Russian Christmas Stories

Title: Ρωσικά χριστουγεννιάτικα διηγήματα

Writer: Edited by Evgenia Krichevskaya, Eleni Bakopoulou

Publishing House: Narkissos

Date of Publication: November 2004

Ratings: 5 stars

*All quotes translated by me, taken from the Greek original.*

”The great days were approaching.”- this is how a narration or a story about Christmas often starts. […] For the adults these days are indeed ”great”. But they are not always days for being festive and carefree. They are often days of reminiscing, even condemning yourself when everything you have done weighs on your shoulders, and even more so when you remember all those things you should have done, but you were unable or hesitant or dismissive to do. The lonely ones are burdened by loneliness; the betrayed by betrayal, the forgotten by oblivion.”

(Russian Winter by Konstantin Korovin)

Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Leskov, Vladimir Korolenko, Aleksandr Kuprin, Ivan Bunin, Arkady Averchenko, Vladimir Nabokov…

(Russian Winter by Vladimir Zhdanov)

26 short stories about Christmas from seven great Russian writers for the ”great, holy” days that are sadly not so ”great” for everyone. Young women of the aristocracy who try to help others, daydreaming in their loneliness. Rich landowners that refuse access to festivities to their workers who are treated like servants. Ruthless police officers that carry out their dubious task through blind, raw violence with an entire village as their victim. Farmers loyal to a nature that is as harsh as it is beautiful. Children who try to support their family because the lights of the wealthy estates cannot reach their poor huts. Doctors who fight for survival, artists who experience pain to create art, a society fascinated with spiritualism because their earthly life is too mundane and ugly. Characters that are familiar, lively. Human beings that are good and evil living their lives in the heart of winter. In the Russian steppe or the glorious cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg, wandering in the haunting country, so full of beauty, so full of instability and social inequality, so close to the brink of war.