'the Steppe and other Stories'', a collection is among the first of Chekhov's works to be published in a serious literary journal. The majority of tales in this collection focus on the issues faced by privileged class. The narration shows that the author never left his roots, being the son of an unsuccessful provincial grocer greatly influenced his writings. Interesting!

Nineteen traditional folktales reflecting the way of life of the Kazakhs, a Turko-Mongol nomadic people whose chief domain is the second largest republic of the Soviet Union. Includes glossary.

Exiled to Siberia In June 1942, the Rudomin family is arrested by the Russians. They are "capitalists -- enemies of the people." Forced from their home and friends in Vilna, Poland, they are herded into crowded cattle cars. Their destination: the endless steppe of Siberia. For five years, Ester and her family live in exile, weeding potato fields and working in the mines, struggling for enough food and clothing to stay alive. Only the strength of family sustains them and gives them hope for the future.

The Hungry Steppe examines one of the most heinous crimes of the Stalinist regime, the Kazakh famine of 1930–33. More than 1.5 million people perished in this famine, a quarter of Kazakhstan's population, and the crisis transformed a territory the size of continental Europe. Yet the story of this famine has remained mostly hidden from view. Drawing upon state and Communist party documents, as well as oral history and memoir accounts in Russian and in Kazakh, Sarah Cameron reveals this brutal story and its devastating consequences for Kazakh society. Through the most violent of means the Kazakh famine created Soviet Kazakhstan, a stable territory with clearly delineated boundaries that was an integral part of the Soviet economic system; and it forged a new Kazakh national identity. But this state-driven modernization project was uneven. Ultimately, Cameron finds, neither Kazakhstan nor Kazakhs themselves were integrated into the Soviet system in precisely the ways that Moscow had originally hoped. The experience of the famine scarred the republic for the remainder of the Soviet era and shaped its transformation into an independent nation in 1991. Cameron uses her history of the Kazakh famine to overturn several assumptions about violence, modernization, and nation-making under Stalin, highlighting, in particular, the creation of a new Kazakh national identity, and how environmental factors shaped Soviet development. Ultimately, The Hungry Steppe depicts the Soviet regime and its disastrous policies in a new and unusual light.

Featuring first-time translations of numerous examples of modern Kazakh literature for publication in the USA, this anthology provides excellent examples of literary life in both Soviet and post-Soviet Kazakhstan, and introduces readers to the rich literary traditions of the region. The materials introduce the rich literary heritage of Kazakhstan, which is a part of the unique prose and poetry traditions of the Central Asia steppes and Eurasia. The selected readings will enhance the understanding of unique nomadic culture and Central Asian universe of the great Eurasia Steppe, which, in the words of British Chancellor George Curzon, has ""charms for the historian, the archeologist, the man of science ...."" The Stories of the Great Steppe was designed as an a supplementary reader and textbook for students and general public studying 20th century Eastern European, Russian, and Central Asian literature, culture, and intellectual history. It can be used in courses on Slavic literature, Russian and Soviet literature, Russian cultural history, World History, and the History of World Civilizations.

It was easy to fall into Karabas, as easy as falling down a hole, but it was hard, to put it bluntly, to get out again. Never mind the zeks, even the soldiers were exiled ...' Deep in the desolate steppe, Captain Khabarov waits out his service at a camp where the news arrives in bundles of last year's papers and rations turn up rotting in their trucks. The captain hopes for nothing more from life than a meagre pension and a state-owned flat. Until, one Spring, he decides to plant a field of potatoes to feed his half-starved men ...This blackly comic novel shows the unsettling consequences of thinking for yourself under the Soviet system. Oleg Pavlov's first novel, published when he was only 24, Captain of the Steppe was immediately praised for its chilling but humane and hilarious depiction of the Soviet Empire's last years. The first in a trilogy, this novel already confirms Pavlov as a worthy successor to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

With an invasion looming at Russia's borders, Petka wages a war against boredom by secretly raising a wolf, stowing away in a shipment bound for the combat zone, and antagonizing the troops moving through the village.