Cultural and national stereotypes in "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy

In the paper Cultural and national stereotypes in War and Peace by L. Tolstoy several chapters of the 3rd and the 4th books of the novel are analyzed, the chapters which are set in the territory of Lithuania, a former part of Respublica Poloniae. The paper concerns a “mechanism” of transformation of the natural geographical space of Lithuania into a fictional space of Russia. Tolstoy treats ironically the mental confrontation of Napoleon and Alexander I, when basing on the clichés about Russians and the ‘Russian earth’ each of the emperors presents his own understanding of the territories having taken over by Russia as a result of the third partition of Poland in 1795. According to Tolstoy, it is impossible to comprehend rationally the cultural and national mythologems and stereotypes in which the sacred spirit of a people is embodied. Arguing for this claim Tolstoy as an artist sacrifices the national peculiarities of LithuaniaVytauto Didžiojo universitetasŠvietimo akademij