they, and only they, are what life, in the last analysis, is made of;
hence the routine political historians are talking shallow nonsense.
Throughout the 5os Tolstoy was obsessed by the desire to write
a historical novel, one of his principal aims being to contrast the 'real'
texture of life, both of individuals and communities, with the 'unreal'
picture presented by historians. Again and again in the pages of War
and Peace we get a sharp juxtaposition of 'reality' -what 'really'
occurred-with the distorting medium through which it will later be
presented in the official accounts offered to the public, and indeed be
recollected by the actors themselves-the original memories having
now been touched up by their own treacherous (inevitably treacherous
because automatically rationalising and formalising) minds. Tolstoy is
perpetually placing the heroes of War and Peace in situations where
this becomes particularly evident.
Nikolay Rostov at the battle of Austerlitz sees the great soldier,
Prince Bagration, riding up with his suite towards the village of
Schongraben, whence the enemy is advancing; neither he nor his
staff, nor the officers who gallop up to him with messages, nor anyone
else is, or can be, aware of what exactly is happening, nor where, nor
why; nor is the chaos of the battle in any way made dearer either in
fact or in the minds of the Russian officers by the appearance of
Bagration. Nevertheless his arrival puts heart into his subordinates;
his courage, his calm, his mere presence create the illusion of which
he is himself the first victim, namely, that what is happening is somehow connected with his skill, his plans, that it is his authority that is in some way directing the course of the battle; and this, in its turn,
has a marked effect on the general morale all round him. The dispatches
which will duly be written later will inevitably ascribe every act and
event on the Russian side to him and his dispositions; the credit or
discredit, the victory or the defeat, will belong to him, although it is
clear to everyone that he will have had less to do with the conduct
and outcome of the battle than the humble, unknown soldiers who
do at least perform whatever actual fighting is done, i.e. shoot at each
other, wound, kill, advance, retreat, and so on.
Prince Andrey, too, knows this, most dearly at Borodino, where
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R U S S IAN T H I N K E R S
h e i s mortally wounded. H e begins to understand the truth earlier,
during the period when he is making efforts to meet the 'important'
persons who seem to be guiding the destinies of Russia; he then
gradually becomes convinced that Alexander's principal adviser, the
famous reformer Speransky, and his friends, and indeed Alexander
himself, are systematically deluding themselves when they suppose
their activities, their words, memoranda, rescripts, resolutions, laws
etc. to be the motive factors which cause historical change and determine the destinies of men and nations; whereas in fact they are nothing: only so much self-important milling ia the void. And so
Tolstoy arrives at one of his celebrated paradoxes: the higher soldiers
or statesmen are in the pyramid of authority, the farther they must be
from its base, which consists of those ordinary men and women whose
lives are the actual stuff of history; and, consequently, the smaller
the effect of the words and acts of such remote personages, despite all
their theoretical authority, upon that history. In a famous passage
dealing with the state of Moscow in 1 8 1 2 Tolstoy observes that from
the heroic achievements of Russia after the burning of Moscow one
might infer that its inhabitants were absorbed entirely in acts of selfsacrifice-in saving their country, or in lamenting its destruction-in heroism, martyrdom, despair etc., but that in fact this was not so.
People were preoccupied by personal interests. Those who went about
their ordinary business without feeling heroic emotions or thinking
that they were actors upon the well-lighted stage of history were the
most useful to their country and community, while those who tried
to grasp the general course of events and wanted to take part in
history, those who performed acts of incredible self-sacrifice or
heroism, and participated in great events, were the most useless.1
Worst of all, in Tolstoy's eyes, were those unceasing talkers who
accused one another of the kind of thing 'for which no one could in
fact have been responsible'. And this because 'nowhere is the commandment not to taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge so clearly written as in the courSe of history. Only unconscious activity bears
fruit, and the individual who plays a part in historical events never
understands their significance. If he attempts to understand them, he
is struck with sterility.'1 To try to 'understand' anything by rational
means is to make sure of failure. Pierre Bezukhov wanders about,
1 W11r 1111J Pt11u, vol. 4, part 1, chapter 4·
I ibid.
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T H E H E D G E H O G AND T H E FOX
'lost' on the battlefield of Borodino, and looks for something which
he imagines as a kind of set piece; a battle as depicted by the historians
or the painters. But he finds only the ordinary confusion of individual
human beings haphazardly attending to this or that human want.l
That, at any rate, is concrete, uncontaminated by theories and abstractions; and Pierre is therefore closer to the truth about the course of events-at least as seen by men-than those who believe them to obey
a discoverable set of laws or rules. Pierre sees only a succession of
'accidents' whose origins and consequences are, by and large, untraceable and unpredictable; only loosely strung groups of events forming
· an ever varying pattern, following no discernible order. Any claim
to perceive patterns susceptible to 'scientific' formulas must be
mendacious.
Tolstoy's bitterest taunts, his most corrosive irony, are reserved for
those who pose as official specialists in managing human affairs, in
this case the western military theorists, a General Pfuel, or Generals
Bennigsen and Paulucci, who are all shown talking equal nonsense
at the Council of Orissa, whether they defend a given strategic or
tactical theory or oppose it; these men must be impostors since no
theories can possibly fit the immense variety of possible human
behaviour, the vast multiplicity of minute, undiscoverable causes and
effects which form that interplay of men and nature which history
purports to record. Those who affect to be able to contract this infinite
multiplicity within their 'scientific' laws must be either deliberate
charlatans, or blind leaders of the blind. The harshest judgment is
accordingly reserved for the master theorist himself, the great Napoleon,
who acts upon, and has hypnotised others into believing, the assumption that he understands and controls events by his superior intellect, or by flashes of intuition, or by otherwise succeeding in answering
correctly the problems posed by history. The greater the claim the