page_title: Nikolai Tolstoy
section_title: Political activity
hierarchical_section_title: Nikolai Tolstoy / Political activity
caption_attribution_description: English: A photograph of various members of the Monarchist League; Lord Nicholas Hervey, Nikolai Tolstoy and Merlin Sudeley at the Oxford &amp; Cambridge Club, 12th March 1990.
context_page_description: Count Nikolai Dmitrievich Tolstoy-Miloslavsky FRSL is a Russo-British monarchist and author who writes under the name Nikolai Tolstoy. He is a former parliamentary candidate of the UK Independence Party and is the current nominal head of the House of Tolstoy, a Russian noble family.
context_section_description: A committed monarchist, Tolstoy is Chancellor of the International Monarchist League. He was also Chairman of the London-based Russian Monarchist League, and chaired their annual dinner on 6 March 1986, when the Guest-of-Honour was the MP John Biggs-Davison. He was also in the chair for their Summer Dinner on 4 June 1987, at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in Pall Mall. Tolstoy was a founding committee member (January 1989) of the now established War and Peace Ball, held annually in London, which raises funds for White Russian charities. A member of the Royal Stuart Society since 1954, he is presently one of the Vice-Presidents.
  In October 1987, he was presented with the International Freedom Award by the United States Industrial Council Educational Foundation: "for his courageous search for the truth about the victims of totalitarianism and deceit." In October 1991, Tolstoy joined a Conservative Monday Club delegation, under the auspices of the Club's Foreign Affairs Committee, and travelled to observe the war between Serbia and Croatia, the first British political delegation to observe that conflict. 
  Conservative MPs Andrew Hunter, and Roger Knapman, then a junior minister in the Conservative government (and from 2002 to 2006 leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)), were also part of the delegation which, after going to the front lines in the Sisak region, was entertained by President Franjo Tuđman and the Croatian government in Zagreb. 
  On 13 October the group held a Press Conference at the Hotel Intercontinental in Zagreb, which apart from the media, was also attended by delegates from the French government. A report on the conflict was agreed and handed in to 10 Downing Street by Andrew Hunter.
  Tolstoy has stood unsuccessfully for the Eurosceptic and populist United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) as a parliamentary candidate in four British general elections, having first been asked by UKIP founder Alan Sked in November 1996. Tolstoy was subsequently UKIP's candidate for the Barnsley East by-election in 1996; where he received 2.1% of the vote, and for Wantage in the 1997 (0.8%), 2001 (1.9%) and 2005 general elections (1.5%). Tolstoy stood for UKIP in Witney at the 2010 general election and received 3.5% of the vote.
caption: Top table L to R: Christopher Arkell & Lord Nicholas Hervey (standing) Gregory Lauder-Frost (speaking to Arkell), Countess Georgina Tolstoy, Count Nikolai Tolstoy (under painting) unknown man, Lord Sudeley, at the Russian Monarchist League Annual Dinner in 1990
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