Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (; – 23 February 1945) was a Russian writer who wrote in many genres but specialized in science fiction and historical novels. Despite having opposed the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, he was able to return to Russia six years later and live a privileged life as a highly paid author, reputedly a millionaire, who adapted his writings to conform to the line laid down by the communist party. Life and career Parentage Tolstoy's mother Alexandra Leontievna Turgeneva (1854–1906) was a grand-niece of Decembrist Nikolay Turgenev and a relative of the renowned Russian writer Ivan Turgenev. She married Count Nikolay Alexandrovich Tolstoy (1849–1900), a member of the aristocratic Tolstoy family and a distant relative of Leo Tolstoy. Aleksey claimed that Count Tolstoy was his biological father, which allowed him to style himself as a Count, but since his mother had taken a lover and left her husband before he was born, not all of his contemporaries believed him. The Nobel Prize winning author Ivan Bunin, who knew him as a young man, wrote in his diary, on 23 February 1953: "Aldanov said that Alyosha Tolstoy himself told him that he, T., bore the surname Bostrom until the age of 16 and then went to see his imaginary father, Count Nick Tolstoy, and begged to legitimize him." According to author and historian Nikolai Tolstoy, a distant relative:His father had been a rake-hell cavalry officer, whose rowdy excesses proved too much even for his fellow hussars. He was obliged to leave his regiment and the two capital cities, and retired to an estate in Samara, Russia. There he met and married Alexandra Leontievna Turgenev, a lively girl of good family, but slender means. She bore him two sons, Alexander and Mstislav, and a daughter Elizabeth. But the wild blood of the Tolstoys did not allow him to settle down to an existing domestic harmony. Within a year the retired hussar had been exiled to Kostroma for insulting the Governor of Samara. When strings were eventually pulled to arrange his return, he celebrated it by provoking a fellow-noble to a duel. Alexandra fell in love with Alexei Appollonovich Bostrom. In May 1882, already two months pregnant with her fourth child, she fled into the arms of her lover. The Count threatened Bostrom with a revolver but was exculpated by the courts. The ecclesiastical court, in granting a divorce, ruled that the