Stories

Eugenii Andreevich Gagarin’s bright, sensitive, and authentic prose is little known in Russia. The author left the USSR in 1933 and, until his early death, wrote abroad. This audiobook includes two of his novellas and four short stories.

The autobiographical novella “A Trip for Epiphany Eve (Sviatki)” is suffused with the atmosphere of joyful Orthodox Christmas. The overall festive mood disappears only in the finale, when it becomes clear that this Christmas will be the last before the revolutionary upheavals that bring tragedy to Russia.

The short story “The Soviet Prince” unfolds around a young man of noble birth living in Soviet Russia. In this new society, there is no place for him: the traditions instilled in him since childhood are out of place; his family is in hardship; his relatives are subjected to arrests.

“The Cow” is a requiem for the Russian village.

Gagarin brings us into an atmosphere of exile—so familiar to the writer—in the story “White Nights.” A young noblewoman and a retired Cossack live only on memories; the new Russia evokes their rejection, and only love for each other gives them the strength to live on.

The hero of “A Star in the Night” is a former White officer who has taken monastic vows. His fate in the new country is exile and banishment, illness and the likelihood of an imminent death. Painful reflections on Russia’s past and future—on faith and unbelief—strengthen in his soul his faith in the Lord and hope for the victory of the spiritual over the physical.

The novella “The Return of the Cornet” takes place along the front line on the German side. The emotional experiences of the Russian emigrant who serves as an interpreter with the Wehrmacht—yet loves his people above all—form the emotional backbone of the story. Returning to Russia after a long break, the hero rediscovers his homeland, and what he sees shocks him: the new Russia is strikingly different from the old.

The image of the native land, the fate of Russia and the Russian people, reflection on the tragic changes in the life of the Motherland—this is the semantic foundation of all of Eugenii Gagarin’s works.