Nikolai Tolstoy-Miloslavsky
is head of the senior branch
of the Tolstoy
and Miloslavsky families.

His father escaped from Russia in 1920, and came to England where Nikolai was born in 1935.

Nikolai and his wife Georgina have four children: Alexandra, Anastasia, Dmitri, and Xenia and live in a 17th century farmhouse overlooking the Berkshire Downs, not far from Oxford.

His amusements are haunting second hand and academic bookshops, walking, tennis, participating in historical battle re-enactments, and drinking in inns. He is a member of Britain's oldest (1735) dining society, the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, whose motto is Beef and Liberty.

He is Chancellor of the Monarchist League, President of the Association of Bankrupts, a Distinguished Patron of the Orchestra of the World, an honorary member of the Russian Heraldry Society, and a life member of the Royal Stuart Society, the Royal Martyr Church Union, and the Forty Five Association. He is a member of the Society of Authors, the Council for Christians and Jews, the Irish Texts Society, the Roman Society, and the International Arthurian Society.

He was educated at Wellington College (1949-53) and Trinity College Dublin (1956-61), where he graduated with Honours BA and MA in Modern History and Political Theory.

An account of his immediate family background may be found in the last chapter of his family history THE TOLSTOYS. The development of his concern with post war forced repatriation is set out in the prefaces to VICTIMS OF YALTA and THE MINISTER AND THE MASSACRES, and his long standing fascination with the Arthurian legend and Celtic studies in THE QUEST FOR MERLIN.

THE TRIAL

Tolstoy is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and Adjunct Professor at Utah Valley State College. In October 1987 he was presented with 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 DECEIT.

In 1989 an English court fined him £1,500,000 for accusing Lord Aldington of being a war criminal, in connection with his responsibility in 1945 for the handover to Stalin and Tito of more than 70,000 prisoners of war and refugees from Russia and Communist Yugoslavia, in the full expectation that they would be killed, tortured, or enslaved.

In July 1995 the European Court of Human Rights concluded unanimously that the British Government had violated his rights in respect of Article 10 of the Convention on Human Rights.The Times commented in a leading article:

"In its judgment yesterday in the case of Count Nikolai Tolstoy, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Britain in important respects, finding that the award of £1.5 million levelled against the Count by a jury in 1989 amounted to a violation of his freedom of expression. Parliament will find the implications of this decision difficult to ignore."

In January 1993 he was appointed by Ataman G.G. Krutov of the Moscow Cossack Krug to the rank of Essaul (Captain) in the Cossack Host. In June 1996 at a military ceremony commemorating the Nazi invasion of Russia he was presented with a ceremonial sabre by the All-Russian Cossack Ataman Alexander Gavrilovich Martynov, and appointed an honorary Terek Cossack.