Battle of Borodino - Legacy

Legacy

Poet Mikhail Lermontov romanticized the battle in his poem Borodino. The battle was famously described by Count Leo Tolstoy in his novel War and Peace as "a continuous slaughter which could be of no avail either to the French or the Russians". A huge panorama representing the battle was painted by Franz Roubaud for the centenary of Borodino and installed on the Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow to mark the 150th anniversary of the event. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky also composed his 1812 Overture to commemorate the battle.

In Russia, the Battle of Borodino is reenacted yearly on the first Sunday of September. On the battlefield itself, the Bagration flèches are preserved; a modest monument has been constructed in honour of the French soldiers who fell in the battle. There are also remnants of trenches from the seven-day battle fought at the same battlefield in 1941 between the Soviet and German forces (which took fewer human lives than the one of 1812).

A commemorative 1-ruble coin was released in the Soviet Union in 1987 to commemorate the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino, and four million were minted. A minor planet 3544 Borodino, discovered by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1977 was named after the village Borodino.