We continue our new program series about the Russian-French war of 1812 ahead of the approaching bicentenary of Russia’s victory over Napoleon. Today’s story, unlike the previous ones, does not track any episodes of that war. Instead, we will tell you how the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy depicted the 1812 campaign in his world-famous novel “War and Peace”.
In all probability, most of our listeners have never bothered to read the two-volume “War and Peace”. But they must doubtless have seen at least one of the three screen adaptations of Tolstoy’s epic novel. The first film was released in the United States in 1956, starring the charming Audrey Hepburn as Natasha. Ten years later, the Soviet version of “War and Peace” came out. The third one, a German-French-Russian production, appeared fairly recently.
So, what’s the secret of the unfading popularity of “War and Peace”, first published a century and a half ago, almost 75 years after the war of 1812? As you may be able to guess, Tolstoy did not witness those events just because he was born 16 years later. But the way he depicted them continues to draw readers and historians.
For the 6 years that he was penning his novel, Tolstoy immersed himself in archives, perusing the memoirs and letters of war veterans, both Russian and French, and visiting key battle scenes. “Everywhere in my novel you come across historical figures. I did not invent anything,” he wrote in a letter.
It was not from hearsay that Tolstoy knew what war was like. He served in the army and took part in the Crimean War of the 1850s, commanding an artillery battery during the siege of Sevastopol. Tolstoy could also rely on emotional first-hand accounts from his father,a veteran of the 1812 war, who was once taken prisoner by the French.
In “War and Peace”, he explores a crucial episode in Russian history, a war that inflicted profound grief and suffering on Russians, for which there was only one man to blame – the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.Tolstoy portrays him as a self-complacent and blood-thirsty egoist craving for global dictatorship, a conclusion he derived from eye-witness reports and the diaries of Bonaparte’s fellow officers who shared his exile on the island of St. Helena.
Tolstoy even planned to translate those diaries into Russian. “War and Peace” is a hymn to the Russian people, whose love of their homeland, self-sacrifice and hatred towards the aggressor enabled Russia to rout the superior enemy. Tolstoy lauds mercy and commiseration that swept Russian society in 1812 and imparts those most noble feelings to his characters.
Decrying war as the greatest of evils, a horrific crime and pointless bloodbath, he shows how it cripples people’s lives on both sides of the frontline. Regretfully, Tolstoy’s assessments of war, made 150 years ago, hold true for our days. His call on humanity to abandon violence in settling disputes and live in kindness and mercy, the feelings he valued most, is still largely unheeded.
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