"Twenty-six Men and a Girl" is a pioneering story of social realism, and is a story of lost ideals. Twenty-six men labor in a cellar, making kringles in an effective prison. They are looked down upon by all around them, including the bun bakers. Thei...
In his novel, Gorky portrays the life of a woman who works in a Russian factory doing hard manual labour and combating poverty and hunger, among other hardships. Pelageya Nilovna Vlasova is the real protagonist; her husband, a heavy drunkard, physica...
In the cellar of a small boarding house, thin boards partition off the room of Vaska, a young thief. In the kitchen live Kvashnya (Dough), a vendor of meat pies, the decrepit Baron, and the streetwalker Nastya. Other lodgers sleep in bunks in the sam...
The story begins in 1815 in Digne, as the peasant Jean Valjean, just released from 19 years' imprisonment in the Bagne of Toulon—five for stealing bread for his starving sister and her family and fourteen more for numerous escape attempts&mdash...
Pushkin is usually credited with developing Russian literature. He is seen as having originated the highly nuanced level of language which characterizes Russian literature after him, and he is also credited with substantially augmenting the Russian l...
Hermann, an ethnic German, is an officer of the engineers in the Imperial Russian Army. He constantly watches the other officers gamble, but never plays himself. One night, Tomsky tells a story about his grandmother, an elderly countess. Many y...
Just there, over the crowned head, Wasn't laid a woe of a nation, Where Law is steadfastly set With Liberty in combination. Where every one obtains a shield, Where, hold by righteous arms of people, Their sword glides smoothly o'er a fiel...
Pyotr Andreyich Grinyov (the narrative is conducted on his behalf) is the only surviving child of a retired army officer. When Pyotr turns 17, his father sends him into military service in Orenburg. En route Pyotr gets lost in a blizzard, but is resc...
At the Cossack community The Cossack chief Yavtukh (nicknamed Kovtun) explains that his daughter expired before she finished revealing how she knew Khoma; at any rate he swears horrible vengeance upon her killer. Khoma turns sympathetic, and swears t...
The corrupt officials of a small Russian town, headed by the Mayor, react with panic to the news that an incognito inspector (the incognito one) will soon be arriving in their town to investigate them. The flurry of activity to cover up their conside...