A sketch for a novel makes for an unfocused story : Tolstoy's Hadjim Murat

So it turns out I was wrong about Tolstoy's story/novella Hadji Murat, in "The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories," Pevear-Volokhonsky translation - it's not a minature War and Peace - alternating between two story strands. Rather, most of the novella concerns the Chechen leader Murat and his decision to come over to the Russian side, primarily to build an alliance to take on his Chechen rival and to free his family held captive. Tolstoy spins a number of strands from this main yarn, so to speak - including the section that I admired a lot in yesterday's post about the almost-random shooting and death of a young Russian soldier and the back story on his village and his family. As the novella moves forward, Tolstoy gives us scenes of Murat meeting members of Russian society, Murat narrating his life story to a Russian translator, backroom dealings of the leaders of the Russian army, all kind of interesting but finally, unfortunately, all pulling us away from the main focus of the story and diluting its impact by accrual of too many strands, too many undeveloped details. It's a not a miniature War and Peace but a sketch for a complex novel that was never to be - I found it hard to follow and hard to enter. Murat, the last story in this volume, makes a good complement or bookend to the first story, A Prisoner of the Caucasus, which shows a Russian soldier held by Tartar bands who escapes to freedom, and Murat has some similar material but seen (somewhat) from the nonRussian point of view.