Old Hunting Grounds and Other Stories by Yuri Kazakov

by Yuri Kazakov, Vladislav Zhukov (Translator)

The two volumes comprise 38 short stories and travel sketches describing Russians and parts of the Soviet Union which up to Kazakov's time (he died in 1982) had been almost untouched by that country's 20th century upheavals. The majority of his settings are the coast and forests adjoining the White Sea, peopled by hunters, fishermen, buoy-keepers, ancient peasants, children in the most halcyon moment of their youth, and among his memorable actors are not excluded even an occasional soulful dog or bear. Through the eyes of this new array of 'Russian originals' we return to forgotten ways of perceiving the world around us, of appreciating the essential miracle of our surroundings, the universe extending from the immediate and almost microscopic grain of sand or flower, out to the infinitudes of which we are a part. The sense of the two books is topical and universal: the degree of man's involvement in the harmony and natural processes of the world is an essential measure of his moral dignity. (That such natural processes included hunting, for instance, is a challenging thought in our environmentally-ideological and conservation-focused times.) In the classic style of the Russian short story Kazakov's narratives move at a leisurely pace and often end apparently inconclusively, but they never fail to induce a deeply reflective mood. A few of his tales do have an urban setting, but even those are suffused with a pastoral quality, contributed to by the inescapable presence of the seasonal and climactic envelopment of man's works; and too by nature's mind-borne continuities: for example, a suburban boy repeatedly imagining and remembering episodes in some once-glimpsed corner of Russia's backwoods. Such recollections, and more immediate contemplations of nature in his other stories, return and return like wistful sighs among the meanders of Kazakov's uncomplicated plots.

272 pages, Paperback

First published March 9, 2014

About the author

Yuri Pavlovich Kazakov was a Russian author of short stories. He started out as a jazz musician, but turned to publishing his stories in 1952. He attended the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute, graduating in 1958. Kazakov was born to a worker's family in Moscow and grew up in the old Arbat area, which has today been turned into a tourist attraction but in the mid-1900s was the focal point of Russian culture. He emerged as a writer only thanks to the short period in recent Russian history known as "the Thaw", but in the mid-1960s, this period gave way to stagnation in culture and public life. Kazakov produced some of his best stories in the 1970s, which dealt with the merging of two souls, the soul of the newborn and the soul of the poet at the end of his life.

Kazakov died on November 29, 1982 and was buried in Vagankovo Cemetery in Moscow.