Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy
A review.
When you think of Leo Tolstoy you think of “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina” — ponderous tomes tackling complex and difficult issues. But “Hadji Murad” is quite different, at least in length, if not the complexity or nuance of the subject matter at hand; it is a novella and one of the last works by Tolstoy and possibly one of his shortest (some critics think it is one of his best stories).
Hadji Murad is an Avar (a tribe in Dagestan) Chieftain who has a falling out with the then leader of the Chechens, Imam Shamil. This result in his family - mother, wife and children being held hostage by the Chechen leader and forcing him on the run. Frustrated by his inability to free his family from captivity, he decides to ally himself to the Russians, to seek their help to free his family and settle scores with his enemy. This is his story.
Hadji Murad is man caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place — he defines Chechen resistance, but in desperation, he defects to the hated Russians to seek their assistance. He is understandably wary of both sides and both sides are wary of him — the Chechens are out to kill him, and the Russians are not quite sure what to make of him, or how to use him.
The broader story encompassing Hadji Murad’s own story and his troubles has meaning and relevance even in today’s world — the centuries-old conflict between Islam and Christianity and the strife between colonizers and the colonized. Some of these conflicts are as frustratingly common today as they were described in this book going back almost 200 years.
The year is 1851 and there is fighting between the Chechens and the Russians in the Caucasus. Russia is the biggest regional power, but their colonialist encroachment into the Caucasus region is resisted by the Chechens. And by some of the other ethnic Caucasian groups in the region . Most Chechens are firmly against the Russians, but some are collaborating with them, because they seek to enroll the Russians in their own personal (internecine) conflicts. No different than what we have seen in many recent conflicts, including the French Indochinese wars, the conflict in Vietnam, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the global war on terror etc. In all these conflicts, there are groups ready to make alliances with the invading powers, against their own brethren.
Russia, under Tsar Nicholas, follows a scorched earth policy. To make life unbearable for the Chechens, the Russians clear cut forests, destroy villages, befoul water bodies, and kill off livestock. The Chechen people, by and large, are hardy and they are used to privations; they have spirit, and they rebuild over and over, cleaning up after every Russian act of wanton destruction. What takes generations to painstakingly build is torn down in an instant, but the Chechens persist. They cannot fathom the wanton destruction and cruelty, which in turn, hardens their attitudes against the Russians. It is a vicious cycle.
Tolstoy shows that life has little value in those times and in that region, and blood is shed indiscriminately. The leaders of the two nations, Tsar Nicholas, and Imam Shamil are portrayed in less than flattering light. Nicholas’ casual cruelty is breathtaking (he sentences a Polish medical student who commits a minor offense to run the gauntlet of a thousand men twelve times, ostensibly because capital punishment has been abolished in Russia. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment — death by firing squad might be preferable than running the gauntlet of a thousand men a dozen times!). Imam Shamil is also portrayed as a cruel distant man who might be cynically using religion and promoting holy war against the Russian infidels. Of course, the disparity in power between the two states is too high, and you get a sense that the only thing that is prolonging the conflict is the difficult terrain that the Russians must operate in to get to the Chechens. The forests and the mountains confer a level of advantage to the Chechens, but it is a matter of time before the Russians overcome those advantages.
Tolstoy also provides some insights into war (he had enlisted in the Russian Army himself and had seen action in the Caucasus campaigns… things are not always the way they seem. In one unnecessary and almost frivolous skirmish with the Chechens, the Russians lose a hapless private (who, as fate would have it, joined the army in place of his brother because his brother had children and a family to take care of) and the Chechens suffer no casualties. But the report sent to the Ministry of War claims that the Russian Army suffered no losses, and the Chechens lost a hundred men! Truly the fog of war, perpetrated by undisciplined officers in the field, who seem to have no accountability, and who do not suffer any consequences.
In another scene, Tolstoy describes Imam Shamil being escorted triumphantly back to his home base… people are lined up in the streets to welcome him and there is great fanfare, but deep down Shamil knows that things did not go well in battle. It was very close to being an ignominious defeat. But one would hardly know it watching the exuberant welcome he gets.
Hadji Murad is a man caught in difficult circumstances. He is honorable and brave, he has a good heart, he acts with integrity, and he is magnanimous… an epic hero playing in his own tragedy. He treats people with genuine courtesy and kindness, and many of the Russians who interact with him are taken by him. He understands that he is the Russians’ “guest” and that he cannot force them to help him or to act on his behalf unless they choose to do so. Eventually, he despairs that the Russians will never provide him the support he needs to rescue his family, and fearing this, he decides to take matters into his own hands.
The situation that he finds himself in reminds him of a Tavlinian fable of a falcon, as he plots his escape: “… a falcon who had been caught and lived among men, and afterwards returned to his kind in the hills. He returned but wearing jesses with bells; and the other falcons would not receive him. ‘Fly back to where they hung those silver bells on thee!’ said they. ‘We have no bells and no jesses.’ The falcon did not want to leave his home and remained; but the other falcons did not wish to let him stay there and pecked him to death.”
In the end Tolstoy’s story is about the senselessness of war, the high price paid in human lives as a result of these senseless actions, honor and integrity, and good and evil in unlikely places — Hadji Murad may be a hunted man among the Chechens, but there are still loyalists among them who risk their own lives and property to help him. And when he is among the “enemy,” his authenticity and wholesomeness is recognized, respected, and admired by many of the people that he meets. There are also many on both sides who would like nothing but a speedy death for him.
At the beginning of the book, an unknown narrator (the author?) is picking flowers in a meadow, putting together a nosegay. He sees a beautiful crimson flower on a thistle, a plant that they call “Tartar” in the area. It is so beautiful that he wants to cut it and use it as the centerpiece of the nosegay. He spends considerable amount of time and effort hacking away fiber after fiber of the thorny thistle stem (which nevertheless stings him all over his hands), before it surrenders its flower. And when finally cuts the flower, he realizes that he has defiled it by his very act of chopping it off the thistle, and that it no longer fits so well into the delicate nosegay. The narrator feels ashamed that he has needlessly destroyed something by trying to take it away from its proper place.
And he remarks to himself: “But what energy and tenacity! With what determination it defended itself, and how dearly it sold its life!” recollecting the effort it had cost him to pluck the flower. I feel there is no better way to describe Hadji Murad.
