Two centuries of short stories by twenty-five titans of Russian literature, from Pushkin and Gogol to Tatyana Tolstaya and Svetlana Alexievich--in the beautifully jacketed Pocket Classics series. Russian Stories rounds up marvelous short stories by all the Russian heavyweights, including Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov, Bulgakov, and Nabokov, and continuing up to contemporary writers such as Tatyana Tolstaya and the recent Nobel Prize-winner Svetlana Alexievich. There is no similar one-volume collection of the best of the Russian greats in English, and especially none that include as many women as this one does, including a story by the recently rediscovered Teffi, who was widely hailed a century ago in Russia as "the female Chekhov." From the fate-changing storms that sweep through Alexander Pushkin's "The Blizzard" and Leo Tolstoy's "The Snow Storm" to the political whirlwind of perestroika that shapes Vladimir Sorokin's 1985 story "Start of the Season" to the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union as experienced by ordinary people in Alexievich's "Landscape of Loneliness," these riveting stories chronicle not only the particular dramas and upheavals of the Russian people, but also the tribulations and triumphs of the human spirit. CHRISTOPH KELLER is editor of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poet anthology Hip Hops: Poems About Beer . He is the author of prizewinning novels, plays, and essays in German, as well as the Swiss best-selling memoir The Best Dancer . He is the coauthor of a forthcoming biography of the American poet Muriel Rukeyser, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf. He divides his time between New York City and St. Gallen, Switzerland. Alexander Pushkin THE BLIZZARD Translated by Paul Debreczeny   Over hillocks deep in snow Speeding horses trample, In a clearing off the road Winks a lonely temple. . . . All at once a blizzard flings Drifts across the way, And a wheeling raven’s wings Rasp above the sleigh. Sorrow spell the gusty wails, And the hasting horses Scan the darkness, manes and tails Bristling in their courses . . . --Zhukovskii   Toward the end of the year 1811 – a memorable time for us – there lived in his own village of Nenaradovo a good man called Gavrila Gavrilovich R. He was renowned throughout the region for his hospitality and cordiality: neighbors came to his house all the time, some to eat and drink well, others to play Boston for five-kopeck stakes with his wife, Praskovia Petrovna, and still others to see the couple’s daughter, Maria Gavrilovna, a slender and pale girl of seventeen. She was considered a good match, and quite a few men marked her out either for themselves or for their sons.   Maria Gavrilovna had been brought up on French novels and was consequently in love. The object she had chosen for her affections was a penniless sublieutenant of infantry, who at the time was staying in his village on a furlough. It goes without saying that the young man was aflame with an equal passion, and that the parents of his beloved, as soon as they noticed the young couple’s mutual inclinations, forbade their daughter even to think about him. They began receiving him at their home with less kindness than they would have shown a retired assessor.   Our lovers were engaged in correspondence, and they met alone every day either in the pine grove or by the ancient chapel. There they swore eternal love for each other, lamented their fate, and discussed different possible courses of action. As a result of such correspondence and meetings, they arrived (which was quite natural) at the following consideration: if we cannot breathe without each other, yet the will of cruel parents stands in the way of our happiness, should we not disregard that will? It is easy to guess that this felicitous idea occurred to the young man first and was then heartily embraced by Maria Gavrilovna’s romantic imagination.   Winter set in and put a stop to the young couple’s meetings their correspondence, on the other hand, grew all the more lively. Vladimir Nikolaevich entreated Maria Gavrilovna in each letter to give herself to him and wed him in secret; they would remain in hiding for a while, then throw themselves at the feet of her parents, who of course would at last be moved by the lovers’ heroic constancy and unhappy state and would inevitably say, ‘‘Children! Come to our bosoms!’’   Maria Gavrilovna hesitated for a long while; many a plan for elopement was rejected. At last she gave her consent: on an appointed day she was to miss supper and retire to her room on the pretext of a headache.Her maid was in collusion with her; they were both to go into the garden by way of the back porch, find the sleigh waiting for them behind the garden, get in and ride five versts from Nenaradovo to the village of Zhadrino, and once there, go straight to the church, where Vladimir would be expecting them.   The night before the decisive day Maria Gavr