Will it be war or peace? The descendants of Russia's greatest novelist, Count Leo Tolstoy, have taken up arms against Kremlin plans to put much of his legacy in the care of a curator they regard as a family enemy, and there is no sign that they will lay them down.

The Tolstoy heritage industry is lovingly tended by the writer's great-great-grandson, Vladimir Tolstoy, who is admired for his innovative way of running the Tolstoy estate at Yasnaya Polyana, 120 miles south of Moscow, one of the few state museums in Russia said to earn their keep and even make a little profit.

But the arts minister, Mikhail Shvydkoi, has appointed the Tolstoy scholar Vitaly Remizov director of the three Tolstoy museums in Moscow.

It has caused a bitter row, brought threats of retaliation from Yasnaya Polyana, and perhaps put foreign exhibitions on Tolstoy in jeopardy.

In his later years Tolstoy was celebrated as one of the world's foremost pacifists. But Vladimir is not minded to turn the other cheek.

"If this appointment goes ahead I will organise protests, meetings, petitions," he said yesterday after fraught talks with Mr Shvydkoi.

"I represent the views of the family."

It is a formidable family, ranged across the globe from America to Sweden, France and Italy, as well as in Russia. It has considerable clout when it comes to looking after the 19th century genius's legacy.

Which leaves Mr Remizov, who holds the Tolstoy chair at the teacher training college in Tulna, near Yasnaya Polyana, in a tricky position.

He seemed bemused yesterday, and said he had been kept in the dark.

"I know nothing about the appointment. I'm coming to Moscow tomorrow to see the minister and find out what's going on."

He and Vladimir Tolstoy have crossed swords before. "We try to maintain diplomatic relations," said Vladimir, who replaced Mr Remizov as director of the family estate in 1994.

He told the newspaper Izvestiya that on the day Mr Remizov was sacked he took with him all the manuscripts of the studies on Tolstoy.

"He had no right to. Dozens of papers. Then they appeared in various publications ... He dissolved the Yasnaya Polyana archives."

Even worse, he said, he ordered rebuilding and the felling of a forest on the estate, famed for its orchards and woodlands.

The Tolstoys' intention is to keep everything in the family.

The novelist's grand-daughter Sophia, who was the poet Sergei Yesenin's last wife, directed the country estate and the Moscow museums until her death in 1957, when the management of the various properties was separated.

The museums are the handsome Moscow villa where Tolstoy's 13 children lived, the smaller Moscow house where he spent his childhood in, a third Moscow building associated with him, and the railway station at Astapovo, south of the city, where he died in 1910.

Vladimir Tolstoy said: "I've got enough work to do at Yasnaya Polyana. "But historically it would be just for me to be the head of it all. All the museums are one indivisible whole. If I was proposed as new head, I wouldn't disagree."

Mr Shvydkoi clearly does disagree. He is making a name for himself as a taboo-breaker, taking on the most sacred names in the Russian arts. Soon after his appointment last year he engineered a purge of senior figures at the Bolshoi ballet and opera and ordered radical changes at the company.

He told Izvestiya that there were a lot of unresolved problems at Yasnaya Polyana.

"I doubt whether such a fine speaker as Vladimir Tolstoy could run several museums."

Vladimir retorted that giving the job to Mr Remizov would jeopardise the lucrative prospect of exporting Tolstoy exhibitions to the west.

He is currently cooperating in a Tolstoy project for Edinburgh next year. He said that it might be cancelled.

Behind the battle for the great writer's legacy may lie a very contemporary Russian feud over money, private property and the public good.

Mr Shvydkoi said he believed that the wealthy Tolstoy diaspora wanted to privatise all the Tolstoy properties and estate and gain control of the lot. "But this is public property".

Vladimir Tolstoy said: "Talk of privatisation is simply not true, and Shvydkoi knows that. It will all remain with the state."