Well known for his innovative plays, which total one-fourth of his works, Aleksei Antipovich Potekhin also wrote essays, sketches, stories, novellas, and novels. Championing peasant equality at the time of serfdom, he was an authority on the life, culture, mores, and language of the Russian peasant, as well as an ardent environmentalist and sensitive advocate for improving women's plight. Potekhin's writings were appreciated by Leo Tolstoy, who in an 18 February 1887 letter to Potekhin wrote, "I believe that in dramatic and theatrical matters after Ostrovsky there is no expert better than you, also that in matters of the people's life no expert can equal you, that I am aware of myself." While serfdom was still an institution, Potekhin wrote the first full-length Russian peasant play, Sud liudskoi--ne Bozhii (Human Judgment Is Not That of God, 1854), and the first Russian novel with a serf girl as its heroine, Krest'ianka (The...