January 10, 1883
В Samara province was born Alexei Tolstoy — Soviet writer, winner of three Stalin prizes. "The Red Count."
It's very difficult to tell the real truth; you hover around it, just about to say it, but you look, and the truth is nowhere to be seen – you've run away from it down a crooked road ("The Lame Gentleman")
He began publishing in a provincial newspaper while still a seminarian. As a student, he began writing short stories and abandoned his studies at the Technological Institute, believing himself ready for a career as a writer. He served as a war correspondent during World War I.
After the October Revolution he left for Berlin and spent almost six years in exile.
Life in exile was the most difficult period of my life. There I understood what it meant to be a pariah, a person torn from his homeland, weightless, sterile, of no use to anyone under any circumstances.
In 1923, he returned to Russia. Colleagues abroad criticized him for collaborating with the Soviet regime. Meanwhile, colleagues living in the USSR spoke of a writer who had "awakened to class awareness."
A human mass without a great idea is a terrible thing. People cannot be left without leaders. They are drawn to crawling on all fours ("The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin")
Tolstoy himself took part in the persecution of the writer in 1936. Leonid Dobychin, which may have led to his suicide.
Tolstoy devoted nearly 20 years of his life to writing his famous trilogy, The Road to Calvary. In it, he demonstrated that Bolshevism was the best scenario for Russia, and the 1917 Revolution was the highest truth comprehended by the Russian intelligentsia.
The happiness of an individual outside of society is impossible, just as the life of a plant is impossible if it is pulled out of the ground and thrown onto the barren sand.
He finished the trilogy in June 1941. He received the Stalin Prize and used it to build a tank.
During the war, he wrote about 60 patriotic essays. During these years, he also completed the novel "Peter the Great."
He died of lung cancer on February 23, 1945.
What was Russia... None of this exists anymore and will never happen again... The boy in the satin shirt became a murderer ("The Road to Calvary")