Hadji Murat

Hadji Murat reflects Leo Tolstoy’s anti-war sentiments, showcasing his advocacy for pacifism through depictions of the atrocities of war and the legacy of conflict. The lives and deaths of his minor characters, like Sado and Avdeev, though seemingly insignificant to the larger plot, reveal the lingering effects of war's cruelty.

The Russian soldier Avdeev's death underscores the dichotomy between the impersonal abstraction of a wartime casualty statistic and the profound, intimate grief experienced by his family. Avdeev dies during the Russian campaign to conquer the Caucasus region. A report to Tiflis describes this loss impersonally:

On November 23rd two companies of the Kurinsky regiment went out of the fortress to cut wood. In the middle of the day, a considerable body of mountaineers suddenly attacked the woodcutters […] Two privates were lightly wounded in action and one was killed. The mountaineers lost around a hundred men killed and wounded (35).

The impersonal nature of the military report dehumanizes Avdeev’s suffering as a mere statistic. The report spotlights the gap between the lived experiences of soldiers and the sanitized accounts presented in official records. The narrative contrasts the “light” injuries of two privates with the "around a hundred men killed and wounded" among the mountaineers, an imbalance that reflects war’s toll and questions the celebrated narratives of victory and valor. The futility of Avdeev's death is evident when his family receives the news. The army scribe notes that he died "defending the tsar, the fatherland, and the Orthodox faith" (38); the phrase is meant to confer honor, yet the context of its delivery, alongside a letter from his mother and unspent money meant for the now-deceased Avdeev, highlights the emptiness of such justifications against the backdrop of irrevocable human loss. By spotlighting the death of an ordinary individual caught in the crossfire, Tolstoy deviates from traditional war narratives that often glorify the ultimate sacrifice of the protagonist. This narrative choice illuminates the brutal impact of war on the individual and serves to reject the glorification of military deaths. Thus, Tolstoy’s critique extends to the use of patriotic and religious rhetoric to rationalize war, exposing the manipulative nature of such sentiments. The irony Tolstoy draws lies in the contrast between the grand narrative of sacrifice for purportedly high ideals versus the tangible waste of Avdeev’s death, advocating that such ideals do not justify the human cost of conflict.

The irony inherent in Sado’s losses accentuates the brutal, senseless nature of war. Sado, the character who initially shelters Hadji Murat from Shamil and aids Murat's defection to the Russians, sees his aoul (village) and saklya (home) destroyed by the very forces he helped:

[W]hen he came back to his aoul, he found his saklya destroyed; the roof had caved in, the door and posts of the little gallery were burnt, and the interior was desecrated. His son […] was brought dead to the mosque on a horse, covered with a burka, having been stabbed in the back with a bayonet (79).

Tolstoy candidly depicts the atrocities of war, capturing the personal loss and communal devastation that conflict entails. The destruction of Sado’s home mirrors the wider ruin of war. The death of Sado’s son, a child stabbed from behind, becomes a symbol of war’s faceless cruelty, where cowardice prevails over honor. This manner of killing a child, from behind without a chance for defense, epitomizes the cruelty, cowardice, and insidious nature of war, where human lives become footnotes in grander schemes of power.

Through Hadji Murat, Tolstoy narrates a critique of war and its associated atrocities, questioning the moral justifications of violence, and probing the narratives that glorify it. His depiction of personal loss and societal devastation highlights the enduring impact of conflict, serving to critique the values that underpin narratives of heroism and sacrifice.