The Cossacks

Includes an Introduction, Biography of Tolstoy, Plot Summary, Bibliography and Reading Guide Questions. The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy is a short novel about the experiences of Onenin, a young Russian aristocrat, who decides to join the army and finds himself in a Cossack village during the Caucasian War (1817-1864). The novel explores a number of themes that were to become ever more important to Tolstoy as he developed as a writer: the purpose of life and nature of happiness and the truth of primitive rural life contrasted with the sophisticated culture of Russian urbane society. Tolstoy went on to write two of the most famous novels in history: War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but it was in The Cossacks that he started to find his voice as a writer.