ABSTRACT
RUSSIAN SHORT STORIES History During the first years of his literary career Vladimir Nabokov wrote and published primarily poetry. However, as early as January, 1921, the Berlin Russian émigré newspaper RuF ( The Rudder) printed “Nezhit”’ (“The Sprite”), the first of some fifty Russian short stories by Nabokov; the next story, “Slovo” (“The Word”) did not appear until two years later. While in 1921-1923 Nabokov published only original poetry and translations in the Russian periodicals of Berlin, Riga, Prague, and Paris, 1924 was marked by the publication of nine stories; for 1925 the number amounted to five. Over the next fourteen years he continued to publish an average of one to three stories per year, some of which were included in the collections Vozvrashchenie Chorba (The Return of Chorb, 1930) and Sogliadatai (The Eye, 1938). After 1939 Nabokov did not write any short stories in Russian; the 1956 Russian collection Vesna v FiaFte i drugie rasskazy (Spring in Fialta and Other Stories) contained fourteen stories from the 1930s that had not been included in The Eye. During the last few years unauthorized reprints of stories from all three collections have appeared in Russia.
