French invasion of Russia part of the government. During the Cold War, many Western historians were inclined to see Russia as "the enemy", and there was a tendency to downplay and dismiss Russia's contributions to the defeat of Napoleon. As such, Napoleon's claim that the Russians did not defeat him and he was just the victim of fate in 1812 was very appealing to many Western historians. Russian historians tended to focus on the French invasion of Russia in 1812 and ignore the campaigns in 1813–1814 fought in Germany and France because a campaign fought on Russian soil was regarded as more important than
Political midlife crisis Mendelson, from their 2008 perspective, anticipated that the traumas of the George W. Bush presidency would "season [the Unitied States] with new strength, wisdom and maturity", enabling it to move forward from this political midlife crisis. The European debt crisis (2009–present) has been called the European Union's midlife crisis in articles by Gideon Rachman, Roland Benedikter, and Natalie Nougayrede. Arguably Brexit and the ongoing migrant crisis are further symptoms of an ongoing European midlife crisis. Leo Tolstoy, in "War and Peace", asks about the 1812 French invasion of Russia: "What is the cause of this movement which took the French