Doctor Krupov. The Thieving Magpie

A great rebel, revolutionary, a freethinker in the best sense of the word, Alexander Ivanovich Herzen is a writer who made an enormous contribution to Russian and world literature. In his youth, he had already come to know the underside of Russian public life: the arbitrariness and unheard-of frauds of officials, the senselessness of provincial life, the place of the “little people” and their lack of rights, the crudity and stupidity of ordinary folk. All of this Herzen portrayed concisely and vividly in the short story “Doctor Krupov.”

The novella “The Magpie Thief” was written by A. I. Herzen in 1848, but it saw the light only two years later. The author dedicated the story to the famous talented nineteenth-century actor M. S. Shchepkin.

The novella tells the sad fate of a talented enslaved actress, whom the lustful advances of her owner, Count Skamen (Scamen—spelling varies), destroyed.

In this work, the writer seeks to draw the attention of Russian society to the difficult, powerless situation of the enslaved woman, who was considered by her masters to be nothing more than an ordinary thing—no different from furniture.