Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy's epic novel "War and Peace" is the standard of Russian classical literature. The novel took about seven years to write; work on this titanic work requires a separate story.

L.N. Tolstoy began writing “War and Peace” in the fall of 1863. Literary scholars and historians studying War and Peace rely primarily on the 5,200-page manuscript stored in the archive. The history of the creation of the novel can be very clearly traced from the pages of the manuscript. Interesting fact is that Tolstoy initially conceived a novel about a participant in the Decembrist uprising who returned home from exile. According to the author, the plot began in 1856. Then L.N. Tolstoy rethought his original plan and decided to write about 1825 - about the Decembrist uprising. The author did not stop there either, and he sent his hero to the years Patriotic War 1812, but since this war is directly connected with 1805, the story began from there, from the hero’s youth.

The original idea was to capture 50 years of the country's history, dividing them into three periods:

• Beginning of the century (wars with Napoleon, coming of age of the future Decembrists);
• 20s (the main event was the Decembrist uprising);
• Mid-century (defeat in Crimean War, sudden death Nicholas I, amnesty for participants in the uprising Senate Square and returning them to their native lands).

While writing his masterpiece, L.N. Tolstoy decided to shorten it and leave only the first period, slightly touching on the second at the end of the work. Several times the author gave up writing the novel, whole year he wrote only the beginning; about 15 versions of the plot have been preserved in Tolstoy’s archive. When writing, the author used history books, memoirs, archival documents– the author wanted to be precise down to the smallest detail, which cannot but command respect. L.N. Tolstoy visited the Borodino field, he stayed there for two days. Finished writing my great work the author in 1869, spending a huge amount of effort on this.

One of the main goals of the writer was not to depict the struggle of two emperors, but to show the liberation struggle of the people, and he succeeded in this. Tolstoy very skillfully described social life Petersburg and military operations, which are very closely interconnected. There has not been, and is not, a work like “War and Peace” in our literature. This work is a huge layer of Russian (and not only) classical literature.

The history of the creation of Tolstoy's novel War and Peace

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is the world's greatest writer, who with his works could reveal the essence of Rus', the way of life and completely open his feelings to everything that was happening at that moment.

One of such works in which you can feel what is happening and understand what the author saw is the work “War and Peace”. This novel belongs to the works of a global scale, depicting very subtly the character and feelings of its heroes. Thanks to many years of effort, this is a work of art. Conquered the world. The main goal the novel, were the events that took place during the invasion of Napoleon’s army, which began their journey across the lands of Europe and reached the Russian lands. These events reflected on the feelings of Lev Nikolaevich, and he expressed this in his letters, which he sent with concern to his relatives in other cities.

His literary skills made it possible to colorfully display in his work all the details, like personal life heroes of all these events, and to capture the scale of the grandiose battle. Thanks to his ability to express thoughts beautifully, the reader is completely immersed in the thick of current events. Lev Nikolaevich began narrating the novel in 1805, when a wave of emotions washed over him about the suffering of the Russian people. The author himself felt the pain and torment that the Russian people felt.

The main character of the novel turned out to be Platon Karataev, on whom hopes were pinned. In it, the author reflected all the willpower and endurance of the people. Main in a feminine way, became Natalya Rostova. She became a symbol of femininity and kindness in the novel. No less important heroes of this wonderful work were Kutuzov and Napoleon himself. These two heroes display greatness and courage, thoughtful military tactics, and general human qualities, each of them. The author mentioned absolutely all classes of society, which brought the work under discussion among world literary critics. Few of them understood that the work was written in real events, in disputes and discussions, there was a full discussion of the work of Lev Nikolaevich. Very highlight in the novel it became the murder of Vereshchagin.

The first part of the novel proceeded strictly in theoretical order. There was no strong spiritual impression in it, and there was no reversal of all events. Here, the author was not verbose and did not embellish the details. He just did, general descriptions for readers of this work. At first glance, the novel could not interest the reader, but having reached the second part of the novel, the author introduces a clearly expressed heroine, Natalya, which completely enlivens the actions and the entire plot.

Natalya herself had a casual and simple appearance, which was combined with family life and vanity. Later, the author already draws the girl as a socialite, with the manners of a noble lady. She has a large circle of friends and admirers, which in the work elevates her to more high status in society.

Ultimately, this great and grandiose work, in its content and design, became a historical narrative of both personal life different people with different classes, and military battles and fate ordinary people who took part in this battle.

Since ancient times, the book has been a symbol of knowledge, knowledge and education. It is not surprising, because it was in these written sources that sometimes truly precious and useful information was contained.

The novel "War and Peace" is the highest achievement of Tolstoy's artistic genius. The book required enormous efforts from the author, commensurate with its merits.

Typically, the boundaries of Tolstoy’s work on a novel are defined as seven years: 1863–1869. This version has become so established that it has already migrated to the pages of school textbooks. However, it is unfair, confuses the essence of the matter, and gives rise to many misconceptions. Tolstoy himself, in the article “A few words about the book “War and Peace”,” wrote about the five years of creation of the novel. This was in 1868, and he did not imagine then that completing the text would require another two years of the same “incessant and exceptional labor under best conditions life."

The fact is that in 1862, an 18-year-old girl, Sonechka Bers, the daughter of a doctor in the court department, became Countess Tolstoy. Her husband was 34 years old at the time; he finally entered the quiet family backwater. Work became more fun. However, firstly, it began much earlier, and secondly, an important circumstance was forgotten: Tolstoy never continued it continuously, without frequent stops, especially in its early stages. This was the case with Anna Karenina, Resurrection, and other plans. The writer had to interrupt his work to think about the future development of the plot and, as he said, to prevent the “scaffolding” of the building of the work under construction from collapsing. In addition, Tolstoy himself claimed, while working on the supposed preface to the novel, that back in 1856 he began writing a story about a Decembrist returning with his family from exile to Russia. This is a very important recognition in many ways. Peculiarity creative process Tolstoy was that, despite the exceptional power of imagination, he always proceeded from fact. This, figuratively speaking, was the “stove” from which the dance of his imagination began, and then in the process of work he went far away from this fact, creating a fictitious plot and fictitious persons. The story of the Decembrist, which Tolstoy remembered, was the plan for the future novel “The Decembrists” (its manuscripts were preserved and were published later). 1856 was the year of the Decembrist amnesty, when the few surviving participants in the movement who had not taken firm roots in Siberia flocked to their homeland. Tolstoy met some of them, and his Pierre Labazov, the hero of the original story, then the novel, had real prototypes.

It was necessary to find out the history of these people, and Tolstoy moved on to 1825, to the “era of delusions and misfortunes” of his hero; then it turned out to be necessary to turn to the hero’s youth, and it coincided with the “glorious era of 1812 for Russia.” But for the third time, Tolstoy abandoned what he had started, because he believed that the character of the people and the Russian army “should have been expressed even more clearly in the era of failures and defeats.” The action of the novel "War and Peace" begins in 1805, when in skirmishes with Napoleon, Russian troops suffered severe losses until 1807 with the fatal Battle of Austerlitz.

Thus, the start of work on “War and Peace” was not 1863, but 1856. We can talk about the existence of a coherent plan: a story about the Decembrist, which turned into the novels “The Decembrists” and “War and Peace.” There is also evidence that Tolstoy worked on this gradually changing plan in 1860, 1861 and even in 1862-1863. In addition, the famous name itself - "War and Peace" - arose very late. It only appeared in a typesetting manuscript in 1856! Until that time, there were several titles of the novel: “Three Times”, “All’s Well That Ends Well”, “From 1805 to 1814”, “One Thousand Eight Hundred and Five” (this was not the title of the entire novel, but only its beginning, which appeared in the magazine version in "Russian Bulletin" 1865–1866). The title of the novel written by Tolstoy was originally as follows: “War and Mip.” Meaning of the word "mgr" completely different from the “world” that now structures the whole artistic system based on the principle of contrast with the concept of "war". "Mip" is a community, people, community, working life masses of people. In one of the drafts of the novel, the author used the proverb: “The world reaps, but the army feeds,” i.e. the contrast was intended in a different way than it is now in the final, canonical text.

So, Tolstoy went into the past from modernity in order to return to it again, but at the end of a new novel, the contours of which became increasingly clearer for him. The writer was going to end with where he once began his work. “My task,” he notes in one of the rough drafts of the unpublished preface, “is to describe the lives and conflicts of certain individuals during the period from 1805 to 1856.”

“War and Peace,” thus, with all its majestic scope, which even now amazes the imagination, is only part of a grandiose and not fully realized plan. In the cursory epilogue of the novel, omitting events after 1812, Tolstoy sketched scenes from the early 1820s, i.e. close eve of the Decembrist uprising. However, even in this form, this block of novel, not fully processed, with many events and persons, serves as a grandiose example of great creative will and great work. It didn’t take the author seven years, but twice as long – 14 years! In this case, everything falls into place: never will a writer have to experience such a powerful creative impulse into the unattainable, into the unattainable. Although even now the author of this brilliant novel is almost like God, because he made a titanic effort: he led his heroes from 1805 through several eras of Russian life, sketched the approach to the December catastrophe of 1825 and recreated the events of 1856 in advance (in the romance "Decembrists", written long before work on "War and Peace" was completed). To fully implement the plan, a series of novels would be required, like Balzac's "Human Comedy".

The ridiculous version of working for seven years appeared because textual critics who studied the manuscripts of the novel were let down by... textual criticism. They decided that since there were no surviving manuscripts reflecting the work of 1856 and subsequent years, then there was no work! The well-known idea of ​​Tolstoy’s famous letter to Fet turned out to be forgotten, where the paradoxical nature of his work was especially clearly expressed: “I don’t write anything, but I work painfully... It’s terribly difficult to think over millions of possible combinations in order to choose from 1/1000000.”

However, the surviving drafts in many ways exceed the volume of War and Peace. At the same time, the manuscripts, this true chronicle of Tolstoy’s hard work, destroy some of the legends associated with his work on the famous novel, for example, the also firmly rooted version that Tolstoy seven times rewrote War and Peace. It is clear that even if the author seven spans in the forehead, he would not be able to do this. But our admiration for Tolstoy is endless, and since they say this about him, it means it is so, because he can do anything. Famous in the past Soviet writer and the functionary, now completely forgotten, lecturing his readers, says: “Just think, Tolstoy rewrote War and Peace seven times,” and after thinking a little, adds, “by hand!” He apparently understands that this is hardly possible, because every time in such cases there is a need for many inevitable amendments, revisions of the text at every step and in almost every phrase, a chain reaction of more and more changes that have no end. In a word, it is difficult for a writer not to write, but rather to rewrite what has been written. If this had happened to Tolstoy, he would have spent his entire life writing one novel without ever finishing it.

That is why it is appropriate to say here that the appearance of “War and Peace” is a consequence not only of the exceptional intensity of Tolstoy’s artistic genius, but also of the fact that he was truly brilliant in organizing his work. The writer left for himself only creative element at work. He never rewrote, but wrote from a whitewashed text, i.e. from a copy taken from an autograph or from a manuscript that had already been copied more than once before, and then the copy was again at hand, and the energetic creative search. Tolstoy firmly adhered to the rule he learned while working on Childhood: “We must forever discard the idea of ​​writing without corrections.”

It is known how much effort it cost Tolstoy to carry out preliminary work, as he said, “deep plowing of the field” for a new work. A lot of concise characteristics of the characters were sketched out, the plot and its individual episodes were carefully thought out.

Even a solid system of rubrics was determined by which the idea of ​​a particular character in War and Peace was formed: “property” (status), “social”, “love”, “poetic”, “mental”, “family”.

But now the plans seem to have been finally thought out, the heroes begin to show themselves directly in action, in clashes with each other, detailed descriptions of scenes, episodes, chapters appear - and everything to which so much effort was devoted collapses before the eyes of the author, and he is already pays little attention to pre-drawn notes and plans, following the logic of the characters emerging in his mind. That is why Tolstoy often noted with surprise that his heroes act as they tend to act, and not as he wants, and that, in fact, it is best when plans are developed by them, and not by the author.

How complex the process of creating an image was for Tolstoy is evidenced by the story of the appearance of one of the central figures in the novel - Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, told by Tolstoy himself. "IN Battle of Austerlitz“,” the writer recalled, “I needed a brilliant young man to be killed; in the further course of my novel I only needed the old man Bolkonsky and his daughter; but since it’s awkward to describe a person who has nothing to do with the novel, I decided to make a brilliant young man son of old Bolkonsky. Then he interested me, a role in the further course of the novel presented itself for him, and I pardoned him, only by severely wounding him instead of death.”

This story, however, does not exhaust the entire history of the creation of the image, which for Tolstoy himself, even in May 1865, when the letter was written, was still largely unclear. In one of the notes, Prince Andrei turned into a “rubbish russian”; in other drafts, the theme of a quarrel between father and son over Prince Andrei’s marriage to the “insignificant daughter of a landowner” was developed in detail; a fragment of the manuscript was preserved, where he challenged Ippolit Kuragin, who persistently pursued him, to a duel wife, "little princess". The main difficulty was that the character of the hero was devoid of development, the play of light and shadows, the idea of ​​an invariably cold, prim, arrogant aristocratic dandy was created, whose habits were ridiculed by those around him. Even after publishing “The Year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Five” in the magazine “Russian Messenger,” Tolstoy wrote to Fet in November 1866 that Prince Andrei was “monotonous, boring and only un homme com me il faut,” and that the character of the hero “is worth and doesn't move." Only in the autumn of 1866, when work on the novel was finishing, the image of Prince Andrei was finally determined, and the previous interpretation of the hero was discarded. Returning to the magazine text “One Thousand Eight Hundred and Five” in 1867, when preparing the first edition of “War and Peace,” Tolstoy gradually erased the features of contemptuous negligence, coldness, swagger and laziness that had previously distinguished Prince Andrei. The author already sees his hero differently. But what a long way to go! And this is only one character, and there are more than 500 of them in the novel.

It often happened that in the process of work, some of the characters turned out to be rethought, as was the case, for example, with Ippolit Kuragin (in the early drafts Ivan Kuragin), in which original plan there was not even a shadow of those traits of physical and mental degeneration that this character would later be endowed with - a representative, in the words of Prince Andrei, of “court lackeys and idiots.”

The image of Pierre Bezukhov is far from the final version, the same should be said about Anna Pavlovna Scherer, Princess Drubetskaya, who aroused the obvious sympathy of the author at the beginning of work on the novel. Even Natasha Rostova in the first drafts sometimes bears little resemblance to the “sorceress” who will eventually appear on the pages of the book. In numerous sketches with endless authorial amendments, the work looms before us greatest artist world literature.

One of the most fundamental and highly artistic prose works in history Russian literature is the epic novel War and Peace. The high ideological and compositional perfection of the work is the fruit of many years of work. The history of the creation of Tolstoy's War and Peace reflects the hard work on the novel from 1863 to 1870.

Interest in the theme of the Decembrists

The work is based on the Patriotic War of 1812, its reflection on the destinies of people, the awakening of moral and patriotic feelings, and the spiritual unity of the Russian people. However, before starting to create a story about the Patriotic War, the author changed his plans many times. For many years he was concerned about the topic of the Decembrists, their role in the development of the state and the outcome of the uprising.

Tolstoy decided to write a work reflecting the story of the Decembrist, who returned in 1856 after a 30-year exile. According to Tolstoy, the beginning of the story should have begun in 1856. Later, the author decides to begin his story in 1825 in order to show what reasons led the hero to exile. But having plunged into the abyss historical events, the author felt the need to depict not only the fate of one hero, but the Decembrist uprising itself, its origins.

Original concept

The work was conceived as a story, and later as a novel “The Decembrists,” on which he worked in 1860–1861. Over time, the author is not satisfied with only the events of 1825 and comes to the understanding that it is necessary to reveal in the work earlier historical events that formed the wave patriotic movement and the awakening of civic consciousness in Russia. But the author did not stop there either, understanding the inextricable connection between the events of 1812 and their origins, which date back to 1805. Thus, the idea of ​​creative recreation of artistic and historical reality is planned by the author into a half-century large-scale picture reflecting events from 1805 to the 1850s.

“Three Times” in the history of Russia

The author called this idea of ​​​​recreating historical reality “Three Times”. The first of them was supposed to reflect the historical realities of the 19th century, personifying the conditions for the formation of the young Decembrists. The next time is the 1820s - the moment of formation of civic activity and the moral position of the Decembrists. The culmination of this historical period, according to Tolstoy, was a direct description of the Decembrist uprising, its defeat and consequences. The third period was conceived by the author as a recreation of the reality of the 50s, marked by the return of the Decembrists from exile under an amnesty due to the death of Nicholas I. The third part was supposed to personify the time of the onset of long-awaited changes in the political atmosphere of Russia.

Such a global plan of the author, which consists in depicting a very wide time period filled with numerous and significant historical events, required enormous effort and effort from the writer. artistic forces. The work, in the finale of which the return of Pierre Bezukhov and Natasha Rostova from exile was planned, did not fit into the framework of not only a traditional historical story, but even a novel. Understanding this and realizing the importance of a detailed recreation of the pictures of the War of 1812 and its starting points, Lev Nikolaevich decides to narrow the historical scope of the planned work.

The final version of the artistic concept

In the author’s final plan, the extreme time point turns out to be the 20s of the 19th century, which the reader learns about only in the prologue, while the main events of the work coincide with historical reality from 1805 to 1812. Despite the fact that the author decided to convey the essence of the historical era more briefly, the book could not fit into any of the traditional historical genres. The work, combining detailed descriptions of all aspects of war and peacetime, resulted in a four-volume epic novel,

Working on a novel

Despite the fact that the author has established himself with the final version artistic design, working on the work was not easy. Over the seven-year period of its creation, the author repeatedly abandoned work on the novel and returned to it again. The peculiarities of the work are evidenced by numerous manuscripts of the work, preserved in the writer’s archive, numbering more than five thousand pages. It is through them that the history of the creation of the novel “War and Peace” can be traced.

The archive contained 15 draft versions of the novel, which indicates the author’s utmost responsibility for working on the work, high degree introspection and criticism. Realizing the importance of the topic, Tolstoy wanted to be as close as possible to true historical facts, philosophical and moral views of society, and civic sentiments of the first quarter of the 19th century. To write the novel “War and Peace,” the writer had to study many memoirs of eyewitnesses of the war, historical documents and scientific works, and personal letters. “When I write history, I like to be faithful to reality down to the smallest detail,” Tolstoy asserted. As a result, it turned out that the writer unwittingly collected a whole collection of books dedicated to the events of 1812.

In addition to working on historical sources, for a reliable depiction of the events of the war, the author visited the sites of military battles. It was these trips that formed the basis for the unique landscape sketches that transform the novel from a historical chronicle into a highly artistic work of literature.

The title of the work chosen by the author represents main idea. The world that lies in spiritual harmony and in the absence of military action in native land, can make a person truly happy. L.N. Tolstoy, who at the time of creating the work wrote: “The artist’s goal is not to undeniably resolve the issue, but to make one love life in its countless, never-exhaustible manifestations,” undoubtedly succeeded in realizing his ideological plan.

Work test

The sixties of the 20th century were the time when Tolstoy worked on the novel “War and Peace” (1864-1869). These years were a period of great public excitement and intense confrontation that unfolded around the peasant issue. The reform of 1861 on the abolition of serfdom did not essentially resolve the issue of the peasant and his relationship with the master.

The large number of uprisings with which the peasantry responded to the reform clearly showed the discontent and indignation caused by the reform among the peasant masses. The problem of the “man” was still at the center public life. Journalism and fiction they raised the problems of the peasantry and the future of Russia with particular acuteness and trepidation.

Novels and stories are becoming saturated with journalism, and the genre of topical essays is becoming popular. Interest in history is growing: the most important issues of the era are considered in the light of the historical past; Public lectures on history are becoming commonplace. Tolstoy intended to collide two eras: the era of the first revolutionary movement in Russia - the era of the Decembrists, and the sixties - the era of revolutionary democrats.

In the summer of 1863, Tolstoy began writing a story about the Decembrist who returned from Siberia in 1856. But he soon abandoned what he had started and moved on to 1825, the era of his hero’s “delusions and misfortunes.” Thus, moving away from 1856 to 1805, Tolstoy intends to “guide not one, but many... heroes and heroines through the historical events of 1805, 1807,1812, 1825 and 1856.” Tolstoy did not realize this grandiose plan. Having first focused on the events of 1805-1814, Tolstoy intensively collects and studies the materials he needs.

At the same time, he pays special attention to the memories and letters of people of that time, which would give him the opportunity to show the social atmosphere of the era and home life his heroes. At this stage of the writer’s work, the “world” was the focus of his attention, and historical events were supposed to serve only as stages and a background for the unfolding of the life of noble families. Two years later, Tolstoy comes to the intention of expanding the boundaries of the life he depicts. He had an idea historical novel. Historical figures and social life now came to the fore in the novel.

Their depiction required great knowledge of the era and understanding of the causes of major historical events early XIX century. To acquire this knowledge, the writer studies Russian and foreign works about the war of 1812. Having decided at first to show only landowner Russia and the nobility, Tolstoy in the final edition of the novel painted an extensive picture of the life and mentality of landowner and peasant Russia.

In 1862, Tolstoy began to create a work that was vast in size and at the same time greatest in artistic merit - the novel War and Peace. He worked on it in the most favorable external conditions, living almost forever in Yasnaya Polyana, in a calm and cheerful mood, supported by a happy family life. Only under such conditions was it possible to create such a colossal work, with a huge mass of large and small figures, outlined with the same vitality. Tolstoy worked on his work slowly, redoing and rewriting several times. Starting your work,

Tolstoy thoroughly became acquainted with the era that he wanted to depict: he reread a lot of historical and other scientific works concerning the era, notes and memoirs of his contemporaries, etc. He also borrowed something from family memories: he depicted, for example, his mother in the person of the princess Marya Bolkonskaya, the character of Nikolai Rostov gave the features of his father, and in Prince Andrei he gave a portrait of one of his cousins. In addition, Tolstoy also used various private, unpublished documents: letters, diaries, notes entrusted to him for the study of the era.

Based on this varied material, he created his enormous picture of Russian life in one of the most important points her stories. This picture amazes with its breadth of size and richness of content. If Belinsky once called “Eugene Onegin” “an encyclopedia of Russian life,” then with even greater right this name fits Tolstoy’s work.

The history of the novel

"War and Peace"

L. N. Tolstoy worked on the novel "War and Peace" from 1863 to 1869. Creating a large-scale historical and artistic canvas required enormous efforts from the writer. Thus, in 1869, in the drafts of the “Epilogue,” Lev Nikolaevich recalled the “painful and joyful perseverance and excitement” he experienced in the process of work.

The manuscripts of “War and Peace” testify to how one of the world’s largest works was created: over 5,200 finely written sheets have been preserved in the writer’s archive. From them you can trace the entire history of the creation of the novel.

The idea for War and Peace arose even earlier, when in 1856 Tolstoy began writing a novel about a Decembrist returning from Siberian exile to Russia. At the beginning of 1861, the author reads the first chapters of the new novel “The Decembrists” to I. S. Turgenev.

The novel began in 1856, shortly before the abolition of serfdom. But then the writer revised his plan and moved on to 1825 - the era of the Decembrist uprising. But soon the writer abandoned this beginning and decided to show the youth of his hero, which coincided with the formidable and glorious times of the Patriotic War of 1812. But Tolstoy did not stop there either, and since the war of 1812 was inextricably linked with 1805, he began his entire work from that time. Having moved the beginning of the action of his novel half a century into the depths of history, Tolstoy decided to take not one, but many heroes through the most important events for Russia.

The year of birth of the novel "War and Peace" is considered to be 1863.

During the first year of work, Tolstoy worked hard on the beginning of the novel. According to the author himself, many times he started and gave up writing his book, losing and gaining hope of expressing in it everything that he wanted to express. Fifteen versions of the beginning of the novel have been preserved in the writer’s archive. The concept of the work was based on Tolstoy’s deep interest in history, philosophical and socio-political issues. The work was created in an atmosphere of boiling passions around the main issue of that era - about the role of the people in the history of the country, about their destinies. While working on the novel, Tolstoy sought to find the answer to these questions.

Contrary to the writer’s hopes for the speedy birth of his literary brainchild, the first chapters of the novel began to appear in print only in 1867. And for the next two years, work on it continued.

They were not yet entitled “War and Peace”; moreover, they were subsequently subjected to cruel editing by the author.

Tolstoy called his plan to capture the half-century history of the country in artistic form “Three Times.” The first time is the beginning of the century, its first decade and a half, the time of the youth of the first Decembrists who went through the Patriotic War of 1812. The second time is the 20s with their main event - the uprising of December 14, 1825. The third time is the 50s, the unsuccessful end of the Crimean War for the Russian army, the sudden death of Nicholas I, the amnesty of the Decembrists, their return from exile and the time of waiting for changes in the life of Russia.

However, in the process of working on the work, the writer narrowed the scope of his initial plan and focused on the first period, touching only on the beginning of the second period in the epilogue of the novel. But even in this form, the concept of the work remained global in scope and required the writer to exert all his strength. At the beginning of his work, Tolstoy realized that the usual framework of the novel and historical story would not be able to accommodate all the richness of the content he had planned, and began to persistently look for a new one. art form, he wanted to create a literary work of a completely unusual type. And he succeeded. "War and Peace", according to L.N. Tolstoy is not a novel, not a poem, not a historical chronicle, it is an epic novel, a new genre of prose, which after Tolstoy became widespread in Russian and world literature.

Tolstoy abandoned the first version of the title of the novel - “Three Times”, since in this case the narrative should have begun with the Patriotic War of 1812. Another option - "One thousand eight hundred and five" - ​​also did not correspond to the author's intention. In 1866, a new title for the novel appeared: “All's well that ends well,” corresponding to the happy ending of the work. However, this option did not reflect the scale of the action in any way, and was also rejected by the author

Finally, at the end of 1867, the final title “War and Peace” appeared. In the manuscript, the word "peace" was written with the letter "i". " Dictionary Great Russian language" V. I. Dalya broadly explains the word "mir": "Mir is the universe; one of the lands of the universe; our land, globe, light; all people, the whole world, the human race; community, society of peasants; gathering." Without a doubt, this is precisely the symbolic understanding of this word that Tolstoy had in mind when he included it in the title.

The last volume of War and Peace was published in December 1869, thirteen years after the idea of ​​a work about the exiled Decembrist arose.

The second edition of the novel was published with minor copyright edits in 1868 - 1869, virtually simultaneously with the release of the first. In the third edition of War and Peace, published in 1873, the writer made significant changes. Some of his “military, historical and philosophical reflections,” according to the author, were taken outside the novel and included in the “Articles on the Campaign of 1812.” In the same publication, L.N. Tolstoy translated most of the French text into Russian. On this occasion, he said that “I sometimes felt sorry for the destruction of French.” The need for translation was caused by the bewilderment that arose among readers due to the excessive abundance of French speech. In the next edition of the novel, the previous six volumes were reduced to four.

In 1886, the last, fifth lifetime edition of War and Peace was published, which became a standard. In it, the writer restored the text of the novel according to the edition of 1868-1869, returning historical and philosophical considerations and the French text to it. The final volume of the novel was four volumes.

In order to truthfully describe the events of the Patriotic War of 1812, the writer studied a huge amount of materials: books, historical documents, memoirs, letters. “When I write history,” Tolstoy pointed out in the article “A few words about the book “War and Peace,” “I like to be faithful to reality down to the smallest detail.” While working on the work, he collected a whole library of books about the events of 1812. In the books of Russian and foreign historians, he found neither a truthful description of events nor a fair assessment of historical figures. Some of them uncontrollably praised Alexander I, considering him the conqueror of Napoleon, others exalted Napoleon, considering him invincible.

Having rejected all the works of historians who depicted the war of 1812 as a war of two emperors, Tolstoy set himself the goal of truthfully covering the events great era and showed the liberation war waged by the Russian people against foreign invaders. From the books of Russian and foreign historians, Tolstoy borrowed only genuine historical documents: orders, instructions, dispositions, battle plans, letters, etc. He included in the text of the novel letters from Alexander I and Napoleon, which the Russian and French emperors exchanged before the start of the war of 1812; the disposition of the Battle of Austerlitz, developed by General Weyrother, as well as the disposition of the Battle of Borodino, compiled by Napoleon. The chapters of the work also include letters from Kutuzov, which serve as confirmation of the characteristics given to the field marshal by the author.

When creating the novel, Tolstoy used the memoirs of his contemporaries and participants in the Patriotic War of 1812. Thus, from “Notes about 1812 by Sergei Glinka, the first warrior of the Moscow militia,” the writer borrowed materials for scenes depicting Moscow during the war; in “The Works of Denis Vasilyevich Davydov” Tolstoy found materials that served as the basis for the partisan scenes of “War and Peace”; In the Notes of Alexei Petrovich Ermolov, the writer found a lot of important information about the actions of Russian troops during their foreign campaigns of 1805–1806. Tolstoy also discovered a lot of valuable information in the notes of V.A. Perovsky about his time in captivity by the French, and in S. Zhikharev’s diary “Notes of a Contemporary from 1805 to 1819,” on the basis of which the novel describes Moscow life at that time.

While working on the work, Tolstoy also used materials from newspapers and magazines from the era of the Patriotic War of 1812. He spent a lot of time in the manuscript department of the Rumyantsev Museum and in the archives of the palace department, where he carefully studied unpublished documents (orders and instructions, dispatches and reports, Masonic manuscripts and letters from historical figures). Here he became acquainted with the letters of the maid of honor of the imperial palace M.A. Volkova to V.A. Lanskaya, letters from General F.P. Uvarov and other persons. In letters not intended for publication, the writer found precious details depicting the life and characters of his contemporaries in 1812.

Tolstoy stayed in Borodino for two days. Having traveled around the battlefield, he wrote to his wife: “I am very pleased, very pleased with my trip... If only God grants health and peace, and I will write this battle of Borodino, which has never happened before." Between the manuscripts of War and Peace there is a piece of paper with notes made by Tolstoy while he was on the Borodino field. “The distance is visible for 25 miles,” he wrote, sketching the horizon line and noting where the villages of Borodino, Gorki, Psarevo, Semenovskoye, Tatarinovo are located. On this sheet he noted the movement of the sun during the battle. While working on the work, Tolstoy developed these brief notes into unique pictures of the Borodino battle, full of movement, colors and sounds.

More than a century has passed since the first part of the novel appeared in print, and War and Peace is invariably read by people of all ages - from young men to old people.