* I would like the thank Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book. *

At the height of the war on the Eastern Front , a Wermacht medical unit commandeers the estate of Leo Tolstoy to set up a field hospital, despite the strident objections of the caretaker Katerina Trubetzkaya. Bookish surgeon Paul Bauer seeks to mollify her hatred of the Germans because of his love of the writer.

The occupation proceeds under bitter wintry conditions that the Germans are ill-prepared for, while the surgeons face mounting body counts as the Russian counter-attacks start to take hold. Paul tries to take refuge in reading Tolstoy, while others resort to drink and other distractions. As it becomes clearer that the Germans are going to be routed, the behaviour of some of the occupiers turns extreme.

Strangely, this book reminded me all the time of MASH. Not for its humour, but for the portrayal of surgeons placed under incredible pressure in the theatre of war, leading them to adopt behaviour, ethics and techniques far from the professional norms that they once held. Conte sets all this in a grim evocation of brutal winter weather and a developing sense of gloom and ill-fatedness.

I really enjoyed this novel, but I thought that the final part was a bit trite and unnecessary. It felt like a clumsy coda to a story that had already been adequately told. ( )

Steven Conte’s brilliant new novel The Tolstoy Estate recreates the brief WW2 German Occupation of Yasnaya Polyana outside Moscow before they were forced to retreat.

As I said the other day in discussion about historical fiction at Whispering Gums, I know a fair bit about this extraordinary event because in 2012 The Spouse and I had a private tour to Yasnaya Polyana when we were in Russia, and our guide was an expert on the battlefield history of the area, tours of which he more commonly led. So en route, on the two-hour journey from Moscow, he gave us a bonus history of the German onslaught and how it was repulsed. It was only our second day in Russia, and we were yet to see evidence of the scorched earth policy of the Germans, so we were not then really aware that the survival of this historic estate, the home of one of the world's greatest writers, was an anomaly. But as we subsequently visited palaces and cathedrals and museums in what had been occupied territory, we saw photos documenting the way the Germans expressed their hatred of all things Russian by looting and destroying these buildings and cultural artefacts. It really is a remarkable experience to wander through an exquisite palace and then come across, in a small corridor, B&W photos of that same palace in ruins. As the before-and-after photos at this website at Russia Beyond show, not all restoration work is complete, even now.)
But Yasnaya Polyana escaped this fate because it was strategically useful. The Germans were advancing on Moscow, but were halted on the southern flank at the city of Tula just under 200k from the capital. They used the Tolstoy estate, about 12k southwest of Tula, as a hospital for casualties, and occupied it for about six weeks. In Conte's novel, the occupiers discover the significance of the building when they find tourist maps, and the central character military surgeon Paul Bauer is a bookish type who has read War and Peace and Anna Karenina. So for him, it's a bit like the literary pilgrimages I like to do, feeling a sense of reverence for the site where a great work of literature was penned.

Plus, he speaks Russian albeit with mediocre skill. (Which I can understand because I learned it for six months before travelling to Russia and it's not an easy language to learn.) So it's just as well that Katerina Trubetzkaya, Acting Head Custodian of Yasnaya Polyana, speaks fluent German, starting with a smart put-down to the battalion's CO, Lieutenant Colonel Julius Metz: 'Any half-decently educated person can speak the five or six main European dialects.' Metz is monolingual, never really discovering that he is at the mercy of those who interpret for him. Bauer doesn't tell him that Katerina has imprudently ignored his quiet advice not to identify herself as Tovarishch i.e. Comrade, and Katerina switches in and out of German whenever it suits her. But since her hostility is reckless, she delivers most of her insults in German, so that the enemy can understand her.

One aspect that I noticed repeatedly in Svetlana Alexievich's The Unwomanly Face of War, was how passionately the Soviet women spoke of their land and their desire to defend it no matter the cost. Over and over again Alexievich quotes their disbelief and outrage: how dare anyone set foot on their land? So Conte's representation of Katerina is absolutely authentic: she is livid, and she is also utterly confident that Germany will be defeated. In this respect she has Tolstoy on her side: because War and Peace is framed around Napoleon's humiliating retreat from Moscow in 1812, with 27,000 soldiers the only remnant of his massive army after the loss of 380,000 men in the bitter Russian winter.

'It's only a matter of time until Tula falls, gnädige [gracious] Frau, and when it does the whole Soviet centre will collapse. By Christmas, I assure you, we'll be well ensconced in Moscow.'

[...]

'Let's say you're right, she said, 'though I strongly doubt it.' Bauer guessed what was coming, and she didn't disappoint. 'In 1812 Napoleon held Moscow for most of September and October, and yet by November his Grande Armée was — how shall I put it? — in headlong retreat.'

'Madam, warfare is no longer a matter of rag-tag armies chasing one another about the countryside. It's total, and our strength is the greater.'

'Russia remains large, its winters cold'.

Metz gave her a supercilious smile. 'You seem like an intelligent woman. Don't you know that history never repeats itself?

'Ah, but there you're wrong. Herr Oberstleutnant. 1707, the Swedes. It was in Russia they learned neutrality. If you're smart enough, you Germans will learn the same lesson — though somehow I doubt it. (p.29)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/10/16/the-tolstoy-estate-by-steven-conte/ ( )