It is a study of history and historians, a unique portrayal of Russian society, a philosophical tract, and an attempt at Russian mythmaking. Tolstoy presented history using the techniques of fiction and analyzed that history within the text itself. He then attached a purely philosophical (and much-criticized) epilogue on the nature of history, power, and free will. The book is often described as a prose epic, a designation that links it to the great verse epics of the ancient Greek poet Homer and those of Virgil, his Roman counterpart.
Tolstoy began writing the book in 1863. His initial idea was to write about a group of revolutionaries called the Decembrists, who tried to prevent Nicholas I from taking the Russian throne in 1825, hoping to install a constitutional monarchy instead. As Tolstoy examined the history of this group, following the threads of their movement took him back in time to the events of the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon was a French emperor who conquered most of Europe in the early 1800s, but whose failed invasion of Russia initiated his downfall.
Tolstoy published War and Peace over four years, from 1865 to 1869. It was an immediate success, in part because of the Russians' patriotism and their resultant resistance to Napoleon's massive invasion fifty years earlier.
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