The Sebastopol Sketches

Tolstoy wrote the three Sebastopol sketches after serving as an officer in the Russian army during the Crimean War. When in the winter of 1854 he arranged to be transferred to the besieged town of Sebastopol, Tolstoy was spurred on by a fierce patriotism, but also an equally fierce desire to alert the authorities to appalling conditions in the army. He recreates in the December, May and August sketches what happened during different phases of the siege, unprecedentedly bringing home to Russia’s entire literate public the atrocities of war. Thus, because of the Sketches, Tolstoy has been called the first war correspondent; in terms of his career, they heralded his arrival as a literary celebrity.