Note 10 — Chapter VIII

Tolstoy commenced this work in 1863 by The Decembrists, of which he wrote three fragments. But he saw that the foundations of his plan were not sufficiently assured, and going further back, to the period of the Napoleonic Wars, he wrote War and Peace. Publication was commenced in the Rousski Viestnik of January, 1865; the sixth volume was completed in the autumn of 1869. Then Tolstoy ascended the stream of history; and he conceived the plan of an epic romance dealing with Peter the Great; then of another, Mirovitch, dealing with the rule of the Empresses of the eighteenth century and their favourites. He worked at it from 1870 to 1873, surrounded with documents, and writing the first drafts of various portions; but his realistic scruples made him renounce the project: he was conscious that he could never succeed in resuscitating the spirit of those distant periods in a sufficiently truthful fashion. Later, in January, 1876, he conceived the idea of another romance of the period of Nikolas I.; then he eagerly returned to the Decembrists, collecting the evidence of survivors and visiting the scenes of the action. In 1878 he wrote to his aunt, Countess A. A. Tolstoy: "This work is so important to me! You cannot imagine how much it means to me; it is as much to me as your faith is to you. I would say even more." (Correspondence) But in proportion as he plumbed the subject he grew away from it; his heart was in it no longer. As early as April, 1879, he wrote to Fet: "The Decembrists? If I were thinking of it, if I were to write it, I should flatter myself with the hope that the very atmosphere of my mind would be insupportable to those who fire upon men for the good of humanity." (Ibid.) At this period of his life the religious crisis had set in; he was about to burn his ancient idols.