The Cossacks

Leo Tolstoy

Jan 2004 · Alcazar Audio Works · Narrated by David Thorn

About this audiobook

Tolstoy's first novel and acknowledged as one of his best. The Cossacks is based on Tolstoy's own forays into the Caucasus, abandoning his aristocrat life of gambling and carousing in Moscow and volunteering to be attached to the regular army. Leo Tolstoy's firsthand insight to the magnificent landscape and the colorful Cossack way of life is lushly descriptive, in a text translated from his manuscript by close friends.

Olenin is an aimless young nobleman who is disenchanted with city life. Taking a post as a Cadet in the army, he finds himself assigned to the remote Cossack outpost in the Caucasus. It is here, among the Tatars, the Chechens, and the Old Believers, that he will fall in love with a beautiful Cossack girl. The only problem is that she is promised to a Cossack warrior.

In the setting of what is present-day Kazakhstan, Tolstoy examines two psychological problems. The first is the dilemma of a young man who desires both fulfilling love and a place as a respected member of society. The other is the difficulty of a primitive society to accept domination by a higher culture that has no understanding of the traditions it asks its colonists to cast aside.

About the author

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 in Russia. He is usually referred to as Leo Tolstoy. He was a Russian author who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Leo Tolstoy is best known for his novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). Tolstoy's fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness, and Hadji Murad. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays. Tolstoy had a profound moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870's which he outlined in his work, A Confession. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. His ideas of nonviolent resistance which he shared in his works The Kingdom of God is Within You, had a profund impact on figures such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. On September 23, 1862 Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs. She was the daughter of a court physician. They had 13 children, eight of whom survived childhood. Their early married life allowed Tolstoy much freedom to compose War and Peace and Anna Karenina with his wife acting as his secretary and proofreader. The Tolstoy family left Russia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the Soviet Union. Leo Tolstoy's relatives and descendants moved to Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and the United States. Tolstoy died of pneumonia at Astapovo train station, after a day's rail journey south on November 20, 1910 at the age of 82.