Two centuries of the Russian classics Two centuries of the Russian classics 2686-7494 IWL RAS https://doi.org/10.22455/2686-7494-2025-7-3-66-87 Research Article Articles Non-obvious Sources of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Literature as a Life Creation) Gulin Alexander V. red@rusklassika.ru Seprember 25, 2025 7 3 66 87 L. N. Tolstoy War and Peace Denis Davydov Pushkin Austerlitz Borodino sources psychologism Copyright © 2026, IWL RAS 2026 The article attempts to identify the non-obvious sources of L. N. Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Peace and analyze the features of their creative transformation by the writer. The research shows that the desire to constantly correlate artistic descriptions of War and Peace with the true realities of the past is a through principle in Tolstoy’s work on the novel. The identified principle of mastering the material allows us to more convincingly consider as sources of this or that image some documentary and artistic works that do not have an exact match with the novel, which, in one way or another, ended up in the field of vision of the creator of War and Peace. From this angle, the research considers the works of I. N. Skobelev, N. E. Mitarevsky, A. A. Kononov, N. A. Durova, and F. N. Glinka. Cases of Tolstoy’s appeal to the poetry of A. S. Pushkin and D. V. Davydov are considered. It is concluded that the psychological reflection and rethinking of the heroic era of national history in the novel corresponded to the ideas of the writer’s educated contemporaries, and at the same time, looking to the future, shaped the Russian historical worldview for decades to come. 1. Apostolov, N. N. Lev Tolstoi nad stranitsami istorii: istoriko-literaturnye nabliudeniia [Leo Tolstoy on the Pages of History: Historical and Literary Observations]. Moscow, Komissiia po oznamenovaniiu stoletiia so dnia rozhdeniia L. N. Tolstogo Publ., 1928. 296 p. (In Russ.) 2. Gulin, A. V. “ʽTen’ Pugachevshchiny’ v ʽVoine i mire’ L. N. Tolstogo” [“ʽThe Shadow of Pugachevshchina’ in L. N. Tolstoy’s ʽWar and Peace’.”]. Problemy istoricheskoi poetiki, vol. 17, no. 4, 2019, pp. 173–192. https://doi.org/10.15393/j9.art.2019.7082 (In Russ.) 3. Shklovskii, V. B. Mater’ial i stil’ v romane L’va Tolstogo “Voina i mir” [Material and Style in Leo Tolstoy’s Novel “War and Peace”]. Moscow, Federatsiia Publ., 1928. 249 p. (In Russ.) Shcherbakov, V. I. “Neizvestnyi istochnik ʽVoiny i mira’ (ʽMoi zapiski’ masona P. Ia. Titova)” [“Unknown Source of ʽWar and Peace’ (ʽMy Notes’ of the Freemason P. Ya. Titov)”]. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 21, 1996, pp. 130–151. (In Russ.)