Hadji Murad is a novella (that is, a long short story, about 50 pages), by Leo Tolstoy, who also wrote War and Peace. The action takes place in the middle of the 19^th century. Then, as now, the Russian army was engaged in a major, and exhausting, offensive in the Caucasus, in the area now known as Chechnya. The hero, after whom the story is named, as a Chechen war lord and freedom fighter, who wants to liberate his people from oppression by the Russians. But he first needs to defeat another Chechen leader, who controls a part of the country, and has managed to capture Hadji Murad's wife and son. In the attempt to do this, he enlists the support of the Russians, who are (naturally) suspicious of him, but willing to use him as a way of extending their control of the area.

This story is a wonderful evocation of the heroic qualities of a primitive war lord, and it also raises complex questions about how military leaders from two entirely different cultures can negotiate with one another. The Russians are Christian; the Chechens are Muslim. In addition they speak different languages, and can only communicate through interpreters. Some of the problems inherent in peace-keeping can be examined in this story.

The American literary critic Harold Bloom has said about the lead character, "Magnificent in his sense of force, like Achilles, Hadji Murad is mature, unambiguous, potent without savagery. ... No other central figure in Tolstoy receives so loving and full an accounting ..., and I am not persuaded that there is an equivalent to the Tartar chief anywhere else in Western literature. Who else has given us the natural man as triumphant protagonist, rich in courage and guile alike?"