Tolstoy began writing
The cutting of the forest
in June 1853, while stationed in the Caucasus, and completed it in the rear of the Crimean War front at Bel'bék on June 18, 1855, during the siege of Sevastopol. It is an account of an ordinary day in the nineteenth-century Caucasus experienced by a group of Russian soldiers. This novella is part of a cycle of three short stories inspired by the violence of war, described with ruthless truth and devoid of any form of romanticism, works that shocked Russian society by challenging even the censorship apparatus, which considered whether to prevent their publication.