Hadji Murad (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By Leo Tolstoy and Gitta Hammarberg

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. With the resumption of Russia's military action in Chechnya in the 1990s, Hadji Murad gains new relevance, and anyone following global terrorism today will find Tolstoy's description of the nineteenth-century war all too familiar. The work provides a wealth of information about the Caucasus and on one of the most colorful figures of the nineteenth-century Russo-Caucasian war, the Avar chieftan, Hadji Maurad. Changing allegiances, inter-ethnic tensions, raids on villages, inaccurately reported war casualties, grieving mothers, and even the gruesome beheadings described so vividly in Hadji Murad still occur. Rarely are they described in prose as powerful as Tolstoy's.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Mar 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781411468214

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Russian author of novels, short stories, novellas, plays, and philosophical essays. He was born into an aristocratic family and served as an officer in the Russian military during the Crimean War before embarking on a career as a writer and activist. Tolstoy’s experience in war, combined with his interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, led him to devote his life and work to the cause of pacifism. In addition to such fictional works as War and Peace (1869), Anna Karenina (1877), and The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), Tolstoy wrote The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893), a philosophical treatise on nonviolent resistance which had a profound impact on Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. He is regarded today not only as one of the greatest writers of all time, but as a gifted and passionate political figure and public intellectual whose work transcends Russian history and literature alike.

Book preview

HADJI MURÁD

LEO TOLSTOY

TRANSLATED BY AYLMER MAUDE

INTRODUCTION BY GITTA HAMMARBERG

Introduction and Suggested Reading © 2005 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

This 2012 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Barnes & Noble, Inc.

122 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10011

ISBN: 978-1-4114-6821-4

INTRODUCTION

LEO TOLSTOY’S HADJI MURÁD IS AN EXCITING ACCOUNT OF WAR, vengeance, treason, murder, exotic locales, luxurious indulgence, and political plotting. When Tolstoy wrote the novel, which was to be his last, he was the world’s most influential pacifist and had rejected a life of luxury. Although Hadji Murád is only about one-tenth the length of War and Peace, it went through eleven manuscript versions, nearly 2,200 draft pages, and took Tolstoy about a decade to write. Yet, for all its un-Tolstoyan brevity, the novel manages to raise some very Tolstoyan questions about life and death, war and peace, government, social class, religion, and family values. It also provides a wealth of ethnographic information about a fascinating region, the Caucasus. Hadji Murád, an Avar chieftain, was one of the most colorful figures in the nineteenth-century Russo-Caucasian war. Tolstoy, who participated in this war, was in Tiflis in 1851 during Hadji Murád’s surrender and described him then as the leading dare-devil and ‘brave’ in all Circassia.¹ The novel begins with Hadji Murád’s desertion to the Russian side and the rest of the book relates his amazing reasons and the bloody aftermath. With the resumption of Russia’s military action in Chechnya in the 1990s, Hadji Murád gains new relevance, and anyone following global terrorism today will find Tolstoy’s description of the nineteenth-century war all too familiar. Changing allegiances, inter-ethnic tensions, raids on villages, inaccurately reported war casualties, grieving mothers, and even the gruesome beheadings described so vividly in Hadji Murád still occur. Rarely are they described in prose as powerful as Tolstoy’s.

In 1828, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born into the Russian nobility and the wealth and privilege that entailed. In 1910, at age eighty-two, he denounced his wealth and privilege and set out on the road as the poor wanderer he would have preferred to be—only to die. For most of his life he vacillated between the privileged lifestyle of a nobleman and regrets about enjoying it at a time when the majority of Russians suffered poverty and almost half of them were serfs. He lived most of his life on the family estate he was to inherit, Yasnaya Polyana, south of Moscow, with periods spent in Kazan, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, and travel abroad. Despite being a dropout from Kazan and St. Petersburg universities, where he studied oriental languages and law, Tolstoy was a voracious reader and self-educator, a talented linguist, a promising musician, a committed pedagogue who soon after quitting his studies did a stint in a low-level civil-service job and opened schools for serf children at Yasnaya Polyana—all of which alternated with carousing and gambling. His start as a writer came in 1851, when he accompanied his brother to the Caucasus and spent four years in the army, first as a volunteer-observer, later as a commissioned officer. His conduct on the battlefield was outstanding and in an 1851 letter (the same letter in which he first mentions Hadji Murád) he vowed to assist with the aid of a cannon in destroying the predatory and turbulent Asiatics.² Often, however, he was less enthusiastic and already in 1853 he wrote in his diary that war is so ugly and unjust that anybody who wages it has to stifle the voice of his conscience.³ Though his Caucasian activities were a far cry from his pious preoccupations while writing Hadji Murád almost fifty years later, his feelings about the war were ambivalent from the beginning.

War and peace were constant themes in Tolstoy’s fiction. His first published works on peaceful gentry life, including Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1851-1857), were written in tandem with works inspired by the Southern wars: The Raid (1853), The Woodfelling (1855), The Cossacks (1852-1863), and Sevastopol Sketches (1855-56). The Prisoner of the Caucasus was published about twenty years later. By the time he officially resigned from the army in 1856 he was already a famous author and moved in the highest literary circles in St. Petersburg and Moscow. But concerts, operas, intellectual circles, literary salons, celebrity, and even his fellow writers soon lost their appeal for Tolstoy and he turned from literature to more useful work: managing Yasnaya Polyana and resuming his pedagogy, as well as traveling abroad to study educational practices—a pattern that was to repeat itself. In 1862, he married Sophia Behrs and embarked on a rich family life, which was to include thirteen children and numerous relatives and friends. Between writing his most famous novels, War and Peace (first published in 1865-69) and Anna Karenina (the first complete edition appeared in 1878), he again abandoned literature in favor of pedagogy and wrote numerous works on religion, philosophy, education, and social issues.

Tolstoy’s bouts with depression and a general existential agony came to a head in the mid-1870s and he went through a profound moral crisis or rebirth, which he described in Confession (1882) and What I Believe. These were followed by a series of religious works, including A Harmony and Translation of the Gospels, also known as The Gospels in Brief. Tolstoy rethought his literary credo and published it as What Is Art? (1898). Together with Greek tragedies and the works of Shakespeare, Dante, Beethoven, and Michelangelo, he denounced his own masterpieces as elitist and hence bad art. Some of his subsequent works were indeed written in the simpler style he now advocated (readings for children, Father Sergius, Master and Man), and he wrote plays for popular audiences, The Power of Darkness (1886) being his only success on stage. However, he also produced canonical works, which were artistically akin to his earlier fiction, notably The Kreutzer Sonata (1889), Resurrection (1899), and Hadji Murád (which he worked on intermittently from 1896 to 1905). As Edward Wasiolek quips, Tolstoy could only be a great writer even though he was the only writer trying not to be.⁴ But he felt guilty for working on Hadji Murád, confessing his enjoyment in a whisper, and referring to it as indulgence and foolishness.⁵ As if anticipating obstacles to publication, Tolstoy did not release Hadji Murád for publication during his lifetime and when it appeared posthumously in 1912, it was heavily censored, especially the chapters about the tsar and the Russian raid on Sado’s village. Uncensored editions appeared only after the 1917 Revolution.

Tolstoy had become a thorn in the side of both state and church and many of his works were censored, forbidden, and often initially published abroad. By 1901, when the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated Tolstoy, Yasnaya Polyana had become a literary and religious pilgrimage site, and many Tolstoyan colonies had been founded (and persecuted) in Russia and abroad. The old curmudgeon had denounced industrialism, money, private property, landownership, institutionalized laws, governments, and the church. He was in lively contact with intellectuals worldwide, engaged in physical labor, was a committed vegetarian, gave up smoking and drinking, did gymnastics, played tennis, rode horses, and learned to ride a bike and cobble boots. He continued his voracious reading and language study—he learned Hebrew and even took a stab at Dutch—as well as his religious ruminations, teaching, philanthropy, and famine relief work. He polemicized against imperialist wars and criticized autocracy. In 1905, he protested against Jewish pogroms and revolutionary violence—and this was also the last year he tinkered with Hadji Murád.

By this time Tolstoy’s family was managing his estates and publications, while he had relinquished his rights to recent works. Domestic squabbles grew in frequency as he became increasingly idiosyncratic and his moral convictions won out over wealth and privilege. By and large he managed to live the hard-working life of a peasant, even though family considerations kept him at his estate and his status as the sage at Yasnaya Polyana assured a constant dialogue with leading writers, painters, thinkers, and Tolstoyans. Wandering off to leave all that behind, he caught pneumonia and died. But even in death Tolstoy could not escape fame, attracting crowds and creating an unintentional sensation at the Astapovo railroad station, which has since been renamed in his honor.

Hadji Murád is set in the Caucasus, a mountainous region between the Black Sea and the Caspian and between three historical empires—Turkey, Persia, and Russia—each of which has coveted the region for its strategic location, natural riches, and beauty. When Tolstoy headed for the Caucasus, the Russian empire had been expanding southwards for three centuries. The conquest reached a particularly intense stage in the drawn-out holy war in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, led on the Caucasian side by charismatic imams who united diverse ethnic groups against Russia under the banner of Islam. The defeat in 1859 of Shamil, the most legendary imam, ended this stage of the conquest. The events Tolstoy describes in Hadji Murád took place during this last stage when some Caucasians had gone over to the Russian side, while others continued to fight. Hadji Murád is caught in a double bind between two unpalatable despots: Shamil and Nicholas I, both of whom (but especially the tsar) Tolstoy ruthlessly castigates. Hadji Murád had crossed over to the Russians in his youth in retaliation for the murder of the Avar khans by a rival. While in the Russian camp, Hadji Murád was again betrayed by a fellow Caucasian (allied with Russia) and he returned to the Caucasian side, now united under Shamil. We meet him, en route to a second surrender to the Russians, after his grudges against Shamil proved stronger than his ethnic loyalty. His family remained under Shamil’s control, and by the end of the novel he again leaves the Russian camp to save them. He is attacked by a combination of Russians and allied Caucasians and beheaded, ironically, by one of his own. Through Hadji Murád’s stormy encounters with mountaineers and Russians, Tolstoy shows the complex interactions between Russians and North Caucasians and the evils of war and imperialist power plays.

Hadji Murád lends symmetry to Tolstoy’s oeuvre: He ended his literary career where he began it—in the Southern war zone. Ironically, he returned to the theme of war when he was most intensely preoccupied with pacifism and non-resistance to evil. This is expressed most forcefully in The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), which influenced Mahatma Gandhi, who corresponded with Tolstoy. His initial war enthusiasm had by now given way to sharply anti-war feelings. Hadji Murád combines a theme from his youth with ideas from his old age.

Hadji Murád is a historical novel. Tolstoy did meticulous background research—down to details like Hadji Murád’s limp—but used his eighty-odd sources selectively and mingled historical data with fiction, much as he had in War and Peace. The Caucasian leaders (Shamil, Hadji Murád) and the Russian leaders (Nicholas I, courtiers, local dignitaries, the Vorontsóvs, Lóris-Mélikov) are real historical personages and Tolstoy even used their actual documents. Other people and events are transformed to fit Tolstoy’s artistic needs. Sado, for example, is loosely based on Tolstoy’s Chechen blood brother, Sado Miserbiev, who sided with the Russians. Their specific gifts to each other are recreated in the novel as the dagger and watch exchange between Hadji Murád and the Vorontsóvs. Even the nickname of Vorontsóv’s son, Bulka, recycles the name of Tolstoy’s black bulldog who had accompanied him to the Caucasus. Other elements (e.g., the Avdéev family) are entirely fictional, yet plausible.

Tolstoy uses three main devices to structure his ideas: reversed chronology, comparison, and framing. The novel is a contemplation of life in light of inevitable death, a theme Tolstoy had long grappled with, most famously in Three Deaths and The Death of Ivan Ilych. In Hadji Murád he uses reversed chronology to feature his hero’s death before we see his life, and he shows his death three times: first metaphorically as a dying thistle, next as a decapitated head (echoing his own first ritual head shaving and that of his son, Yusuf, in a masterful evocation of generational cycles), and finally his death on the battlefield. Tolstoy invites us to contemplate the hero’s life in all its excitement, since his death, when finally revealed in detail, comes as no surprise.

Hadji Murád’s life is defined by the company he keeps and the events he participates in, especially the war. Tolstoy evaluates the imperial conquest and the main actors on both sides by using a second structuring device: multiple comparisons—between Russians and Caucasians, as well as comparisons by class within each camp. His comparisons are echoed throughout the text. The married Nicholas’ tryst with a young girl is compared to Shamil’s futile pursuit of his youngest wife, and both rulers are easily flattered and deceived. Within the Russian camp, Nicholas’ womanizing is echoed by the Uhlan officer who has his own amorous tête-à-tête in the tsar’s box, by Poltoratsky’s flirtation with Vorontsóv’s wife, Butler’s romancing Mary Dmitrievna, and Avdéev’s wife’s affair with the shopkeeper. Among the lower classes, the Avdéev serf family echoes the simple villager Sado and his family, and the cameo appearance of Nazarov provides a fainter echo of these suffering families. This intricate pattern of comparisons and ripple effects, extending potentially forever, yields a condensed novel, yet creates the same kind of saturation reality that characterizes Tolstoy’s long novels. This structure gives the novel depth and conveys the sense that all of life is interconnected and part of a larger, still relevant, reality. Tolstoy avoids the kind of direct sermonizing that some readers have found objectionable in, for instance, the disquisitions on history in War and Peace. Through an intense accumulation of comparisons and echoes, Tolstoy voices his scorn for the upper classes on both sides and his sympathies for the (by no means entirely virtuous) lower classes, who lead simpler, more moral and productive lives and bear the brunt of the suffering. The echoes reiterate facets of the same message and make it all the more compelling. The Russians as a whole are depicted more negatively than the Caucasians and Tolstoy shows how the southward-marching empire disrupts the lives of both colonizers and colonized, how power corrupts, and how rulers make poor role models. He depicts good actions and cruelties on both sides and thus seems objective.

Tolstoy is less eager than before to show any positive aspect of war—there is little bravery on the Russian side and though the Caucasians, especially Hadji Murád, are valiant fighters, they do not gain from their prowess. In his earlier Caucasian stories Tolstoy praised unostentatious bravery and admired the submissive soldier in contrast to the wannabe oriental he mercilessly parodied. He did not directly speak up against war or the powers that wage war. In Hadji Murád he condemns the cruelty, sensuality, and hypocrisy of the Russian government in no uncertain terms, and implicitly confesses his own complicity and guilt. By showing the evils of war and the destructive effects of conscription, he voices his pacifist belief in non-resistance to evil.

Perhaps the most obvious device Tolstoy uses is the traditional frame story (about the narrator picking flowers), which introduces the core story and hints at many of its themes. The plot of the frame story is simple: A man wanders across newly plowed fields between hay and rye harvests. He picks a bouquet of wildflowers and spots a weed: a beautiful Tatar thistle. He tries to add it to his bouquet, but finds the prickly plant impossible to pick. He (and the plow before him) has mangled the thistle, and he discards it. He remembers a Caucasian episode of years ago. The frame resumes at the conclusion of the novel and the botanical plot is laid

Reviews for Hadji Murad (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

[ben_a_11 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The master.

[greeniezona · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I picked up this book at the library thinking, "Hey, Tolstoy! A book from the 1800s!" (for book bingo). But it's not! But, as a trade-off for being one of Tolstoy's last books, it does serve as my second book by an author over the age of 65. Which I'll happily take.

This novella about a Chechen rebel is strangely relevant again. The things that I knew about Chechnya, present-day or in the time of this story, sum to approximately zero, so I spent a lot of time in the first dozen pages thumbing back and forth to the handy glossary in the back, which turned out to be a lot about clothes.

The deeper you get into this story, the more its brilliance is revealed. All the characterizations of all the people involved in Murat's story, all of them acting along their personal, selfish interests. Whether or not their actions end up benefitting Murat, or Russia, or Chechnya, they are all, in the end, perfectly self-centered. Yet the story is somehow empathetic with each of the characters, even as it makes clear the sometimes disastrous effects of their selfishness.

Such an absorbing read. A wonderful book.

[ctpress_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hadji Murad is a story difficult to interprete. Tolstoy seems to be taking shots at Czarism and Russian imperialism holding up for us with admiration Hadji Murad, a muslim and a Chechen repel commander. Bound by honor and duty and reverence for his religion. Yet there’s brutality on each side - maybe more a disillusionment attitude towards war of any kind seems to be preeminent in Tolstoy’s retelling of this story - a mixture of history and fiction, facts and myth.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Hadji Murat is a remembered story: "an old story from the Caucasus, part of which I saw, part of which I heard from witnesses, and part of which I imagined to myself." The story depicts the life of soldiers, of nobility, of family life, of the politics of war and the larger-than-life character of Hadji Murat.Hadji Murat was a real Chechen leader and Tolstoy probably first heard of him while he was serving in the Caucasus, based on his own letters home to his brother. Although it is historical the story reads like a myth in spite of its realism. The primary theme is Murat's struggle to resist his enemies while remaining faithful to himself and his family. But there are many other ideas that can be found in the novel, such as determinism, the struggle between a Christian Russia and Muslim Chechnya, and the classic West versus East theme.The story is told in short chapters or vignettes that ultimately introduce dozens of characters from all levels of Russian and Chechen society. The first two pages of the story are like an overture that depicts the discovery of a thistle bloom in the field that will not "submit" and that reminds the narrator of his memory of the hero, Hadji Murat. The story as remembered begins with Murat and two of his followers fleeing from Shamil, the commander of the Caucasian separatists, who is at war with the Russians. They find refuge at the house of Sado, a loyal supporter of Murat. However, the local people learn of his presence and chase him out of the village.Murat decides to make contact with the Russians and sends his aide to them eliciting a promise to meet Murat. Arriving at the fortress of Vozdvizhenskaya, he joins the Russian forces, in hopes of drawing their support in order to overthrow Shamil and save his family. Before his arrival, a small skirmish occurs with some Chechens outside the fortress, and Petrukha Avdeyev, a young Russian soldier bleeds out in a local military hospital after being shot. There is a chapter-length aside about the childless Petrukha who volunteered as a conscript in place of his brother who had a family of his own. Petrukha's father regrets this because he was a dutiful worker compared to his complacent brother.While at Vozdvizhenskaya, Murat befriends Prince Semyon Vorontsov, his wife Maria and his son, and wins over the good will of the soldiers stationed there. They are at once in awe of his physique and reputation, and enjoy his company and find him honest and upright. The Vorontsovs give him a present of a watch which fascinates him.On the fifth day of Murat's stay, the governor-general's adjutant, Mikhail Loris-Melikov arrives with orders to write down Murat's story, and through this some of his history is told. He was born in the village of Tselmes and early on became close to the local khans due to his mother being the royal family's wet nurse. When he was fifteen some followers of Muridism came into his village calling for a holy war (ghazavat) against Russia. Murat declines at first but after a learned man is sent to explain how it will be run, he tentatively agrees. However, in their first confrontation, Shamil—then a lieutenant for the Muslims hostile to the Russians—embarrasses Murat when he goes to speak with the leader Gamzat. Gamzat eventually launches an attack on the capital of Khunzakh and kills the pro-Russian khans, taking control of this part of Dagestan. The slaughter of the khans throws Hadji and his brother against Gamzat, and they eventually succeed in tricking and killing him, causing his followers to flee. Unfortunately, Murat's brother is killed in the attempt and Shamil replaces Gazmat as leader. He calls on Murat to join his struggle, but Murat refuses because the blood of his brother and the khans are on Shamil.Once Murat has joined the Russians, who are aware of his position and bargaining ability, they find him the perfect tool for getting to Shamil. However, Vorontsov's plans are ruined by the War Minister, Chernyshov. A rival prince who is jealous of him, and Murat has to remain in the fortress because the Tsar is told he is possibly a spy. The story digresses into a depiction of the Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, which reveals his lethargic and bitter nature and his egotistical complacency, as well as his contempt towards women, his brother-in-law, Frederick William IV of Prussia, and Russian students.The Tsar orders an attack on the Chechens and Murat's remains in the fortress. Meanwhile, Murat's mother, wife and eldest son Yusuf, whom Shamil hold captive, are moved to a more defensible location. Realizing his position (neither trusted by the Russians to lead an army against Shamil, nor able to return to Shamil because he will be killed), Hadji Murat decides to flee the fortress to gather men to save his family.At this point the narrative jumps forward in time, to the arrival of a group of soldiers at the fortress bearing Murat's severed head. While Maria Dimitriyevna—the companion of one of the officers and a friend of Murat—comments on the cruelty of men during times of war calling them 'butchers', the soldiers then tell the story of Murat's death. The nightingales, which stopped singing during the battle, begin again and the narrator ends by recalling the thistle that had been the catalyst for his original remembrance of Hadji Murat.The story is filled with realistic details that bring the family of Murat and his comrades to life. His original decision to go over to the Russian side, while understandable, ultimately puts Murat in an untenable position. A scene between his son and Shamil, who his holding him captive, is both poignant and terrifying when Shamil tells the boy that he will slice off his head. The two cultures seem to be both very different yet similar. For example, the Tsar demonstrates condescension and enmity for his peers but this is also true of Shamil. The literary style of Tolstoy where every detail is important and the structure is held together by the mystical union of man and nature makes this short novel a major masterpiece.

[dekedastardly · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hadji Murat feels like an epic read in spite of its relative brevity.The story contains portents for our modern era especially in understanding historic grievances between the Caucasus and Russia, Islam and Christianity, which have survived the Communist Soviet era. This tale of power and brutality,subterfuge and corruption, personal and military loyalties divided or switched in unlikely and unholy alliances depending upon who needs what most and when, kidnappings, human shields, sham religiosity, and so on resonates strongly today only the cult of personality, with princes and tsars inspiring military loyalty, was stronger pre World War 1 than the nationhood which supercedes it today especially with the demises of dictatorship.Tolstoy even manages to throw in romantic interludes with the rugged and elegant rebel dangerously and familiarly attractive to the otherwise loyal concubines.Ultimately it is a personal story which ends in sheer futility and the lesson that nothing changes so long as bad and morally weak men can inspire loyalty to the death in return for power and influence.Although at times I found keeping up with the various factions a little difficult and re read many passages for clarification, the book had my attention throughout and what I believe was the desired effect.

[magicians_nephew · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Hadji Murad is the last book written by Count Leo Tolstoy before his death. It's a sympathetic portrait of a real life Chechnyan Freedom Fighter going toe to toe with the Russian invaders (and his own tribal politics) circa 1850 in the Caucasus. It does not end well. The author begins the work with a little story about finding a brightly colored thistle in the fields, cut and broken by the reaper, but still standing proudly. It is the theme of the work - the individual standing upright and proud even under adversity. OK. So why did it leave me so cold? Maybe just that Hadji Murad is such a good and noble guy that he just ain't that interesting. And the comic set pieces about the Russian army in the fields - drinking, gambling, shuffling paperwork - seem rushed and formulaic and fails to engage. Usually Tolstoy is better at it than this. Perhaps we're meant to see the "Savage" tribesman as more civilized than the Western cultured Russians. OK. Tolstoy has written a lot of amazing books. He's entitled to take a Mulligan on this one. Read for a Book Circle.

[richardderus · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Book Circle Reads 160TITLE: [HADJI MURAD]Author: [[LEO TOLSTOY]]Rating: 3* of fiveThe Publisher Says: In [Hadji Murat], Tolstoy recounts the extraordinary meeting of two polarized cultures--the refined, Europeanized court of the Russian tsar and the fierce Muslim chieftains of the Chechen hills. This brilliant, culturally resonant fiction was written towards the end of Tolstoy's life, but the conflict it describes has obvious, ironic parallels with current affairs today. It is 1852, and Hadji Murat, one of the most feared mountain chiefs, is the scourge of the Russian army. When he comes to surrender, the Russians are delighted. Or have they naively welcomed a double-agent into their midst? With its sardonic portraits--from the inscrutable Hadji Murat to the fat and bumbling tsar--Tolstoy's story is an astute and witty commentary on the nature of political relations and states at war. Leo Tolstoy is one of the world's greatest writers. Best known for his brilliantly crafted epic novels [War and Peace] and [Anna Karenina], he used his works to address the problems of Russian society, politics, and traditions.My Review: Flat prose exposing the bones of a story better told in the Wikipedia entry on Hadji Murad, the historical Avar leader.The story was among Tolstoy's papers at his death. Louise Shanks Maude, the wife of Tolstoy's good friend and primary translator of non-fiction Aylmer Maude, included Hadji Murad in their 21-volume Oxford University Press edition of the Collected Works of Tolstoy. The Maudes were Fenians, communal-living enthusiasts, and both came from English families firmly rooted in Russia. This constellation of characteristics made them uniquely sympathetic to Tolstoy's rather unusual social views.Louise Maude did no service to Tolstoy's memory by publishing this story after Tolstoy's death. His own attitude towards the work, based on his correspondence, seems to have focused more on finishing it and with it putting a flourish on his life-long argument with the deterministic world he saw about him. Tragedy being inevitable, Tolstoy takes the historical tale of Hadji Murad (known to him from his service to Russia in the Caucasus) and presents an honorable man's desperate struggle to escape the inescapable fate awaiting him: Death in the attempt to save his beloved family from death, which they will suffer anyway because of his foredoomed death attempting to save them from death.How Russian.There's a very involving tale here. What there isn't is a novel or novella of any satisfying substance. The story as it's published reads more like notes towards a novel. The action and the characters are crudely carved from Tolstoy's accustomed fine marble, but lack any fine detail and indeed are only partially revealed; most of the work needed to create a memorable character is left to the imagination of the reader. That it can be done at all is down to the artist's eye for good materials that Tolstoy possessed, refined by a long lifetime's work. What a pity that its audience isn't legally confined to Tolstoy scholars.

[garypatella · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hadji Murat is a really good story. Tolstoy seems to send a message about understanding other cultures, and decides to write about a non-Russian protagonist. You sympathize with Hadji and have a vested interest in the character by the end.

[fuzzy_patters · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found Hadji Murad to be reminiscent of some of the great American western movies of the mid-twentieth century, which made me wonder how many western authors and movie-makers had been influenced by this book. The book had many aspects of the American western including political intrigue, blood feuds, frontier skirmishes, and a woman who understands the horrors of war and violence much more than the men do.On the whole, I would say that this was a good read that was very interesting because of all of the aforementioned elements. On the other hand, I would not say that it is a great novel because it never really left me reconsidering or challenging preconceptions or even empathizing with others, which I believe are hallmarks of great literature. Instead, it was a very entertaining read that just never quite lived up to some of Tolstoy's other works.

[lillian3_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The struggle to stay alive ... to exist. How strong the life force is in some people ... and what a waste to see such strength carelessly crushed.

[lukes_171461 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is my first immersion in Tolstoy. This is novella-length, and tells the true story of a Chechen leader who goes over to the Russian side and assists Nicholas II conquer the Caucasus in 1852. Tolstoy's focus, I believe, is to bring out the pointlessness of war, and the horrific, wasteful-on-a-grand scale Czarist policies of the time.By reputation, I understand Russian translates well into English, but this edition of this story is not a good example. I wouldn't say it's stilted, but it is quite stiff in places.There are interesting descriptions of the broad landscapes, and the broad designs of the rapacious Russian royalty. I doubt this is high in the Tolstoy canon. It probably doesn't deserve to be.

[sirroger · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fictionalized account of a real event that occurred during the Russian/Chechen conflict in the Caucasus in the late 1800's. Hadji Murad was a great chieftain, both feared and revered. He breaks with the Chechen leader, and attempts to negotiate with the Russians for assistance to rescue his family. As the political events play out, he is unable to trust either side, and is killed in a final battle. This book may initially be more difficult for many to appreciate than Anna Karenina or Resurrection. It contains Tartar words and descriptions of Chechen villages, dress, and customs that may be just as confusing as the details of the 19th century Russian court. Luckily, the persistent will discover that Hadji Murad also contains the key elements that make Tolstoy's longer works so enjoyable to read. It is his gift for realistic description and his omniscient narrator that make the characters come alive. Since the story of Hadji Murad is a true one, there are several characters that each play a smallish part, but each character is presented clearly and concisely, with insight that allows the reader to know them better than they know themselves. Recommended for fans of Tolstoy.