Sebastopol in May and Sebastopol in December

by Leo Tolstoy

The three 'Sebastopol Stories' were based on Tolstoy's experience as a serving solider in the besieged Crimean city in 1854 and 1855. First published in book form in 1856, they consolidated the reputation the young Tolstoy had established with Childhood (1852).
In Sebastopol in December , cast in the form of a guided tour of the city, Tolstoy chronicles both the patient suffering and the undemonstrative heroism of the city's defenders and civilian population. Sebastopol in May focuses on the officer class, particularly the vacillating Mikhailov and the doomed Praskukhin, the description of whose death is one of the most celebrated passages in Russian literature. In these stories Tolstoy's anti-war stance, so important in War and Peace and his later non-fictional works, is already clearly delineated. (The third story, Sebastopol in August , is not included in this edition.)

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.

His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

See also:
French → Léon Tolstoï
Spanish → León Tolstói

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Listened to his on LibriVox and enjoyed the prose. Tolstoy relates the absurdity of war through the eyes of those who fight. Much irony here. I did find it hard to follow which I attribute to the audio version. Overall it was enjoyable but I didn't take away much.

[Tyler Gaffney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this quickly for school — I definitely want to read this again slower on my own time at some point, since it’s quite interesting! There’s definitely some War and Peace-y bits here and there.

[Cornelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Until this book, I did not understand what people saw in Tolstoy, I was and still am a Dostoevsky fan.

But this book surprised me. It is not a pleasant ride though... Stories about the absurdity of war: people who do not know what they are fighting for, mud, shootings, sieges, dirt, lack of food-a place where idealism and innocence of youth are lost forever.

And sometimes you feel the dirt and wonder why and where do we go now...

[Clay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written, but pointless.

[Geoffrey Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second person narrative and moral didactics is occasionally suffocating.