"Kutuzov
By Alexander Mikaberidze
Oxford, 789 pages, $34.95
In a recent poll ranking the world's
top historical figures, Russians voted Mikhail Kutuzov No. 15, behind his enemy
Napoleon (No. 14) and several places ahead of Mikhail Gorbachev (No. 20).
Kutuzov was the general who saw off Napoleon's Grande Armee in 1812; in the
West, he is chiefly known through Leo Tolstoy's portrayal in "War and
Peace." Hence the subtitle of Alexander Mikaberidze's enthralling
"Kutuzov: A Life in War and Peace."
Tolstoy's blubbery Kutuzov falls
asleep in front of the allied commander at the council of war on the eve of the
Battle of Austerlitz in 1805. Mr. Mikaberidze reveals how the novel's portrayal
"cast a shadow that endures" and writes that he wishes to lift
Kutuzov "out of Tolstoy's novel" and "place him in the world he
helped to shape." And so he does. The reader sees Russia spooling by as
Kutuzov stands, always, center stage.
Mikhail Illarionovich
Golenischev-Kutuzov was born into nobility in 1747, probably on the family
estate in the Pskov region of Russia's northwest. His father was an engineer
and distinguished soldier. Young Mikhail passed his early years among what Ivan
Turgenev calls "nests of gentlefolk," and was destined for military
service: the family coat of arms depicts a shield and an eagle clasping a sword
in its claws.
Mr. Mikaberidze, a professor of
history at Louisiana State University Shreveport, has published a trilogy on
Napoleon's invasion of Russia, as well as "The Napoleonic Wars: A Global
History," which won two military-history awards. In "Kutuzov" he
deftly marshals colossal amounts of primary material to chart his subject's
path to glory.
Kutuzov was a 15-year-old freshly
graduated ensign when Peter III lost his throne in a coup led by his wife,
Catherine. As a general -- Gregory Potemkin, Empress Catherine's lover,
supported the promotion -- Kutuzov emerged from the Russo-Ottoman wars a
six-time decorated hero. He was twice seriously wounded, once when a musket
ball smashed through his skull. Part One of Mr. Mikaberidze's substantial
volume closes these wars, but it was not the end of Turkey for Kutuzov. In 1772
Catherine sent him to the Sublime Porte as ambassador. His entourage of more than
600 included 24 singers and five cobblers.
Upon Catherine's death in 1796, her
son Paul ascended the throne. The new emperor was godfather to one of Kutuzov's
grandsons; the younger of the general's five daughters were maids of honor at
court. In 1801 Paul was assassinated, and his 23-year-old son Alexander became
czar. Had Kutuzov been in on the murder plot? Mr. Mikaberidze concludes only
that he "must have seen or heard something." The account of this
imperial transition is gripping.
Onward and upward then, but with
setbacks. Abruptly relieved of his command as military governor of St.
Petersburg in 1802, amid the swirling instability of the new czar's court,
Kutuzov spent three years in exile on his estates in western Ukraine. He owned
15,000 serfs and moaned constantly, in his letters, about money ("I am
haunted by the fear of spending my old age in penury and want").
Napoleon, who glowers at the
emotional heart of the book, enters around the turn of the century in Part
Three as Kutuzov, by then serving as governor general of Lithuania, danced the
mazurka in Vilna "till [his] head hurt." (You would have thought it
would be his feet.) In 1805 Alexander selected Kutuzov to head the First Army
in the looming war against France. Tolstoy depicts Kutuzov, after Napoleon's
victory at Ulm, with wrinkles that "ran over his face like a wave."
The famous campaign is thrilling, with its retreats, carnage and cavalry
attacks as darkness descends. Defeat at Austerlitz casts a long shadow. (Mr.
Mikaberidze shows that Kutuzov had not wanted to fight the battle.) Part Four
begins with Kutuzov serving as the military governor of Kyiv during "The
Wilderness Years, 1806-1808." "I am not happy here," he writes
home.
The author calls his man "an
inveterate womanizer." In Bucharest in 1811 a contemporary reported that a
very young girl often sat on his lap "playing with his aiguillettes."
His wife, Catherine, comes to life occasionally through her letters, but on the
whole remains an indistinct figure. Mr. Mikaberidze mentions depressions and
lassitude, but the inner Kutuzov never comes alive in these pages. It would be
a lot to expect. This is more a work of military history, with Kutuzov at its
center, than it is a biography. The prose is clear and the narrative drive
never slows even when the fighting does.
Kutuzov negotiated a peace treaty
with the Ottomans in May 1812, and three months later John Quincy Adams, then
America's ambassador to Russia, watched as the czar honored the general at
Kazan Cathedral. Part Five opens in June 1812, as Napoleon surveys his men
marching across the Nieman River. Alexander appoints the 65-year-old Kutuzov
("much stouter" now) supreme commander of Russia's armed forces.
Borodino beckons in a superb climax. The fabled battle does not constitute a Russian
victory, but the French fail to achieve the outcome they had hoped for, and Mr.
Mikaberidze, in a nuanced assessment, casts Borodino as an important step on
the road to Napoleonic defeat. Kutuzov's subsequent decision to withdraw from
Moscow and prepare to fight a war of attrition is among the most controversial
military decisions ever made, and is described vividly in these pages.
Mr. Mikaberidze is a formidable
researcher. Few will ever match his scholarship in a field he has made his own.
He has mined Kutozov's voluminous papers, the diaries and correspondence of
contemporaries, and archives in Lithuania and France. Diagrams and maps of
battles and defenses help guide the reader through the fog of war as units and
battalions disband and reform, theaters shift and chronic problems of logistics
confound.
He teases historical truth from
mythmaking and challenges Tolstoy's traditional image of Kutuzov as a morose
and passive observer of historic events. Contemporaries often reckoned that
Kutuzov shielded himself from outsiders with a small circle of officers, and
many felt he had missed opportunities to defeat Napoleon outright. Soviet
historiographers, on the other hand, lionized him. Stalin, we are told,
"was instrumental in the amplification of the Kutuzovian legend." He
was a tool of Soviet propaganda, notably during World War II.
The author is always quick to defend
his subject. Kutuzov "was said to have done his best to rein in the
pillaging" at the storming of Izmail, a victory that "conferred an aura
of martial glory that followed him for the rest of his life." Mr.
Mikaberidze concedes that there is "some truth" in the claims that
Kutuzov's age and poor health "clouded his judgement" and that he
"feared confronting Napoleon." But only one-tenth of a Grande Armee
of 600,000 survived to recross the Nieman in December 1812.
Kutuzov died in his bed soon after,
in April 1813. Most Russians at the time hailed him as "the Savior of the
Nation." Others perceived the old soldier as "a relic of a bygone
era." This book presents a thorough reassessment.
---
Ms. Wheeler is the author, most
recently, of "Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia With Pushkin, Tolstoy, and
Other Geniuses of the Golden Age."" [1]
