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
War and Peace that Tolstoy's works have now been translated into Danish, Goncharov again stressed the immense importance of "War and Peace". "Count Tolstoy really mounts over everybody else here [in Russia]", he remarked. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (in a May 30, 1871 letter to Strakhov) described "War and Peace" as "the last word of the landlord's literature and the brilliant one at that". In a draft version of "The Raw Youth" he described Tolstoy as "a historiograph of the , or rather, its cultural elite". "The objectivity and realism impart wonderful charm to all scenes, and alongside people of talent, honour and duty he