Information about the author: 

Acknowledgments: The research was carried out at IWL RAS at the expense of a grant from the Russian Science Foundation No. 22-18-00051-П, Available at: https://rscf.ru/project/22-18-00051/

Abstract:

The article examines the image of General Guderian, presented in the novel by G.N. Vladimov “The General and His Army” during the stay of the German military man in the estate-museum Yasnaya Polyana of L.N. Tolstoy, in which in November–December 1941, a fascist headquarters command post was set up. Tolstoyan allusions in Vladimov’s novel are emphasized, it is shown that the episodes of General Guderian’s stay in Yasnaya Polyana, his reading of the epic novel “War and Peace” in the study of the Russian classic become some of the brightest and most meaningful in the entire work. It is noted that the views of Tolstoy and General Guderian on the war and the main driving forces of history differ radically, although Tolstoy himself and Guderian are indirectly compared in Vladimov’s novel. The writer presents not so much a Wehrmacht general as a general of the German Empire, a Prussian general, a military theorist and strategist who studies the life of Russian people and the fate of Russia and understands well that in order to understand the strength of a nation, one must look not only at the present, but at the history of the country, at the previous war, which showed the weaknesses and invincible strength of the Russians. But at the same time, Vladimov does not justify Guderian and does not approve of his actions, he shows very well that General Guderian, who voluntarily became one of Hitler’s generals, suffers his main defeat in the Yasnaya Polyana estate. The article also raises the problem of the existence of Yasnaya Polyana during the Great Patriotic War, the history of the occupation of the estate by the fascists.

Keywords: G.N. Vladimov, L.N. Tolstoy, general Guderian, the Great Patriotic War, estate, estate topos, museum, Yasnaya Polyana.