Mikhail Kutuzov

Mikhail Kutuzov was a Russian field marshal best known for commanding Russian forces during Napoleon’s invasion of 1812. His strategy around Borodino, the evacuation of Moscow and the pursuit of the retreating French made him a central figure in Russian patriotic memory.

Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace places Mikhail Kutuzov within a narrative shaped by military command and battlefield decision-making, family, marriage and personal loyalty, and social change and the pressures of ordinary life.