The Tartar thistle is a symbol that interlaces themes of resilience, defiance, and the essence of struggle against the backdrop of the central conflict of the story, the Caucasian War. This tumultuous and prolonged conflict saw the Chechen people pitted against the encroaching forces of the Russian Empire. Through the eyes of the narrator, the thistle emerges as a symbol of the Chechen spirit of resistance. Encountering the thistle while traversing a plowed field, the narrator expresses the desire to find something alive amidst the desolation of “this dead, black field” (4). Imperial Russia’s scorched earth tactics, marked by the deliberate destruction of forests in the Caucasus, take shape in the narrative as a strategy to strip the Chechen resistance of resources. This military strategy finds a symbolic parallel in the "dead, black field" described by Tolstoy.

When the narrator encounters the thistle, he reflects on the effort required to detach the flower, saying, “How staunchly it defended itself and how dearly it sold its life” (4). In this way, the thistle mirrors the broader struggle of the Chechen people to maintain their autonomy and cultural identity against imperial aggression. The thistle’s resilience in the bleakest environments epitomizes perseverance amidst devastation, paralleling the Chechen resistance to Russian domination.