The central place in Alexei Tolstoy's work is held by his books about the events of the Great October Revolution and the Civil War. His Ordeal (1919-1941) is a book about the Russian people as they forge their way to a new life, about the Russian intelligentsia which, as a result of a long "ordeal", found its place in society. Tolstoy himself wrote of the plan behind his "It's time to begin studying the Revolution, it's time for the artist to become a historian and a thinker... I not only acknowledge the Revolution - with such acknowledgement alone it would not be possible even to write a novel - I love its dark majesty, its world-wide scope. And that is the task of my novel - to create this majesty, this scope in all its complexity.

The central place in Alexei Tolstoy's work is held by his books about the events of the Great October Revolution and the Civil War. His "Ordeal" (1919-1941) is a book about the Russian people as they forge their way to a new life, about the Russian intelligentsia, which, as a result of a long "ordeal", found its place in society. Tolstoy himself wrote of the plan behind his "It's time to begin studying the Revolution, it's time for the artist to become a historian and a thinker... I not only acknowledge the Revolution - with such acknowledgement alone it would not be possible even to write a novel - I love its dark majesty, its world-wide scope. And that is the task of my novel - to create this majesty, this scope in all its complexity.

The central place in Alexei Tolstoy's work is held by his books about the events of the Great October Revolution and the Civil War. His Ordeal (1919-1941) is a book about the Russian people as they forge their way to a new life, about the Russian intelligentsia, which, as a result of a long "ordeal", found its place in society. Tolstoy himself wrote of the plan behind his "It's time to begin studying the Revolution, it's time for the artist to become a historian and a thinker... I not only acknowledge the Revolution - with such acknowledgement alone it would not be possible even to write a novel - I love its dark majesty, its world-wide scope. And that is the task of my novel - to create this majesty, this scope in all its complexity.