SOURCE: “Nature and Self in Kazakov,” in The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. XII, No. 4, Winter, 1968, pp. 397-406.

In the following essay, Collins considers the themes of nature and isolation in several of Kazakov's stories.

Both Soviet and Western critics have noted (although not explored) the influence of Turgenev and Bunin, among others, on Jurij Kazakov. In view of Turgenev's use of nature—especially in Otcy i deti—to indicate man's relationship to Self, and of even more complex currents in the works of Bunin,¹ it is surprising that Kazakov's themes of nature and Self, of alienation and the overcoming of alienation, have received so little attention by the critics. Few fail to observe that “communion with nature” seems to be important in Kazakov, or that he seems not to care for the “larger issues” of the socio-political life of his nation or world, but such comments...