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
The Decembrists The Decembrists The Decembrists was a planned novel by Leo Tolstoy, who finished three chapters. Its hero was to have been a participant in the abortive Decembrist Uprising of 1825, released from Siberian exile after 1856. During composition, Tolstoy decided to begin with what he saw as the roots of the Decembrist movement in the 1812 Napoleonic invasion of Russia. The result was his celebrated novel "War and Peace," set between the years 1805 and 1820. Its final chapters carry the action up to the period of the Decembrists. Tolstoy may have intended "War and Peace" to be volume one