This explains the general and lively interest felt in Russia for the productions of belles lettres. This form of literature is regarded as the mirror of the various phases of that astounding development which Russia has accomplished during the last sixty years.
First came the reforms of the Fifties and Sixties. Serfdom was abolished, class distinctions were largely broken up, local self-government was initiated. So many reforms were introduced in the departments of Justice, of Instruction, of Credit and Commerce, that the ground was prepared for a totally new Russia. A vigorous blossoming of Russian literature coincided with this period of fermentation. Turgeniev, Gontscharov, Leo Tolstoi, and Dostoevsky found rich nutriment for their imaginative talent in the fresh-turned prolific soil of Russian Society. With, and alongside of, them a number of no less gifted authors throve uninterruptedly, till the reaction in the second half of the Sixties and in the Seventies fell like a frosty rime upon the luxurious blooms, and shrivelled them. The giants were silenced one by one. Leo Tolstoi remained the sole survivor.
With him none but the epigones, the friends of the people, worked on. Few writers attained to any eminence. Among such as also won a hearing in Germany must be mentioned Vladimir Korolenko and Chekhov. These two belong to the group known as "the Men of the Eighties."
Beggar collecting for a church fund (After a sketch by Gorki)
These years, which immediately preceded the appearance of Gorki, form part of the most gloomy period of modern Russian history. Blackest reaction followed the desperate struggles of the Nihilists in the Seventies in all departments. At the threshold of the Century stalked the spectre of regicide, to which Alexander II. was the doomed victim… and over the future hovered the grim figure which banished its thousands and ten thousands of gifted young intellectuals to Siberia.
This period accordingly corresponded with a definite moral retrogression in the ethical condition of the Russian people.
There was a necessary reflection of it in the literature. This era produced nothing of inspired or reformatory force. A profound pessimism stifled all originality. Korolenko alone, who was living during the greater part of this time as a political prisoner in distant Yakutsk, where he did not imbibe the untoward influences of the reaction, remained unmoved and strong. Anton Chekhov, too, survived the gloomy years, and grew beyond them.
He did not, it is true, entirely escape the influences of the time. He was the delineator of the deplorable social conditions under which he lived. But he deserves to be better known than he is to the outside public. His works everywhere express a craving for better things—for the reforms that never come. His men are helpless. They say indeed: