Leo Tolstoy’s 1863 novel set among Russian frontier communities is The Cossacks.
The novel follows Dmitri Olenin, a young Russian nobleman who leaves Moscow and joins a military outpost in the Caucasus. There he encounters Cossack society and becomes fascinated by its relationship with land, work, freedom, and violence. His romantic feelings for Maryanka complicate his attempt to escape aristocratic life.
Tolstoy began the work in the 1850s, drawing on his experiences in the Caucasus, and completed it after several revisions. It was published in 1863 in the journal The Russian Messenger.
The Cossacks is sometimes confused with Hadji Murat, a later Tolstoy novella also connected with the Caucasus. The Cossacks is a full-length novel focused on Olenin’s cultural encounter and personal transformation.