Tolstoy

Igor Zakharov, the publisher in question, drew on authoritative editions to compile the version of the novel he published in 2000,⁸³ but he was pilloried for his popularising efforts on Russian television, and also by literary scholars anxious to preserve the integrity of Tolstoy’s masterpiece. Zakharov was certainly disingenuous in claiming he was bringing to readers the ‘real Lev Tolstoy’ and the ‘real War and Peace’ as Tolstoy translated the French material in the novel into Russian later, for the 1873 edition.⁸⁴ Nevertheless this ‘edition’, which appeared in English translation in 2007,⁸⁵ is helpful in throwing into greater relief the impact which Tolstoy’s collaboration with Pyotr Bartenev had on the future evolution of War and Peace, which has everything to do with the greater number of historical sources he now consulted. Tolstoy once commented that turning to Bartenev with a research query was like turning on the tap of a samovar.⁸⁶

Tolstoy drew up a contract with Bartenev and a Moscow printer to publish his novel in June 1867. He was now at last calling it War and Peace, perhaps under the influence of Proudhon’s 1861 tract of the same name, which had appeared in Russian translation in 1864. He was perhaps also acting under the influence of Herzen, who had written three articles under this title in 1859.⁸⁷ Tolstoy and Bartenev agreed to an initial print run of 4,800 copies of six separate volumes, corresponding to the six parts the novel was then divided into, with a planned price of eight roubles. Fifteen per cent of the proceeds were to go to Bartenev for copy-editing the book and dealing with the censor, and twenty were to go to booksellers.⁸⁸ Sonya’s father was clearly still keen to be involved, and he turned out to be very useful when Tolstoy experienced unexpected delays in receiving the first proofs. In the summer of 1867 Andrey Estafevich fired off regular bulletins to Yasnaya Polyana to report on what was going on in Moscow, telling Tolstoy when Bartenev was coming back from his dacha, what he said upon his return and so on and so forth. Tolstoy, meanwhile, realised that the first half of volume one was much longer than the second. While he started pruning the first part, which he believed improved it immeasurably, he requested Bartenev to take out as many indentations as possible in the first half and increase them in the second. This created some very long paragraphs.⁸⁹

While Tolstoy was proofreading the early chapters for the publication of this new edition he was, of course, still writing and researching later parts of his novel. In September 1867 he did some research of a different kind. He was getting near to the crucial Battle of Borodino in his narrative, and in order to deepen his understanding of the movements of the 250,000 soldiers who took part in it, he decided to go and inspect the battleground, located near the town of Mozhaysk, about seventy miles west of Moscow. The Battle of Borodino was the decisive confrontation between Napoleon’s Grande Armée and the Russian forces led by General kutuzov in 1812, and accordingly it occupies a pivotal position in Russian history, and indeed in War and Peace, coming roughly at the halfway mark in the novel. The battle took place during the course of one long day, but it occupies twenty chapters in Tolstoy’s epic narrative, including discursive commentary from the author himself. Combining the lofty perspectives of both the historical figures of Napoleon and kutuzov with the ground-level viewpoint of fictional characters like Prince Andrey, in charge of a regiment, and Pierre, a civilian who unwittingly becomes caught up in the maelstrom, Tolstoy’s artistic tactics are equal to the most sophisticated and effective of military strategies, while his campaign against professional historians no less aggressive.