Russian Patriotism Analysis

Tolstoy writes, “The French army had borne within itself, as it was, the chemical conditions of its decomposition” Napoleon and his generals seem to have good intentions they order their men not to loot and treat the Russians they meet respectfully. However, the privation and lack of discipline in the French army means that the foot soldiers eagerly and violently loot Moscow at their first opportunity. Throughout his war chapters, Tolstoy implicates fear and deprivation as sources of human cruelty. The French soldiers are at their most heartless when they are marching the prisoners out of Moscow. This behavior is easily explained by the fact that the soldiers have been living in increasingly miserable conditions and now must retreat

The general attitudes of Russian people show that two opposite views of patriotism have been constructed: patriotism as an ideology and patriotism as a natural and personal feeling. The majority of Russian people believe it is not the state that has to decide what is patriotic and what is not. Patriotism is a deep and intimate feeling that cannot be commanded or directed from the top. Additionally, despite the official preference for the “uncritical conformity” to the ideals of the state patriotism, a significant number of Russians do not dismiss criticism as unpatriotic. The majority of Russians associate patriotism with a love to the country, but their willingness to work for the betterment of the country is limited. It appears that the view of patriotism as an active identification with the nation has become less prevalent in the country. People in Russia have the highest amount of pride in Russia’s rich natural resources, history, sports achievements, culture, and the size of the country, while remain quite skeptical about social and economic advances. A very insignificant number of people take pride in fellow

Over the next five years he wrote and compiled materials for a complete course of elementary education. He tested them in his school and revised them. The final versions were published in (1875) as The New Primer and The Russian Readers. Tolstoy 's materials eventually met with fairly general acceptance and were widely used in the nation 's schools. The foundation of Tolstoy 's reputation is the work of his middle period (1863-77). It was then that he wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, both of which are, by common consent, well up on the list of the greatest novels ever written. War and Peace defies facile categorization. It is a suitable generic combination of the psychological novel, the family novel, and the historical novel, with a liberal admixture of the scope and tone of the epic. Set amidst the historical conflict between the France of Napoleon and the Russia of Alexander I, it deals primarily with the events of the years (1805) to (1812) and ends with an epilogue set in about 1820. Against a backdrop of alternating periods of peace and war Tolstoy unfolds the stories of the Bolkonsky and Rostov families, and of Pierre