Today, it is not always clear why we should study Leo Tolstoy, a privileged nineteenth-century count who in later life rejected the value of fiction even though he kept on writing it, who lived one way and preached another, a writer most of us can only read in translation. The answer is simple: Tolstoy has much to teach us about nineteenthcentury Russia, about how societies transform themselves, about the impact of war, about intimacy and the human heart, and, of course, about the craft of writing powerful, beautiful, and memorable fiction.

“In the Days of Serfdom” and Other Storiesis...

“Just as you please to order, madam ! Only it would be a pity if it’s the Doutlofs. They’re all good fellows, and one of them must go if we don’t send at least one of the domestic serfs,” said the steward, “As it is, everyone is hinting at them. . . . But it’s just as you please, madam!”

And he placed his right hand over his left in front of him, inclined his head towards the other shoulder, drew in—almost with a smack—his thin lips, rolled up his eyes, and said no more, evidently intending to...

“No, no, no! It can’t be, , Doctor! Surely something can be done ? Why do neither of you speak ?” said a young mother, as with long, firm steps she came out of the nursery, where her three-year-old child, her first and only son, lay dying of water on the brain.

Her husband and the doctor, who had been talking together in subdued tones, became silent. With a deep sigh the husband timidly approached her, and tenderly stroked her dishevelled hair. The doctor stood with bowed head, and his silence and immobility showed the hopelessness of the case.

“what’s...

KORNÉY VASÍLYEF was fifty-four when he had last visited his village. There was no grey to be seen in his thick curly hair, and his black beard was only a little grizzly at the cheek-bones. His face was smooth and ruddy, the nape of his neck broad and firm, and his whole strong body padded with fat as a result of town life and good fare.

He had finished army service twenty years ago, and had returned to the village with a little money. He first began shopkeeping, and then took to cattle-dealing. He went to Tcherkdsy, in the province...

It was June, and the weather was hot and still. In the forest the foliage was thick, sappy and green, and only rarely did a yellow leaf fall here and there from a birch or a lime-tree. The wildrose bushes were covered with sweet blossoms; and the forest glades were a mass of honey-scented clover. The thick, tall and waving rye was growing darker, and its grain was swelling fast. In the low-lying land the corncrakes called to one another ; in the rye and the oat field quails croaked and cried noisily ; in the forests at rare intervals...

In the spring of 1830 Pan Jaczéwski, at his family estate of Rozánka, received a visit from Joseph Migoúrski, the only son of a deceased friend.

Jaczéwski, a patriot of the days of the second partition of Poland, was a broad-browed, broadshouldered, broad-chested man of sixty-five, with a long white moustache on his brick-red face. As a youth he had served with Migoúrski’s father under the banner of Kosciúszko ; and with all the strength of his patriotic soul he hated the “Apocalyptic Adulteress” (as he called Catherine II) and her abominable paramour, the traitor Póniatowski ; and he believed...

It happened in Russia in the ’seventies, when the struggle between the Revolutionists and the Government was at its height.

The General-Governor of a district in South Russia, a healthy-looking German with drooping moustaches and a cold look on his expressionless face, dressed in a military uniform, with a white cross at his neck, sat one evening in his cabinet, at a table on which were placed four candles with green shades, looking through and signing papers left for him by his secretary.

Among those papers was the death-warrant of Anatole Svetlogoúb, a graduate of the Novorossiysk University, sentenced for...