Aleksei Tolstoi was born on 29 December (11 January) 1883 in Sosnovka Settlement of Samara Province. His literary career started with the publication of a book of poetry in 1907. The most remarkable works by Tolstoi belonged to the Soviet period of his writing, though he spent the first post-revolutionary years in emigration in Paris (1918–1921). He returned to the USSR to become later a two-time winner of the Stalin Prize for outstanding contribution into literature. During World War II Aleksei Tolstoi directed lot of his energies to journalism, writing numerous front-line essays.

The 1920s were marked with a number of Tolstoi’s sci-fi works, such as the story Aelita (1922–1923) about a social upheaval on Mars, the play Bunt mashin (The Revolt of the Machines) (1925) and the novel The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin (1925–1927) about a megalomaniac scientist venturing to enslave the world. The short story Golubye goroda (Blue Cities) (1925) dwells on opposition of modern science and patriarchal Russian village. The trilogy The Road to Calvary started in 1921 in Paris and finished in 1941 in the USSR is his most significant work that gives a realistic picture of life of Russian society, intelligentsia in particular, during the war and revolution. His Peter I (Vol. 1–3, 1929–1945, unfinished) is considered the best historical novel of the Soviet period of Russian literature.

Aleksei Tolstoi died on 23 February 1945 in Moscow.