A Prisoner In The Caucasus Leo Tolstoy 9781162868578 Books
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This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
A Prisoner In The Caucasus Leo Tolstoy 9781162868578 Books
I have long believed that the life of Leo Tolstoy would be a great television mini-series. And if such a mini-series were made, the most colorful and exiting part would be the five years of his military service. Tolstoy was a veteran of the wars in the Caucasus and the Crimea in the 1850s, and the experience provided him with the combat insight to be a very effective writer about the experience of war. Reading the stories he based on his own life provides an appreciation for the genius of War and Peace. "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" is one of those stories.I first read this story in the Russian language over forty years ago. At the time I was a West Point cadet, and the version I read was an annotated edition for first-year students of Russian. The romance and adventure of the story stayed with me all that time. Since I read it, I have come to appreciate it more because of two aspects of my career. First, upon graduation I became an Infantry officer and served in Vietnam as a platoon leader and company commander. Second, since my retirement from active duty I have become a defense consultant working in the former Soviet Union. I have worked in or travelled to 8 of the former Soviet Socialist Republics, and I have been in the Caucasus. Both of those experiences have given me a greater appreciation of how well this little story is written.
I have been trying to find a Russian-language copy of "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" for six years. It is only available as a part of a multi-volume anthology of Tolstoy's works. Most of the Russians I know have this anthology in their homes. It is common in this part of the world to discuss Tolstoy's better known works, such as War and Peace or Anna Karenina, but "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" is largely forgotten, an unread 14 pages in Volume 9 of the anthology. So when I found an edition of this work published separately, I was eager to get it.
The story is a simple one. It is about a young Russian officer serving in the Caucasus who is captured by Muslim Tarter tribesmen and who escapes by means of a courageous and clever ruse. It's not the plot, but the details of the story that make it charming and memorable to me.
The young officer's name is Zhilin. In the original Russian, we are told that he is from the land owning class, as was Tolstoy himself. In 1851 he left a comfortable estate to join an artillery regiment that was fighting in Chechnia. Cited for bravery on more than one occasion, Tolstoy proved himself to be a good soldier, just as Zhilin proves himself to be in the story.
The beginning of the story is poignant and sweet. Zhilin receives a letter from his mother. She is old and sick, and asks him to get leave so that he can come home `and bury her'. Besides, she goes on, she has found a girl for Zhilin to marry `who is pretty and kind and has property'. I have met many mothers like this in my years in this region, so while we never see this woman, she becomes a memorable character in the story.
Zhilin decides to go. He asks his colonel for leave. It is approved, and he bids farewell to his brother officers and provides his soldiers with a very Russian `four pails of vodka' as a going away present. Then he prepares for his journey.
Tolstoy is precise in his description of military life in Chechnia at that time. He tells us there was a war going on, and it was a war of very brutal character. In fact, though Tolstoy doesn't tell us, it was the time of the campaign against the elusive Chechen leader named Shamil. Very few Americans would know that name, but it would have been very familiar to contemporary readers of the story. During this campaign it was very dangerous for Russian troops to venture out from their fortresses, because the Tarters might kidnap or kill them. So to travel one had to go in an armed convoy from fortress to fortress, and Zhilin is going to travel on horseback with such a convoy.
This part of the story seems very authentic to me. Tolstoy describes the arid terrain, withering heat, and the many little delays that can make military life so tedious at times. The reader can almost see the sweat on soldiers, hear the creak of the wagons, and smell the droppings of the horses. One of the officers, a man named Kostilin, becomes impatient and proposes to Zhilin that they ride ahead. Zhilin is not enthusiastic about this idea - he knows the danger, and he does not know Kostilin - but when Kostilin tells him that his rifle is loaded, Zhilin agrees to go with him. Kostilin is not the officer Zhilin is, as Zhilin is about to learn.
In Vietnam we used to say that war was many hours of sheer boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror. This is what Zhilin and Kostilin experience next. They are set upon by a band of tribemen led by a Tarter with a red beard. Kostilin turns out to be a coward. Rather than trying to help Zhilin, he tries to flee, and as a result both are captured. Both are `prisoners' in the Caucasus.
At this point the story becomes a study of the contrasting character of these two officers. The Tartar chief, Abdul Marat, instructs each of them to write home for ransom. Kostilin complies, content to rely on his family to pay the money required to set him free. Zhilin is made of sterner stuff. He knows his mother cannot afford to pay ransom, and so resolves to use his wits find a way to free himself. Zhilin stands up to his captors. He refuses to write for the amount of ransom they demand. His courage earns the respect of the Tarters, who calls him the `brave Russian'. Unknown to them, Zhilin has written to the wrong address, so the letter cannot be delivered. He fixes the chieftain's clock, and when the news gets out the other broken clocks and firearms in the village, which earns him the nickname `the good Russian'. They give him some small considerations in his captivity, which he will use in planning his escape. Zhilin is charming with children - another very Russian trait - and his personality wins the affection of the chief's young daughter Dina. Making toys for her from clay, he manages to get her cooperation for his escape. After a harrowing chase, Zhilin finds his way back to Russian forces. Kostilin too returns after the Tarters receive his ransom a month later, but we are told that he was `almost dead'.
The end of the story leaves some issues unresolved. Was Dina punished when her father learned that she helped Zhilin escape? Was Kostilin's treatment more brutal after because of Zhilin's escape? We don't know. We only know that Tolstoy obviously prefers Zhilin's brave and clever resistance to Kostilin's acquiescence in captivity.
This translation of the story is generally competent, although linguistic perfectionists who are familiar with Russian will find some nits to pick. For example, when Kostilin runs away from the Tarters, the text says `Zhilin saw it was a bad lookout ..", which seems to me a very awkward translation of the original Russian, literally "Zhilin saw it was a bad thing" or perhaps less literally "Zhilin saw it was a bad situation."
After 40 years I still find this small story worth reading. It is entertaining in its own right, and as a glimpse into the life of the young Tolstoy [he was 22 when he went to the Caucasus] it is worth the time it takes to read. As Tolstoy himself remarked, "I failed to become a general in the army, but I became one in literature."
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A Prisoner In The Caucasus Leo Tolstoy 9781162868578 Books Reviews
I have, for my sins, agreed to write up an entry on Christian-Muslim relations in Tolstoy for the University of Birmingham's project on Christian-Muslim relations in literature. I say "for my sins" because Tolstoy suffered from acute graphomania throughout his long life, and the disease must be contagious, because his followers and scholars are nearly as prolific. Which means trying to do anything that involves Tolstoy involves wading through literally thousands of pages of text, only some of it scintillating.
The actual story "Prisoner of the Caucasus" (Кавказский пленник, variously translated as "Prisoner of the Caucasus," "Prisoner in the Caucasus," and "Caucasian Prisoner," the literal translation of the title) is, however, scintillating in the extreme. Based in part on Tolstoy's own experiences as an officer in the army during the 1850s in the Caucasus, the story was first published in 1872 as part of his ABC for peasant children and peasant readers. At the time he was moving away from the loose baggy monstrosity of his best-known works, "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina," and experimenting with an extremely spare, compressed style, and the result is a lapidary little work, full of exquisite nature descriptions and gripping action sequences in its 40 pages, as we follow the adventures of Russian soldier Ivan Zhilin ("John Life") as he is captured and held for ransom by Caucasian villagers, and makes several daring escape attempts, even as he befriends the villagers who are keeping him prisoner.
While Tolstoy's "Prisoner of the Caucasus" is an interesting work in its own right, what makes it truly fascinating is its place in Russian literature as a whole. Russianists will recognize it as a reworking of Pushkin's epic poem of the same name, also about a Russian officer captured by Chechens/Circassians, although Tolstoy eschews Pushkin's youthful 1820s romanticism for a stripped-down, unsentimental realism. Even more interesting are the recent spate of stories and films the work has spawned Sergei Bodrov Sr.'s 1996 movie "Кавказский пленник" (English title "Prisoner of the Mountains"), which starred his son Sergei Bodrov Jr. as Ivan Zhilin, launching his tragically brief but illustrious career, is a very close reworking of the story, but with the action set during the first Chechen war (1994-96). Vladimir Makanin, who recently passed away, also reworked the story, this time called "Кавказский пленный" ("Caucasian POW"), but made the captive a teenage Chechen separatist fighter who is captured by a Russian soldier; the story was adapted for the screen in Aleksey Uchitel's 2008 film, which is available in English as "Captive."
Which suggests that there truly is something captivating for the Russian imagination about the Caucasus, and that the two regions will not be disintwined easily or quickly, if they ever will at all.
I have long believed that the life of Leo Tolstoy would be a great television mini-series. And if such a mini-series were made, the most colorful and exiting part would be the five years of his military service. Tolstoy was a veteran of the wars in the Caucasus and the Crimea in the 1850s, and the experience provided him with the combat insight to be a very effective writer about the experience of war. Reading the stories he based on his own life provides an appreciation for the genius of War and Peace. "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" is one of those stories.
I first read this story in the Russian language over forty years ago. At the time I was a West Point cadet, and the version I read was an annotated edition for first-year students of Russian. The romance and adventure of the story stayed with me all that time. Since I read it, I have come to appreciate it more because of two aspects of my career. First, upon graduation I became an Infantry officer and served in Vietnam as a platoon leader and company commander. Second, since my retirement from active duty I have become a defense consultant working in the former Soviet Union. I have worked in or travelled to 8 of the former Soviet Socialist Republics, and I have been in the Caucasus. Both of those experiences have given me a greater appreciation of how well this little story is written.
I have been trying to find a Russian-language copy of "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" for six years. It is only available as a part of a multi-volume anthology of Tolstoy's works. Most of the Russians I know have this anthology in their homes. It is common in this part of the world to discuss Tolstoy's better known works, such as War and Peace or Anna Karenina, but "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" is largely forgotten, an unread 14 pages in Volume 9 of the anthology. So when I found an edition of this work published separately, I was eager to get it.
The story is a simple one. It is about a young Russian officer serving in the Caucasus who is captured by Muslim Tarter tribesmen and who escapes by means of a courageous and clever ruse. It's not the plot, but the details of the story that make it charming and memorable to me.
The young officer's name is Zhilin. In the original Russian, we are told that he is from the land owning class, as was Tolstoy himself. In 1851 he left a comfortable estate to join an artillery regiment that was fighting in Chechnia. Cited for bravery on more than one occasion, Tolstoy proved himself to be a good soldier, just as Zhilin proves himself to be in the story.
The beginning of the story is poignant and sweet. Zhilin receives a letter from his mother. She is old and sick, and asks him to get leave so that he can come home `and bury her'. Besides, she goes on, she has found a girl for Zhilin to marry `who is pretty and kind and has property'. I have met many mothers like this in my years in this region, so while we never see this woman, she becomes a memorable character in the story.
Zhilin decides to go. He asks his colonel for leave. It is approved, and he bids farewell to his brother officers and provides his soldiers with a very Russian `four pails of vodka' as a going away present. Then he prepares for his journey.
Tolstoy is precise in his description of military life in Chechnia at that time. He tells us there was a war going on, and it was a war of very brutal character. In fact, though Tolstoy doesn't tell us, it was the time of the campaign against the elusive Chechen leader named Shamil. Very few Americans would know that name, but it would have been very familiar to contemporary readers of the story. During this campaign it was very dangerous for Russian troops to venture out from their fortresses, because the Tarters might kidnap or kill them. So to travel one had to go in an armed convoy from fortress to fortress, and Zhilin is going to travel on horseback with such a convoy.
This part of the story seems very authentic to me. Tolstoy describes the arid terrain, withering heat, and the many little delays that can make military life so tedious at times. The reader can almost see the sweat on soldiers, hear the creak of the wagons, and smell the droppings of the horses. One of the officers, a man named Kostilin, becomes impatient and proposes to Zhilin that they ride ahead. Zhilin is not enthusiastic about this idea - he knows the danger, and he does not know Kostilin - but when Kostilin tells him that his rifle is loaded, Zhilin agrees to go with him. Kostilin is not the officer Zhilin is, as Zhilin is about to learn.
In Vietnam we used to say that war was many hours of sheer boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror. This is what Zhilin and Kostilin experience next. They are set upon by a band of tribemen led by a Tarter with a red beard. Kostilin turns out to be a coward. Rather than trying to help Zhilin, he tries to flee, and as a result both are captured. Both are `prisoners' in the Caucasus.
At this point the story becomes a study of the contrasting character of these two officers. The Tartar chief, Abdul Marat, instructs each of them to write home for ransom. Kostilin complies, content to rely on his family to pay the money required to set him free. Zhilin is made of sterner stuff. He knows his mother cannot afford to pay ransom, and so resolves to use his wits find a way to free himself. Zhilin stands up to his captors. He refuses to write for the amount of ransom they demand. His courage earns the respect of the Tarters, who calls him the `brave Russian'. Unknown to them, Zhilin has written to the wrong address, so the letter cannot be delivered. He fixes the chieftain's clock, and when the news gets out the other broken clocks and firearms in the village, which earns him the nickname `the good Russian'. They give him some small considerations in his captivity, which he will use in planning his escape. Zhilin is charming with children - another very Russian trait - and his personality wins the affection of the chief's young daughter Dina. Making toys for her from clay, he manages to get her cooperation for his escape. After a harrowing chase, Zhilin finds his way back to Russian forces. Kostilin too returns after the Tarters receive his ransom a month later, but we are told that he was `almost dead'.
The end of the story leaves some issues unresolved. Was Dina punished when her father learned that she helped Zhilin escape? Was Kostilin's treatment more brutal after because of Zhilin's escape? We don't know. We only know that Tolstoy obviously prefers Zhilin's brave and clever resistance to Kostilin's acquiescence in captivity.
This translation of the story is generally competent, although linguistic perfectionists who are familiar with Russian will find some nits to pick. For example, when Kostilin runs away from the Tarters, the text says `Zhilin saw it was a bad lookout ..", which seems to me a very awkward translation of the original Russian, literally "Zhilin saw it was a bad thing" or perhaps less literally "Zhilin saw it was a bad situation."
After 40 years I still find this small story worth reading. It is entertaining in its own right, and as a glimpse into the life of the young Tolstoy [he was 22 when he went to the Caucasus] it is worth the time it takes to read. As Tolstoy himself remarked, "I failed to become a general in the army, but I became one in literature."
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