The Raid, 1853, The Wood-Felling, 1855, Sevastopol Sketches, 1855, 1856

All these tales are based around what Tolstoy experiences while he is in the army. At the time of writing, military tales are very popular in Russia and especially those from the Caucasus, thanks to other homegrown men of letters such as Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov. In The Raid, Tolstoy’s first example of writing about war, he explores courage and the justification for war, principally through a dialogue between a captain and the narrator. The events of two days frame the story. The nature of different Russian soldiers and why they serve is the theme of The Wood-Felling, which is set during an expedition into the forest. At the end of the story, one of the soldiers is dead from enemy fire. While these two stories take place during the Caucasian War, Tolstoy’s famous Sevastopol sketches are set during the Crimean War. In Sevastopol in December a nameless narrator gives his first impressions of the town as he walks about. Readers learn what it is like to be in a military hospital and on guard duty, about the effect of war on civilians, and so on. Sevastopol in May has less of the first one’s patriotism and concentrates on one night of military action and the officers who take part in it. It more stridently denounces war and is heavily censored. In the last of the sketches, Sevastopol in August, the heroes are brothers, both of whom are killed. When it is published in the January 1856 issue of The Contemporary, the initials LNT are replaced by Count Leo Tolstoy and it is noted that Childhood and Boyhood and a number of other stories from previous editions are by the same author.