Kutuzov: A Life in War and Peace with Alexander Mikaberidze

Hello and welcome to World History Encyclopedia. My name is Kelly and today I am joined with author and professor Alexander Mikabetadze. Alex is a professor of history and Ruth Herron Knoll Endowed Chair at Louisiana State University Shreveport, and holds both a degree in international law and a PhD in history. He's an expert on the Napoleonic Wars and has written and edited over two dozen books. Today though, we're going to be chatting to Alex all about his new book Kutuzov, A Life in War and Peace, published by Oxford University Press. Thank you so much for joining me today, Alex. It's a pleasure talking to you. You are the author of Kutuzov, A Life in War and Peace. Would you like to start off by telling us what the book and this man is all about? Oh yes, the book is about a character, a historical figure, but also the main protagonist of the book that many people claim to have read, but very few actually managed to go through, War and Peace. And those who are familiar with the novel know that the Russian field marshal who leads the Russian armies, both in 1805 and then in the decisive showdown with Napoleon in 1812, was Mikhail Rayonovich Galinischev-Kutuzov, this very interesting character that Tolstoy uses to create his own vision of what a historical figure should be like. My book is the first modern biography of this figure. For some reason, not much attention has been paid to him. There was an earlier biography written in the 1970s, but unfortunately it has many issues. And so I decided to write this book as a way both to explore Kutuzov's life, because he served in the Russian military for 54 years, so it's a long career and a rather distinguished one, but also to use his life as the vehicle to re-examine the saga of Russian imperial history in the second half of the 18th century and early 19th century, a very turbulent period. And Kutuzov, because his career was so long and successful, was involved in virtually every major political-military event that shaped the course of Russian history and, by implication, the course of Eastern European history. And there are many events that I think still reverberate to the present day. For example, the fate of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, of which modern-day Ukraine was part back then, was decided with Kutuzov's involvement. And the big, the grand issue of the day, the late 18th century, of course, was the fate of the Ottoman Empire, the so-called Eastern Question. And Kutuzov, as a Russian ambassador, was involved in this. And of course, the showdown between the French Empire and the Russian Empire in 1812 is one of those moments that really can be used as a turning point in modern history. Wow, brilliant. So why do you think no one has done a biography of this man in 50-plus years? Oh, you're waiting for me? No, I'm lucky in that way. One of the reasons is linguistic. Much of the Napoleonic historiography overall is dominated by the English and French views. Overall, Russian side, or for that matter, Italian and German side of the Napoleonic Wars is less known, especially in the English historiography. And, you know, partly it's linguistic, partly, of course, it's ideological and political because for much of the past 200 years, at least for the past centuries, there certainly was an ideological divide between the two sides, which hampered access to archives. And so, and therefore, we have this dearth of studies on key figures from the Russian side. So while on the British and French side, we have biographies of all major figures. And even, you know, most of the secondary general divisions kind of level on, as I mentioned, Kutuzov, a man who was the supreme commander of the Russian forces in 1812, and then led the Allied forces in the beginning of 1813 campaign against Napoleon. His biography has not been written, as you said, in five decades. And that's, I think, one of the reasons also that I wanted to write this book is to showcase the diversity of viewpoint that we still need when dealing with the past. I always tell my students that history is like a kaleidoscope, when you look through the tube, and you turn it around, and with each turn, you see these different shapes and figures emerging. Well, for me, each of that shape is an additional source, additional viewpoint. And by writing this book, I want to enrich the Napoleonic kaleidoscope. We know what happened from the French side. And this way, I want to bring the Russian side and I'm going to showcase what was the Russian thinking, what was the Russian decision making. And I think for the readers, there will be a lot of interesting insights for why things happen the way they did. And I try to explain that as much credit as we give to Napoleon, he does deserve it. There are many instances when his opponents, and especially an example of his great victory at Auschwitz in 1805, it's his opponent's mistakes that really delivered the victory to Napoleon. And that's where I think this book contributes to the existing historiography. Yeah, so it's kind of rounding out this picture that we sort of already filling in the gaps. I'm not very familiar with this time period. Do you have a lot of sort of primary sources from the Russian point of view in this period and these major events? Yes. The Russian archives remain largely untapped by the Western historians. The Russian historiography is quite rich and diverse, but it has its own pitfalls because much of what the Russian historians focused on is about this one particular year, 1812. Understandably, Russians are very proud about triumphing over Napoleon. But there is enormous material out there, both in a print version, but most crucially in the archives. And so I was privileged to have access to the documents from the Russian military archive and to remind the listeners of many parts of what is today Eastern Europe, especially the Baltic states like Lithuania were back then part of the Russian Empire. Therefore, the local provincial archives are also very valuable, since they retain much of that information that is important to reconstruct the past. And in this case, my hero, Kutuzov, was governor general of several major provinces. And so in order to reconstruct the history, I was able to access material from the Lithuanian historical archives as well. Wow, that's brilliant. And so with this figure, Kutuzov, is he someone that you've wanted to write about for a while? Or was it something that sort of just popped up? Tell us how you came to write this book. Yeah, that's a great question, because I certainly didn't think of writing about him until recently. He was always somewhere in the back corner of my mind, because he's such an iconic presence. And I certainly know, having been born and raised in the Soviet Union, and then, you know, having spent the last 25, almost 30 years of my life working on Russian history, you cannot but encounter him. But I never seriously considered writing a book on him until just a few years when I was rereading War and Peace and kind of talking with my students about this grand theory that Tolstoy offers of the vision of a man of action. And of course, in his novel, Tolstoy creates the tautonomy of Napoleon, a man of science, a rational being who wants to control historical events, wants to be in charge, and then Kutuzov, who is portrayed as hands-off, kind of understanding that there are processes that are much larger than him, and he trusts the flow. And it always bothered me whether that was true or not, because, you know, as a historian, you read a lot of contemporary responses, and I've read enough publications in response to novella when it came out in 19th century, when surviving veterans of Napoleonic Wars were complaining that what Tolstoy did was to supplant historical reality with a historical fiction. And so, the more I looked at it, I realized that, you know, there is not much on that subject in English. And what we do have is, unfortunately, very flawed and full of factual mistakes. And so, that's when, about four years ago, once I was completing my last book on Napoleonic Wars, I decided, well, I think this will be a nice transition from grappling with the global history of Napoleonic Wars. Let's grapple with one man's role. That's brilliant. And so, do you primarily focus on just his later life and his life in the military campaigns and that side of things, or do you begin with like his childhood? Yes. Yeah, I looked at his entire life. You know, he was born in 1747, passed away in 1813, so he didn't live long enough in that sense, but it was a career that was fascinating to really explore because, as I mentioned, he joined the military when he was just 12 years old, spent the rest of his life in the service, in military service, fought in numerous campaigns, and really went through the entirety of the military system. You know, I jokingly refer to him as a jack-of-all-trades because in this military service, he was especially employed in every branch, in every capacity you can imagine, from engineer to staff officer to the person, you know, to commander who raised infantry units, light infantry units, light cavalry units, supervised siege, and then also dabbled in diplomacy. So, very fascinating man. And as I mentioned, the reason I really wanted to write this is not because necessarily this is about one man's life, but rather because what it tells us about the larger picture of Russian history. Because one of the fascinating aspects to Kutuzov is that, as accomplished as he was when he died in 1813, right, the man, he had this reputation of a man who defeated Napoleon, the contemporaries knew better. They knew how flawed he was. And then what we see is the deliberate efforts by the Russian government, both imperial and Soviet, to create a national myth. And so the third kind of reason, you know, not just because he's an interesting guy, not just because it represents an imperial, a slice of Russian imperial history, but also what it tells about use of history or misuse of history. Because by the time we get into the 20th century, you see deliberate calculated misuse of history to create a vision of Kutuzov that does not correspond to reality. And so that's where I try to point out how history can be misconstrued, it can be used for the purpose of state building, myth making, nationalism. And it's still, in every respect, it's still ongoing, especially with regard to use of history by the Russian government today. Yeah, I think the misuse of history is a big issue that definitely is something that modern historians and anyone writing about history is something that they have to work on and keep in mind. Because yeah, you take things out of context, and you can really use it for anything. Exactly. That's really, take one quote and put it somewhere and you know, it can mean something completely different. So by the sounds of it, you cover a lot of different aspects, not just of his life, but also greater topics, greater themes. While you were researching this period of history, this man, did anything strike you as really interesting or surprising that you'd like to tell our viewers? There are many, I think, aspects to his career that I find fascinating. One of them, for example, in what this new generation of historians now refer to as the military enlightenment, right? The enlightenment we know from was this intellectual movement in the 18th century that wanted to reassess European society with this rational, skeptical mind. But over the last few years, the new historians, the up-and-coming historians, like my colleague, Dr. Christy P. Kekero and Eugene Yakinkov and others, kind of shaped this new concept of military enlightenment where 18th century thinkers try to rationalize war and how and why and when countries should go to war. Kutuzov, in that respect, was an important figure within Russian military enlightenment because he tried to bridge the theoretical part of it, which spoke about using education as an improvement of individuals, as crafting what one Russian enlightenment thinker said, new kind of people, but also practical needs of the army. And that kind of juggling these two balls of aspirational, let's create better human beings, but also practical, where those human beings also should be able to kill other human beings, was quite an interesting aspect to research. And then, of course, Kutuzov is a controversial figure in that he's, because of Tolstoy, he's envisioned as that passive individual, as a man who notoriously, in Tolstoy's retelling, is sleeping on the EF-01, decisive battle at the Austerlitz and then eats fried chicken during another great battle. And I wanted to show that that vision of Tolstoy is, while containing kernels of truth, is overall misconstrues who he really was. And I wanted to show the complexity of his personality and allow people to really enjoy learning about that other side of the coin. Definitely. So you're doing a big job, really, trying to... It's a big book. You have to wait through 800 pages. But then by the end, you'll have a completely different view, especially... That's right. ...on war and peace. Yeah. And you'll be grateful it's only half the length of war and peace. So there you go. Really a saving time. Yeah. That's right. So if there was one thing you want people to know about your book, but also Kutuzov, what would that be? I think... And then that's the... It's a thing that Kutuzov himself was very adamant about. So your listeners might know that in 1805, there was this historic epic showdown between a coalition of European powers and Napoleonic France. And the showdown took place on the fields of Auschwitz in December of 1805, and Napoleon scores what is probably the most famous of his victories, but also one of the greatest military engagements of modern history. And it happened so that Kutuzov was in charge of the army when it was... Or allied army when it was crushed, but not really. And that's, I think, one of the big things I wanted to point out, that to the degree to which Kutuzov's hands were hammered, and to underscore what he really wanted and what he was forced to do. Because that was the thing that always bothered him for the rest of his life, really. And at every opportunity, he would tell people that, remember that battle we lost? You're like, yeah, yeah, we do. I was not responsible for it. So this way, I want to pay respect to the old man and tell people that, no, he was not responsible for that battle. Brilliant. I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Alex. You will be able to purchase Kutuzov, A Life in War and Peace from Oxford University Press. I will leave a link down below to purchase it. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. This video was brought to you by World History Encyclopedia. For more great articles and interactive content, head to our website via the link below. 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