Nikolai Tolstoy

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Nikolai Tolstoy (left) and Kiril Sakskoburggotski

Nikolai Dmitrijewitsch Tolstoi-Miloslawski ( Russian: Николай Дмитриевич Толстой-Милославский ; born June 23, 1935 ) is a Russian - English historian and author who publishes under the name Nikolai Tolstoy .

Family background

Nikolai Tolstoy's great-grandfather was Pawel Tolstoy-Miloslavski, chamberlain to the last Russian tsar Nicholas II. The tsar had promised to make him count because of his services, but this was postponed because of the First World War . Later, Grand Duke Kyrill awarded him the title of count as the new head of the Romanov family , with the consent of Maria Feodorovna , mother of the last tsar, and his sisters Xenia and Olga .

Tolstoy's father, Count Dimitri Tolstoy, fled Russia in 1920 and settled in England. He became a lawyer and later became Queen's Counsel . Nikolai Tolstoy is a descendant of Ivan Andreevich Tolstoy (1644–1713) head of the older line of the Tolstoy family . He is distantly related to the author Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), who is descended from Pyotr Tolstoy , a younger brother of Ivan Tolstoy.

Nikolai Tolstoy's parents separated in 1940, and his mother married well-known author Patrick O'Brian . The mother was forbidden from any contact with her children because she had left the father. Tolstoy met his mother, like O'Brian, only in 1955 and got along well with both of them in the years that followed. After O'Brian's death in 2000, he inherited his great fortune.

Count Tolstoy has both British and Russian citizenship.

Youth and education

Nikolai Tolstoy was born in England and trained at Wellington College in Berkshire , the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and Trinity College in Dublin . He wrote about growing up in England:

“Like many thousands of other Russians in this century, I was born and raised in another country, and it was only in later years that I was able to enter the land of my ancestors. Nonetheless, it was a very Russian upbringing that impressed my unusual legacy on me. I was baptized in a Russian Orthodox Church and attended services there. In the evenings I prayed the Russian Lord's Prayer and went to parties where little Russian boys and girls used a mixture of languages, and I felt different in demeanor and temperament than my English friends. I think I was heavily influenced by the melancholy and evocative Russian apartments in which my parents, who were actually very charming and eccentric, were surrounded by relics from that enigmatic, distant land of wolves, boyars, and snowy forests of Ivan Bilibin's famous illustrations of Russian fairy tales lived - icons , Easter eggs , pictures of the tsar and tsarina, family photos and emigrant newspapers. Somewhere there was a real Russia that we all belonged to, but it was behind distant seas and light years away. "

- Nikolai Tolstoy : The Tolstoys; Twenty-Four Generations of Russian History 1333-1983 . page 8

Literary work

Tolstoy published a number of books on Celtic mythology , such as In Search of Merlin - Myth and Historical Truth and a novel about King Arthur , The Coming of the King . In 1979 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature .

Nikolai Tolstoy also wrote about World War II and its direct aftermath. In 1977 he wrote the nonfiction book The Yalta Betrayed - England's Guilt Before History , in which the British military are held responsible for the transfer of Soviet citizens to Stalin's authorities in violation of the Geneva Conventions . In 1986 he published The Minister and the Massacres , in which he made the British military, especially Harold Macmillan and Toby Low, 1st Baron Aldington , jointly responsible for the Bleiburg massacre . The book received widespread praise at first, but there was also criticism, such as from Macmillan's official biographer, Alistair Horne . Scottish author Ian Mitchell further accused Tolstoy of his unsubstantiated claim that Macmillan was a secret agent of the NKVD . Christopher Booker , who had initially also believed in Macmillan's complicity, showed Tolstoy in his own book numerous distortions; Tolstoy also used testimony in his book describing events forty years earlier.

Controversy

A historian who had dealt with the forced repatriation of Soviet citizens and other people during and after World War II, Tolstoy was appointed by the defense of John Demjanjuk as an expert on his trial in Israel . In a letter to the Daily Telegraph (April 21, 1988) Tolstoy wrote that the process and its legal implementation violated “ at the most vital principles of natural justice ”. He criticized Judge Dov Levin for allowing spectators who were brought in by buses to boo and hiss. Tolstoy called Levin's litigation “ an appalling travesty of every principle of equity ” and that the procedure was “ a show trial in every sense of the word ” (dt. “A show trial in the truest sense Sense of the word ”), with a direction like in the theater. When it was ultimately found that Demjanjuk had been falsely identified, the death penalty against him was overturned.

In 1989, Lord Aldington , a former British officer, later chairman of the Conservative Party and chairman of the board of directors of the insurance company Sun Alliance, brought a defamation lawsuit for Tolstoy accusing him of war crimes, and pamphlets of those allegations by a man named Nigel Watts who had an argument with the insurance company had been taken over. Although Tolstoy was not the actual target of the lawsuit, he felt attached to Nigel Watts and joined the proceedings as a defendant. He lost and was sentenced to a payment of two million pounds . It was later revealed that the government had withheld important documents during the trial. Tolstoy's appeal was dismissed at a High Court of Justice hearing that excluded the public and the press.

In July 1995, the European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously that the judgment violated Tolstoy's rights under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“right to freedom of expression”), but that only concerned the amount of damages. Tolstoy refused to pay to Lord Aldington during his lifetime; he made the first payment of £ 57,000 two days after his death. Shortly before, he had inherited a fortune from his stepfather, Patrick O'Brian.

further activities

Nikolay Tolstoy is a staunch monarchist and, as such, Chancellor of the International Monarchist League . He was also chairman of the London-based Monarchist League of Russia . He is one of the founding members of the annual London War and Peace Ball , which raises funds for charity projects for White Russians . In October 1987 he was awarded the International Freedom Award by the United States Industrial Council Educational Foundation for his “courageous search for the truth about the victims of totalitarianism and fraud” . In 1993 he was appointed Essaul (captain) by the Ataman Krutov of the Moscow Cossacks . In 1996, as part of a military ceremony to commemorate the invasion of the Germans during World War II, he received an honorary saber and was named an honorary Cossack.

Tolstoy was a member from the very beginning of the United Kingdom Independence Party , a right-wing liberal party that is calling for Britain to leave the EU . Several times he ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for this party for the British Parliament .

family

Nikolai Tolstoy is married to Georgina. The couple has four children:

Publications

  • The Founding of Evil Hold School. WH Allen, London 1968, ISBN 0-491-00371-4 .
  • Night of the Long Knives (= Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Violent Century. Politics in Action. Vol. 7). Ballantine, New York NY 1972, ISBN 0-345-02787-6 .
  • Victims of Yalta. Hodder and Stoughton, London et al. 1977, ISBN 0-340-19388-3 (Published in the USA as: The Secret Betrayal. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York NY 1977, ISBN 0-684-15635-0 ; In German: Die Betrayed by Yalta. England's guilt before history. Langen-Müller, Munich et al. 1978, ISBN 3-7844-1719-1 ; Reprint: Victims of Yalta. The Secret Betrayal of the Allies, 1944–1947. 1st Pegasus Books cloth edition. Pegasus Books, New York, 2012, ISBN 978-1-60598-362-2 (with a new foreword and description of the process with Lord Aldington)).
  • The Half-Mad Lord. Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford (1775-1804). Cape, London 1978, ISBN 0-224-01664-4 .
  • Stalin's Secret War. Cape, London 1981, ISBN 0-224-01665-2 .
  • The Tolstoys. 24 Generations of Russian History. 1353-1983. Hamilton, London 1983, ISBN 0-241-10979-5 (In German: Das Haus Tolstoi. 24 Generations of Russian History (1353–1983). Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1985, ISBN 3-421-06287-0 ).
  • The Quest for Merlin. Hamish Hamilton, London 1985, ISBN 0-241-11356-3 (In German: In search of Merlin. Myth and historical truth. Diederichs, Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-424-00903-2 ).
  • The Minister and the Massacres. Century Hutchinson, London et al. 1986, ISBN 0-09-164010-5 .
  • The Coming of the King. Being the first Part of the Book of Merlin, or Myrddin, from the Yellow Book of Meifod. Bantam Press, et al. London 1988, ISBN 0-593-01312-3 .
  • Patrick O'Brian. The Making of the Novelist. Century, London 2004, ISBN 0-7126-7025-4 .
  • The Application of International Law to Forced Repatriation from Austria in 1945. In: Stefan Karner , Erich Reiter, Gerald Schöpfer (eds.): Cold War. Contributions to the East-West confrontation 1945 to 1990 (= Our time history. Vol. 5). Leykam, Graz 2002, ISBN 3-7011-7432-6 , pp. 131-153.
  • Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Merlin Legend. In: Arthurian Literature. Vol. 25, 2008, ISSN  0261-9946 , pp. 1-43.
  • The Mysterious Fate of the Cossack Atamans. In: Harald Stadler , Rolf Steininger , Karl C. Berger (eds.): The Cossacks in the First and Second World War (= Nearchos. Archaeological-military-historical research. Vol. 3). StudienVerlag, Innsbruck et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-7065-4623-2 , pp. 151–167.
  • When and where was Armes Prydein Composed? In: Studia Celtica. Vol. 42, No. 1, 2008, ISSN  0081-6353 , pp. 145-149.
  • The Oldest British Prose Literature. The Compilation of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi. Mellen, Lewiston NY et al. 2009, ISBN 978-0-7734-4710-3 .
  • Cadell and the Cadelling of Powys. In: Studia Celtica. Vol. 46, No. 1, 2012, pp. 59-83.
  • Tolstoy contributed several chapters to the History of the Twentieth Century published in Moscow , a compulsory textbook for all Russian secondary schools

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Master and Deceiver on hmssurprise.org
  2. ↑ a b Tolstoy pays £ 57,000 to Aldington's estate on telegraph.co.uk v. December 9, 2000.
  3. ^ English text: “Like thousands of Russians in the present century, I was born and brought up in another country and was only able to enter the land of my ancestors as a visitor in later years. It was nevertheless a very Russian bringing, one which impressed on me the unusual nature of my inheritance. I was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church and I worshiped in it. I prayed at night the familiar words Oche nash , attended parties where little Russian boys and girls spoke a mixture of languages, and felt myself by manner and temperament to be different than my English friends. I think I was the most affected by those melancholy and evocative Russian homes where my elders, for the most part people of great charm and eccentricity, lived surrounded by the relics - ikons, Easter eggs, portraits of Tsar and Tsaritsa, family photographs, and émigré newspapers - of that mysterious, far-off land of wolves, boyars , and snow-forests of Ivan Bilibin 's famous illustrations to Russian fairy-tales. Somewhere there was a real Russian land to which we all belonged, but it was shut away over distant seas and space of years. "
  4. ^ The Application of International Law to Forced Repatriation from Austria in 1945. In: Stefan Karner, Erich Reiter, Gerald Schöpfer (eds.): Cold War. Contributions to the East-West confrontation 1945 to 1990. 2002, pp. 131–153.
  5. ↑ Alistair Horne: The unquiet graves of Yalta . In: National Review . tape 42 , February 5, 1959, ISSN  0028-0038 , p. 27 .
  6. ↑ Stevan K. Pavlowitch: The Minister and the Massacres. Review . In: The English Historical Review . tape 104 , no. 410 , 1959, ISSN  0013-8266 , pp. 274-276 , doi : 10.1093 / ehr / CIV.CCCCX.274 .
  7. ^ Ian Mitchell: The Cost of a Reputation. Topical Books, London 1997, pp. 145f.
  8. ↑ Christopher Booker: A Looking-Glass Tragedy. The Controversy Over The Repatriations From Austria In 1945 . Gerald Duckworth & Co, London 1997, p. 85.
  9. ↑ Christopher Booker: A Looking-Glass Tragedy. The Controversy Over The Repatriations From Austria In 1945 . Gerald Duckworth & Co, London 1997, p. 188.
  10. ^ Willem A. Wagenaar: Identifying Ivan. A Case Study in Legal Psychology. Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York NY et al. 1988, ISBN 0-7450-0396-6 ; Yoram Sheftel: The Demjanjuk Affair. The Rise and Fall of a Show Trial. Revised edition. Gollancz, London 1994, ISBN 0-575-05795-5 ; Hans-Peter Rullmann : The Demjanjuk case. On the evidence and the political background to the trial in Jerusalem. Wild, Sonnenbühl 1987, ISBN 3-925848-02-9 ; Jim McDonald: John Demjanjuk. The real story. Amana Books, Brattleboro VT 1990, ISBN 0-915597-79-9 .
  11. ^ The Sunday Times , April 7, 1996.
  12. ↑ The Guardian , May 28, 1992, p. 19 and June 8, 1992, p. 4.
  13. ^ Richard Alleyne: Tolstoy pays £ 57,000 to Aldington's estate . In: The Telegraph , December 9, 2000. 
  14. ↑ Count Nikolai Tolstoy agreed to become a Patron of The Estonian Monarchist League on estonianmonarchistleague.blogspot.de v. January 16, 2010 .
  15. ^ Richard Eden: Alexandra Tolstoy, the oligarch Sergei Pugachev and a 'juicy' story. In: The Telegraph , September 26, 2009.
  16. Jump up ↑ Richard Kay: Miss Tolstoy counts her £ 2bn fortune. In: Daily Mail , November 2, 2011. Retrieved January 1, 2013.
  17. ↑ Tim Walker: Jeweler Xenia Tolstoy receives her gem from Lord Buckhurst. In: The Telegraph, September 24, 2009. Retrieved January 1, 2013

literature

  • Daily Express , September 24, 1992
  • Weekend Telegraph , September 25, 1992
  • The Times , November 15, 1996

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Tolstoy, Nikolai
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tolstoy-Miloslawski, Count Nikolai Dmitrievich (full name); Николай Дмитриевич Толстой-Милославский (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian historian and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1935