Count Rostov shoots Lieutenant Pulonov

Count Rostov shoots Lieutenant Pulonov in an incident that the novel later recalls through a conversation about Rostov’s movements in 1914. Its decisive revelation is Rostov’s explanation: the shared aristocratic status that might have seemed to protect Pulonov instead becomes the reason Rostov gives for shooting him.

Circumstances and chronology

The shooting is discussed when a colonel asks Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov about his last departure from the country. Rostov places that departure on May 16, 1914, and the colonel connects it to the incident with Lieutenant Pulonov a few days earlier. The conversation establishes the incident’s place in the chronology, but does not describe how the shooting unfolded or what immediately preceded it.

Rostov’s stated reason

The colonel asks why Rostov shot Pulonov and points out that Pulonov, like Rostov, was an aristocrat. Rostov responds, “I shot him because he was an aristocrat.” His mild shock at the question gives way to a concise answer that turns the colonel’s assumption inside out: aristocratic identity is not offered as a bond between the men but as Rostov’s stated grounds for violence. The exchange supplies a reason, not a fuller account of motive or circumstance.

The colonel’s response and the incident’s significance

The colonel laughs and says that he had not considered the matter that way, adding that it is an idea the Bolsheviks should understand. His reaction shifts the exchange from a question about one shooting to a political observation about class identity. Rostov’s answer is striking for its blunt reversal, but the passage leaves the shooting itself undescribed; its meaning in this scene rests on the contrast between the colonel’s expectation of aristocratic solidarity and Rostov’s explanation.