History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev

Initially banned by censors and published for the first time in 1883 by Russkaya Starina, eight years after the author's death, it became one of the best known examples of political satire in 19th-century Russia, popular with Russian intellectuals of many generations.

Harkins has pointed out, Tolstoy was neither a Slavophile nor a Westernizer, but shared certain views of each camp, admiring both the Western-type constitutional monarchy and the Kievan Rus' period in Russian history, seeing the latter as heroic and progressive.

[1] According to William Harkins, The History of the Russian State should be seen "as an important work by an author who has a very substantial claim to be regarded as Russia's leading humorous poet, and not as a serious or entirely consistent statement of definite ideological position.

The accounts of Ryurik and then Igor, Oleg, Olga and Svaytoslav's deeds (verses 9–14) are marked by the "macaronic" (as W.Hoskins describes it) use of the German language: Nu, dumayut, komanda/Zdes nogu slomit tchort/Es ist je eine Shande/Wir mussen wieder fort.

[4] A loather of Mongol's Yoke, Tolstoy then describes the enemy's advent in neutral, jovial manner, reserving most of the bile for the Russian local leaders, quick to report one on another to heir foreign masters (Verse 26).

In search of it, having chosen Amsterdam for his port of call, he's shaven the nations' beards off, "dressed all of us up as Hollanders" and indeed maintained a certain kind of discipline which promptly vanished with his death (Verse 55).

Yekaterina comes in, Voltaire and Diderot advice her to grant freedom to her people and this way maintain Order, but... Messieurs, im vozrazila/Ona, vous me comblez/I totchas prikrepila/Ukraintsev k zemle.

We are in Paris/ With Louis le Desire) This jubilant point in history sees "Russia's colours flourishing", its land being abundant, but Order still nowhere in sight (Verse 67).

[4] The reason for taking his tale to an abrupt end Tolstoy explains in Verse 68: Poslednee skazanye/Ya b napisal moyo/No tchayu nakazanye,/Boyus monsier Veillot.

(I would have written the final part of my tale, but expect punishment, and the one who frightens me is monsier Veillot), the latter being the head of a Russian Interior Ministry's Postal Department, with the right to use perlustration.

[5] And it was Verse 68 that's made Tolstoy's poem relevant for all the latter times of the Russian history:[6] Hodit' byvayet sklizko/Po kameshkam inym/Itak, o tom tchto blizko/My lutche umoltchim.

Tolstoy ends his poem with a sarcastic paean to Aleksander II's ministers, picturing them as a bunch of children sleighing down the snowy slope.

The poem ends with Tolstoy's preposterously humble address to the Interior Minister Alexander Timashev saying that since his face appeared upon the country like a dawn he introduced the Order to his land.

Mentioning Nestor the Chronicler again and slipping totally into parodying the latter's style, Tolstoy asks the reader to correct possible faults of the author for the sake of truth, then concludes: Sostavyl ot bylinok/Rasskaz nemudry sei/Hudyi smirenny inok/Rab bozhy Aleksei.