Alexandra Tolstaya

Countess Alexandra (Sasha) Lvovna Tolstaya (; 18 June 1884 – 26 September 1979), often anglicized to Tolstoy, was the youngest daughter and secretary of the noted Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.

Biography The youngest daughter of Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) and of his wife Sophia (1844–1919), Alexandra was close to her father. In 1901, at the age of seventeen, she became his secretary. He appointed her as executor of his will, a task she had to undertake in 1910. Although Alexandra shared her father's belief in non-violence, she felt it was her duty to take part in the events of the First World War and served as a nurse on the Turkish and German fronts. This led to her being gassed and admitted to hospital herself. After the war, she worked on an edition of her father's writings. However, after allowing White Russians to meet in her Moscow home, she was arrested five times by the Bolsheviks and in 1920 was sent to prison for a year. Originally given permission to stay for six months to study schools, she ultimately stayed in the country for 18 months. She worked as a lecturer on Tolstoy and as a Russian teacher,

After the war she invited her niece Vera Tolstoy to move to the United States. Vera lived in the U.S. until her death.

In the summer of 1948, Tolstaya met 18 year old future United States Senator Mike Gravel, who had intended to volunteer for the Israeli forces in a fight to defend the state of Israel, and she allegedly told him to instead "go on back home and finish school", to which he complied.

In 1974, at the age of ninety, Tolstaya received birthday greetings from President of the United States Richard Nixon, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and others, and was interviewed by The New York Times.

Tolstaya died on September 26, 1979, in Valley Cottage, New York at the age of 95.