Russian essays and stories

These essays (which deal with Russia) are in no sense political. I will not go so far as to say they are uninteresting; such modesty is, as Bacon once pointed out, a gross form...

Later on in the day a boy of seventeen got into the train. He carried a large box. I was reading a book by Gogol, and had put it down for a moment on the seat. He took it up and...

That evening I went to a restaurant at which there was a musical performance. I fell into conversation with a young merchant sitting at the next table, and he said to me after w...

The sunflower season has arrived. Sunflowers are grown in great quantities in Russia, not for ornamental or decorative purposes but for utilitarian purposes. They are grown for...

“When the writer said that Tourgenieff was not for the general public, he meant, of course, the English or the French general public,” said Feodor Petrovitch. “In Russia his nov...

“So you’ve come to talk politics,” he said, “and I am not going to talk politics with you. I am going to talk literature with you--a far more interesting subject. No Russian kno...

The literature, for instance, cannot go back to the time when there was no political life, because there is a political life now. The Reactionaries may have the best of it; the...

The curtain goes up on a space of complete darkness (in Moscow they gave you the impression that you were looking into illimitable space), from which a figure in grey emerges (i...

“Well,” said the old man, “I suppose you know that two years ago after the disastrous war in South Africa, and the disorders and the general strike which followed it, the Govern...

But why, it will be asked, are the Jews killed? First of all, at the root of the matter, there is the following cause: In a country which is as politically unripe and undevelope...

Count X. was a landowner who lived in the south of Russia, not far from one of the large manufacturing towns. He spent the whole summer in a small country house, about six miles...

Douniasha looked radiantly happy; she was dressed in pale green, and wore a necklace of bright beads; but Anoushka, in her pink silk finery, looked as white as a ghost, and said...

“At least, I hope,” said his wife, “that the result of all this, and of your having to do all this extra work, will be that you will get promotion.”

“I prefer to look on,” said Holmes, and when I had likewise declined to play, the Prince and the Princess and Princess Barbara sat down at the table. Prince Alexander also decli...