About Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy and his work "War and Peace" /last part/

Tolstoy has been able to perceive the specific interests, psychology and the worldview of each social category, each person individually, and to find the appropriate means for their individual and unique artistic transformation. He pays extraordinary attention to mass psychology, especially when painting large battles (at Austerlitz, at Borodino), or other massive scenes, such as the departure of Moscow from the Russians, or later the escape of the French from her.

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Everywhere, there is a strong belief that there is indissoluble spiritual bondage and unity between people, especially at decisive moments when the spiritual activity increases, or when some common thought or ideal gathers within itself the disjointed and insufficiently directed and clear thoughts of individuals. For Tolstoy, the human mass is not a gray and no-limb crowd. For him the human mass is already a collective. The united by a thought, from a spirit of people according to Tolstoy, is the true creator of history. Throughout the novel-epic, the controversy goes with those bourgeois and bourgeois historians and writers who magnify the personalities as creators and proponents of historical events. Tolstoy strongly rejects allegations that history is the work of kings and generals. It is the work of the masses, and when it is written scientifically or artistically, the people must be her protagonist. At the core of his thought, Tolstoy is right. But he completely ignores the importance of historical figures who become great because they have understood the real interests of the people and have put all their strength in their service. Great personalities are aware of what is often long wandering messy and unclear in the minds of ordinary people.

From the point of view of his philosophy of history, Tolstoy does not acknowledge the merits of the historical figures described in "War and Peace", with the exception of Kutuzov, whom he considers to be spiritually completely merged with the people's and soldiers' masses. In fact, a historical role, positive or negative, is also played by other individuals. In clarifying the historical events and their philosophical meaning, Tolstoy also intervenes in some religious moments. The spirit of the people that guides the course of events, he says, is ultimately determined by the world spirit or by God. Tolstoy exaggerates in places the importance of chance as a factor in historical events. These false conceptions of the writer find more place in the theoretical retreat on the pages of the novel than in the art of its own. They are due to the idealistic and religious views of Tolstoy, but they do not diminish the grandeur and importance of his work or his personality in general. "War and Peace" is not an ordinary family novel, it is not a love novel. This large-scale work presents the fullness of Russian society and examines in depth the subject of Russia's fate. Discovers the qualities of the Russian national character and the Russian national character. It concerns the question of the debt to the fatherland. Tolstoy does not neglect any corner of the vast Russian society. He responds everywhere, so "War and Peace" is an epic in which Russian society is depicted in time and space.

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