The Death of Ivan Ilyich and other Stories by Leo Tolstoy (1886)

I never read any Russian authors while growing up because of the Cold War, so Russian literature was completely new territory for me when I retired. We had read a translation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in school, but that was framed more as Cold War history than literature. After finishing Anna Karenina (which disappointed me; see my review here: https://mitchwyle.blogspot.com/2024/11/anna-karenina-by-leo-tolstoy-1875-1878.html) I complained about it over dinner with friends. One of them suggested I try Tolstoy’s short stories instead, so I picked up this collection.

The stories are technically excellent. The plots are tight and strong, the characters are painted in rich three-dimensional detail, and there are moments of sharp humor that I genuinely enjoyed. This volume includes the famous novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich along with several other shorter pieces that showcase Tolstoy’s skill at concise storytelling.

What wore me down, however, was the relentless moralizing. Every story hammers the same theme: oppressed Russian peasants suffer under the weight of blind, self-serving oligarchs and bureaucrats, while the powerful remain oblivious to the obvious immorality and unsustainability of the system. The Christian theological preaching and sense of outrage felt heavy-handed and repetitive. Unlike Anna Karenina, these stories do not linger on the neurotic inner lives of the elites, but the sermon-like tone still grated on me.

I am glad I read the collection for the craftsmanship and the characters, but it has put me off Tolstoy entirely. I will not be moving on to War and Peace or his other major works. I may explore Pushkin next, though I worry I lack enough historical context to appreciate him fully.

3/5 stars.