Letters on the Franco-Prussian War

The depth of Turgenev’s interest in the events of 1870 is evidenced by the very fact that, in print, five of his correspondences about the Franco-Prussian War appeared. The emergence of letters about the Franco-Prussian War was influenced by Turgenev’s territorial proximity to the theater of military operations. Living in the border town of Baden-Baden, he seemed to have become an eyewitness of the first weeks of the war. Yet Turgenev did not become an ordinary war correspondent; his attention focused on major historical and ethical questions, on the causes of the war, and on the possible consequences of the bloody clash in which the peoples of two countries close to him were involved.