Which magazine published the first installments of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace?

The first installments of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace appeared in Russky Vestnik.

Russky Vestnik was a major nineteenth-century Russian literary and political journal, also known in English as The Russian Messenger. It published the beginning of Tolstoy’s vast historical novel from 1865 onward. Publication in a magazine allowed readers to encounter the work in installments while Tolstoy continued revising it.

The relationship eventually became difficult. Tolstoy’s historical and philosophical passages did not always fit the journal’s editorial preferences, and the novel’s final form changed substantially from its early serialized presentation. The completed work was issued as a book in 1869.

The magazine is sometimes confused with other Russian periodicals that published Tolstoy’s writings, including The Contemporary, where his first literary work appeared. The two names refer to different publications and different stages of his career.