Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times - Hardcover

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Andrew D. Kaufman, internationally recognized Russian literature scholar at the University of Virginia, is the author of Understanding Tolstoy and coauthor of Russian for Dummies. An award-winning teacher of Russian language, literature, and culture, he is a featured Tolstoy expert on Oprah.com and is frequently invited to discuss Russian literature and culture on national and international television and radio programs.

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Give War and Peace a Chance

1

PLANS

The mind’s game of chess goes on independently of life, and life of it.

—Tolstoy’s diary, March 1863

As a nineteen-year-old nobleman and proprietor of a vast estate, Tolstoy had big plans for his future. He listed them in his diary:

(1) To study the whole course of law necessary for my final examination at the university. (2) To study practical medicine, and some theoretical medicine. (3) To study languages: French, Russian, German, English, Italian and Latin. (4) To study agriculture, both theoretical and practical. (5) To study history, geography and statistics. (6) To study mathematics, the grammar school course. (7) To write a dissertation. (8) To attain an average degree of perfection in music and painting. (9) To write down rules. (10) To acquire some knowledge of the natural sciences. (11) To write essays on all the subjects I shall study.

And, in order to keep himself on track, he created an extensive list of rules that he’d intended to follow religiously. Here are just a few of the headings taken from his diary:

RULES FOR DEVELOPING THE PHYSICAL WILL

RULES FOR DEVELOPING THE EMOTIONAL WILL

RULES FOR DEVELOPING THE RATIONAL WILL

RULES FOR DEVELOPING THE MEMORY

RULES FOR DEVELOPING ACTIVITY

RULES FOR DEVELOPING THE INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES

RULES FOR DEVELOPING LOFTY FEELINGS AND ELIMINATING BASE ONES, OR, TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY, RULES FOR DEVELOPING THE FEELING OF LOVE AND ELIMINATING THE FEELING OF SELF-LOVE

RULES FOR DEVELOPING SOUND JUDGEMENT



A Man with a Plan: Tolstoy as a student in 1849.

Oh, and Tolstoy had one more rule: “The first rule which I prescribe is as follows: No. 1. Carry out everything you have resolved. . . . I haven’t carried out this rule.” Nor was he exaggerating. Within five years of writing down that list of intentions he had the following accomplishments to show for it:

• Briefly attended Kazan University, but withdrew without graduating

• Moved to Petersburg, planned to enroll in the university and enter the civil service, but having become distracted by cards, women, and booze, did neither

• Failed as a farmer, estate manager, and agricultural reformer

• Opened a school for peasant children on his estate with no success

• Gambled away tens of thousands of rubles (in today’s money, around a half million dollars) at the card table

• Lost the house in which he was born in a game of cards

• Failed at every romantic relationship he attempted

• Visited a brothel with his brother, and wept from shame when it came time to settle the bill

• Was hospitalized on multiple occasions for venereal disease

• Exhibited increasing signs of severe hypochondria as well as pathological fear of death

• Lost his faith in God, regained it, and then lost it again

True, Tolstoy had been promoted to ensign for distinction in action in the Caucasus. And, interestingly, he’d enjoyed success in one pursuit he hadn’t thought to include in his list of youthful ambitions: the writing of fiction. These were, however, among the very few bright spots on an otherwise dismal CV. Up to that point he’d failed at pretty much everything he tried, forcing him to come to a sobering conclusion: “It is easier to write ten volumes of philosophy than to put a single precept into practice.” Not that this prevented him from trying. Future generations of readers, moreover, may be thankful that Tolstoy’s life wasn’t exactly turning out as he’d planned, for while he was amassing an impressive list of failures, he was also acquiring wisdom essential for the creation of War and Peace.

“The mind’s game of chess goes on independently of life, and life of it,” Tolstoy wrote in his diary in 1863. So it is with his characters’ every intellectual conviction and rational intention. Whether in the ballroom or on the battlefield, as soon as they come into contact with real life, their ideas and plans disintegrate like so much meteor dust. The characters who come to recognize how little they know about what will happen, Tolstoy suggests, are actually the ones who know the most.

Toward the novel’s beginning, the night before the battle of Austerlitz in 1805, a council of high-powered generals and military strategists prepare for the upcoming battle—analyzing troop movements, estimating the size of Napoleon’s army, evaluating strategies. With all that planning you’d think victory was a sure thing, right? Actually, the Russians and their allies, the Austrians, will get trounced, and not in spite of all their good planning, but precisely because of it.

Hovering self-assuredly over a great map spread out before the council, the Austrian general Weyrother intones for an hour, in nauseating detail (and in German), his written “disposition for the attack on the enemy’s position behind Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz, 20 November, 1805” (261). Alas, unlike the map so beautifully illuminated by candlelight the evening before, the actual battlefield the next morning is shrouded in a fog that prevents the attacking army from seeing where in the hell they’re going! As Tolstoy would write later in the novel about another battle, “[a]s in all dispositions, everything was beautifully thought out, and, as with all dispositions, not a single column arrived where it was supposed to at the appointed time” (994).

By the time the Russians do arrive at Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz, the place where they’d intended to begin the action, they are no longer the attackers, but the ones being attacked. It is a contingency Weyrother’s plan hasn’t provided for. Nor did it include a provision for the vexation felt by the Russian troops toward their supposed allies, those “muddleheaded” Germans, or the ill-humor felt by the commanders and superior officers, who are understandably frustrated that the action being undertaken bears no relation to what they’d proposed at the council of war. Dispirited to have arrived late, unable to see, and finding themselves now under assault, they are entirely unprepared to cheer up their troops.

Considering all of the crucial details that Weyrother’s brilliant battle plan has left out, Commander in Chief Mikhail Kutuzov’s decision to catch some shut-eye during the war council appears in retrospect a pretty good use of his time. “ ‘There’s nothing more important before a battle than a good night’s sleep,’ ” Kutuzov murmurs to the chattering strategists at the military council, upon waking for a moment (264). For he knows what Tolstoy knows: nothing in battle ever goes according to plan—so just get some rest. That way when the unforeseen cannonballs are whizzing toward you in the morning, you may at least respond quickly and, with any luck, get out of their way.

History, Tolstoy reminds us, proved Kutuzov right. Though the Russians lost the battle of Austerlitz, they ultimately won the war against Napoleon in 1812, and...