‘Kutuzov’ Review: Russia’s Beloved General
Westerners know him via ‘War and Peace,’ but the soldier did far more than face down Napoleon in 1812.
"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."