Matchbox label made in the Soviet Union, 1950’s/1960’s, with the image of a statue of Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1883-1945). Nicknamed the Comrade Count, he was a Russian writer who wrote in many genres but specialized in science fiction and historical novels.
During World War II he served on the Extraordinary State Commission of 1942-1947 which “ascertained without reasonable doubt” the mass extermination of people in gas vans by the German occupiers. During the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals, Soviet prosecutors recognized his work in the investigation of atrocities committed in the Stavropol region.