Leo Tolstoy began writing War and Peace in 1863, the very year he married and settled down at his country estate, yet he could not bring himself to call it a novel. He famously declared that the work was not a novel, even less was it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle, creating a literary form that baffled his contemporaries and critics alike. The story began as a serialized piece titled The Year 1805, published in The Russian Messenger from 1865 to 1867, but Tolstoy grew so dissatisfied with the early drafts that he tore up the entire manuscript and rewrote the book from scratch between 1866 and 1869. His wife, Sophia Tolstaya, was forced to copy no fewer than seven separate complete manuscripts by hand before he finally deemed the work ready for publication, a testament to the sheer physical and mental toll the composition took on the author. The final version, published in 1869, was so different from the serialized version that readers who had followed the story in the magazine were eager to buy the complete novel, which sold out almost immediately upon release.
The Five Families
The narrative weaves together the lives of five distinct Russian aristocratic families to illustrate the impact of Napoleon's invasion on Tsarist society, creating a vast tapestry of human experience. The Bezukhovs are led by Count Kirill Vladimirovich, a wealthy man with dozens of illegitimate sons, including the socially awkward and kindhearted Pierre, who becomes the central voice for Tolstoy's own philosophical struggles. The Bolkonskys are defined by the gruff exterior of Prince Nikolai Andreich Bolkonsky, who displays great insensitivity to his children's emotional needs despite a hidden depth of feeling, and his son Prince Andrei, a thoughtful and skeptical officer who seeks glory in war only to find it hollow. The Rostovs represent the chaotic heart of the story, with Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov being a hopeless manager of finances who is generous to a fault, leaving his family perpetually short of cash despite owning many estates. His daughter Natasha, introduced as not pretty but full of life, is an accomplished singer and dancer whose impulsive nature drives much of the emotional drama, while her brother Nikolai serves as a beloved hussar and her cousin Sonya remains a devoted orphan in love with him. The Kuragins serve as the novel's antagonists, with Prince Vasily Sergeyevich Kuragin ruthlessly attempting to marry his children into wealth at any cost, including his daughter Hélène, a beautiful and sexually alluring woman rumored to be involved in an incestuous affair with her brother Anatole, and his son Anatole, a handsome and amoral pleasure seeker who attempts to elope with Natasha. The final family, the Drubetskoys, includes the impoverished Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya, who pushes her son Boris to climb the career ladder even at the expense of his friends, and her daughter Julie Karagina, who is so unfamiliar with her native Russian language that she must take lessons to speak it.
The novel's first major turning point occurs during the Battle of Austerlitz, where Prince Andrei Bolkonsky's romanticized vision of war is shattered by the brutal reality of the battlefield. As the battle is about to start, Andrei thinks the approaching day will be his Toulon or his Arcola, referencing Napoleon's early victories, but the reality of the conflict proves far more chaotic and meaningless than he anticipated. During the fighting, Andrei falls into enemy hands and even meets his hero, Napoleon, only to find the French Emperor petty and paltry compared to the lofty, righteous, and kindly sky he had seen and comprehended. The battle ends badly for Russia, not because of a lack of courage, but because the soldiers fought for irrelevant things like glory or renown rather than the higher virtues that would eventually produce a victory at Borodino. Prince Andrei is badly wounded as he attempts to rescue a Russian standard, and the experience leaves him disillusioned and questioning the purpose of his life. The novel uses this disaster to critique the Great Man Theory of history, suggesting that the actions of leaders like Napoleon are often insignificant compared to the collective will of the thousands of soldiers involved. Tolstoy portrays Austerlitz as an early test for Russia, one which ended badly because the soldiers fought for irrelevant things like glory or renown rather than the higher virtues which would produce, according to Tolstoy, a victory at Borodino during the 1812 invasion.
The Burning of Moscow
The occupation of Moscow and its subsequent fire serve as the novel's most harrowing and symbolic event, marking the beginning of the end for Napoleon's campaign. The Rostovs wait until the last minute to abandon Moscow, even after it became clear that General Kutuzov had retreated past the city, and they are given contradictory instructions on how to either flee or fight. Count Fyodor Rostopchin, the commander in chief of Moscow, publishes posters rousing the citizens to put their faith in religious icons while simultaneously urging them to fight with pitchforks if necessary, before fleeing himself and giving orders to burn the city. Tolstoy states that the burning of an abandoned city mostly built of wood was inevitable, and while the French blame the Russians, these blame the French, creating a cycle of mutual accusation. The Rostovs have a difficult time deciding what to take with them, but in the end, Natasha convinces them to load their carts with the wounded and dying from the Battle of Borodino, unknowingly including Prince Andrei among the wounded. Pierre, who has taken off on a naïve mission to assassinate Napoleon, becomes anonymous in all the chaos, shedding his responsibilities by wearing peasant clothes and shunning his duties and lifestyle. He rescues a young girl from a burning house and then comes across two French soldiers robbing an Armenian family, intervening by attacking the soldiers and being taken prisoner by the French army, setting the stage for his spiritual transformation in captivity.
The Prisoner and the Peasant
In the depths of the prisoner-of-war camp, Pierre Bezukhov finds the meaning of life through his friendship with Platon Karataev, an archetypal good Russian peasant with a saintly demeanor. Karataev is an honest person of integrity who is utterly without pretense, and Pierre discovers meaning in life simply by interacting with him, finding a spiritual peace that eluded him in the high society of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The two men are forced to march with the Grand Army during its disastrous retreat from Moscow in the harsh Russian winter, enduring months of tribulation during which the fever-plagued Karataev is shot by the French. Pierre is finally freed by a Russian raiding party led by Dolokhov and Denisov, after a small skirmish with the French that sees the young Petya Rostov killed in action. The death of Karataev and the loss of Petya leave Pierre with a profound sense of grief and a new understanding of the value of human life. He realizes that the true meaning of existence is not found in grand historical events or the pursuit of glory, but in the simple, everyday interactions with other people and the acceptance of life's inevitable suffering. This transformation marks the beginning of Pierre's journey toward a more authentic and moral life, one that will eventually lead him back to Natasha and a life of domestic happiness.
The Death of War
The novel's conclusion brings together the surviving characters in a post-war Russia that is rebuilding itself from the ashes of the invasion, while Prince Andrei Bolkonsky dies in a final act of forgiveness and love. Andrei has been taken in and cared for by the Rostovs, fleeing from Moscow to Yaroslavl, where he is reunited with Natasha and his sister Maria before the end of the war. In an internal transformation, he loses the fear of death and forgives Natasha in a last act before dying, finding peace in the face of his own mortality. Pierre's wife Hélène dies from an overdose of an abortifacient, and Pierre is reunited with Natasha, while the victorious Russians rebuild Moscow. Natasha speaks of Prince Andrei's death and Pierre of Karataev's, and both are aware of a growing bond between them in their bereavement. The first part of the epilogue begins with the wedding of Pierre and Natasha in 1813, and Nikolai Rostov, who has left the army after hearing of Petya's death, marries Princess Maria to save his family from financial ruin. The couples remain devoted despite misunderstandings, and the novel ends with a hint that the idealistic, boyish Nikolenka and Pierre would both become part of the Decembrist Uprising, suggesting that the next generation will continue the struggle for a better society.
The Philosophy of History
The second part of the epilogue contains Tolstoy's scathing critique of all existing forms of mainstream history, challenging the Great Man Theory that claims historical events are the result of the actions of heroes and other great individuals. Tolstoy argues that this is impossible because of how rarely these actions result in great historical events, and that great historical events are the result of many smaller events driven by the thousands of individuals involved, a summation which he earlier compared to calculus and the sum of infinitesimals. He then goes on to argue that these smaller events are the result of an inverse relationship between necessity and free will, necessity being based on reason and therefore explicable through historical analysis, and free will being based on consciousness and therefore inherently unpredictable. Tolstoy also ridicules newly emerging Darwinism as overly simplistic, comparing it to plasterers covering over the windows, icons, and scaffolding with plaster, impressed with the smooth result. He wrestles with the tension between our consciousness of freedom and the apparent need for necessity to develop laws of science and history, saying at times that the first is as real as the second, and yet that its reality would destroy the second. He concludes that just as astronomy had to adopt the Copernican hypothesis of the earth's movement, not because it fits our immediate perceptions, but to avoid absurdities, so too must historical science accept some conception of necessary laws of human action, even though we feel free in our ordinary lives.
The Literary Revolution
The novel that made its author the true lion of the Russian literature enjoyed great success with the reading public upon its publication and spawned dozens of reviews and analytical essays, some of which formed the basis for the research of later Tolstoy scholars. The liberal newspaper Golos was one of the first to react, with its anonymous reviewer posing a question later repeated by many others: What could this possibly be? What kind of genre are we supposed to file it to? Where is fiction in it, and where is real history? Writer and critic Nikolai Akhsharumov suggested that War and Peace was neither a chronicle, nor a historical novel, but a genre merger, this ambiguity never undermining its immense value. The literary left received the novel coldly, seeing it as devoid of social critique and keen on the idea of national unity, while the conservative press and patriotic authors accused Tolstoy of consciously distorting 1812 history and desecrating the patriotic feelings of their fathers. Yet prominent Russian writers of the time supported the novel wholeheartedly, with Ivan Goncharov declaring it a Russian Iliad and Fyodor Dostoevsky describing it as the last word of the landlord's literature and the brilliant one at that. The novel's influence spread worldwide, with Gustave Flaubert expressing his delight in a January 1880 letter to Turgenev, writing that it was the first class work and that he used to utter shrieks of delight while reading. Ernest Hemingway confessed that it was from Tolstoy that he had been taking lessons on how to write about war in the most straightforward, honest, objective and stark way, and Isaac Babel said that if the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.