It has been charged against War and Peace that it neglects to show the evil side of serfdom: the brutality, the cruelty, the immurement of women, the flogging of grown-up sons, the torture of serf girls by their mistresses, etc. But Tolstoy studied the period closely from letters, diaries and traditions, especially from the records of his own grandparents, the Tolstoys and the Volkónskys; and he says he did not find horrors worse than are to be found now, or at any other period. People then loved and envied, and sought for truth and virtue, and were swayed by passions, as now. Their mental and moral life was just as complex, and in the upper circles it was sometimes even more refined than now.... No doubt the greater remoteness of the higher circle from the other classes gave a special character to the period, but not the character of brutal violence.
Tolstoy is in sympathy with that time, sees the poetry of it, and knows how much of goodness, courage, kindliness and high aspiration existed among those politically unenfranchised serf-owners. With our modern, Western desire to organise society efficiently, he never has sympathised. The state of a man's mind has always been to him more important than the conditions of his life, and it seems to him as though there were some antithesis between the two: as though, if you organised your society, it would cease to think truly or feel deeply. We in the West are beginning to believe the opposite, and to suspect that to leave society unorganised or disorganised has an inevitable tendency to blunt our minds and souls. But not the less is it valuable to have so wonderful a picture of Russia as it was at the commencement of the nineteenth century, painted by one who sees it as the best Russians of that period saw it themselves.
Of the history part of the book, it should be noted that Tolstoy says: 'Wherever in my novel historic characters speak or act, I have not invented, but have made use of materials which during my work have accumulated till they form a whole library.'
He told me he considered the defect of the book, besides its size, to be the intrusion of a long philosophic argument into the story. He still holds the opinions he held when he wrote it, as to the influence or impotence of 'great' men, as well as all that he then said about destiny and free will; but he now realises that his novel would have been a better novel without these abstract disquisitions.
The characters in the book are not strictly copied from life, but in the main Tolstoy's father's family are represented by the Rostófs and his mother's by the Bolkónskys. In the magazine article already referred to, Tolstoy says that only two minor characters are taken from life, and 'all the other characters are entirely invented, and I have not even for them any definite prototypes in tradition or in reality.' But when he said that, he was defending himself from the charge of having copied actual people who had played a part in the society of the time, and he clearly overstates his case, for to a considerable extent the characters in the novel correspond to the people mentioned in the following list:
| Characters in War and Peace: | Members of the Tolstoy or Volkónsky Families: |
| The old Prince N. Bolkónsky. | Tolstoy's grandfather, Prince N. Volkónsky. |
| His daughter, Princess Marie N. Bolkónsky. | Tolstoy's mother, the Princess Marie N. Volkónsky. |
| The old Count Ilyá A. Rostóf. | Tolstoy's grandfather, Count Ilyá A. Tolstoy. |
| Count Nicholas I. Rostóf. | Tolstoy's father. Count Nicholas I. Tolstoy. |
| Countess Natálya Rostóf. | Tatiána Behrs, Tolstoy's youngest sister-in-law. |
| Sónya. | Tatiána A. Érgolsky. |
| Dólohof is made up of a combination of Count TheodoreTolstoy, a famous traveller, with R. I. Dórohof, anotorious dare-devil of Alexander I.'s days. | |
Many even of the minor characters, such as Mlle. Bourienne, and Ivánushka the woman pilgrim in man's clothes, are copied more or less closely from people connected with the Volkónskys' home at Yásnaya Polyána.
Tolstoy's sympathies and antipathies in this novel: his appreciation of affection, kindliness, simplicity and truthfulness, and his dislike of what is cruel, pompous, complicated or false, are the same as in his earlier stories, but mellowed and wiser; they are also the same as in his later didactic writings, though there they are formulated, dogmatic and rigid.
The novel covers nearly the whole range of Tolstoy's experience of life: in it we have the aristocracy and the peasants; town life and country life; the Commanders, officers and privates of the army, in action and out of action; the diplomatists and courtiers; flirtation, love, balls, hunting, and a reform movement which is all talk. What Tolstoy does not show, is what he did not know—the middle-class world: the world of merchants, manufacturers, engineers and men of business. Of course these in Russia a hundred years ago, played a comparatively small part; and there was practically no political activity such as that of our County Councils, Borough Councils and Parliament. But that all this was absent from Tolstoy's mind, and that his outlook on life was confined to the aristocracy which consumed and the peasantry which produced, will, in the sequel, help us to understand the social teaching to which he ultimately came. His brother-in-law tells us that Leo Tolstoy 'has in my presence confessed to being both proud and vain. He was a rampant aristocrat, and though he always loved the country folk, he loved the aristocracy still more. To the middle class he was antipathetic. When, after his failures in early life, he became widely famous as a writer, he used to admit that it gave him great pleasure and intense happiness. In his own words, he was pleased to feel that he was both a writer and a noble.'
'When he heard of any of his former comrades or acquaintances receiving important appointments, his comments reminded one of those of Souvórof