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'War and Peace', Tolstoy's epic novel, covers Russian social history during the time of Napoleon. Tolstoy initially intended to write about the Decembrist Uprising of 1825 in which Russian army officers led a revolt of about 3,000 Russian soldiers on December 14, but when he was researching this, Tolstoy was led back to Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and the history of that war. 'War and Peace' was eventually published in serialised form between 1865 and 1869 and was hailed as a new kind of fiction which covered the great themes of life during war time and during peace time.