Unlike the politically non-committal Caucasian ceuvre of Tolstoy's earlier days, Hadji Murat unequivocally condemned the war against the Muslim tribes. Written between 1896 and 1904, the semi-fictional novel belongs to the era of the Boer War (1899–1902), an outbreak of hostilities which inaugurated the twentieth century's long wave of revolts against colonialism. A glaring demonstration of the brutality and hypocrisy of “civilizing missions”, this current event surely intensified anti-imperialist sentiment in Hadji Murat. But besides having a new historical perspective on empire-building, Tolstoy also had evolved his religious and social thought focused on relations between the peasantry and lords of Russia. Solidarity with the peasant as the victim of an unjust sociopolitical system blended in Hadji Murat with sympathy for the Caucasian tribes as a foreign population senselessly decimated by Russia. The tsarist state's exercise of abusive power is the story's major concern, condensed in the framing metaphor of the blooming thistle crushed by a cartwheel. Known as the “Tatar” in the region of Tolstoy's estate outside Moscow, the colorful wild plant bears a common Russian misnomer for the Caucasian tribes and operates as a symbol for the Avar hero, Hadji Murat.

While Tolstoy's earlier Caucasian œuvre pursued antiromantic strategies, Hadji Murat sought instead to dislodge an officially constituted view of history and force the Russian élite into uncomfortable reassessment of the war. The work approached the tribesman as a culturally muzzled figure who needed a mediator to bring him into authentic dialogue with the Russian readership.