Avva

Scenes from the life of the clergy described in the essay—an uncommon subject for Mamin‑Sibiryak—show that the author knew the everyday life and way of living of this milieu well. The figure of Father Andronik and even the conflict between a representative of the old clergy and a new direction had already been outlined in the essay "Sisters" (1881), but during the writer’s lifetime it still was never published.