FAQ

The Last Station is based on the 1990 biographical novel of the same name by American writer Jay Parini. The novel was adapted for the movie by American film maker Michael Hoffman, who also directed the film.

No, she is a character invented for the novel.

Russian names consist of a personal name, a patronymic, and a surname. People are often referred to by simply their personal name and patronymic. Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy can be called "Lev Nikolayevich" (Lev, son of Nikolay), or "Lev Tolstoy". Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya can be called "Sophia Andreyevna" (Sophia, daughter of Andrey) or Sophia Tolstaya.

Sophia Tolstaya survived the Russian Revolution in relative peace and died in 1919. Vladimir Chertkov died in Moscow in 1936. Alexandra Lvovna "Sasha" Tolstaya was imprisoned by the Communists in 1920, but the next year was installed as the director of the Tolstoy museum in Yasnaya Polyana. She left the USSR in 1939 and founded the Tolstoy Foundation in 1949. In her later years, she helped many Russian intellectuals (notably Vladimir Nabokov and Sergei Rachmaninoff) to escape Bolshevik persecution and to settle in America. She died in New York in 1979.