Makar Alexeevich

Makar Alexeevich is Joseph Bazdeev’s half-insane and hard-drinking brother, left in the Bazdeev house after Sophia Danilovna has taken the children to the Torzhok estate. Though he appears only briefly, his unstable presence transforms Pierre Bezukhov’s solemn search for spiritual guidance and patriotic purpose into a scene of comic disorder, sudden violence, and accidental exposure.

Identity and Setting

Makar Alexeevich remains in the Bazdeev house while the household is being dispersed by the crisis in Moscow. Gerasim describes him as the brother of his late master, Joseph Bazdeev, and as a man who was once connected to an intellectually serious household but has now become “quite feeble.” His physical appearance conveys that decline: he is tall and bald, with a red nose, a dressing gown, and galoshes worn on bare feet. He mutters angrily in the anteroom and retreats along the passage when Pierre arrives.

The sealed and dusty study preserves the memory of Joseph Bazdeev’s authority, particularly through the manuscripts and the authentic Scotch Acts of the order. Makar Alexeevich, by contrast, embodies the household’s disintegration. The room contains the dead benefactor’s intellectual and spiritual legacy; the anteroom and passage contain the living brother’s drunken confusion. His presence therefore provides a grotesque human counterpoint to Pierre’s reverent meditation over Bazdeev’s papers.

Encounter with Pierre Bezukhov

When Pierre visits the house to sort Joseph Bazdeev’s books and papers, Makar Alexeevich is not initially an active participant. Pierre knows him as a half-crazy old man and a hard drinker, and treats him with a mixture of recognition, pity, and apprehension. While Pierre sits for more than two hours in the dusty study, absorbed in the manuscripts, Makar Alexeevich remains outside the central action.

The contrast changes when Makar Alexeevich appears drunk, with his dressing gown unfastened and his face red and distorted. Pierre has obtained a pistol and is imagining a heroic attempt to kill Napoleon Bonaparte; Makar Alexeevich’s sudden entrance gives that fantasy an immediate, uncontrolled, and absurdly local form. He declares that the frightened people will not surrender and asks whether he is right, as though he too were defending a besieged cause. His words reveal a heroic fancy, but not a coherent plan or command of circumstances.

The Pistol and the French Officer

Makar Alexeevich notices the pistol on the table and seizes it with unexpected speed. Gerasim and the porter follow him into the vestibule and try to take it away, but he clings to the weapon, shouting commands and resisting their efforts. His cry of “To arms! Board them!” turns the domestic passage into a makeshift battlefield, while his drunkenness makes the danger impossible to control through ordinary reason.

The crisis intensifies when a French officer enters the house and asks for quarters and lodging. The officer attempts to communicate with Gerasim, smiling and gesturing as the frightened servant fails to make himself understood. At that moment Makar Alexeevich appears at the kitchen door with the pistol. He watches the Frenchman with what the narrative calls a madman’s cunning, raises the weapon, and takes aim.

Pierre throws himself at Makar Alexeevich just as the old man tries to fire. Makar Alexeevich nevertheless reaches the trigger, producing a deafening report and filling the space with smoke. The shot damages the plaster of the wall, but the officer is not wounded. Pierre wrests away the pistol and immediately explains in French that Makar Alexeevich is an unfortunate madman who did not know what he was doing. The old man’s incoherent resistance thus nearly causes a fatal confrontation and forces Pierre to abandon his attempt to conceal his knowledge of French.

Narrative Function and Significance

Makar Alexeevich is not presented as a sustained political actor or as a rational representative of Russian resistance. His defiance is real in its bodily intensity but detached from practical judgment: the slogans of battle, the pistol, the drunken posture, and the frantic struggle form a distorted imitation of organized heroism. The scene exposes the gulf between Pierre’s imagined assassination of Napoleon and the chaotic violence that can actually erupt around a weapon.

His intervention also collapses distinctions between the heroic and the ridiculous. Pierre has been imagining himself as a solitary instrument of Providence, prepared to kill Napoleon and accept execution. Makar Alexeevich, with his bare feet, dressing gown, red face, and drunken cries, performs a parodic version of the same sacrificial militancy. Yet the consequences are not merely comic. A real French officer is placed in danger, Pierre must intervene physically, and the household’s hidden arrangements become vulnerable to military scrutiny.

The episode uses Makar Alexeevich to make private madness and public catastrophe touch. The French occupation has entered the domestic interior, while the domestic disorder answers it with an improvised act of violence. Makar Alexeevich’s brief appearance therefore marks the point at which Pierre’s inward fantasy, the Bazdeev household’s decay, and the larger crisis of Moscow become one dangerous scene.