The Decembrists
planned novel by Leo Tolstoy, who finished three chapters
The Decembrists (Russian: Декабристы, Dekabristy) is an unfinished novel by Leo Tolstoy, who finished three chapters. Its hero was to have been a participant in the abortive Decembrist Uprising of 1825, released from Siberian exile after 1856. It was intended as a sequel to War and Peace, and the second part of a planned trilogy, whose third part would be set in 1856.
Planning and early composition
In a letter to Herzen in 1861, Tolstoy spoke of shifting the focus of his writing back to previous historical eras:
In 1856, I began to write a tale with a certain theme, the hero of which was to have been a Decembrist returning with his family to Russia. Reluctantly I turned from the present to the year 1825, the epoch of my hero's mistakes and misfortunes, and abandoned what I had begun. But in 1825 my hero was already a grown-up family man. To understand him I had to go back to his youth, and his youth coincided with the epoch, glorious for Russia, of 1812. Once again I put aside my beginning, and started to write from the period of 1812.
The story was to contrast the physical and moral vitality of the returning Decembrist exiles with the decrepitude and artificiality of his contemporaries who had stayed in Moscow's "club society". Tolstoy's aim, however, was not just to idealize the Decembrists, but to present a balanced view, similar to his other work.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Decembrists” as planned novel by Leo Tolstoy, who finished three chapters. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as planned novel by Leo Tolstoy, who finished three chapters. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q27680843. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1825, 1856, 1861 and 1812.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Decembrists” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.