"The Red and the White" offers a clear echo of one major literary accomplishment and in its form it challenges a second masterpiece. There are similarities, both of large design and of special technique, between "The Red and the White" and "War and Peace."

Having marched boldly into such company the book must justify its ambition by showing a brilliant command of its material. And it does show that command. Encompassing chaos, as the Russian revolution is dramatized in the process of destroying an old way of life, the novel brings into artistic order a monumental account of the sufferings, loyalties, betrayals, deaths, and rebirths incident to such a gigantic convulsion of social evolution.

As his master Tolstoy did before him, Troyat looks at a crisis in world history over the shoulders of a tight little circle of representative men and women. The members of the Arapov family and their associates provide examples of all the types that become involved first in the ideological and then the physical struggle of the years 1914 to 1918….

In the end, when the Bolsheviks seize complete control, the Arapovs—as typical representatives of the old bourgeoisie—are seen to have lost everything….

The crises of the novel, though they inevitably run parallel to the course of history, are made to turn always on moments of intense feeling in the private lives of the people of the narrative. The range of these personal passions is broad; the quality of the emotion is never banal or tainted by the obvious cliche. Memorable, because it blends so many elements of the humorous, pitiful, noble, and grotesque, is the passage in which a fine old man is saved from summary execution by the Bolsheviks simply because certain things, confiscated among his belongings, testify to his advanced ideas about cremation; in the bemused and childlike minds of the revolutionists he becomes a worthy brother, waging war against traditions of death as they wage war on traditions of life.

It must not be claimed that "The Red and the White" stands shoulder to shoulder with "War and Peace." Tolstoy's virtues and his faults were all on the gigantic scale and Troyat does not match either the former or the latter. He attempts to offer no large, philosophic comment on "the meaning of history" as Tolstoy so pontifically and bewilderingly did. Yet real as his people are they do not equal Tolstoy's in emotional depth or significance.

The stature of "War and Peace" is still unique. But Troyat's command of a sweeping view of the social scene is most impressive; his mastery of the revealing moment of passion identifies him as a distinguished artist.