Background
Kutuzov-Tolstoi, Mikhail Pavlovich, Count was born on November 3, 1896 in Tsarskoe Selo.
Kutuzov-Tolstoi, Mikhail Pavlovich, Count was born on November 3, 1896 in Tsarskoe Selo.
Educated at high school in Baden-Baden. Graduated from the Imperatorskii Aleksandrovskii Lyceum, 1915.
Grew up in Paris. Moved to Darmstadt where his step-father, the Baltic baron Knorring, was Russian Ambassador at the court of the Grand Duchy of Hesse (the local Grand Duke was the brother of the Tsar’s wife). Married Princess Marie Volkonskii. Remained through the Revolution 1917 on the Volkonskii estate near Tambov.
Saved by local peasants from execution at the hands of a Cheka squad. Witnessed the murder of the German Ambassador Mirbach in Moscow, and the Uritskii terror in Petrograd. Managed to flee to Finland to a former army comrade of his father, Mannerheim.
Settled in Brussels, where his wife died after an operation, 1928. Moved to Latvia, and married the Belgian Countess de Villers in Riga, 1939. Just before the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states, moved to Yugoslavia, and later Transylvania, where he managed the estates of Hungarian aristocrats.
At the end of World War II, in Budapest, organized an international hospital for wounded soldiers, under the protection of the Swedish Red Cross. Arrested by SMERSH, 1944, but soon released. In 1951, expelled with his wife from communist Hungary.
Moved to Ireland. Founded an international school of languages at Delgany, County Wicklow, and taught Russian history at Trinity College, Dublin. His valuable memoirs — The Story of My Life, 1986 - depicting the changes in Russia and Europe from pre-World War I to post-WWIl society were published in Germany.