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Fyokla Tolstaya

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Fyokla Tolstaya
Tolstaya in 2018
Born
Anna Nikitichna Tolstaya

(1971-02-27) 27 February 1971 (age 53)
Moscow, Russia
Occupations
  • Journalist
  • radio
  • television presenter

Fyokla Nikitichna Tolstaya (Russian: Фёкла Никитична Толстая; born 27 February 1971), also known as Fekla Tolstoy, is a Russian journalist, cultural figure, and TV and radio presenter. She is the great-great-granddaughter of the author Leo Tolstoy.[1]

Biography

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Fyokla Tolstaya was born Anna Nikitichna Tolstaya on 27 February 1971 in Moscow. She holds a degree in Slavic philology from the Moscow State University and trained as a director at the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS).[2]

She began a career in journalism in the late 1990s, working as a magazine critic, newspaper columnist, and host on the radio stations Echo of Moscow and Radio Mayak.[3]

Media and cultural work

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Tolstaya was the host of several popular Russian television programmes, including People's Artist, based on the British reality television series Pop Idol. She is the longtime host of a morning talk show called "The Observer" on Russia's main dedicated culture channel (TV Kultura).[4]

She hosted the Russian documentary series "Great Dynasties" (2005–2006) and was the author and host of a documentary series called "The Tolstoys" about the history of the Tolstoy family (2011).[5] In 2022, she authored and hosted a documentary series called "Museums Without Borders" that explores contemporary museum practices in different regions of Russia.[6]

Tolstaya also appeared as an actress in the films Seraphim Polubes and Other Inhabitants of the Earth [ru] (1984), The Old Alphabet (1987) and To Be Victor Pelevin. Sorry, Who? (2020).[7]

In 2008, she was a finalist in the Russian figure skating competition Stars on Ice [ru], where she performed alongside Olympic medal-winning skater Artur Dmitriev.[8]

Leo Tolstoy's heritage

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Tolstaya has been head of development at the Leo Tolstoy State Museum in Moscow since 2012.[9] She led several projects in the digitisation of culture, including a crowdsourcing project called "All of Tolstoy in One Click" to digitise Tolstoy's entire body of work – spanning novels, diaries, letters, childhood memories, and religious and philosophical tracts – and make it fully available online.[10][11] The free website launched in 2013.[12] Tolstaya also worked with Samsung to create a mobile app called "Live Pages" that presents classical literary texts in an interactive online format.[13]

Tolstaya has coordinated several large-scale online reading marathons dedicated to Tolstoy and other authors of classical literature. In 2014 she organised a 36-hour reading marathon of Anna Karenina in partnership with Google. The live broadcast, which streamed on Google+ and YouTube, went viral and entered the Guinness World Records as the largest audience for a live-streamed reading marathon.[14][15][16]

In 2015, Tolstaya organised an online public reading marathon of War and Peace.[17] The four-day event had more than 1,300 participants, including Polish film director Andrzej Wajda and a Russian cosmonaut who contributed a reading from the International Space Station.[18]

Tolstaya is active in the field of digital humanities and co-authored a project called Textograf, a web-based app for the digitisation of manuscripts, among other projects.[19]

References

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  1. ^ "Crowdsourcing Tolstoy". The New Yorker. 14 October 2013. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
  2. ^ "Leo Tolstoy's heritage in the eyes of different generations. A talk by Fekla Tolstoy | Cambridge Russian-Speaking Society". 19 February 2019. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  3. ^ "Fekla Tolstaya". culturalforum.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  4. ^ "Наблюдатель". smotrim.ru. Retrieved 23 May 2022.
  5. ^ "Толстые [The Tolstoys]". smotrim.ru. Retrieved 9 June 2022.
  6. ^ "Музеи без границ [Museums Without Borders]". smotrim.ru. Retrieved 9 June 2022.
  7. ^ "Fyokla Tolstaya". IMDb. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  8. ^ Star ice 2008/11/22, Tolstaya Dmitriev 1, retrieved 22 May 2022
  9. ^ "Leo Tolstoy's heritage in the eyes of different generations. A talk by Fekla Tolstoy | Cambridge Russian-Speaking Society". 19 February 2019. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  10. ^ "Crowdsourcing Tolstoy". The New Yorker. 14 October 2013. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  11. ^ "Thousands volunteer for Leo Tolstoy digitisation". The Guardian. 16 October 2013. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  12. ^ Omidi, Maryam. "Tolstoy archive launches with 90 volumes of writing". The Calvert Journal. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  13. ^ "Mobile application "Live Pages. Fyokla Tolstaya: "Living Pages" will make it easier for schoolchildren to perceive literary classics. Living Pages War and Peace". gigafox.ru. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  14. ^ "Leo Tolstoy's heritage in the eyes of different generations. A talk by Fekla Tolstoy | Cambridge Russian-Speaking Society". 19 February 2019. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  15. ^ Beard, Nadia. "Online reading marathon of Anna Karenina goes viral". The Calvert Journal. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  16. ^ "Largest audience for a live-streamed reading marathon". Guinness World Records. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  17. ^ "Four-day marathon public reading of War and Peace begins in Russia". The Guardian. 8 December 2015. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  18. ^ "1,300 people join marathon reading of 'War and Peace' live on Russian TV". PBS NewsHour. 10 December 2015. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  19. ^ "Textograf: A Web Application for Manuscript Digitization" (PDF).
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