The Project Gutenberg EBook of Best Russian Short Stories, by Various

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Title: Best Russian Short Stories

Author: Various

Release Date: September 11, 2004 [EBook #13437]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEST RUSSIAN SHORT STORIES ***

Produced by David Starner, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project Gutenberg
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[Illustration: ANTON P. CHEKHOV, RUSSIA'S GREATEST SHORT-STORY WRITER]

BEST RUSSIAN SHORT STORIES

Compiled and Edited by THOMAS SELTZER

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE QUEEN OF SPADES _A.S. Pushkin_

THE CLOAK _N.V. Gogol_

THE DISTRICT DOCTOR _I.S. Turgenev_

THE CHRISTMAS TREE AND THE WEDDING _F.M. Dostoyevsky_

GOD SEES THE TRUTH, BUT WAITS _L.N. Tolstoy_

HOW A MUZHIK FED TWO OFFICIALS _M.Y. Saltykov_

THE SHADES, A PHANTASY _V.G. Korolenko_

THE SIGNAL _V.N. Garshin_

THE DARLING _A.P. Chekhov_

THE BET _A.P. Chekhov_

VANKA _A.P. Chekhov_

HIDE AND SEEK _F.K. Sologub_

DETHRONED _I.N. Potapenko_

THE SERVANT _S.T. Semyonov_

ONE AUTUMN NIGHT _M. Gorky_

HER LOVER _M. Gorky_

LAZARUS _L.N. Andreyev_

THE REVOLUTIONIST _M.P. Artzybashev_

THE OUTRAGE _A.I. Kuprin_

INTRODUCTION

Conceive the joy of a lover of nature who, leaving the art galleries,
wanders out among the trees and wild flowers and birds that the
pictures of the galleries have sentimentalised. It is some such joy
that the man who truly loves the noblest in letters feels when tasting
for the first time the simple delights of Russian literature. French
and English and German authors, too, occasionally, offer works of
lofty, simple naturalness; but the very keynote to the whole of
Russian literature is simplicity, naturalness, veraciousness.

Another essentially Russian trait is the quite unaffected conception
that the lowly are on a plane of equality with the so-called upper
classes. When the Englishman Dickens wrote with his profound pity and
understanding of the poor, there was yet a bit; of remoteness,
perhaps, even, a bit of caricature, in his treatment of them. He
showed their sufferings to the rest of the world with a "