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
Leo Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (; Russian: , tr. ; ; ), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels "War and Peace" (1869) and "Anna Karenina" (1877), often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, "Childhood", "Boyhood", and "Youth" (1852–1856), and "Sevastopol Sketches" (1855), based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. Tolstoy's fiction includes dozens