Newspaper reports about the Polish uprising of 1863 in the perception of L.N. Tolstoy

Abstract

During the Polish uprising of 1863, L.N. Tolstoy expressed a desire to go to war again, as is known from his letter to A.A. Fet dated May 1-3 and from S.A. Tolstoy's diary dated September 22, 1863. As a result, the very military-political context of 1863, in which this desire was formed, remained practically unexplored. It remained unclear which Polish or pan-European events could actualize Tolstoy's desire in May and September 1863, why this desire is now escalating, then, obviously, retreating. In this article we will fill this gap by recreating the foreign policy context of 1863 on the basis of newspaper reports about the Polish uprising in April-May and September. In the early 60s, the Polish uprising entailed the intervention of Western powers in the conflict. This led to a diplomatic struggle between the Russian Empire and the Western powers. The focus of our attention will be publications from the "Moscow Vedomosti" edited by M.N. Katkov, which Tolstoy most likely followed. The main method of research is comparative and cultural-historical. Using these methods, we analyze in detail what exactly happened in May and September 1863 in the theater of operations in Poland and in the diplomatic spheres of Europe. Recreating the international situation of that time, we will prove that Tolstoy's desire to "take the sword off the rusty nail", about which he wrote to Fet, arose at the most critical moments for European diplomacy, when a new war between Russia and a coalition of Western states (like the Patriotic or Crimean) seemed almost inevitable. And the disappearance of his desire is connected with the elimination of this military threat. This proves that at the time of the beginning of work on "War and Peace", the writer was still quite closely following the modern political agenda, although he refused to participate in the war, the thought of it did not pass without a trace and left an imprint on his artistic imagination. Tolstoy then offered the reader of War and Peace a generally peaceful view of relations between peoples.