This chapter analyzes the history of imperial politics from 1800 to 1914, with special emphasis on three key elements: the autocracy, the army, and peasant life before and after serfdom’s abolition in 1861. It argues that Tolstoy’s worldview took shape in the context of bureaucratic and military systems in which serf-owners occupied privileged positions, which complicated the abolition of serfdom, and which made impossible the building of an egalitarian social order in Russia.