The "wild Tolstoys", as they were known in the high society of Imperial Russia,[1] have left a lasting legacy in Russian politics, military history, literature, and fine arts.

The Tolstoys were a family of provincial Muscovite gentry who claimed their ancestry to a mythical Lithuanian nobleman named Indris stated by Pyotr Tolstoy as supposedly having arrived from the Holy Roman Empire to Chernigov in 1353, the very year when the city became part of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, together with his two sons Litvinos (or Litvonis, "Lithuanian") and Zimonten (or Zigmont, or "Samogitian") and a druzhina of 3000 men.

[2][3] Because of the pagan names and the fact that Chernigov at the time was ruled by Demetrius I Starshy some research concluded that they were Lithuanians who arrived from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then in conflict with the State of the Teutonic Order.

[2][4][5] At the same time, no mention of Indris was ever found in the 14-16th century documents, while the Chernigov Chronicles used by Pyotr Tolstoy as a reference were lost.

Alexander Ivanovich Tolstoy (1770–1857), stemming from a collateral branch of the family, inherited the comital title and estates of his childless uncle, the last of the Ostermanns.

Count Feodor Petrovich Tolstoy (1783–1873), sympathetically mentioned by Pushkin in Eugene Onegin, was one of the most fashionable Russian drawers and painters of the 1820s.

Alexander Griboyedov satirized him in Woe from Wit, and his cousin Leo Tolstoy — who called him an "extraordinary, criminal, and attractive man" — fictionalized him as Dolokhov in War and Peace.

He wrote admirable ballads, a historical novel, some licentious verse, and satires published under the penname of Kozma Prutkov.

His lasting contribution to the Russian literature was a trilogy of historical dramas, modelled after Pushkin's Boris Godunov.

After he started his career in the military, he was first drawn to writing books when he served in Chechenya, and already his first story, Detstvo ("Childhood"), was something quite unlike anything written before him.

Later he developed a kind of non-traditional Christian philosophy, described in his work The Kingdom of God is Within You which inspired Rainer Maria Rilke and Mohandas Gandhi, then a young lawyer, whose influence extended to Martin Luther King Jr. and James Bevel.

Most of his reputation declined with that of Socialist Realism, but his children's tale character Buratino retains his strong legacy with the younger audience of Russia and across the former Soviet space, appearing as popular reading, a movie, and a variety of derivative forms.

Another member of the family is Count Nikolai Tolstoy-Miloslavsky (born in 1935), a British historian and monarchist, and nominal head of the House of Tolstoy today.