The final volume of War and Peace appeared in 1869 amid heated debates. ‘War over War and Peace’ was the characteristic title of a contemporary review. Tolstoy’s epic was a sharply revisionist work, as it assailed the traditional notion of 1812 inspired by the so-called doctrine of Official Nationality with its three pillars of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality. But Tolstoy, always a nonconformist, remained highly idiosyncratic even in his revisionism. Refuting the official mythology, he also snubbed the prevalent ‘political correctness’ of the radical and liberal camps of his own time. As a result, he was attacked from all sides. The left could not forgive his unrepentant aristocratism, while the right mistook him for one of the fashionable nihilists with their all-out attack on traditional values including the sacred memory of Russia’s Patriotic War. The fray was joined by literary critics, fellow writers, historians, veterans of 1812, and professional military men.

One hundred fifty years later, the fog from the initial battles surrounding Tolstoy’s book is long gone, and there is a venerable tradition of scholarly commentary and interpretation. And yet, with all its tangible monumentality and grandeur, War and Peace remains a somewhat elusive masterpiece. This impression is aptly captured in the words of Andrei Bely, a seminal modernist author, who states that he read War and Peace four times and every time it was as if he was reading a different novel. One may argue that a great work of art inevitably contains many levels of meaning and that, additionally, the reader’s perception also evolves. That may be true, but the case of War and Peace seems special. The novel exists in multiple dimensions and bristles with diverging meanings, but somehow, almost miraculously, all of its elements ultimately merge into one magnificent and harmonious edifice.

A useful starting point for approaching this paradox of War and Peace is the contradictory – and contrarian – nature of Tolstoy’s intentions. Throughout his life Tolstoy went against the grain and defiantly challenged prevailing views, arguing against what was considered fashionable and ‘progressive.’ In the late 1850s, irritated by the domineering radicals from the editorial board of the journal Sovremennik (Contemporary), he contemplates launching a rival publication entitled Nesovremennik (Un- or Non-Contemporary). This plan, although quite unrealistic, has important implications that can be projected onto Tolstoy’s oeuvre in general. First, it is not to be confused with conservatism and is best described by Yuri Tynianov’s notion of innovating archaism. Second, there is an obvious challenge, an invitation to an argument. And finally, regardless of the polemical thrust, or perhaps, exactly owing to it, the object of polemics receives a new life (the negating prefix aside, Contemporary is a part of Non-Contemporary).

The opening chapters of the book that would become War and Peace appeared in a journal under the name 1805. This title in itself was defiant, since the public discourse of the era of the Great Reforms was dominated by the burning issues of the day. Challenging the prevalent populist tendencies, all characters in the opening chapters belong to the very top of the Russian aristocracy. Moreover, big portions of the dialogue are in French. (Unfortunately, most foreign translations, following the practice of Tolstoy’s later lifetime editions, do not preserve the bilingual nature of the dialogue.) As the novel progressed, the scope of Tolstoy’s narration broadened immensely through the portrayal of the ‘people’s war’ in wide historical and philosophical contexts. Still, Russia’s greatest national epic opens with a French interjection in aristocratic small talk: ‘Eh bien, mon prince…’

Tolstoy’s contrarian stance provoked numerous critical attacks. Especially challenging were objections from surviving veterans who, among other things, could not accept trivial details that lowered the heroic spirit of 1812. But Tolstoy ultimately did not have to address such objections, as his book in a way defended itself. Thus, Avraam Norov, a prominent statesman who had lost a leg as a young officer in the Battle of Borodino, found it improbable that Tolstoy’s Kutuzov during the fateful days of 1812 could be engrossed in reading a frivolous book in French. After Norov’s death in 1869, a French translation of a picaresque novel by Smollett was found in his library. According to the inscription on the cover, Norov had read this book in captivity while recovering from his wound in the occupied Moscow. Another eyewitness critic was Prince Pyotr Viazemsky, a major cultural figure of the bygone era, who in 1812 had wandered into the battle of Borodino as an observer, very much like Tolstoy’s Pierre. What is most ironic about Viazemsky’s clever criticism is that, trying to counter War and Peace with his own memoires, he unwittingly supports two of Tolstoy’s favorite assertions: that great historical events are made up of mundane concerns of ordinary people and that the chaos of war does not yield to any neat narrative categorization.

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