Alexandra Tolstaya

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Alexandra Tolstaya bigraphy, stories - Russian noble

Alexandra Tolstaya : biography

1 July 1884 – 26 September 1979

Alexandra (Sasha) Lvovna Tolstaya ( 18 July 1884 – 26 September 1979) was the youngest daughter and secretary of the noted Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.

Although Alexandra Lvovna shared with her father the doctrine of non-violence, she felt it was her duty to take part in the events of World War I. For her courage, the Russian government awarded her three St George Medals and the rank of colonel.

The Bolsheviks imprisoned Alexandra in 1920, but she was installed as the director of the Tolstoy museum in Yasnaya Polyana the next year. She left Soviet Union in 1929, and settled in the United States, where she founded the Tolstoy Foundation.

In later years, she helped many Russian intellectuals (notably Vladimir Nabokov and Sergei Rachmaninoff) to escape Bolshevik persecution and to settle in America.

Notes

  • Rayfield, Donald, Stalin and His Hangmen, Random House, 2004, ISBN 0-375-75771-6.

Category:1884 births Category:1979 deaths Category:Russian nobility Category:Tolstoy family Category:Leo Tolstoy Category:Russian women Category:Women in World War I Category:Women in the Russian and Soviet military Category:Colonels (military rank) Category:Soviet emigrants to the United States Category:Tolstoyans Category:Eastern Orthodox Christians from Russia Category:Eastern Orthodox Christians from the Russian Empire Category:Russian anti-communists Category:White Russian emigrants to the United States Category:Imperial Russian emigrants to the United States Category:Burials at Novo-Diveevo Russian Cemetery