Tolstoy--The Man Behind the Moscow

http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/courses/2015/HUM54/files/original/92c988733c0b327ddea9f1e27fd16696.jpg

The design of the State Historical Museum in Moscow.

http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/courses/2015/HUM54/files/original/57bd64ae88a4275ddedde898079664b3.jpeg

The State Historical Museum today.

http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/courses/2015/HUM54/files/original/f6538497dee9de44b7c8dc618feb2407.jpg

The Dorogomilovo Cathedral

“…so Moscow involuntarily went on with her usual life, though she knew that the time of her destruction was near…”

—Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (p. 851)

Tolstoy is an individual who has tremendously shaped the world’s impression of Russia, and transitively, of Moscow, by literally writing the city. War and Peace subverts the usual stigma of the person’s role in the city because of the way in which Tolstoy uses personification to describe Mother Russia (Moscow). His incredibly detailed descriptions of the city and the nature of Moscow paint a beautiful portrait of this historic city. Again, a socialist political history greatly adds to the urban fabric of Moscow.