List of War and Peace characters. All the References from African Swallows to Zoot". Springer — via Google Books. Palgrave Macmillan — via Google Books. Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times". Simon and Schuster — via Google Books. The World of Movies, Media, and Multimedia: Oxford University Press — via Google Books. Leo Tolstoy 's War and Peace War and Peace board game War and Peace: Retrieved from " https: Use dmy dates from November Views Read Edit View history.

This page was last edited on 25 September , at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Bela Crkva Novi Sad Zlatibor. The Rostovs celebrate the name day of Natasha and Countess Rostova. The family of the dying Count Bezukhov fret over who will inherit. Pierre Bezukhov comes to terms with his large inheritance and life in high society. Andrei Bolkonsky leaves his pregnant wife and goes away to war. The Rostov family receive news of war from Nikolai. Vasili Kuragin tries to marry his daughter to Pierre and his son to Maria Bolkonskaya.

Preparations are take place for the Battle of Austerlitz. Nikolai Rostov returns home from war; Pierre struggles in his marriage. Pierre suspects his wife of infidelity. France and Russia make peace at Tilsit. Andrei visits the Rostovs. Tsar Alexander I attends a ball, and romance blossoms between Andrei and Natasha. Andrei proposes to Natasha. Nikolai Rostov returns for extended leave.


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Natasha Rostova pays a visit to the Bolkonskys. Pierre cannot decide whether to join the army or not. The French advance and the Russians retreat; Nikolai rescues Maria from a peasant uprising. The citizens of Moscow are forced to decide whether to abandon the city or not. At Borodino both sides take heavy losses.

The aftermath of Borodino. Prince Andrei leaves to recuperate from his wounds abroad, leaving Natasha initially distraught. Count Rostov takes her and Sonya to Moscow in order to raise funds for her trousseau. Anatole has since married a Polish woman whom he has abandoned in Poland. He is very attracted to Natasha and determined to seduce her, and conspires with his sister to do so. Anatole succeeds in making Natasha believe he loves her, eventually establishing plans to elope.

Natasha writes to Princess Maria, Andrei's sister, breaking off her engagement. At the last moment, Sonya discovers her plans to elope and foils them. Devastated, Natasha makes a suicide attempt and is left seriously ill. Pierre is initially horrified by Natasha's behavior, but realizes he has fallen in love with her. As the Great Comet of —12 streaks the sky, life appears to begin anew for Pierre.

Prince Andrei coldly accepts Natasha's breaking of the engagement. He tells Pierre that his pride will not allow him to renew his proposal. With the help of her family, and the stirrings of religious faith, Natasha manages to persevere in Moscow through this dark period. Meanwhile, the whole of Russia is affected by the coming confrontation between Napoleon's troops and the Russian army.

Pierre convinces himself through gematria that Napoleon is the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation. Old Prince Bolkonsky dies of a stroke knowing that French marauders are coming for his estate. No organized help from any Russian army seems available to the Bolkonskys, but Nikolai Rostov turns up at their estate in time to help put down an incipient peasant revolt. He finds himself attracted to the distraught Princess Maria. Back in Moscow, the patriotic Petya joins a crowd in audience of Czar Alexander and manages to snatch a biscuit thrown from the balcony window of the Cathedral of the Assumption by the Czar.

He is nearly crushed by the throngs in his effort. Under the influence of the same patriotism, his father finally allows him to enlist.

Napoleon himself is a main character in this section, and the novel presents him in vivid detail, both personally and as both a thinker and would-be strategist. Also described are the well-organized force of over , French Army only , of them actually French-speaking that marches through the Russian countryside in the late summer and reaches the outskirts of the city of Smolensk. Pierre decides to leave Moscow and go to watch the Battle of Borodino from a vantage point next to a Russian artillery crew.

After watching for a time, he begins to join in carrying ammunition. The battle becomes a hideous slaughter for both armies and ends in a standoff. The Russians, however, have won a moral victory by standing up to Napoleon's reputedly invincible army.

The Russian army withdraws the next day, allowing Napoleon to march on to Moscow. Among the casualties are Anatole Kuragin and Prince Andrei. Anatole loses a leg, and Andrei suffers a grenade wound in the abdomen. Both are reported dead, but their families are in such disarray that no one can be notified. The Rostovs have waited until the last minute to abandon Moscow, even after it is clear that Kutuzov has retreated past Moscow and Muscovites are being given contradictory instructions on how to either flee or fight.

Count Rostopchin, the commander in chief of Moscow, is publishing posters, rousing the citizens to put their faith in religious icons, while at the same time urging them to fight with pitchforks if necessary. Before fleeing himself, he gives orders to burn the city. 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.

Unknown to Natasha, Prince Andrei is amongst the wounded. When Napoleon's Grand Army finally occupies an abandoned and burning Moscow , Pierre takes off on a quixotic mission to assassinate Napoleon. He becomes anonymous in all the chaos, shedding his responsibilities by wearing peasant clothes and shunning his duties and lifestyle. The only people he sees are Natasha and some of her family, as they depart Moscow. Natasha recognizes and smiles at him, and he in turn realizes the full scope of his love for her.

Pierre saves the life of a French officer who fought at Borodino, yet is taken prisoner by the retreating French during his attempted assassination of Napoleon , after saving a woman from being raped by soldiers in the French Army. Pierre becomes friends with a fellow prisoner, Platon Karataev, a peasant with a saintly demeanor.


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In Karataev, Pierre finally finds what he has been seeking: Pierre discovers meaning in life simply by interacting with him. After witnessing French soldiers sacking Moscow and shooting Russian civilians arbitrarily, Pierre is forced to march with the Grand Army during its disastrous retreat from Moscow in the harsh Russian winter. After months of trial and tribulation — during which the fever-plagued Karataev is shot by the French — Pierre is finally freed by a Russian raiding party, after a small skirmish with the French that sees the young Petya Rostov killed in action.

Meanwhile, Andrei has been taken in and cared for by the Rostovs, fleeing from Moscow to Yaroslavl. He is reunited with Natasha and his sister Maria before the end of the war. Having lost all will to live, he forgives Natasha in a last act before dying. Pierre is reunited with Natasha, while the victorious Russians rebuild Moscow. Natasha speaks of Prince Andrei's death and Pierre of Karataev's.

War and Peace

Both are aware of a growing bond between them in their bereavement. With the help of Princess Maria, Pierre finds love at last and marries Natasha. The first part of the epilogue begins with the wedding of Pierre and Natasha in Count Rostov dies soon after, leaving his eldest son Nikolai to take charge of the debt-ridden estate. Nikolai finds himself with the task of maintaining the family on the verge of bankruptcy. His abhorrence at the idea of marrying for wealth almost gets in his way, but finally he marries the now-rich Maria Bolkonskaya and in so doing saves his family from financial ruin.

Nikolai and Maria then move to Bald Hills with his mother and Sonya, whom he supports for the rest of their lives. As in all good marriages, there are misunderstandings, but the couples—Pierre and Natasha, Nikolai and Maria—remain devoted to their spouses. Pierre and Natasha visit Bald Hills in There is a hint in the closing chapters that the idealistic, boyish Nikolenka and Pierre would both become part of the Decembrist Uprising. The first epilogue concludes with Nikolenka promising he would do something with which even his late father "would be satisfied" presumably as a revolutionary in the Decembrist revolt.

The second part of the epilogue contains Tolstoy's critique of all existing forms of mainstream history. The 19th-century Great Man Theory claims that 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. Rather, he argues, great historical events are the result of many smaller events driven by the thousands of individuals involved he compares this 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 explainable by historical analysis, and free-will being based on "consciousness" and therefore inherently unpredictable.

The novel that made its author "the true lion of the Russian literature" according to Ivan Goncharov [19] [20] enjoyed great success with the reading public upon its publication and spawned dozens of reviews and analytical essays, some of which by Dmitry Pisarev , Pavel Annenkov , Dragomirov and Strakhov formed the basis for the research of later Tolstoy scholars.

The liberal newspaper Golos The Voice, April 3, 93, was one of the first to react.

Its anonymous reviewer posed a question later repeated by many others: 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, writing in Vsemirny Trud 6, suggested that War and Peace was "neither a chronicle, nor a historical novel", but a genre merger, this ambiguity never undermining its immense value. Annenkov, who praised the novel too, was equally vague when trying to classify it.

In general, the literary left received the novel coldly. They saw it as devoid of social critique, and keen on the idea of national unity. They saw its major fault as the "author's inability to portray a new kind of revolutionary intelligentsia in his novel", as critic Varfolomey Zaytsev put it. Shelgunov in Delo magazine characterized the novel as "lacking realism", showing its characters as "cruel and rough", "mentally stoned", "morally depraved" and promoting "the philosophy of stagnation".

Still, Mikhail Saltykov-Schedrin , who never expressed his opinion of the novel publicly, in private conversation was reported to have expressed delight with "how strongly this Count has stung our higher society". On the opposite front, the conservative press and "patriotic" authors A. Vyazemsky among them were accusing Tolstoy of consciously distorting history, desecrating the "patriotic feelings of our fathers" and ridiculing dvoryanstvo.

One of the first comprehensive articles on the novel was that of Pavel Annenkov, published in 2, issue of Vestnik Evropy. The critic praised Tolstoy's masterful portrayal of man at war, marveled at the complexity of the whole composition, organically merging historical facts and fiction. In the end the critic called the novel "the whole epoch in the Russian fiction". Slavophiles declared Tolstoy their " bogatyr " and pronounced War and Peace "the Bible of the new national idea".

Strakhov was the first critic in Russia who declared Tolstoy's novel to be a masterpiece of level previously unknown in Russian literature. Still, being a true Slavophile , he could not fail to see the novel as promoting the major Slavophiliac ideas of "meek Russian character's supremacy over the rapacious European kind" using Apollon Grigoriev 's formula. Years later, in , discussing Strakhov's own book The World as a Whole , Tolstoy criticized both Grigoriev's concept of "Russian meekness vs. Western bestiality" and Strakhov's interpretation of it. Among the reviewers were military men and authors specializing in the war literature.

Most assessed highly the artfulness and realism of Tolstoy's battle scenes. The army general and respected military writer Mikhail Dragomirov , in an article published in Oruzheiny Sbornik The Military Almanac , —70 , while disputing some of Tolstoy's ideas concerning the "spontaneity" of wars and the role of commander in battles, advised all the Russian Army officers to use War and Peace as their desk book, describing its battle scenes as "incomparable" and "serving for an ideal manual to every textbook on theories of military art.

Unlike professional literary critics, most prominent Russian writers of the time supported the novel wholeheartedly. Goncharov, Turgenev, Leskov, Dostoyevsky and Fet have all gone on record as declaring War and Peace the masterpiece of the Russian literature. Embracing the whole epoch, it is the grandiose literary event, showcasing the gallery of great men painted by a lively brush of the great master This is one of the most, if not the most profound literary work ever.

It also serves as a monument to Russian history's glorious epoch when whatever figure you take is a colossus, a statue in bronze. Even [the novel's] minor characters carry all the characteristic features of the Russian people and its life. Fyodor Dostoyevsky in a May 30, letter to Strakhov described War and Peace as "the last word of the landlord's literature and the brilliant one at that". In a draft version of The Raw Youth he described Tolstoy as "a historiograph of the dvoryanstvo , or rather, its cultural elite". Nikolai Leskov , then an anonymous reviewer in Birzhevy Vestnik The Stock Exchange Herald , wrote several articles praising highly War and Peace , calling it "the best ever Russian historical novel" and "the pride of the contemporary literature".

Marveling at the realism and factual truthfulness of Tolstoy's book, Leskov thought the author deserved the special credit for "having lifted up the people's spirit upon the high pedestal it deserved". In this respect the novel of Count Tolstoy could be seen as an epic of the Great national war which up until now has had its historians but never had its singers", Leskov wrote.

Afanasy Fet , in a January 1, letter to Tolstoy, expressed his great delight with the novel. The manner in which Count Tolstoy conducts his treatise is innovative and original. The first French edition of the War and Peace paved the way for the worldwide success of Leo Tolstoy and his works. Since then many world famous authors have praised War and Peace as a masterpiece of the world literature.

Gustave Flaubert expressed his delight in a January letter to Turgenev, writing: What an artist and what a psychologist! The first two volumes are exquisite. I used to utter shrieks of delight while reading.


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    • This is powerful, very powerful indeed. Romain Rolland , remembering his reading the novel as a student, wrote: It is life itself in its eternal movement. Isaak Babel said, after reading War and Peace , "If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.

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    This is the reason for our trust in his presentation. War and Peace has been translated into many languages. It has been translated into English on several occasions, starting with Clara Bell working from a French translation. About 2 per cent of War and Peace is in French; Tolstoy removed the French in a revised edition, only to restore it later. Academic Zoja Pavlovskis-Petit has this to say about the translations of War and Peace available in Unlike the other translators, Dunnigan even succeeds with many characteristically Russian folk expressions and proverbs.

    She is faithful to the text and does not hesitate to render conscientiously those details that the uninitiated may find bewildering: On the Garnett translation Pavlovskis-Petit writes: War and Peace is frequently inexact and contains too many anglicisms. Her style is awkward and turgid, very unsuitable for Tolstoi. War and Peace This article is about the novel by Leo Tolstoy. For other uses, see War and Peace disambiguation. Tolstoy's notes from the ninth draft of War and Peace , Cover of War and Peace , Italian translation, In by the Russian artist Illarion Pryanishnikov.

    List of War and Peace characters.

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    War and Peace simple family tree. War and Peace detailed family tree. Natasha Rostova, a postcard by Elisabeth Bohm. Scene in Red Square , Moscow, Oil on canvas by Fedor Yakovlevich Alekseev. The Battle of Borodino , fought on September 7, and involving more than , troops and 70, casualties was a turning point in Napoleon's failed campaign to take Russia.

    It is vividly depicted through the plot and characters of War and Peace.