While the Mogilev region was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Grudinovka was ruled by such well-known nobles, as the Hatskevich family and the Sapega family. When after the first partition of the Polish state in 1772 those territories came to possession of the tsarist Russia, the Empress Catherine gave the village and another 19 thousand acres of land and forest to Count Tolstoy.

According to papers of the first half of the XIX century, one of the best breeding horse plants, a modern manufacturing factory, a brewery and a glassworks functioned in Grudinovka. The estate was built by the Tolstoy family there since the late XVIII to early XIX century; the owners chose a beautiful spot at the lake. The manor house is a small two-storey palace with a dome and columns, a main staircase and an elegant outdoor terrace. There were outbuildings located around it. Count Dmitry Alexandrovich practically did not leave the family estate and after the death was buried in the territory of the local temple. There are buried other members of the aristocratic Tolstoy family.

There is a beautiful English park of 10 hectares in front of the estate of the Tolstoy family. There were planted birches, oaks, pines, firs, thujas and Siberian cedars. Amongst exotic trees there are Pennsylvanian ashes, Crimean cherries, blue thorny willows and others. Besides, the park is “inhabited” by more than 40 species of plants. There was a pond in the heart of the park.

Countess Alexandra Grigoryevna was the last of the Tolstoy family who owned Grudinovka, and famous Tolstoy – the writer Lev Nicolaevich never was in the estate.

Alexandra Grigoryevna was of the noble Shcherbatov family descending from the Rurik dynasty. She was the wife of the last owner of the village of male line – Dmitry Pavlovich.

That woman built a hospital. A building of the hospital can be still seen in the village. The best specialists of medical profile of those who were in Mogilev worked in the institution. The countess paid salary to doctors out-of-pocket and annually visited the hospital together with her daughters. The generous landowner gave a special dowry to babies born within those walls. In 1905, she became a member of the Committee of the Red Cross in the Bykhov County. The countess died20 years later, she was buried in Paris.

When the Tolstoy fammily left the estate in Grudinovka

During the Great Patriotic War, the estate served as a hospital for wounded Soviet soldiers. When Mogilev region was adapting to civilian life, a secondary school, an orphanage, a boarding school of sanatorium type for children with rheumatism were established in the building of the former estate of the Tolstoy family.

When the building of the family estate served at least some purposes, it was alive. Today it is in decay, although the park has been included by the government into the list of natural monuments of nationwide significance. There are still no funds for the restoration of the palace and park, the once beautiful structure is falling into decay more and more.

Guests of Grudinovka can walk along the long corridors of the estate and see everything with their own eyes – the door to the palace is not locked, there are no doors here

At first, you will find yourself in a spacious hall with tall columns. The paint on the columns and walls has long ago been cracked, but it continues to keep courageously in many places. Going upstairs along the massive staircase, you can enter the second floor with huge empty rooms and plaster ceiling in the central room. The ground floor looks exactly the same.

Despite the state of neglect, the estate of the Tolstoy family is still an impressive attraction of Grudinovka. Maybe someday it will be restored.