A look at war and peace from a position popular interests(based on the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace")
In 1869, L. N. Tolstoy wrote one of the brilliant works of world literature - the epic novel War and Peace. According to I. S. Turgenev, "nothing better has ever been written by anyone."
“For a work to be good, one must love the main, basic idea in it. In War and Peace, I loved the people’s thought, as a result of the war of 1812,” said Leo Tolstoy.
Main character novel - people. The people thrown into the unnecessary and incomprehensible war of 1805, the people who rose in 1812 to defend their homeland and defeated in the war of liberation a huge enemy army led by an invincible commander until then.
The novel contains more than a hundred crowd scenes, more than two hundred named people from the people act in it, although the meaning of the image of the people is determined not by the number of crowd scenes, but by the people's idea. Major events novels are evaluated by Tolstoy with folk point vision. The writer expresses the people's assessment of the war of 1805 in the words of Prince Andrei: "Why did we lose the battle near Austerlitz? .. There was no need for us to fight there: we wanted to leave the battlefield as soon as possible."
The War of 1812 was not like other wars. "Since the fire of Smolensk, a war has begun that does not fit any previous legends," wrote Tolstoy.
The Patriotic War of 1812 was a just, national liberation war for Russia. The Napoleonic hordes entered the borders of Russia and headed for its center - Moscow. All the people came out to fight the invaders. Ordinary Russian people - the peasants Karp and Vlas, the elder Vasilisa, the merchant Ferapontov, the deacon and many others - hostilely meet the Napoleonic army, put up resistance to it. The feeling of love for the Motherland embraced all segments of the population.
Tolstoy says that "for the Russian people there could be no question whether it would be good or bad under the control of the French." The Rostovs are leaving Moscow, having handed over carts to the wounded and leaving their house to the mercy of fate; Princess Marya Bolkonskaya leaves her native Bogucharovo nest. Disguised in a simple dress, Count Pierre Bezukhov is armed and stays in Moscow, intending to kill Napoleon.
But disgusting are individual representatives of the bureaucratic-aristocratic society, who, in the days of the national disaster, acted for selfish, selfish purposes. The enemy was already in Moscow, but Petersburg court life went on as before: "There were the same exits, balls, the same french theater, the same interests of service and intrigue". The patriotism of the Moscow aristocrats consisted in the fact that instead of French dishes they ate Russian cabbage soup, and a fine was imposed for French words.
Tolstoy angrily denounces the Moscow governor-general and commander-in-chief of the Moscow garrison, Count Rostopchin, who, due to his arrogance and cowardice, was unable to organize replacements for the heroically fighting army of Kutuzov.
The writer speaks with indignation about careerists - foreign generals like Wolzogen. They gave all of Europe to Napoleon and "came to teach us - glorious teachers!" Among staff officers, Tolstoy singles out a group of people who want only one thing: "... the greatest benefits and pleasures for themselves ... The drone population of the army." These people include Nesvitsky, Drubetskoy, Berg, Zherkov and others.
Tolstoy had great sympathy for the people, who played the main and decisive role in the war against the French conquerors.
The patriotic feelings that gripped the Russians gave rise to the mass heroism of the defenders of the Motherland. Talking about the battles near Smolensk, Andrei Bolkonsky rightly noted that Russian soldiers "fought there for the first time for the Russian land", that the troops had such a spirit that he (Bolkonsky) had never seen, that Russian soldiers "repulsed the French for two days in a row and that this success has multiplied our strength."
Even more fully, the "folk thought" is felt in those chapters of the novel where characters are depicted who are close to the people or strive to understand them: Tushin and Timokhin, Natasha and Princess Marya, Pierre and Prince Andrei - all those who can be called "Russian soul".
Tolstoy portrays Kutuzov as a person who embodied the spirit of the people.
Kutuzov is a truly popular commander. Thus, expressing the needs, thoughts and feelings of the soldiers, he appears during the review near Braunau and during the Battle of Austerlitz, and especially during Patriotic War 1812. “Kutuzov,” writes Tolstoy, “with his whole Russian being knew and felt what every Russian soldier felt.” Kutuzov for Russia - his own, native person. During the war of 1812, all his efforts were directed towards one goal - the cleansing of his native land from the invaders. "It is difficult to imagine a goal more worthy and more in line with the will of the whole people," says the writer. On behalf of the people, Kutuzov rejects Lauriston's proposal for a truce. He understands and repeatedly says that battle of Borodino there is a victory; understanding, like no one else, the popular nature of the war of 1812, he supported the plan proposed by Denisov for the deployment of partisan operations.
Kutuzov - carrier folk wisdom, an exponent of popular feelings. He is distinguished by "an extraordinary power of penetration into the meaning of occurring phenomena, and its source lies in the popular feeling, which he carried in himself in all its purity and strength." Only the recognition of this feeling in him made the people elect him, against the will of the tsar, as commander-in-chief of the Russian army. And only this feeling put him on that height from which he directed all his forces not to kill and exterminate people, but to save and pity them.
Both soldiers and officers - they all fight not for the St. George Crosses, but for the Fatherland. Shake their moral fortitude defenders of the battery of General Raevsky. Tolstoy shows the extraordinary stamina and courage of the soldiers and the better part of the officers. He writes that not only Napoleon and his generals, but all the soldiers French army experienced in the battle of Borodino "a feeling of horror before the enemy, who, having lost half of the army, stood just as menacingly at the end as at the beginning of the battle."
With great knowledge of the matter, Tolstoy describes the glorious actions of the Russian partisans and their commanders - Denisov and Dolokhov. In the center of the story about the guerrilla war are the images of Tikhon Shcherbaty, who embodies the best national traits Russian people, and Platon Karataev, personifying "everything Russian, folk, round, kind." Tolstoy writes: "... it is good for the people who, in a moment of trial ... with simplicity and ease, pick up the first club that comes across and nail it until in their souls feelings of insult and revenge are replaced by contempt and pity."
The culminating moment of the Patriotic War was the Battle of Borodino. If, when describing the battles that took place on foreign territory (Austerlitz, Shengraben), the author focused on some heroes, then on the Borodino field he draws the mass heroism of the people and does not single out individual characters.
The courageous resistance of the Russian troops, their invincibility surprise and amaze Napoleon, who has not yet known defeat. The self-confident emperor at first could not understand what was happening on the battlefield, since instead of the expected news of the flight of the enemy, the previously orderly columns of French troops were now returning in upset, frightened crowds. Napoleon stumbled upon a mass of dead and wounded soldiers and was horrified.
Discussing the results and significance of the Battle of Borodino, Tolstoy says that the Russians won a moral victory over Napoleon's troops. The moral strength of the French attacking army was exhausted. “Not that victory, which is determined by the picked up pieces of matter on sticks, called banners, and the space on which the troops stood and are standing, but a moral victory, one that convinces the enemy of the moral superiority of his enemy. And in his impotence, was won Russians near Borodino.
Moral qualities armies, or the spirit of the troops, certainly influence the outcome of hostilities, especially since on the part of the French the war was of an aggressive nature, on the part of the Russian people the war was national liberation.
The people achieved their goal: motherland was cleared of foreign invaders.
Reading the novel, we are convinced that the writer judges the great events of the past, war and peace from the standpoint of popular interests. And this is the “folk idea” that Tolstoy loved in his immortal epic, and which illuminated his brilliant creation with an unfading light.
Throughout the novel we see Tolstoy's distaste for war. Tolstoy hated murders - it makes no difference in the name of what these murders are committed. There is no poeticization of the feat of a heroic personality in the novel. The only exception is the episode of the Battle of Shengraben and the feat of Tushin. Describing the war of 1812, Tolstoy poeticizes the collective feat of the people. Studying the materials of the war of 1812, Tolstoy came to the conclusion that no matter how disgusting the war with its blood, death of people, dirt, lies, sometimes the people are forced to wage this war, which may not touch a fly, but if a wolf attacks it, defending himself, he kills this wolf. But when he kills, he does not feel pleasure from this and does not consider that he has done something worthy of enthusiastic chanting. Tolstoy reveals the patriotism of the Russian people, who did not want to fight according to the rules with the beast - the French invasion.
Tolstoy speaks with contempt of the Germans, in whom the instinct for self-preservation of the individual turned out to be stronger than the instinct for the preservation of the nation, that is stronger than patriotism and proudly speaks of the Russian people, for whom the preservation of their "I" was less important than the salvation of the fatherland. Negative types in the novel are those heroes who are frankly indifferent to the fate of their homeland (visitors to the salon of Helen Kuragina), and those who cover up this indifference with a beautiful patriotic phrase (almost all the nobility, with the exception of a small part of it - people like, Pierre, Rostovs), as well as those for whom war is a pleasure (Dolokhov, Napoleon).
The closest to Tolstoy are those Russian people who, realizing that war is a dirty, cruel, but in some cases necessary, work without any pathos on the great work of saving the motherland and do not experience any pleasure in killing enemies. This is, Bolkonsky, Denisov and many others episodic heroes. With special love, Tolstoy paints scenes of a truce and scenes where the Russian people show pity for defeated enemy, caring for the captured French (Kutuzov's call to the army at the end of the war - to pity the frostbitten unfortunate people), or where the French show humanity towards the Russians (Pierre being interrogated by Davout). This circumstance is connected with the main idea of the novel - the idea of the unity of people. Peace (absence of war) unites people into a single world (one common family), war divides people. So in the novel the idea is patriotic with the idea of peace, the idea of the negation of war.
Even though the explosion spiritual development Tolstoy occurred after the 70s, in its infancy, many of his later views and moods can be found in works written before the turning point, in particular in "". This novel was published 10 years before the turning point, and all of it, especially as regards political views Tolstoy is a phenomenon of a moment of transition for a writer and thinker. It contains the remnants of Tolstoy's old views (for example, on the war), and the germs of new ones, which will later become decisive in this philosophical system which will be called "tolstoy". Tolstoy's views changed even during his work on the novel, which was expressed, in particular, in a sharp contradiction in the image of Karataev, which was absent in the first versions of the novel and introduced only on final stages work, patriotic ideas and moods of the novel. But at the same time, this image was caused not by the whim of Tolstoy, but by the entire development of the moral and ethical problems of the novel.
With his novel, Tolstoy wanted to say something very important to people. He dreamed of using the power of his genius to spread his views, in particular his views on history, "on the degree of freedom and dependence of man on history", he wanted his views to become universal.
How does Tolstoy characterize the war of 1812? War is a crime. Tolstoy does not divide combatants into attackers and defenders. “Millions of people have committed against each other such an innumerable number of atrocities ... that in whole centuries the annals of all the judgments of the world will not collect and which, during this period of time, the people who committed them did not look at as crimes.”
And what, according to Tolstoy, is the reason for this event? Tolstoy cites various considerations of historians. But he does not agree with any of these considerations. “Any single reason or a whole series of reasons seems to us ... equally false in its insignificance in comparison with the enormity of the event ...”. Huge terrible phenomenon- war, must be generated by the same "huge" cause. Tolstoy does not undertake to find this reason. He says that "the more we try to rationally explain these phenomena in nature, the more unreasonable, incomprehensible they become for us." But if a person cannot know the laws of history, then he cannot influence them. He is a powerless grain of sand in the historical stream. But within what limits is a person still free? “There are two aspects of life in every person: personal life, which is the freer, the more abstract its interests, and spontaneous, swarm life, where a person inevitably fulfills the laws prescribed for him.” This is a clear expression of those thoughts in the name of which the novel was created: a person is free in every this moment act as he pleases, but "a perfect deed is irrevocable, and its action, coinciding in time with millions of actions of other people, acquires historical significance."
A person is not able to change the course of swarm life. This life is spontaneous, and therefore not amenable to conscious influence. A person is free only in his personal life. The more he is connected with history, the less he is free. "The king is the slave of history." A slave cannot command a master, a king cannot influence history. “In historical events, so-called people are labels that give a name to an event, which, like labels, has the least connection with the event itself.” Such are the philosophical arguments of Tolstoy.
Napoleon himself sincerely did not want war, but he is a slave of history - he gave more and more new orders, accelerating the start of the war. The sincere liar Napoleon is confident in his right to plunder and is sure that the stolen valuables are his rightful property. Enthusiastic adoration surrounded Napoleon. He is accompanied by "enthusiastic cries", before him jump "fading with happiness, enthusiastic ... huntsmen", he puts a telescope on the back of the "happy page that has run up". One reigns here general mood. The French army is also some kind of closed "world"; the people of this world have their own common desires, common joys, but this is a “false common”, it is based on lies, pretense, predatory aspirations, on the misfortunes of something else in common. Participation in this common pushes to stupid actions, turns human society into the herd. Driven by a single thirst for enrichment, a thirst for robbery, having lost their inner freedom, the soldiers and officers of the French army sincerely believe that Napoleon is leading them to happiness. And he, to an even greater extent a slave of history than they, imagined himself to be God, because “for him, the conviction was not new that his presence at all ends of the world ... equally strikes and plunges people into the madness of self-forgetfulness.” People tend to create idols, and idols easily forget that they did not create history, but history created them.
Just as it is incomprehensible why Napoleon gave the order to attack Russia, so are Alexander's actions incomprehensible. Everyone was waiting for the war, "but nothing was ready" for it. “There was no common leader over all the armies. Tolstoy, as a former artilleryman, knows that without a "common leader" the army finds itself in a difficult situation. He forgets the skeptical attitude of the philosopher to the possibility of one person to influence the course of events. He condemns the inaction of Alexander and his courtiers. All their aspirations "were aimed only at ... having a good time, forgetting about the upcoming war."
The assertion that the basis of "War and Peace" is historical events is one of the most common. Accordingly, the description of the Battle of Borodino, which occupies twenty chapters of the third volume, is the center of the work, its culmination, a decisive moment both in the fate of the country and in the life of many heroes of the book.
Here Pierre will meet Dolokhov, Prince Andrey - Anatole, here many characters will be revealed to us from a hitherto unfamiliar side, here we will see with painful longing in the eyes of the recent idol of many - the vain Napoleon and the calm and majestic old man Kutuzov, here for the first time an enormous force will manifest itself: peasant militia in white shirts. The people are a force, according to the author of "War and Peace", which won the war.
But from the moment when the work was published, most of all claims against Tolstoy the historian were made precisely about his portrayal of historical events, real historical figures and their understanding of the truth about the war. And this is one of the biggest (by no means the only) paradoxes in the book. Tolstoy's view of the war, history, role famous people, indeed, in many respects does not coincide with the real truth about the same war.
According to Tolstoy the thinker, the story goes forward regardless of will individual people called great; the course of history is subject to the actions of many people who cannot be directed, predicted, planned. In accordance with this, a real commander (be it Napoleon or Kutuzov) is not able and should not impose his will during the battle; he just watches what is happening.
That is why (remember the Battle of Shengraben) Tolstoy emphasizes the immobility of Bagration's face and his almost indifferent attitude to the reports of Prince Andrei, who is surprised that “no orders were given, and that Prince Bagration only tried to pretend that everything that was done out of necessity , accident and the will of private bosses, that all this was done, at least not on his orders, but in accordance with his intentions. And later we will see that Kutuzov also considered it useless to interfere in the course of events, that he "despised both knowledge and intelligence and knew something else that should have decided the matter."
In the image of Kutuzov, the most characteristic in this regard, the two lines of the novel seem to intersect. One line - fictional storytelling. The second line is philosophical and historical digressions.
As an artist, Tolstoy cannot but see that during the war the will of the people, the will of the people and the army, the will and talent of the commander played a huge role. But, narrating about great events, Tolstoy the thinker shows an obvious theoretical, philosophical interest to the causes that give rise to wars, as well as to what laws military operations, movements and the outcome of military battles are subject to. And it must be admitted that the lines dedicated to Kutuzov and Tolstoy allow us to talk about the inconsistency of the image of the great Russian commander, whose individual features in the novel do not always correspond to his historical appearance.
And although Tolstoy tries to convince us of the justice of his historical theory, but he himself dissuades. If Bagration, without giving any orders, only submits to “necessity, chance,” then why then “the chiefs, who approached Prince Bagration with upset faces, became calm, the soldiers and officers greeted him cheerfully and became livelier in his presence”?
Tolstoy the artist refutes Tolstoy the philosopher. Here is how he describes Bagration in the midst of the battle: “His face expressed that concentrated and happy determination that a person has when he is ready to throw himself into the water on a hot day and takes the last run. There were no sleepy, dull eyes, no feigned thoughtful look: round, hard, hawkish eyes enthusiastically and somewhat contemptuously looked ahead ... "
If the will of an individual person does not decide anything, then why does Bagration, saying: “With God!” and “slightly waving his arms, with an awkward step of a cavalryman, as if laboring, he went forward across an uneven field” and then, looking around, shouted: “Hurrah!”, thereby giving a signal to attack? After that, "overtaking Prince Bagration and each other, our discordant, but cheerful and lively crowd ran downhill after the upset French." The Russian attack began, and the will of a strong man with a dark face and hawk eyes became the will of history.
Yes, the battle of Austerlitz is largely shown in the novel as it was seen by the inexperienced and enthusiastic Rostov. Tolstoy shows us the battle of Borodino through the eyes of Pierre, who knows nothing about military affairs. Council in Fili - through the eyes of a child, a six-year-old peasant girl Malasha, forgotten on the stove in the room where the council is being held.
War, as Tolstoy sees it, consists not only of the roar of guns, battles and exploits. The concept of war, according to Tolstoy, includes the general’s efforts to curry favor, and Timokhin’s trembling before his superiors, and Telyanin’s theft, and Denisov’s loss, and Rostov’s torment ... People live in war, and while they are alive, they continue to dream, each about his own , love and hate, grieve and rejoice at the most insignificant occasions. Here, as in peaceful life, there are everyday life - and, perhaps, it is more difficult to behave with dignity in everyday life in war than in battles. Not infrequently even here, in war, the laws that reign in the salons of St. Petersburg high society dictate their will.
But the war has its own truth: when the enemy comes to your land, you are forced to defend yourself - which is what the Russian army did. Of course, the war does not become a holiday from this; it is still a dirty, bloody affair. And it is precisely this military labor and the working people, who appear in War and Peace as the force that decided the outcome of the war with Napoleon, are Tolstoy's measure of justice for him. actors, whether they fictional characters or historical figures like Kutuzov, Napoleon, Tsar Alexander.
Tolstoy, a former military officer, knows the war and writes about it with that measure of truth that breaks through his own theory. The war, depicted by the writer as a national one, allows Tolstoy to assert folk performance about the heroes of history, about historical events and to show that it was precisely simple soldiers Timokhin's companies, the artillerymen of Captain Tushin, the partisans of Vasily Denisov, among whom Tikhon Shcherbaty stood out for his impudent courage, the militia men who put on white shirts before the battle - all those Russian people about whom Kutuzov says: "Incomparable, incomparable people."
This view of the people also determines the attitude of the writer to real historical characters. Therefore, he portrays Kutuzov in this way and not otherwise, creates the image of a truly people's commander, whose strength lies precisely in his relationship with the people. He is sensitive and attentive to the soldiers and completely indifferent to glory. Therefore, Napoleon for Tolstoy is, first of all, the embodiment of war, and war is “contrary to human reason and human nature event". In the third volume, Tolstoy no longer hides his hatred of Napoleon. Why does he hate him so much?
Napoleon allows people to die needlessly out of devotion to him. Napoleon allowed himself to get used to the idea that he is almost a deity, that he can and should decide the fate of other people: doom them to death, make them happy or unhappy... Tolstoy is sure: such an understanding of power always leads to crime, always brings evil .
Here is Alexander I in Tolstoy's "ruler is weak and crafty." Say beautiful phrase he can, but the troops are not ready for war, the people around the king are busy with their careers; the army consists of three parts that do not have a common commander-in-chief, and the king hesitates, does not know whether to accept this title. Is all this true, or did Tolstoy deliberately exaggerate, but in fact Alexander 1 was not so helpless and frivolous?
Indeed, as is known, the news of the war caught the tsar at the ball. But after all, it depended on Tolstoy whether to tell the reader about it or show Alexander not on this day, but, say, on the next, when he held a meeting with the generals. This would also be true, but the writer chose the truth that helped him to affirm own understanding the course of history.
Napoleon and Alexander I - different people, but both of them, according to Tolstoy, bring evil to people by the fact that they consider themselves entitled to decide the fate of peoples. And both of them, Tolstoy believes, do not determine anything in the course of history, because it is accomplished not by the will of emperors and generals, but by the usual, everyday life people. The power of both emperors only hinders this natural life.
One may not agree with Tolstoy's philosophical view of history in everything. But there is something very attractive in his theory, which applies not only to distant days for us. If history is made up of individual actions of individual people, then each person bears an enormous responsibility for everything that happens on earth - each, and not just Napoleon or Alexander I. Each means each of us.
Views of L. N. Tolstoy
On the story in the novel "War and Peace"
“I tried to write the history of the people,” said L. N. Tolstoy about his novel “ War and Peace". And this is not just a phrase: the great Russian writer really depicted in the work not so much individual heroes how much the whole nation as a whole. "People's thought" defines in the novel and philosophical Tolstoy's views, and the image of historical events, specific historical figures, and the moral assessment of the actions of the heroes.
What is the power that drives the nations? Who is the creator of history - the individual or the people? The writer asks such questions at the beginning of the novel and tries to answer them with the whole course of the story.
According to Tolstoy, the historical path of the country is determined not by the will of a historical figure, not by his decisions and actions, but by the totality of the aspirations and desires of all the people who make up the people. “A person consciously lives for himself, but serves as an unconscious tool” to achieve historical goals, writes Tolstoy. He convincingly proves that one person, even the most brilliant, cannot control millions, this is only the appearance of power, but it is these millions that govern the country and determine historical process, that is, it is the people who make history. And a brilliant personality is able to guess, feel the desire of the people and ascend to the people's "wave". Tolstoy says: "Will historical hero not only does not direct the actions of the masses, but she herself is constantly led. Therefore, the attention of the writer is attracted primarily by the life of the people: peasants, soldiers, officers - those who form the basis of it.
Leo Tolstoy on the pages of the novel shows that the historical process does not depend on whim or bad mood one man. War 1812 was inevitable and did not depend on the will of Napoleon, but was determined by the whole course of history, so Napoleon, according to the writer, could not help but cross the Neman, and the defeat of the French army on the Borodino field was also inevitable, because there Napoleonic France was “the hand of the strongest enemy in spirit” was laid, that is, the Russian army. It can be said that the will of the commander does not affect the outcome of the battle, because not a single commander can lead tens and hundreds of thousands of people, but it is the soldiers themselves (that is, the people) who decide the fate of the battle. “The fate of the battle is not decided by the orders of the commander-in-chief, not by the place on which the troops stand, not by the number of guns and killed people, but by that elusive force called the spirit of the army,” writes Tolstoy. Therefore, Napoleon did not lose the Battle of Borodino or Kutuzov won it, but the Russian people won this battle, because the "spirit" of the Russian army was immeasurably higher than that of the French.
This historical pattern Kutuzov felt ingeniously. Leo Tolstoy contrasts on the pages of the novel two commanders (Kutuzov and Napoleon) and two battles - Borodino and Auster-Litskoe.
Russian soldiers did not want to fight in Austria for no reason. Kutuzov understood this very well, and therefore he was not sure of the victory of the allied Russian-Austrian army over the French, despite the numerical superiority and more advantageous position. We see how Kutuzov delayed the start of the battle, trying to save the lives of Russian soldiers in this senseless massacre. Conversely, Kutuzov was notified in advance
Wren in the victory at Borodino, because he knew that every soldier, every Russian officer was literally burning with the desire to fight the French. Andrei Bolkonsky spoke about this desire to fight to his friend Pierre Bezukhov on the eve of the battle: “The French have ruined my house and are going to ruin Moscow, insulted and insult me every second. They are my enemies, they are all criminals, according to my concepts. And Timokhin and the whole army think the same way. They must be executed." Therefore, Bolkonsky himself, and Kutuzov, and all Russian people were sure of victory. We see that during the battle Kutuzov is inactive, he almost does not lead the army. But the brilliant commander knows that the soldiers themselves determine the course of the battle, and Kutuzov is confident in them. Napoleon, on the contrary, is very active: he is constantly interested in the course of the battle, gives orders...But all his activity leads to nothing, because > because he does not determine the outcome of the battle, and this outcome is already historically predetermined.
Tolstoy writes that Kutuzov was able to "guess so correctly the meaning folk sense events”, that is, “guess” the whole pattern of historical events. And the source of this brilliant insight was the "popular feeling" that he carried in his soul great commander. It is understanding folk character historical processes allowed Kutuzov, according to Tolstoy, to win not only the Battle of Borodino, but the entire military campaign and fulfill his mission - to save Russia from the Napoleonic invasion. And how fussy, helpless, even comical Napoleon looks against his background! There is nothing great and ingenious in it, because "there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth."
Thus we see that Leo Tolstoy had his own A look at history, and this view differs in many respects from modern understanding historical process, but this does not make it less interesting for us.
Views of L. N. Tolstoy
On the story in the novel "War and Peace" “I tried to write the history of the people,” said L. N. Tolstoy about his novel “ War and Peace". And this is not just a phrase: the great Russian writer really depicted in the work not so much individual heroes as the whole people as a whole. "People's thought" defines in the novel and philosophical Tolstoy's views, and the image of historical events, specific historical figures, and the moral assessment of the actions of the heroes. What is the power that drives the nations? Who is the creator of history - the individual or the people? The writer asks such questions at the beginning of the novel and tries to answer them with the whole course of the story. According to Tolstoy, the historical path of the country is determined not by the will of a historical figure, not by his decisions and actions, but by the totality of the aspirations and desires of all the people who make up the people. “A person consciously lives for himself, but serves as an unconscious tool” to achieve historical goals, writes Tolstoy. He convincingly proves that one person, even the most brilliant, cannot control millions, this is only the appearance of power, but it is these millions that govern the country and determine the historical process, that is, it is the people who make history. And a brilliant personality is able to guess, feel the desire of the people and ascend to the people's "wave". Tolstoy claims: "The will of the historical hero not only does not guide the actions of the masses, but is itself constantly guided." Therefore The writer's attention is attracted primarily by the life of the people: peasants, soldiers, officers - those who form the basis of it. Leo Tolstoy on the pages of the novel shows that the historical process does not depend on the whim or bad mood of one person. War 1812 was inevitable and did not depend on the will of Napoleon, but was determined by the whole course of history, so Napoleon, according to the writer, could not help but cross the Neman, and the defeat of the French army on the Borodino field was also inevitable, because there Napoleonic France was “the hand of the strongest enemy in spirit” was laid, that is, the Russian army. It can be said that the will of the commander does not affect the outcome of the battle, because not a single commander can lead tens and hundreds of thousands of people, but it is the soldiers themselves (that is, the people) who decide the fate of the battle. “The fate of the battle is not decided by the orders of the commander-in-chief, not by the place on which the troops stand, not by the number of guns and killed people, but by that elusive force called the spirit of the army,” writes Tolstoy. Therefore, Napoleon did not lose the Battle of Borodino or Kutuzov won it, but the Russian people won this battle, because the "spirit" of the Russian army was immeasurably higher than that of the French.
