After Oleksandr Usyk defeated Tyson Fury in late 2024 for the heavyweight championship, the Ukrainian boxer held up a sabre that once belonged to the 17th Century Ukrainian Cossack Hetman, Ivan Mapeza, who this episode is dedicated to.

Usyk’s fortitude spoke to Ukraine’s resilience against a larger foe who initiated the type of vainglorious War Tolstoy condemns, with all of his soul, in W&P.

Showcasing the weapon was a transcendent moment of Usyk bringing history to Life. This ability is something Tolstoy shares given who often he reaches into the past to make literary points. In W&P, for example, Tolstoy cites the Classical world and more recent influences. He skillfully adapts the famous quote from Voltaire: "If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." The Frenchman also had a well-known correspondence with Catherine II, who some of W&P’s characters look to as illustrative of an idealized past. Yet part of her reputation involves keeping so many under serfdom. Voltaire urged her to release her serfs.

Quite forgotten is how Voltaire contributed to Mazepa becoming an icon of the Romantic age. Victor Hugo, Lord Byron & Franz List, also elevated Mazepa to a status Tolstoy himself briefly references in his 1857 work “Youth.” Tolstoy wrote that if he reaches the age of 70, he envisions that a lovely young woman could love him as easily as she could love….a Mazeppa.

Mazepa was born to a noble Cossack family near Kyiv. His father was a town otaman (leader) and his mother instilled in her son a deep devotion to God and Cossack culture. Mazepa received a European education and served at the Polish royal court. While quite young, he is said to have fallen in love with the wife of a Polish nobleman and to have been punished through being tied to a wild horse and carried back to the Land of the Cossacks, where he was adopted by one of their communities and rose to leader. He was Hetman from 1687 – 1709.

Mazepa remains a key figure in Ukrainian-Russian relations given he decided to turn his allegiance to Sweden over the Czar during the Great Northern War. This conflict was fought between Sweden and an anti-Swedish coalition led by Moscow. This intermittent affair lasted about 20 years and involved control over Northern Europe and the Baltics. Sweden initially did well causing Peter to move his troops inward and draw Charles to invade.

The conflict made its way to Mazepa’s Cossacks, whose status and allegiance greatly changed over the previous generation. Since 1654, many were uneasy allies with the Czar after withdrawing support for Poland. They now felt subject to excessive demands for troops to be used in projects like building canals and fortresses, where they could be worked to sickness and death and used as proverbial “cannon fodder”

Thus, in 1708, Mazepa aligned with Charles, giving him 5,000 Cossacks. Mazepa felt he was choosing the lesser of two evils. Later that year, there was a race of belligerents to Mazepa’s home city of Baturyn. 20,000 Russian soldiers commanded by Alexander Menshikov overwhelmed this military arsenal and food store. When the city fell, there was this infamous slaughter of the civilian population. A number were tied to makeshift crosses or boards and floated down the local river.

The next summer, on June 27, 1709, the armies faced off near Poltava, where Peter & Charles were on-hand directing troops. The Czar prevailed and this turn in history explains why Sweden never became a great power. This battle also had a major role in propelling Russia to their status. Yet that fire in the hearts of Ukrainians for independence was not extinguished over the next few centuries. Today, a Ukrainian state exists which exacts quite the toll on Russian aggression. Ukrainians revere Mazepa for making the best choice he could.

Mazepa was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church and Czar Peter also ordered all portraits of the man destroyed. Similarly, Tolstoy, was separated from the Orthodox Church in 1901 through a Church Proclamation. Tolstoy’s writing on religion led to the church to declare him as a “false teacher” imbued with “intellectual pride.” This leads me to the second reference to I have found from Tolstoy on Mazppa, which is the book “Life of Tolstoy” by Tolstoy’s long-time English friend and translator, Alymer Maude. Maude describes how Tolstoy studied the life of Mazepa upon a friendly wager as a law student.

Tolstoy addresses how divided opinions persist through the ages. There will be a prominent crisis grabbing Your attention where every opinion under the sun is stated. He posits there is a perception afforded to a select few people involved in whatever conflict is at hand. There will naturally be some who get close to an accurate prediction of how a matter turns out and are often mistaken with being responsible for the event. For example, if Napoleon orders an advance and wins the field, he will get credit for taking ground. Tolstoy has us examine if there is more to the story.

To illustrate this, Tolstoy has us imagine the hypothetical of men hauling a log, where each expresses an opinion as to how and where to take it. Eventually, the log will be hauled to some location in a manner most similar to how one, or a small group, predict. We are led to the conclusion that those who predict most accurately are responsible for the task. However, Tolstoy’s goal is to relate to the complexity of attributing causes for events. He proffers that there is merely a perception of command and illusory nature of power.

With the Log-haul, there will be various men doing most of the physical work and because of their attention to the task, do not often think so much about what they are doing. Tolstoy proposes that they are as much responsible for the result as so-called decision makers.

Tolstoy infers that certain men who take initiative to “talk more” are often given accolades and find themselves with decision-making capacity and work less with his hands. Napoleon was one such man.

In affairs of the military or other large-scale enterprises, masses direct themselves with grander objectives than hauling a log. The commanding is often done in small teams, who do little of the actual fighting. Tolstoy attributes to this group similar attributes to how man perceives himself when he works alone and develops values to draw from. Basically, considerations which directed past activity, justify present activity, as serve as a guide for his future actions.

Tolstoy finds that this analytical process does not take the overriding values bestowed through the Gospel into account and allows us to devise justifications or rationalizations for collective activity. Tolstoy provides an example through the French Revolution. He notes: for reasons known or unknown the French began to drown and kill one another in that affair of 1789. There was an overriding belief that such was necessary for the welfare of France and for Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality.

The People later felt differently and ceased to kill one another. It was then believed that a centralization of power was necessary as well as resistance to those who desired to stay attached to monarchies. This resolve led to another effort that involved marching out of country to kill at the behest of men like Napoleon. This was accompanied by phrases about the glory of France and baseness of England.

It is such that every movement that occurs inevitably coincides with someone’s expressed wish and receives some justification. Tolstoy proclaims that the justifications made for such wars have no logic but have formidable significance. They serve to release people from moral responsibility for our collective crimes, such as how we kill millions of our fellows. Our intellect can excuse, reframe, or justify anything!

Tolstoy is wrestling with the nature of life, like the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, who Tolstoy often cites. He is expressing that man must rely on more than what other men say -- no matter how convincing. As Andrei realized on the field of Austerlitz, man must look above and beyond himself and act as if he is accountable to the Almighty even when he is flowing with the strongest currents of conventional thinking. We all have a voice in where we are going and for the wars and oppression around us. We share the responsibility of not justifying the unjustifiable.

He uses a metaphor to make the point: Think of a person on a boat who does not perceive the degree to which he is moving, as compared to someone who can see the ship from the shoreline. We are moving but do not feel it. We are all akin to passengers being led somewhere. This can be the narrow path of virtue or the wider path of frailty and sin. Tolstoy essentially is asking you to consider, while on board and looking at the sky: What is Your North Star?

This is a stark reminder to not lose sight of the essential connection that those few names in history have to the masses. Power also lies with the people. It was not one man who led to the excesses of any movement. It was a combination of those considered leaders and the rest of us who actually haul the log.