Vladimir Korolenko: Final judgment

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

Russian writers on war

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Vladimir Korolenko
From Makar’s Dream (1883)
Translated by Suzanne Rozenberg

Hunger and misery drove him hard; he had suffered from the drought in summer and the bitter frosts in winter; the taiga and the frozen soil had yielded him nothing. His life had been like that of cattle which are being driven on and do not know where they are going. Did he know what the priest’s sermons in church meant and why he had to pay the tithes? Did he know what had become of his eldest son, who had been taken as a soldier? He did not know where he died, in what place his poor bones lay!