On Literary Prototypes of Leo Tolstoy’s First War Story’s Characters: Tolstoy – Turgenev – Lermontov – Pushkin

The article is devoted to Leo Tolstoy’s first military story “The Raid” (1851–1852), which refracted the events of the participation of the young writer and the military campaign of Russian troops in the Caucasus. All the main characters of this story have, in addition to real-biographical, also literary prototypes. Thus, Captain Khlopov goes back to the heroes of Turgenev’s “Notes of a Hunter” and Lermontov’s Maxim Maksimych. The prototype of the “pretty ensign” Alanin is found in Pushkin’s poems written during the Caucasian campaign of Russian troops in 1829: “Delibash” (Turkish for “desperate head”) and “From Hafiz” (“handsome young man”). The image of Lieutenant Rosencrantz has a more complex, hybrid character, paradoxically combining the features of Grushnitsky, the heroes of A.A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Pechorin, whom Tolstoy does not distinguish, as well as some features of the “positive” Lermontov and Pushkin heroes. At the same time, the story reproduces not only individual images, but also the overall battle theme of Lermontov (the poem “I am writing to you by chance, really...”) and partly Pushkin (“Journey to Erzerum”). Thus, in his first war story, Tolstoy apparently relied not so much on the works of Stendhal (as will later be in the case with the novel “War and peace”), as on his great Russian predecessors and contemporaries.