[Gutenberg 7501] • Tales of the Wilderness

Boris Pilniak (or in more correct transliteration, Pil'nyak) is the pseudonym of Boris Andreyevich Wogau. He is not of pure Russian blood, but a descendant of German colonists; a fact which incidentally proves the force of assimilation inherent in the Russian milieu and the capacity to be assimilated, so typical of Germans. For it is difficult to deny Pilniak the appellation of a typical Russian.

Pilniak is about thirty-five years of age. His short stories began to appear in periodicals before the War, and his first book appeared in 1918. It contained four stories, two of which are included in the present volume (DEATH and OVER THE RAVINE). A second volume appeared in 1920 (including the CROSSWAYS, THE BIELOKONSKY ESTATE, THE SNOW WIND, A YEAR OF THEIR LIVES, and A THOUSAND YEARS). These volumes attracted comparatively little attention, though considering the great scarcity of fiction in those years they were certainly notable events. But IVAN-DA-MARYA and THE BARE YEAR, published in 1922, produced a regular boom and Pilniak jumped into the limelight of all-Russian celebrity. The cause of the success of these volumes, or rather the attention attracted by them, lay in their subject-matter: