Petr Viazemskii and the Content of the Form of Russian History

• In Event: Peter Viazemsky (1792–1878): “The Lively Recollection of a Great Epoch”

Abstract

Amongst many quips, anecdotes and other kinds of errata, the things one could expect to find in Ms. Haversham’s place, or, at the very least, somewhere in Plyushkin’s garden, one often found are Petr Viazemskii’s words about Lev Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Viazemskii, a veteran of 1812, observed that Tolstoy was doing nothing less in his book than “killing history.” Viazemskii’s words have largely been taken as amounting to a negative review of War and Peace (Morson). But is this really so. Perhaps Viazemskii should be taken at his word that Tolstoy was “killing history.” If approached positively, then it is necessary to ask first what, specifically, history is, then, second, why it so necessary for Tolstoy to “kill” it, and finally, what light the form of Viazemskii’s oeuvre can shed on it? My talk will argue that Viazemskii was right, Tolstoy wants nothing less that to “kill history” because he saw that history, a practice he loved with all being, was becoming discipline, underwritten by Fabian scientific principles, motivated largely by its new role as handmaiden to the nineteenth century nation-state, and that the form of Viazemskii’s literary career presents a vision of what Tolstoy thought history needed to be if it were to again aid people in leading better lives.

Author

• Matt McGarry, UNC at Chapel Hill