Vasily Tolstoy
“Vasily this is the second time this week I've lent you money! A man's got to buy his own liquor, you know, not just his brother's.”
“Ugh... him again.”
Vasily Tolstoy (1875-1912) is the less successful brother of Leo Tolstoy. He was a soldier during the Russo-Japanese War and wrote a memoir about his life during the war, but it was not worth a damn, he had not inherited the same gene for writing skills that his brother did.
Early Life[edit | edit source]
Vasily was born in Russia in 1875, he was the thirty second of the forty five Tolstoy children. At a young age he was mentally scarred when he witnessed the creation of his younger brother Aleksandr. His insanity was only worsened when his older brother Leo would visit on holidays and write portions of his novels upon his little brother's skin. Leo would apologize to Vasily explaining that he always drank when he wrote and was too intoxicated to realized his brother was a child and not a large piece of paper, but this did not console Vasily.
Military Career[edit | edit source]
Vasily enlisted in the Russian army at age twenty, he thought maybe a war would take his mind off of the things that troubled him. A good war could get rid of the deep mental scars he bore. However, when war broke out in Russia, this was not the case
Russo-Japanese War[edit | edit source]
Vasily was a sergeant at the time of the Russo-Japanese War, he hoped that the fighting would free him from the life he knew teetering on the brink of insanity. Unfortunately he did not expect how strong the Japanese Army would be. Giant battle robots, ninjas, and Pokémon were weapons which he had never seen before, and the weak Russian military did not have the weapons to combat Japanese forces. He abandoned the war effort after the Battle of Yalu River. Where his entire platoon was killed in the mountains of Manchuria and there was no one around to shoot him for being a deserter.
Life After War[edit | edit source]
After the war, Vasily struggle to re-assimilate into Russian society. He was in need of financial aid from his brother Leo, who was quite rich after he released his novel War and Peace.
Writing Career[edit | edit source]
Vasily attempted to write a memoir of his life during the war. His prose was even worse than his brother's. His book was entitled Life During Wartime: Tolstoy's Memoir, he hoped to capitalize on people who did not know what his brother's first name was. Unfortunately, the publishers would not accept his book, so Vasily decided to start his own publishing company, Leo funded this as well. The attempts to sell the book brought Vasily and Leo both into debt, Life During Wartime: Tolstoy's Memoir is often regarded as one of the worst books ever written along with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. As Vasily became less successful, his insanity grew worse.
Final Years[edit | edit source]
Vasily spent his latter days drinking heavily, mooching off of Leo, and attempting a career as a prostitute, But he was not in demand, and his new career brought him even deeper into debt.
Death[edit | edit source]
Vasily Tolstoy's death is one of the most interesting cases ever seen. He killed his brother Aleksandr, because he was the origin of his problems. But where the plot thickens is when he went to his parents home. The place was still crawling with children, even though his mother had a dusty old uterus and his father suffered from erectile dysfunction. Investigators found everyone inside the house dead. Vasily and his parents all had gunshot wounds from the same pistol Vasily carried. However the young Tolstoys were poisoned with cyanide and vodka, which Vasily presumably brought.
The strange thing is that Vasily could not afford cyanide and could barely afford vodka, Leo had stopped giving him money. No one knows to this day who killed the Tolstoy children.