Children of the Underground

“Children of the Dungeon” is a story about children’s friendship and about the lives of the poor in tsarist Russia.

It’s impossible to read this unforgettable story without feeling moved. It is written so truly—so full of warm sympathy and love for the unfortunate people!

The author of the story, the Russian writer Vladimir Korolenko, grew up in Ukraine, in a modest working family. In his works, he always fought for the truth. Korolenko could not look indifferently at the suffering of ordinary people; he fiercely hated any evil, violence, and injustice in public life.

You can’t live like that, his stories and essays say—you can’t meekly endure the cruel unjust power of the rich over the poor. You must fight for a better fate for all honest laborers on earth, because “a person is created for happiness, as a bird is created for flight.”

For his speeches against social injustice, Korolenko several times sat in prisons and spent many years in exile.

And the heroes of many of his stories and novellas begin this struggle with those responsible for the people’s grief and poverty.

Korolenko wrote many wonderful works. One of the earliest was the novella “In the Bad Company” (1885). Soon, with a few cuts, it was published for children under the title “Children of the Dungeon.”