...and so it doesn't matter if you're reading it in the original Russian or in translation. The themes and characters and ideas are universal and often transcend a specific historical era and certainly a specific geographic location. Beren is right though in a sense. Even Russian versions of the great Russian authors include footnotes just as any version of Dickens you might find in English would have plenty of footnotes. That's because the book is an artifact of a specific historical time and so much that actually happens and is referred to will in fact be lost on a modern reader no matter what language they read it in. If the translator conveys the major stuff, the themes and so on (and the good ones most certainly do), everyone is missing immediate familiarity with the minutiae of historical context, a point nullified by good footnotes, and yes, readers in the non-original language are "missing" the subtleties of the original language in many ways. Nonetheless, all of this supports what I originally said, I think, which is no matter what language you're reading something in, if it's great, it will be great in the hands of a skilled translator. Lost subtlety aside, War and Peace is a masterpiece in English just as it is in Russian and arguing that the latter is inherently better is, I think, missing the point.