Maria Alekseyevna Dyakova was the sister of Leo Tolstoy’s friend, Dmitry Dyakov. Tolstoy met the Dyakov family in Kazan in the 1840s and was friends with them for many years. Dmitry Dyakov was a friend to all the Tolstoy brothers.

On November 29, 1857, Leo Tolstoy wrote the following about Dmitry’s sister, Maria Dyakova, in his diary:

At the age of 38, Sukhotina, a mother of five children, divorced her first husband, which partly served as Tolstoy’s material when writing Anna Karenina. In the middle of the 19th century, divorces were exceptionally rare, especially those initiated by a woman with children.

As some contemporaries believed, Sergei Mikhailovich Sukhotin, Maria Alekseyevna’s first husband, may have served as the prototype of Alexei Karenin — a chamberlain, adviser to the Moscow palace office and a man of reason. Their son Mikhail Sergeyevich Sukhotin was well acquainted with Leo Tolstoy and his family. He often visited Tolstoy in Khamovniki.

One day Tolstoy presented Mikhail Sukhotin with boots he made himself — at that time the writer was into shoemaking. Widowed, Sukhotin decided to propose to Leo Tolstoy’s eldest daughter, Tatiana, despite them being 14 years apart. They gave birth to Tatiana Mikhailovna Sukhotina — the only granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy to be born from his daughters.