Volume 2

• Welcome
• President's Message
• Abstracts
• Essays
  • Preface
  • Essay 2
  • Essay 3
  • Essay 4
  • Essay 5
  • Essay 6
  • Essay 7
  • Essay 8
  • Essay 9
• About the Authors
• Past Conversations
• Contact Information

Tolstoy and Neighbors: On War and Peace ¹

Mark Conliffe, Professor in WU's Department of German and Russian

Despite its overwhelming attention on Russia as a nation and Russians as a people during the Napoleonic wars, Lev Tolstoy's War and Peace (1865-69) is very much a book that explores the growth and development of young people, specifically their capacity to develop moral compasses. In his great book Tolstoy charts the lives of these young people over some twenty years, depicting in detail their thoughts and actions, their achievements and shortcomings, their usual habits and new experiences, and many other aspects of their characters and circumstances. Among these aspects Tolstoy introduces issues of neighborly relations often enough to underscore their importance for his characters' development and his own ideas generally. In short, characters in this book distinguish themselves in positive ways when they respond meaningfully to neighbors in need.

My goal in this paper is a simple one. I aim to explore what it might mean in War and Peace to "respond meaningfully to neighbors in need." By the end of the book, I contend, Tolstoy seems to propose clearly and simply that a meaningful neighbor is one who helps another at the very moment when the other needs help. He clarifies that a neighbor's actions rarely are grand results of meticulous decisions, theories or plans, but depend more directly on a compulsion to act, which results from one's usual activities and one's own experiences. Indeed, Tolstoy's characters must come to terms with the demands of everyday life before they can think of taking on broader challenges. They must be good neighbors on an immediate and local level, before they can be good neighbors on a grander level. Finally, he underscores that good neighborliness derives from respect for the individuality and dignity of the other.

I should be clear, too, that this is an interpretation of meaningful neighborly relations in the world of War and Peace.  It is neither a criticism nor an apology of this world, but rather is an effort to articulate features of neighborly relations in it. This effort might cause us to conclude that these neighborly relations generally are unidirectional ones that pass from the rich to the poor, from the moneyed classes to the peasants and servants, and there is much material, as Tolstoy knew, to fuel such a reading. But, such a reading, I would offer, is not one that Tolstoy intended. To my mind, in War and Peace Tolstoy was after universal understandings of individual actions and interpersonal relations, rather than economically-driven or determined ones, and, thus, I interpret this world from that perspective.

A Book about Character

In 1868, in his famous defense and explanation of what War and Peace is, "A Few Words Apropos of the Book War and Peace," Tolstoy made clear that he hoped to express in it as much of the character of early nineteenth-century Russian society as he could. "There is a character of that time (as there is of every epoch)," he asserted, "which comes from the greater alienation of the upper circles from the other estates, from the reigning philosophy, from peculiarities of upbringing, from the habit of using the French language, and so on. And this character I have tried as far as I could to express" (Tolstoy 2007b, 1218). Naturally, in this effort Tolstoy gives the fullest treatment to people in the higher levels of society (higher in material riches and military rank), because these are the levels of society that he knows. What might not seem so natural to many readers today is the fact that in War and Peace Tolstoy gives little space to what we in North America would call "next-door neighbors" - that is, to an aspect of our contemporary social character that exists as a given and conditions many things that we do. As a result, Tolstoy challenges us to consider other understandings of neighborliness that might defamiliarize our own. This apparent absence, however, is not his choice as much as it is a fact that nineteenth-century Russians did not feel particular responsibility to the person next door, simply because that person lived next door. They might have felt united by their shared Russianness or their shared humanity, but they probably would not have held community feelings or have experienced a particular sense of moral obligation to the person next door or down the road. In War and Peace, though the word neighbor appears often enough, it usually refers to a fellow human being in need. Next-door neighbors are rare. This aspect of nineteenth-century Russian character appears more readily in the Russian text, where Tolstoy uses different words to distinguish a neighbor who lives nearby from a neighbor who is a fellow human being and incurs a feeling of moral obligation.

Sosed and Blizhnii

By my count, in the most recent English version of War and Peace, the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation, the word neighbor appears nineteen times. Neighbor is the translators' choice of two Russian words, sosed and blizhnii (this tally includes those places when characters use the French word prochain, which Tolstoy translates as blizhnii).[note]2[/note] The Russian words designate different English usages of neighbor. Sosed refers to someone who lives or is located nearby. It is a spatial or geographical referent, and its use does not necessarily imply interaction between my neighbor and me. When it is used in War and Peace, however, there is interaction between characters, but the interaction usually has no moral claim on the characters.  At Count Rostov's house, for example, even though the family affairs are relatively dire, there were "the same whists and Bostons, during which the count, holding his cards fanlike for everyone to see, allowed himself to lose hundreds daily to his neighbors" (Tolstoy 2007a, 515). These neighbors sit near the count at the card table. He knows them and includes them in his family's social evenings, but they don't appear to be dear friends or family. We don't learn their names, they play no important roles, and their parts in the book are brief and passing ones.[3]

Blizhnii, though it also implies nearness, is used more figuratively to refer to someone with whom a character will or should have meaningful interaction, and that interaction usually is positive and involves moral obligation. Tolstoy uses this word when Princess Marya writes to her friend Julie Karagin about "l'amour Chrétien, l'amour du prochain, l'amour pour ses ennemis" ["Christian love, the love of one's neighbor, the love for one's enemies"] (Tolstoy 2007a, 93-4) and when the mason Bazdeev chides Pierre, "You received wealth. How have you used it?  What have you done for your neighbor?" (Tolstoy 2007a, 352). In both situations the speakers use the word neighbor with an understanding that the relationship is a moral one, and that the neighbor need not live nearby. (A case might be made that blizhnii resembles the English construction "fellow man" or "fellow human being" in this sense. We do not use "fellow man" neutrally; when it is used, it implies an attitude with moral dynamics, too. The person who uses this construction toward others usually uses it with respect, compassion, or generosity.) In War and Peace characters rarely know these neighbors in advance and encounter them unexpectedly and often away from home. We may not learn their names and they may play passing parts in the book, but their roles are important ones in advancing Tolstoy's ideas.[4]

Two Views on Estate Life

One third of the way into War and Peace Pierre and Prince Andrei engage in a discussion. The discussion grows from each character's curiosity about the other's actions on his estates, but at its heart is how each regards his neighbors. For Pierre, life is simple. Any harm to another is wrong. Love for one's neighbor and self-sacrifice are right. Pierre feels that he must live for others, no matter who they are, and thus Prince Andrei's claim, that only since he has started living for himself has he been at peace, causes Pierre discomfort and confusion. For Prince Andrei, the right to judge what is right and wrong is not his; indeed, he asserts, "People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more so than in what they consider right and wrong" (Tolstoy 2007a, 383). If this isn't enough for Pierre, Prince Andrei adds that "others, one's ‘neighbors [blizhnie],' le prochain, as you and Princess Marya [Prince Andrei's sister] call them, are the chief source of error and evil" (italics in the original; Tolstoy 2007a, 384). For Prince Andrei, it is enough for him to focus on himself and his immediate family. 

Pierre and Prince Andrei's discussion turns to estates because Pierre has stopped to visit Prince Andrei on his return trip from his own southern estates in Kiev province. Under the influence of his initiation into a Masonic lodge and its teachings, Pierre is determined to do as much good as possible for the peasants on his estates, and goes there with grand intentions of helping them - of liberating them eventually, and until that liberation of reducing their work requirements, of freeing peasant women so that they might spend more time with their children, of providing hospitals, almshouses, and schools, and of changing corporal punishments to hortatory ones. Pierre clearly regards each of his peasants as a blizhnii, whereas Prince Andrei regards each of his as a sosed. Pierre has taken the psychological leap, moving peasants into the realm of fellow human beings, but is that change in perspective alone enough for an individual to effect change?

Tolstoy's narrator brings us up to speed on the work that Pierre and Prince Andrei have done on their respective estates two years later: 

All those undertakings which Pierre had initiated on his estates and had not brought to any result, constantly changing from one thing to another - all these undertakings, without talking about them to anyone and without any noticeable effort, had been carried out by Prince Andrei.

He possessed in the highest degree that practical tenacity, lacking in Pierre, which kept things in motion without any big gestures and efforts on his part. (Tolstoy 2007a, 418) 

Despite his good intentions and firm sense of moral obligation, Pierre has not helped a single blizhnii (but a few greedy stewards have made money off Pierre). On the other hand, although two years earlier Prince Andrei's words seem to render each of his peasants a sosed, his subsequent, quiet actions seem to make that same peasant a blizhnii.

Complex Undertakings

As this example shows, we need not look for the word neighbor in War and Peace in order to identify a neighborly situation. That's no surprise. What might be surprising is that Prince Andrei can appear to bring wellbeing to others with little effort. He seems to be something of a conjuror, because his apparently good results ostensibly appear from nothing, from no efforts to provide his peasants with support. Pierre, in all his naïve altruism, seems much more the one to help neighbors, and his earnestness and eagerness in seeking ways to sacrifice himself and help others appear to bode well for good neighborly results. However, as Tolstoy's narrator underscores, his efforts prove to be ineffectual - even to bring harm to some peasants - while Prince Andrei's work out. Why?

Pierre knows what he wants to do, but he does not understand what it involves. In short, Pierre is not practical and is not acting for the right reasons. In one of his many reflective moments, Pierre seems to recognize this, when, of all the traits that he sees in Prince Andrei at that moment, he marvels "most of all at his ability to work and learn" (Tolstoy 2007a, 29). These traits, as well as Prince Andrei's "practical tenacity" and his knowledge of estate life, make him a relatively aware estate manager (Tolstoy 2007a, 418). His sense of how and why certain tasks should be undertaken differs greatly from Pierre's, and when he sets to those tasks, he realizes them. Pierre sets to his reforms with nothing more than good intentions and a guilty conscience, and in War and Peace one usually needs more than good intentions and a guilty conscience in order to be a good neighbor. Taken together, good intentions and a guilty conscience often lead to conscious goodness. Tolstoy felt especially strongly about conscious goodness, Edward Wasiolek explains, knowing and showing "repeatedly that conscious goodness and benevolence were self-serving and abstract, almost always an application of principle without regard to the actual circumstances at hand and consequently almost always ineffective and often harmful" (Wasiolek 1978, 75). For Tolstoy, good actions usually are ones that grow out of an individual's abilities and awareness of what needs to be done. 

In addition, it is clear that Pierre is trying to do things that should work and that seem good, and, even if he does not admit it, he is trying to do something that will make him - not just his peasants - feel better. His actions do not grow out of the moment, out of an observed need in his neighbor. In Tolstoy's world this last fact diminishes the significance of his effort. Tolstoy expresses his position on this point with utter clarity in a later comment (1907) on an Old Testament story, Richard Gustafson reveals, but that comment is unquestionably consistent with Tolstoy's stand in War and Peace on what comprises the right type of good act.  Gustafson quotes Tolstoy:  "Moses did not see the promised land which he led his people to. I love that allegory. We often regret that we do not see the fruits of our labor, but not seeing, doing without the expectations of a reward, is the necessary, most essential condition of any good deed" (Gustafson 1986, 179-80). Pierre's effort lacks that condition, and thus we might say that, even if it succeeds, it cannot be understood to be a good deed according to Tolstoy. In addition, at best Pierre can be uncertain and hopeful about his reforms. He needs experience and knowledge in the tasks at hand, so that he can act effectively.[note]5[/note] For Tolstoy, in order to help neighbors fully with complex undertakings, his characters must be able, sincere, and reasonable helpers who respond appropriately to a moment of need. Their actions should not develop from a conscious desire to perform a good act, but should be a response to an irrepressible impulse to do good, an impulse that results from feeling more than from circumstances.

Feelings and Experience

Tolstoy's characters are, as are most of us, slaves to their feelings. His great detailing of these feelings convinces us that his characters cannot escape their effect. This detailing also makes these feelings familiar to us, and as we read War and Peace we understand how the characters struggle to keep at bay sadness, anger, grief, disgust, or fear, and how they delight in those moments when nothing, it seems, can dampen their happiness, overcome their love, or take away from their altruism. We surely agree with Prince Andrei when he thinks to himself, "I know myself how little control we have over our sympathies and antipathies" (Tolstoy 2007a, 425). Such knowledge helps Prince Andrei and us to appreciate that sometimes we and others might act uncontrollably in accord with our feelings.

In Tolstoy's early fiction, Donna Orwin has found, characters are "at the mercy of their feelings" to such an extent that they "cannot do what will and reason tell" them to do (Orwin 1983, 508). Indeed, Orwin explains persuasively, Tolstoy felt that feelings, not circumstances, compel a person to do good and evil (Orwin 1983, 505). A foremost forum for the development of such feelings in War and Peace is the family, and members of each of the families - the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, the Kuragins, and even the Drubetskoys - are readily identifiable from unmistakable traits. Throughout the book we recognize the assured and respectful morality of the Bolkonskys, the emotional sense of what is right and wrong of the Rostovs, the self-serving standards of the Kuragins, and the reasoned egocentrism of the Drubetskoys. Clearly, families in War and Peace pass on good traits and bad traits, but, in addition, these traits come to be modified or made concrete through individual and shared experiences, as characters learn about life and acquire habits over time. For Tolstoy, we can recommend, a character's impulse and compulsion to do good or evil are linked directly to these personal experiences, and this impulse usually is irresistible. This impulse reveals, Isaiah Berlin would say, the true values of Tolstoy's characters. "Like the moralists of the Enlightenment," Berlin clarifies, "he [Tolstoy] looked for true values not in history, nor the sacred missions of nations or cultures or churches, but in the individual's own personal experience" (Berlin 1964, 31). The acquisition of the right feelings and experience, then, prepares Tolstoy's characters to perform the right neighborly acts.

More Manageable Undertakings

As I note above, in part, Pierre does not help his peasants effectively because he does not know for sure what they need. His life has never included such concerns as peasant schools and hospitals.  Pierre has never observed his Kiev estates, let alone held a conversation with his stewards or any of his peasants. He is not responding to their requests for assistance, so is unclear whether his humane ideas will be realized. He is working toward abstract goals at best. But, as we see throughout War and Peace, Pierre, more quickly than others, recognizes sadness, pain, discomfort, or need in others. Unstoppable feelings arise in him, when he sees others who are suffering. Indeed, he fares much better at neighborly acts when, during the burning of Moscow, he responds spontaneously to feelings that arise in him when a mother begs him to save her daughter from a burning building. Without hesitation Pierre locates the girl and rescues her.  Moments later, and again without hesitation, Pierre comes to the aid of an Armenian family that is being robbed by French soldiers. In both situations, Pierre responds to the need of the other, acting immediately and, we might argue, instinctually. He knows that he can perform the acts that are needed - and performs them because he wants to - and in both situations he is a good neighbor to these people. He understands what is happening, responds to the call for help from the other as well as from within himself, and acts.

Tolstoy focuses on this type of neighborly action in detail in the chapters leading up to Pierre's neighborly acts, as if underscoring the positive feelings in individuals and their capacity to give of themselves, while around them fighting, robbery, and arson are taking place. A few pages earlier, Natasha responds somewhat similarly, when Russian soldiers, who are retreating from Moscow, ask if they might overnight with their wounded in her family's house. Not only does she unflinchingly grant them shelter for the night, but on her family's behalf eventually offers the wounded soldiers the majority of her family's carriages for transport out of Moscow. Her feelings will permit her to do no less.  And, then, after Natasha's family has left Moscow, Mavra Kuzminishna, a Rostov family servant, answers a call at the door to find a distant relative of the Rostovs, an impoverished young officer. He had hoped that Count Rostov would be able to give him some money to help him. Mavra Kuzminishna offers him twenty-five roubles of her own money, and receives from this act "a sudden flood of maternal tenderness and pity for the unknown little officer" (Tolstoy 2007a, 880). Such a reward acknowledges the rightness of this act and analogous ones. Pierre, Natasha, and Mavra Kuzminishna respond to the feelings that these encounters stir in them, identify the others' specific needs, and do what they can.  They are good neighbors in these instances.

Respect and Understanding

In these last three examples the characters know that they can do something for the others, and their feelings tell them that their actions are right ones. They succeed because they think that they understand what needs to be done and believe that they can do it. The requests demand some physical ability and the capacity to act in morally right ways. These are extreme situations in which the slightest form of aid surely will help - and be welcomed by - the other. The example of Prince Andrei's changes on his estate is a somewhat different one. It is more complex than it seems at first to be. His efforts might seem to be overwhelmingly positive ones, but later in the book we learn that, despite his noteworthy successes, his reforms had increased a particular "wildness" in the peasants on his estate (Tolstoy 2007a, 719). The peasants hadn't taken wholly to the changes with gratefulness or interest. Moreover, when Princess Marya offers to help relocate these same peasants during the French advance, they regard her with mistrust, even animosity, revealing their "wildness" and leaving her in confusion. (Gary Saul Morson's observation, that this "scene is exemplary of the best-intentioned efforts on the part of the upper classes to understand or describe peasants," indirectly links Marya's efforts to Pierre's failed ones on his southern estates [Morson 1987, 125]). We might put the shortcomings of Prince Andrei's and Marya's efforts down to their peasants being a bad lot. But Tolstoy makes clear that these peasants were known to have a different character from those on the main estate of Prince Andrei, Marya, and her father. The issue here is not whether the peasants needed assistance from Prince Andrei and Marya - to be sure, they would have benefited - but rather that the type of assistance and the way it was provided did not acknowledge the individuality of these people. Prince Andrei and Marya fail to respect these peasants' sense of freedom, dignity, and individuality, and thus their neighborly efforts fall short. 

In Tolstoy's writings on education, Isaiah Berlin reminds us, he felt that, if "one can help children and peasants at all, it is only by making it easier for them to advance freely along their own instinctive path" (Berlin 1964, 47-8). We can readily apply this conclusion to Prince Andrei's and Marya's efforts with these peasants. Despite their good intentions and, in the case of Prince Andrei, achievements, Prince Andrei and Marya did not help the peasants to move forward "freely along their own instinctive path." The peasants were to move forward along Prince Andrei's and Marya's paths. Without a doubt, Tolstoy writes critically of how these peasants behave to Princess Marya, but he is equally clear that Prince Andrei and Marya do not understand that their changes might not appeal to or motivate their peasants and that they cannot - and should not - expect the peasants to accept their changes and offers unquestioningly. As Berlin carefully explains, to enable an individual to pursue his instinctive path and to educate him by example, rather than by imposing or applying education, are key in Tolstoy's sense of how we should live in the world not just with peasants but with all others. These understandings place onus on the giver of aid in these more complex situations to recognize and respect the particular way in which another person lives his life. Neighbors must be respectful.

When Pierre reflects on the failure of his ideas for reform of Masonic lodges, he notices "for the first time [...] the infinite diversity of human minds, which makes it so that no truth presents itself to two people in the same way" (Tolstoy 2007a, 436). By this point in the book, we have recognized Pierre's generosity and sympathy for others and see that he cannot quite bring those qualities together with this new awareness about each person's individuality. But near the book's end this awareness of the "legitimate peculiarity of each person, which formerly had troubled and irritated Pierre, now constituted the basis of the sympathy and interest he took in people" (Tolstoy 2007a, 1107).  Pierre is learning to be a better neighbor. We should offer help sympathetically and respectfully, Pierre's positive acts of neighborliness reveal, but to force education or help onto another and to ignore the individuality of the other is to court failure and enmity. A call to neighborliness might produce good intentions, but it also requires respect for the individuality of the other.

"Will you please answer your sister?"

Every now and then in my house one of our daughters will call out to the other, but the other doesn't respond. And so, the call goes out again, and then again, and then again. Finally, my wife or I will step in to ask the latter why she isn't answering her sister, and, not surprisingly, we will receive the answer, "Because I didn't hear her." Surely she did, and we know she did. For some reason, however, she didn't want to answer. If there were urgency in the former's call, we hope, the latter would have responded. But, there was no urgency, so the latter continued with what seemed to her to be more enjoyable or important, or, perhaps, less demanding. Even though my daughter loves her sister, she doesn't want to commit to her at that moment. Despite the claims of family relations, she feels no obligation to her sister at that moment and she doesn't want her sister to impinge on her relative freedom. In fact, because she knows her sister so well, she understands that her request is not an urgent one.

Tolstoy would understand this interaction, as we do, as a fairly usual aspect of sibling dynamics. He would expect more if there were urgency in the call or if the latter noticed need in the former and didn't act. Context matters. He would expect even more if the scenario involved two strangers - two people who might not immediately distinguish between an urgent call and a casual one - for whom there were not familiar patterns of behavior and interaction. (We cannot imagine Pierre's not rescuing the little girl or Natasha's denying shelter to the soldiers.) Nonetheless, Tolstoy understood that even the most morally upright individuals at times choose not to acknowledge others at a moment of need. For instance, as Alpatych, an indefatigable and kind servant of Prince Andrei and Marya's family, leaves Smolensk under attack from the French, he learns from the cook at an inn that the innkeeper, Ferapontov, an acquaintance of Alpatych, is beating his wife.

"He killed her - he beat the mistress! ... How he beat her, how he dragged her! ..."

"What for?" asked Alpatych.

"She was begging to leave. It's a woman's thing!  ‘Take me away,' she says, ‘don't let me and the little children perish. People have all left,' she says, ‘what about us?' And he started beating her. How he beat her, how he dragged her!"

Alpatych seemed to nod his head approvingly at these words, and, not wishing to know any more, went to the door of the room opposite the innkeeper's where he had left his purchases.

"You villain! Murderer!" a thin, pale woman cried out at that moment, and, a baby in her arms, the kerchief torn from her head, she burst through the door and ran down the steps to the yard. Ferapontov came out after her and, seeing Alpatych, straightened his waistcoat, smoothed his hair, yawned, and followed Alpatych into the room.

"So you mean to leave already?" he asked.

Without answering the question or turning to look at the innkeeper, Alpatych, sorting his purchases, asked how much he owed for his stay (Tolstoy 2007a, 695-6).

Alpatych has his own reasons for leaving Smolensk as quickly as possible. The city is under bombardment and, like others, he is worried for his life. Moreover, he must rush back to the estate to warn old Prince Bolkonsky and Marya about the French advance. He may even fear Ferapontov's anger, but we don't know that for sure. In any case, Alpatych, a caring and respectful man, weighs his options, and "not wishing to know more" about the innkeeper's wife, carries on with his tasks. To be sure, Alpatych may know his limitations and thus realize that he cannot help the innkeeper's wife without risk to her or himself. Yet, whatever decision motivates Alpatych to act, that decision reveals to us that, despite the feelings of wrong that might arise in him when he learns that Ferapontov is beating his wife, at that moment Alpatych can respond to that feeling in a number of ways. Being a neighbor may not allow you the choice to feel or not feel responsibility or sadness before your neighbor, but it is up to you to act on that feeling. And, unlike Pierre, Natasha, and Mavra, Alpatych has other demands that win his attention and sense of moral priority.     

In addition to depicting Alpatych's particular response at this moment, Tolstoy underscores the moral weight that knowing about a wrong act or suffering can carry. Both men recognize the wrongness of Ferapontov's act, yet neither can bring himself to face, or at least temper, that wrong. Ferapontov will not chase or beat his wife in Alpatych's presence, and Alpatych cannot bring himself at this moment to look at Ferapontov and thus face the reality and moral reprehensibility of Ferapontov's abuse, no matter his feelings of sadness and culpability before the innkeeper's wife. 

Throughout War and Peace Tolstoy is concerned - overwhelmingly, some might argue - with the dynamics that lead to a person's action. How, Tolstoy seems to be asking, does an individual choose to act? What process takes place in an individual to bring him to perform a particular act? As I have suggested above, Alpatych chooses how to respond to feelings that arise in him. He cannot escape those feelings that cause him to try to ignore what's happening, because he knows immediately that what is happening is wrong, but he will not act against Ferapontov or help his wife. He chooses not to act and limits the feelings that might arise in him by avoiding as fully as possible what's taking place. Other characters, too, choose to try to ignore events, avoid emotive stimuli, and quell feelings that create in them a need to help another person. In these cases the characters might feel for their fellow human beings, but at that moment they cannot or will not perform a neighborly act. Tolstoy shows us that being a neighbor can be demanding. Some characters may be unable to face or cope with an event or person's situation, and thus they look for ways to avoid or minimize their exposure to the event or person that will claim their feelings of moral responsibility.[6]

A Neighbor's Place

The epilogue of War and Peace creates struggles for some readers, in large part because the four main characters - Natasha, Pierre, Marya, and Nikolai - give up themselves primarily to family life. After spirited and tumultuous periods of young adulthood, they settle for the most part into staid and loving domestic routines. Is such a focusing of their lives a comment on neighborliness? 

In the epilogue there are two happy families, Natasha and Pierre's and Marya and Nikolai's. Natasha has removed herself from society to devote herself to her children and her husband, achieving, one commentator observes, "an enviable state of happiness" (Cruise 2002, 198). Indeed, she "valued the society of people to whom, disheveled, in a dressing gown, she could come striding out of the nursery with a joyful face and show a diaper with a yellow instead of a green stain, and hear comforting words that the baby was now better" (Tolstoy 2007a, 1156). Natasha prizes the company of those who appreciate her commitment to her children and husband, and close to home she will rarely, one can safely assume, encounter neighbors who might require her aid. Pierre, too, is devoted to his family, at least as much as he can be, but he also is committed to his political aspirations, to his forming a society "with the one purpose of the common good and common security" (Tolstoy 2007a, 1169). In his efforts for reform, Pierre is looking out for his neighbors, but from a distance. His acts are abstract ones. We do not doubt that they are good acts, but they lack the immediacy and concreteness that called him to save the girl from the burning building and to help the Armenian family. There's a bit of compulsion in Pierre's acts, and, in Tolstoy's world, we recall, compulsion rarely augurs well. Pierre's grand plans in the epilogue almost certainly are preparations for the failed Decembrist revolt of 1825, and this failure (of which all readers would have known in Tolstoy's time) might be a comment on the shortcomings of such grand or compulsive plans generally, or on such an approach to neighborliness specifically. Marya, too, is committed to her family first and foremost. She explains quietly to Nikolai, "‘Pierre says that everybody's suffering, tormented, becoming depraved, and that our duty is to help our neighbors. Of course, he's right,' said Countess Marya, ‘but he forgets that we have other, closer responsibilities, which God himself has indicated to us, and that we can risk ourselves, but not our children'" (Tolstoy 2007a, 1172-73). Marya's understanding of her responsibilities in life is not unlike Natasha's, but in her thoughtfulness and respect for life, she is a fuller character than Natasha. Marya appreciates what she can and cannot do, and thus neighbors are not the chief concern for Marya, an appreciation that she shores up with her understandings of family life and Christian faith. And, Nikolai commits himself indefatigably to estate life for the good of his family, he explains: "I want our children not to go begging; I have to set up our fortune while I live; that's all" (Tolstoy 2007a, 1146). His farming techniques earn him the admiration of his peasants and the cold respect of gentry in his province.  Nikolai regards his peasants with utmost attention and care, but primarily because the working peasant, the muzhik, "appeared to him not only as a tool, but as a goal and a judge" (Tolstoy 2007a, 1144). As we remember, when interacting with their peasants, Prince Andrei, Marya, and Pierre lacked this watchful attention and care, and thus their innovations fell flat and even created animosity. Nikolai has devoted himself to his estate, and his innovations work, but what do we make of the use of "tool" and "goal" to describe his peasants? Is he a good neighbor? Might it be argued that Nikolai is attentive to his peasants because he wants something in return? Is reciprocity at the heart of his neighborly relations? "The lazy, the depraved, and the weak he [Nikolai] persecuted equally and tried to drive them out of the community" (Tolstoy 2007a, 1145), and in such actions toward his peasants we see the extent to which he is willing to help his neighbor - primarily so that it will help his estate. Nikolai discriminates when he offers help to these neighbors. Though Marya might see goodness in his treatment of his peasants, Nikolai clarifies, "I wouldn't do this much for their good. It's all poetry and old wives' tales - all this good of one's neighbor" (Tolstoy 2007a, 1146). 

Marya's statement seems to be Tolstoy's in the epilogue to War and Peace. Family comes first. Neighbors are not a chief concern.  More generally in the book, however, and in order to embrace those without familial ties and obligations, we must extend this sense of what comes first in life, I think, and say that the usual activities of a good life - what family life is in the epilogue - come before efforts to perform neighborly acts. And, such usual activities in War and Peace consist of daily habits and routines, and they receive definition from feelings, experiences, and values.  If such activities come first in life, any commitment to a neighborly act will probably be a spontaneous one. Such an act will be a clear product of authentic concern and respect for the other, rather than a conscious effort to do good. To be sure, when this commitment is required, from what we have learned about the developed feelings and experiences of Tolstoy's main characters and others like them, we can be sure that they will be generous and respectful, and thus that they will respond meaningfully to neighbors in need.

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1. Many thanks to Gillian Eames, David Gutterman and Jennifer Jopp for their helpful readings of earlier versions of this paper.
2. Neighbor: page 58 (twice; sosed [4, 80]), page 352 (twice; blizhnii [5, 82]), page 361 (blizhnii [5, 94]), page 384 (twice; blizhnii [5, 125]), page 434 (blizhnii [5, 192]), page 515 (sosed [5, 300]), page 537 (twice; blizhnii [5, 329]), page 921 (blizhnii [6, 432]), page 974 (sosed [7, 60]), page 1146 (blizhnii [7, 288]), page 1172 (blizhnii [7, 322]), page 1173 (blizhnii [7, 323]); prochain:  page 94 (blizhnii [4, 126/129], page 384 (twice; blizhnii [5, 125]).  For the original Russian I refer to Tolstoi 1960-65, which is the source for Tolstoy 2007a.  When I refer to the original, I note the volume and page number in parentheses
3. To extend the distinction with the adjective "neighboring" we might include the following sentence about Nikolai's work on his estate:  "all that he did was fruitful:  his fortune quickly increased; neighboring muzhiks came asking him to buy them" (Tolstoy 2007a, 1146).  In the original Tolstoy uses the adjective sosednii, which derives from sosed (Tolstoi 1960-65, 7, 288).
4. When Pevear and Volokhonsky translate "V okrestnosti Bogucharova" (Tolstoy 1960-65, 6, 164) as "The neighborhood of Bogucharovo" (Tolstoy 2007a, 719), they break ranks with other translators, who tend to translate the clause - more accurately, I think - as "The vicinity of Bogucharovo" or "In the vicinity of Bogucharovo."  See Tolstoy 2006, 798; Tolstoy 1972, 779; Tolstoy 1968, 865; and Tolstoy 1966, 802.  Still, as all the translators make clear, Tolstoy is after solely a spatial meaning here.
5. See also the writings of Gary Saul Morson, who has examined in detail the topics of work, working with peasants, and working authentically in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina primarily, but also in War and Peace.  See, for example, Morson 1996 and Morson 1997.
6. See Jackson 1993 for a thoughtful examination of Pierre's not wanting to see and wanting not to see an execution of his countrymen.

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References

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