I had been meaning to read this for a while, but had been hesitant to pick it up because of the commitment. However, it did not disappoint. I haven’t read much Russian fiction as of yet, but have long been influenced by Bakunin’s and Kropotkin’s anarchist writings. Even in reading Lenin and Trotsky there is something strangely spectacular and mystifying about the grandeur of their visions. Perhaps peculiar to the Russian psyche is an unresolved tension between West and East that appeals to me. Added to that milieu, in Tolstoy, are the tensions of his age, in which the aristocracy was giving way to the twin modernities of science and capitalism. It was an age of change in which serfs were becoming peasants and merchants were replacing the nobility in wealth and power. You could sense the end of the Romanovs in the air. Tolstoy’s anarchist leanings (or flirtations) have also naturally intrigued me. What better time than the present, given current world events, to try to get a better sense of the Russian mind. Tolstoy weaves together world history, the backdrop of the Crimean War, a picture of the landed gentry and the peasantry, industrialization and modernity, Moscow and St. Petersburg life, all with a clever and entertaining story. At parts the novel reads like a soap opera, while at other times Tolstoy riffs on the philosophical and religious speculations of the day. He moralizes without preaching and always makes sure the characters and plot reign supreme.
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