"The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases and increases according to the point of view from which the action is regarded, but their relation is always one of inverse proportion. A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns him; or a hungry mother exhausted by feeding her baby, who steals some food; or a man trained to discipline who on duty at the word of command kills a defenseless man—seem less guilty, that is, less free and more subject to the law of necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in which these people were placed, and more free to one who does not know that the man was himself drowning, that the mother was hungry, that the soldier was in the ranks, and so on."
Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Recipes: Culinaria: Russia by Marian Trutter
Caviar
Hard Boiled Eggs
Mayonaise
Blini
Unsalted, Tablewater crackers
Whipped Cream Cheese
(other accompaniaments could include sour cream, butter, mashed capers, sliced raw onion, pasta with creme fraiche and lemon zest, lemon slices, etc.)
Champagne
Vodka
This is not a real recipe, per se, more a collection of foodstuffs. I suppose the cream cheese wasn't particularly Russian, but we'd eaten so much sour cream by this point, I was afraid of a general hunger strike if I brought any more out. Generally, I make my deviled eggs with mustard and salt and pepper, or other tasty additions, but I didn't want to overpower the flavor of my caviar, which is already plenty salty enough. I didn't make fresh blini, just defrosted the leftovers from the mushroom meal. I also am too embarrassed to state what brand of caviar I used. I wasn't up for a trip out to Brooklyn, in fact I managed this whole project without visiting Brighton Beach at all, which I suppose is sort of a shame, but instead thought that the Food Emporium would have some. They did. It was dyed with food coloring to be unnatural shades of red or black and it wasn't very good, but it was caviar and I was too tired to quest after better.
Thankfully, neither Jay or Ben had ever had it. We enjoyed it. The eggs in particular were tasty with a dollop off caviar on top. The blini gave an extra flavor, different from the crackers, and the cream cheese was delicious. Champagne and Vodka pair wonderfully.
About the book:
Tolstoy repeatedly revisited the idea that a single man could never inspire people to move from east to west. That had the people not wanted to move from east to west, Napoleon would have been locked up for a lunatic. He reiterates, at great, great length, that despite this fact, modern historians still want to attribute the movement from east to west to the power wielded by great men, "modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has asked. If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of humanity and of the peoples, the first question—in the absence of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible—is: what is the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books."
He never states precisely what that power, or force is. He speaks, again at great length, about man's freedom. He says that Napoleon, far from wanting for himself to tour Moscow as her conqueror, had less freedom than anyone. He says that once we know more fully the cause of an action, the more we come to recognize the absence of freedom in executing that action. He claims that men give power to great men out of lack of freedom, but he doesn't ever say why they come to do this. He also claims that great men, of themselves, have no power and he cites some very terrible leaders to back it up. But there are two things he never addresses: Centuries of indoctrination and hunger.
In pre-historic times, a tribal leader was elected because of his prowess in battle. He literally had to be strong enough and have enough power to protect his people from other tribes. After many years of indoctrinating this belief, we get the dynasties and blood lines and the wealth and mystique that surrounded kings. That is a hard idea to shake off. What made the early Americans able to shake it off was that we had a fairly high standard of living already and our king was an ocean away. The reason why they killed poor Louis is because they were starving and he was living, well, he was living like a king right in the midst of them. The people were told by a few men with ideas that it was ok to kill their king, so they did.
The idea that leaders don’t have personal power may be true in fact but it certainly isn’t true in the minds of a leader’s subjects, who, for centuries, have been buying into the image, pomp, and circumstance accorded the royals. People very well may have followed Napoleon to Moscow simply because he declared himself emperor and said, let’s go to Moscow.
As to why they moved at all, one has to look to economics more than philosophy, personal power, or mysterious “forces.” If the people are starving, they will follow anyone who tells them it will bring them more bread. If they are eating well, and want to be eating better they will follow a Jefferson who tells them they deserve to eat better. I suppose, in that vein, the people of France would have followed Napoleon to conquer America had he proposed it as easily as they might have followed a barker selling them cheaper cuts of meat in the stall down the block.
There is a lot of merit to what Tolstoy is saying about lack of freedom, but he never applies that to propaganda. Napoleon was a master of propaganda. He told a battered, self-consuming France that if they followed him, he would make them rich. So they followed him. If they had not been starving and riled up to fight by new ideas, they never would have revolted in the first place. It wouldn't have been worth the risk to their dinner tables. We could retort that there have been innumerable times in history when the people were starving and did not kill their king, but it was only because there was nobody to tell them it would come out to their benefit somehow. Why stir up trouble if you're not going to get more food out of it?
As for all this talk about lack of freedom, it stems from the fact that through various inspirations, Nick Bolkonski, Jr. lands himself in the midst of the Decemberist revolts, according to Tolstoy, because he had no freedom to do otherwise. But it was the ideas, the propaganda of Pierre, which lead him to do this.
I guess my point is that Tolstoy never looks at hunger as potentially being the "force" he is looking for. He says that the people were poised to move from east to west and then back west to east again. But I say, they would have gone in whatever direction they thought they could get the best meal for their pains.
This wraps up my discussion of War and Peace. I am rather sad to see the end of it.
