Hadji Murad, 1912

This novel is not published until two years after his death. “Its subject matter and his treatment of it run directly counter to his professed belief in the doctrine of non-resistance, and his appeal to men to love their enemies and to turn the other cheek. He recognised this anomaly when he confessed to his daughter that he was ashamed of himself and was writing this story ‘on the quiet’! For the historical Hadji Murat was one of the leaders of the mountain tribesmen who fought under Shamil to resist the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 1850s. Having deserted to the Russians to avenge himself on Shamil, he changes sides again out of concern for the safety of his family, and is killed after a most desperate and tenacious resistance ... Much of his material is borrowed wholly or in part from the many works of reference which Tolstoy consulted assiduously: articles and memoirs in historical journals, the letters of the Russian colonel Prince Voronstsov, the reminiscences of Poltoratsky, an officer who also figures in Tolstoy’s stroy, and various ethnographical treatises on the Caucasus” (p241, Tolstoy, A Critical Introduction, Christian).