, parties, salons, vernissages, anniversaries, theatrical premieres.
After the outbreak of the First World War, he, as a war correspondent from Russkiye Vedomosti, was at the fronts, visited England and France. He wrote a number of essays and stories about the war (the stories "On the Mountain", 1915; "Under Water", "The Beautiful Lady", 1916). During the war years, he turned to drama - the comedy "Unclean Force" and "Killer Whale" (1916).
Tolstoy took the October Revolution with hostility. In July 1918, fleeing the Bolsheviks, Tolstoy and his family moved to Odessa. It seems that the revolutionary events that took place in Russia did not at all affect the story "Count Cagliostro" written in Odessa - a charming fantasy about the revival of an old portrait and other miracles - and the cheerful comedy "Love is a golden book."
From Odessa, the Tolstoy went first to Constantinople, and then to Paris, to emigrate. Alexey Nikolayevich did not stop writing there either: during these years, the nostalgic story "Nikita's Childhood" was published, as well as the novel "Walking Through the Torments" - the first part of the future trilogy. In Paris, Tolstoy was dreary and uncomfortable. He loved not only luxury, but, so to speak, proper comfort. And there was no way to achieve it. In October 1921 he moved again, this time to Berlin. But life in Germany was not the best either: “Life here is approximately the same as in Kharkov under the hetman, the brand is falling, prices are rising, goods are being hidden,” Aleksey Nikolayevich complained in a letter to I.A. Bunin.
Relations with emigration deteriorated. For his collaboration with the Nakanune newspaper, Tolstoy was expelled from the émigré Union of Russian Writers and Journalists: only A.I. Kuprin, I.A. Bunin - abstained ... Thoughts about a possible return to his homeland increasingly took possession of Tolstoy.
In August 1923, Alexei Tolstoy returned to Russia. More precisely, in the USSR. Forever.
“And he immediately harnessed himself to work, without giving himself any respite”: his plays were endlessly staged in theaters; in Soviet Russia, Tolstoy also wrote one of his best stories, The Adventures of Nevzorov, or Ibicus, and completed the fantastic novel Aelita, begun in Berlin, which made a lot of noise. Tolstoy's fiction was viewed with suspicion in writers' circles. "Aelita", as well as the later utopian story "Blue Cities" and the adventure-fiction novel "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin", written in the spirit of the then popular "red Pinkerton", were not appreciated by either I.A. Bunin, nor V.B. Shklovsky, nor Yu.N. Tynyanov, nor even the friendly K.I. Chukovsky.
And Tolstoy shared it with a smile with his wife, Natalya Krandiyevskaya: “It will end up with the fact that someday I will write a novel with ghosts, with a dungeon, with buried treasures, with all kinds of devilry. Since childhood, this dream has not been satisfied ... As for ghosts - this, of course, is nonsense. But, you know, without fantasy, it’s still boring for an artist, somehow prudent ... An artist by nature is a liar, that’s the point! A.M. turned out to be right. Gorky, who said that "Aelita is written very well and, I am sure, will be a success." And so it happened. Alexey Nikolaevich Tolstoy
The return of Tolstoy to Russia caused a variety of rumors. The emigrants considered this act a betrayal and poured terrible curses at the address of the "Soviet count". The writer was favored by the Bolsheviks: over time, he became a personal friend of I.V. Stalin, a regular guest at magnificent Kremlin receptions, was awarded numerous orders, prizes, was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, a full member of the Academy of Sciences. But the socialist system did not accept it, rather, it adapted to it, put up with it, and therefore, like many, he often said one thing, thought another, and wrote a completely third thing. The new authorities did not skimp on gifts: Tolstoy had a whole estate in Detskoye Selo (as in Barvikha) with luxuriously furnished rooms, two or three cars with a personal driver. He still wrote a lot and differently: he endlessly finalized and reworked the trilogy "Walking through the torments" and then suddenly took and gave the children the wooden Pinocchio doll they loved so much - he retold in his own way the famous fairy tale Carlo Collodi about the adventures of Pinocchio. In 1937, he composed the "pro-Stalinist" story "Bread", in which he spoke about the outstanding role of the "father of peoples" in the defense of Tsaritsyn during the Civil War. And until the last days he worked on his main book - a large historical novel about the era of Peter the Great, the idea of which arose, perhaps even before the revolution, in any case, already at the end of 1916, and in 1918 such stories appeared as " Delusion", "The First Terrorists" and, finally, "Peter's Day". After reading "Peter the Great", even the gloomy and bilious Bunin, who strictly judged Tolstoy for his understandable human weaknesses, was delighted.
The Great Patriotic War found Alexei Tolstoy already a well-known writer at the age of 58. During this time, he often appeared with articles, essays, stories, the heroes of which were people who showed themselves in the difficult trials of the war. And all this - despite the progressive disease and the truly hellish torment associated with it: in June 1944, doctors discovered a malignant lung tumor in Tolstoy. A serious illness prevented him from surviving until the end of the war. He died on February 23, 1945 in Moscow.

“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 Leontyevna, nee Turgeneva. The count passionately loved his "holy" Sasha; Over the years, Alexandra Leontyevna 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 Leontyevna 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, lovely, 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 specks of dust and sparkles of childhood are carefully recreated.

The memory of childhood and the feeling of the Motherland. But 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 "Nanny", "Girlfriend", "Two worlds", "How Yura gets acquainted with the world of animals" undoubtedly reflected the feelings and cares about the beloved child. 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 skies 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-Foundry, 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 aspiring 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, 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 lot and fate 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. Tolstoy drank this full cup of suffering together with the Russian intelligentsia 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 sequel, 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 emigrant 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 dramatic 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 saved Tolstoy here too. 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! Can'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 tangibly 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".

Count and Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences Alexei Nikolayevich Tolstoy was an extremely talented and versatile writer who wrote in a variety of genres and directions. In his arsenal are two collections of poems, processing of fairy tales, scripts, a huge number of plays, journalism and other articles. But above all, he is a great prose writer and master of fascinating stories. He would have been awarded the State Prize of the USSR (in 1941, 1943 and already posthumously in 1946). The writer's biography contains interesting facts from the life of Tolstoy. About them further and will be discussed.

Tolstoy: life and work

December 29, 1882 (according to the old January 10, 1883) in Nikolaevsk (Pugachevsk), Alexey Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born. When his mother was pregnant, she left her husband N. A. Tolstoy and moved to live with the zemstvo employee A. A. Bostrom.

Alyosha spent all his childhood on the estate of his stepfather in the village of Sosnovka, Samara province. These were the happiest years for a child who grew up very strong and cheerful. Then Tolstoy graduated from the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, but did not defend his diploma (1907).

From 1905 to 1908 he began to publish poetry and prose. Fame came to the writer after the stories and novellas of the "Trans-Volga" cycle (1909-1911), the novels "Eccentrics" (1911) and "The Lame Master" (1912). Here he described anecdotal and extraordinary incidents that happened to the eccentric landowners of his native Samara province.

World War I

Interesting facts from the life of Tolstoy indicate that he worked in the First World War. And then he reacted with great enthusiasm to the writer at that time he lived in Moscow. At the time of the socialist revolution, Tolstoy was appointed commissar for the registration of the press. From 1917 to 1918, the entire apolitical writer displayed depression and anxiety.

After the revolution, from 1918 to 1923, Alexei Tolstoy spent his life in exile. In 1918 he went to Ukraine on a literary tour, and in 1919 he was evacuated from Odessa to Istanbul.

Emigration

Returning to the topic “Tolstoy: life and work”, it should be noted that he lived in Paris for a couple of years, then in 1921 he moved to Berlin, where he began to establish old ties with writers who remained in Russia. As a result, without taking root abroad, during the NEP period (1923), he returned back to his homeland. His life abroad bore fruit, and his autobiographical work "Nikita's Childhood" (1920-1922), "Walking through the torments" - the first edition (1921), saw the light, by the way, in 1922 he announced that this there will be a trilogy. Over time, the anti-Bolshevik direction of the novel was corrected, the writer was inclined to remake his works, often hesitating between the poles due to the political situation in the USSR. The writer never forgot about his "sins" - noble origin and emigration, but he understood that he had a wide circle of readers right now, in Soviet times.

New creative period

Upon arrival in Russia, the novel "Aelita" (1922-1923) of the science fiction genre was published. It tells how a soldier of the Red Army arranges a revolution on Mars, but everything did not go the way he wanted. A little later, the second novel of the same genre, The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin (1925-1926), was published, which the author remade many times. In 1925, the fantastic story "The Union of Five" appeared. Tolstoy, by the way, in these of his predicted many technical miracles, for example, space flights, catching cosmic voices, laser, "parachute brake", fission of the atomic nucleus, etc.

From 1924 to 1925, Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy created a novel of the satirical genre "The Adventures of Nevzorov, or Ibikus", which describes the adventures of an adventurer. Obviously, this is where Ilf and Petrov's image of Ostap Bender was born.

As early as 1937, Tolstoy was writing a story about Stalin "Bread" by state order, where the outstanding role of the leader of the proletariat and Voroshilov is clearly visible in the events described.

One of the best children's stories in world literature was the story of A. N. Tolstoy "The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Pinocchio" (1935). The writer very successfully and thoroughly remade the fairy tale "Pinocchio" by the Italian writer Carlo Collodi.

Between 1930 and 1934, Tolstoy created two books about Peter the Great and his time. Here the writer gives his assessment of that era and the concept of the king's reforms. He wrote his third book, Peter the Great, already being mortally ill.

During the Great Patriotic War, Alexei Nikolaevich wrote many journalistic articles and stories. Among them are "Russian character", "Ivan the Terrible", etc.

contradictions

The personality of the writer Alexei Tolstoy is rather controversial, as, in principle, his work. In the Soviet Union, he was the second most important writer after Maxim Gorky. Tolstoy was a symbol of how people from the highest nobility became real Soviet patriots. He never particularly complained about the need and always lived like a gentleman, because he never stopped working on his typewriter and was always in demand.

Interesting facts from Tolstoy's life include the fact that he could fuss about arrested or disgraced acquaintances, but he could also evade this. He was married four times. N. V. Krandievskaya, one of his wives, in some way served as a prototype for the heroines of the novel “Walking Through the Torments”.

Patriot

Alexey Nikolaevich liked to write in a realistic manner using true facts, but he also created fantastic fiction superbly. He was loved, he was the soul of any society, but there were those who showed a contemptuous attitude towards the writer. These included A. Akhmatova, M. Bulgakov, O. Mandelstam (from the latter Tolstoy even received a slap in the face).

Alexei Tolstoy was a real national Russian writer, patriot and statesman, he most often wrote on foreign material and at the same time did not want to learn foreign languages for a better feeling of his native Russian language.

After from 1936 to 1938 he headed the Writers' Union of the USSR. After the war, he was a member of the commission to investigate the crimes of the fascist invaders.

It should be noted that the years of Tolstoy's life fell on the period from 1883 to 1945. He died on February 23, 1945 from cancer at the age of 62 and was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Years of life: from 12/29/1882 to 02/23/1945

Well-known Russian, and after the Soviet writer, playwright, essayist, public figure, count, academician. In the USSR, he was considered one of the main "official" writers. After himself, he left an extensive creative legacy in a variety of genres.

Born in the city of Nikolaevsk (now - Pugachev), Samara province. Mother A.N. Tolstoy, being pregnant, left her husband for her lover - Alexei Apollonovich Bostrom, a landowner and an employee of the Zemstvo Council. The childhood of the writer passed in his estate Sosnovka. A.N. Tolstoy's stepfather was his father and until the age of 13 bore his last name, and the final recognition of Tostoy's right to the title occurred only in 1901. He received his initial education, as was the custom of that time, at home, and in 1897 the family moved to Samara, where the future writer entered a real school. After graduating in 1901, he went to St. Petersburg, where he entered the department of mechanics of the Technological Institute. By this time, his first poems, published in 1907 in the form of a collection, belong. In the same year, the writer leaves the institute without defending his diploma, deciding to devote himself to literary work.

Since that time, A.N. Tolstoy works hard and hard. Fame comes to the writer in 1910-1911 after the publication of novels and short stories, which later compiled the book "Trans-Volga". Before the First World War, Tolstoy wrote many stories, novels, plays, poems, fairy tales, he was a regular at literary evenings, salons, and theater premieres. After the start of the war, AN. Tolstoy worked as a war correspondent, wrote a number of essays and stories about the war. He took the October Revolution with hostility. In 1918 Tolstoy left for Odessa, and then through Turkey to Paris. However, life in exile did not go well, Tolstoy experienced material difficulties, could not get along with the emigrant environment (for his cooperation in the newspaper Nakanune, Tolstoy was expelled from the emigrant Union of Russian Writers and Journalists). Moving to Berlin in 1921 did not improve the situation, and in 1923 A.N. Tolstoy decides to return to the USSR.

The writer was received well and immediately began to work fruitfully. During this period, his most famous fantastic works ("Aelita", "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin") were published. At the same time, in the work of A.N. Tolstoy, ideological moments play an increasingly important role, and in the 1930s. By direct order of the authorities, Alexei Tolstoy wrote the first work about Stalin - the story "Bread (Defense of Tsaritsyn)" (published in 1937). In the 30s A.N. Tolstoy begins to actively develop the theme of the reign of Peter I, which has long interested him, and releases the first two parts of the epic novel Peter I. The authorities treated the writer very well, he became a personal friend of Stalin, had two luxurious dachas, several cars, A.N. Tolstoy was awarded numerous orders, prizes, was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, a full member of the Academy of Sciences. During the Great Patriotic War A.N. Tolstoy often acts as a publicist, continuing work on the third book of the novel Peter I. In 1944, the writer was diagnosed with a malignant lung tumor. The disease progressed rapidly, delivering A.N. Tolstoy was truly infernal torment, and on February 23, 1945, the writer died.

Information about the works of the author:

A.N. Tolstoy was married four times (official and unofficial) and became the father of four children.

In 1944 A.N. Tolstoy actively participated in the work of a special commission headed by academician N. N. Burdenko, which came to the conclusion that the Polish officers in Katyn were shot by the Germans.

Writer's Awards

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