The largest, most comprehensive anthology of its kind, this volume brings together significant, representative stories from every decade of the 20th century. It includes the prose of officially recognized writers and dissidents, both well-known and neglected or forgotten, plus new authors from the end of the 20th century. The selections reflect the various literary trends and approaches to depicting reality in the 20th century: traditional realism, modernism, socialist realism, and post-modernism. Taken as a whole, the stories capture every major aspect of Russian life, history and culture in the 20th century. The rich array of themes and styles will be of tremendous interest to students and readers who want to learn about Russia through the engaging genre of the short story.

Contents:

• Once Upon a Time by Leonid Andreyev
• The Invoker of the Beast by Fyodor Sologub
• Gambrinus by Aleksandr Kuprin
• The Little Devil by Aleksei Remizov
• Thus Life Passes by Elena Guro
• Four People by
• Scenes from the Life of the Worker Pantelei Grymzin by Arkady Averchenko
• Black Iris by Nadezhda Teffi
• The Red Crown by Mikhail Bulgakov
• Black Magic by Mikhail Zoshchenko
• The Female Fishby Mikhail Zoshchenko
• Gedali by Isaac Babel
• The Rabbiby Isaac Babel
• The Rabbi's Sonby Isaac Babel
• Family Man by Mikhail Sholokhov
• Outgoing Paper No 27 by Lev Lunts
• The Gardener of the Emir of Bukhara by Vsevolod Ivanov
• The Viper by Aleksei Tolstoy
• The Flood by Evgeny Zamyatin
• Doubting Makar by Andrei Platonov
• Blue Notebook Number 10 by Daniil Kharms
• Old Women Tumbling Outby Daniil Kharms
• Kushakov the Carpenterby Daniil Kharms
• A Dreamby Daniil Kharms
• The Start of a Very Nice Summer Dayby Daniil Kharms
• The Lynching by Daniil Kharms
• Lake, Cloud, Tower by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Smoky Glass Goblet by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
• Tanya by Ivan Bunin
• The Tenants by Andrei Sinyavsky
• Eulogy by Varlam Shalamov
• The House with a Turret by Fridrikh Gorenshtein
• "Victory" by Vasily Aksyonov
• Hands by Yuli Daniel
• A German in Felt Boots by Konstantin Vorobyov
• My Uncle of the Highest Principles by Fazil Iskander
• Chudik by Vasily Shukshin
• I Believe!by Vasily Shukshin
• Bread for a Dog by Vladimir Tendryakov
• You Cried Bitterly in Your Sleep by Yury Kazakov
• Little Arm, Leg, Cucumber by Yury Dombrovsky
• My Older Cousin by Sergei Dovlatov
• Girl of My Dreams by Bulat Okudzhava
• The Fakir by Tatiana Tolstaya
• Galoshes by Viktor Erofeyev
• Surrealism in a Proletarian District by Vladimir Makanin
• Passing Through by Vladimir Sorokin
• The Young by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• Butterfly. 1987 by Leonid Yuzefovich
• The Last War Story by Oleg Ermakov
• A Short History of Paint-ball in Moscow by Viktor Pelevin
• The Queen of Spades by Lyudmila Ulitskaya
• More and More Angels by Yury Buida
• The Samurai's Dream by Yury Buida
• Currency by Yury Mamleyev
• Snow Falls Ever So Quietly by Irina Polyanskaya
• Teacher without Pupils, or from under the Rubble by Lev Rubinshtein
• Into the Mausoleum of Thine by Lev Rubinshtein
• The Lord of the Steppes by Vladimir Tuchkov
• Never by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya
• Experience in Demonstrating Mourning by Marina Vishnevetskaya
• The Dump by Andrei Levkin