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Almost every one of them can be traced back to some Russian or foreign writer. Each of them belongs to and is eminently typical of some accepted literary genre in vogue between 1910 and 1920. The Snow and The Forest Manor belong to the ordinary psychological problem-story acted among "intellectuals"; they have for their ancestors Chekhov, Zenaide Hippius, and the Polish novelists.
It is when we turn to the living that we realise what a flatland is Russian literature now. A writer and critic, Madame Z. Hippius, attempted in the Paris Mercure de France to give an idea of the situation. She admitted the inadequacy of her sketch. The troubled political map of Russia has not been conducive to ripe artistic production.
As she says, even the writers who refused to meddle with politics are marked men; politics in the shape of the secret police comes to them. Madame Hippius makes the assertion that literature in Russian has never existed in the sense of a literary milieu, as an organic art possessing traditions and continuity; for her, Tolstoy, Dostoïevsky, and Turgenieff are but isolated men of genius.
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