Petersburg society has hardly changed during these critical times, and the aristocrats still hold balls, levées, and theater parties, and they are still concerned with court politics. They rejoice at the victory of Borodino and discuss the battle with the same emotions they talk of Ellen Bezuhov's sudden heart ailment. At Anna Pavlovna's soirée some days later, the guests exchange commiserations on account of the death of Countess Bezuhov. After Moscow is abandoned, the grief-stricken emperor declares he will stop at no sacrifice to save his country and will himself lead the peasants to battle if the army fails.
Despite the war, despite all the self-sacrificing, people carry on their personal lives. Tolstoy says that these daily human interests and activities are more important than the public ones we hear so much about. Those who are concerned with their immediate problems, he writes, play the most useful role in history, while those who strive to grasp the general course of events, and try by heroism and self-sacrifice to take a hand in it, are the most useless in society."It is only unselfconscious activity that bears fruit," he says,"and the man who plays a part in an historical drama never understands its significance. If he strives to comprehend it, he is stricken with barrenness." In the remote provinces people bewail the fate of Russia and of Moscow, and in Petersburg society-minded persons talk only of war and self-sacrifice; but the men in the army are silent on these issues and, as they gaze on the flames, their thoughts are not on revenge but on their next pay check or on the next halting place. Their silence comes from an implicit understanding of what they must do, whereas the discussions of those far from the battle scene come from a lack of understanding and a lack of experience.
