Tolstoy slaughtered the English, says great-great-grandson
A RUSSIAN politician who is a descendant of the novelist Leo Tolstoy has boasted that his great-great-grandfather “slaughtered” British and French troops in the Crimea in the 19th century, while insisting that Moscow will not end its war on Ukraine until it has occupied Ukraine up to the Polish border.
Pyotr Tolstoy, the deputy chairman of the Duma, the Russian parliament, made the claim about the country occupying the whole of Ukraine despite its army’s failure to take Kyiv, its logistical problems, its low morale and its difficulties in the eastern Donbas region.
“Notwithstanding the help coming from Europe and the hysteria of Boris Johnson or Mario Draghi [Italy’s prime minister], we will finish the operation when we judge it to be opportune. I think we will stop when we reach the border with Poland,” said Mr Tolstoy, a former television presenter turned United Russia party MP and a propagandist for Vladimir Putin.
He denied suggestions that by supporting the bloody Russian invasion of Ukraine he was “dishonouring” the name of his ancestor, whose masterpiece War and Peace is set against the French invasion of Russia in 1812.
Parts of it were inspired by Tolstoy’s firsthand experience of war – at the age of 26, he fought in the Crimean War as a junior officer in an artillery brigade and was present at the Siege of Sevastopol, which eventually fell to the British and French in 1855.
“Leo Tolstoy was an officer in the Russian army. He slaughtered British and French soldiers in … in Russian Crimea. When your country’s destiny is at stake, your only concern is to stick with your country. I don’t see any contradiction [between Russia’s position today] and his legacy,” Mr Tolstoy told La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper.
In fact, the Crimean war persuaded the young count to give up his highsociety life to focus on writing, human rights activism and promoting pacifism.
“War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves,” Tolstoy wrote.