War and Peace and Immanent Destruction

I've been reading War and Peace and am so far enjoying it. Unlike Crime and Punishment which is ahistorical in that it doesn't necessarily mention the exact time-period in which it takes place, War and Peace is historical, naming names, events, and movements within Russian society. Further differences include the setting: Crime and Punishment takes place in the Russian underclass/peasantry (presumably after the freeing of the serfs), while War and Peace involves the Russian upper class.

While reading the novel, I can't help a sense of foreboding, of impending destruction setting over the whole thing. How can you possibly connect with the characters, many of them noble, good people, knowing that in a few short years after these events take place, their entire world will be destroyed, violently and horrifically, by the Bolsheviks and their fellow communists? It saddens me to realize how much was lost when the greedy, power hungry, and selfish communists wiped out all of Russian society to put in place their misguided, inherently demeaning philosophy of strife, struggle, control, and jealousy.

What is truly saddening is that, like the French immediately after the meeting of the Estates General in 1789, the Russians were gradually working towards meaningful reform. You can't just impose a constitutional democracy on a people overnight. It has to be worked at, tweaked, and made to fit the socio-political culture of that people. The US Constitution wasn't adopted immediately after the American Revolution; there was the inter-regnum period of the Articles of Confederation, which taught the leaders of the country a great deal about federalism, cooperation, and interdependency. The Tsars and their aristocratic advisors slowly worked to modernize and liberalize their incredibly conservative country bit by bit, and by 1917, great strides had been taken. All those strides were for naught. All the hard work of the liberals (referring to republicans, and free-market entrepreneurs) in Russian government and society was utterly destroyed by the usurpation of the Bolsheviks.

Now, I doubt that the Russians of today, after 70 years of devastating communist rule, could recognize the Russia in War and Peace, which is a sad thing.