Much of his work dealt with themes of Marxist historiography, imperialism, and Russian nationalism; he spent much of his professional life at odds with state authorities over his scholarship.

Tarle was also a founder of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Russia's diplomatic university.

His father, Viktor Grigorievich Tarle, belonged to the Merchantry Social Estate and ran a shop in Kyiv.

[1][2] As a student, Tarle joined Marxist clubs and took an active part in the social democratic movement.

Tarle had achieved distinction as a specialist in modern history through his book, Europe in the Age of Imperialism.

He repeated the basic ideas of Mikhail Pokrovsky on the 1812 campaign and interpreted Napoleon from the viewpoint of the class struggle.

The Battle of Borodino was not termed a victory in his work and the resistance to Napoleon was claimed as being "never a popular, national war".

He stated that "there was no mass participation by the peasantry in the guerilla bands and in their activities, and their part in the campaign was strictly limited".

Tarle supported his interpretation by "denying that the peasants fought against the French and describing the burning of Smolensk and Moscow as systematic acts of the Russian army in retreat".

Tarle's biography of Napoleon, according to Black, was accepted as "the final word in the analysis of the 1812 campaign" when it was first published in 1936 but was subject to criticism.

Tarle prepared a new work in a comparatively shorter time and published it in 1938 under the title Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia, 1812.

In addition, Tarle was attacked for having failed to evaluate the Battle of Borodino as a clear-cut Russian victory, for having stated that Moscow was burned by the Russians themselves, and for having assigned too much significance to the expanses of Russia, with cold and hunger being key factors in the defeat of the French army.

Valuable new materials and chiefly Stalin’s enormously significant and illuminating judgment had obliged Soviet historians to correct their errors and revise their interpretations of the war of 1812".

Tarle's complete work was entitled "The City of Russian Glory: Sevastopol in 1854–1855" and was published in 1954 by the USSR Defense Ministry.

Yevgeny Viktorovich Tarle died on 6 January 1955 in Moscow, before he could fulfill his intention of writing another book on the War of 1812.